Wendy Williams
Author
Healing the Trauma of Infant Surgery
Operated on as an infant, without anesthesia, Wendy P. Williams began life at war with her body. There were tubes everywhere, in and out of every opening, her mother reminded her on every anniversary of her surgery. Autobiography of a Sea Creature takes readers on Williams’ difficult sensory journey toward healing, as she communes along the way with horseshoe crabs, dolphins, and other marine life that taught her the restorative power of beauty, resilience, and interdependence. At times luscious and lyrical, at other times analytical and reflective, this literary memoir portrays the dissociative experience of trauma and the roots of self-destructive cycles, as well as the tragic results of medical beliefs at the time that infants could not feel pain. Autobiography of a Sea Creature is both a love letter to the earth and a hopeful testament of humans' capacity to heal our deepest wounds.
Printed book available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Now also available as an audio book from Amazon and Audible.com.
(click the "Buy from Amazon" or "Audible.com" buttons below for details.)
Free download also available from UCSF Health Humanities.
My 20-minute interview with Sacramento's Cap Radio by Insight host Vicki Gonzalez. Listen here.
I was featured in CUTDOWN, a documentary which reveals the practice of infant surgery without anesthesia prior to 1987. View it here.
Interview with Stephen Beitler, adjunct UCSF faculty. Listen here.
The Trauma of Infant Surgery - Pushing Limits - January 19, 2024 | KPFA
An interview with Adrienne Lauby on the KPFA radio show Pushing Limits "providing critical coverage of disability issues." Listen here.
My lecture at the C. F. Reynolds Medical History Society, April 2025. Listen here.
Autobiography of a Sea Creature
In this absorbing book, we are privileged to join Wendy in her journey of 50 years to recover from surgery as an infant when anesthesia was not routinely administered. Ironically, this life-saving operation resulted in the question she could not address with certainty until she was 52 – was she dead or alive? You will be riveted by the chronicling of her experiences and the way she weaves together her inside and outside life as she uses creative processes—breath work, drawings, journaling, and the exploration of her powerful dreams—to search for the answer. Like her role model the biologist Rachel Carson, Wendy crafts exquisite observations of the natural world and her beloved sea creatures, sprinkled like tiny jewels throughout her writing. Reading this book will send you on a most memorable odyssey into a child’s world that few people have been able to make.
Dr. Linda Gantt, PhD, ATR-BC, is the owner and Executive Director of Intensive Trauma Recovery and ITR Training Institute LLC. In late 2020, she co-founded Help For Trauma Inc., a non-profit established to fund trauma research and offer trauma-effective training to mental health workers.
Praise & Reviews
In Autobiography of a Sea Creature, Wendy gives a voice to infants unable to articulate, who, due to necessary medical procedures, experience trauma. We journey with Wendy as she discovers the profound physical and emotional effects of this initial surgery and its consequences throughout her life. She shows us that the tentacles of the trauma extend and blend beyond her to her family and relationships. With the sea and its creatures interwoven in her life, the reader can also ride the fluid waves into healing and well being. With the growing awareness of trauma and PTSD in the world, this autobiography is one of support for both our precious little ones and all adults who were infants at one time.
Jean Anne Zollars, PT, DPT, MA, BI-D, Instructor in Visceral and Neural Manipulation for the Barral Institute, specializing in Pediatrics. Upcoming book: Visceral Manipulation for Pediatrics. www.jazollarspt.com
Autobiography of a Sea Creature is not just a story of one woman's emotional and psychological rebirth from the trauma of infant surgery. It is the poetic, haunting, life-affirming journey of healing an ecosystem, whether that is our human body or our planet. Wendy Williams has written an evocative memoir of awakening that will inspire anyone who cares about resilience, self-exploration, and our capacity for compassion.
Mary Fifield
Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene
Available now: https://www.fireandwaterstories.com/
Note: Dr. Tinnin, along with his wife Dr. Linda Gantt, offered healing help for those suffering from preverbal trauma at their clinic in West Virginia, which is now closed. Now, Dr. Gantt offers trainings in ITR, Instinctual Trauma Response, “a holistic, evidence-supported approach to full trauma resolution and recovery” at her website helpfortrauma.com. The website is full of important information not only for those seeking certification for training, but survivors of infant surgery without anesthesia. Please check out her offerings. What follows is an excerpt of a Dr. Tinnin post from 2010.
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About Preverbal Trauma

It had been widely believed that babies will not remember pain and therefore will not develop post-traumatic disturbances. The medical establishment shared this delusion until 1987 when it was shown to be false by a heroic scholar, Dr. Anand, who published his definitive studies in The New England Journal of Medicine. Before that, newborns and infants up to 18 months of age were operated on without anesthesia. As a consequence, anyone now 26 years or older who had major surgery as a baby is at risk for chronic posttraumatic illness because the surgery was probably done without anesthesia, which was the custom in most hospitals prior to 1987. Abdominal surgery for pyloric stenosis and chest surgery for congenital heart problems were the most common forms of infant surgery. Together these surgeries were required for about eight cases per 1000 births. A rough estimate of the number of survivors during the single year of 1987 (3,829,000 live births) is 30,600. We do not know what proportion of these survivors is now suffering with posttraumatic symptoms but considering the severity of the pain and the helplessness of the infant, we would expect that the majority of these infants were traumatized.
Infant surgery without anesthesia is a glaring example of preverbal trauma, but there are many other traumas during infancy. Babies in pediatric intensive care units are subject to many painful experiences, such as injections, chest tubes, and breathing tubes. Aside from the hospital, trauma threatens infants in many ways. Accidental injuries, illnesses, maltreatment and the witnessing of violence are sources of trauma. People that have survived these early traumatic experiences usually cannot recall them verbally and they cannot forget them nonverbally.

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Life-Long Symptoms

The symptom picture of the survivors is broader than the usual picture for posttraumatic stress disorder. Adult survivors report life-long symptoms of anxiety (constant nervousness and spells of terror or panic), hostility (temper outbursts and urges to smash or break things), depression, self-consciousness, distrust of others, and a high vulnerability to stress. The life-long aspect of these symptoms leads to the faulty clinical perception that they are personality disorders instead of recognizing them as persisting reactions first elicited by preverbal trauma. That recognition opens the way to curative treatment of the adult survivor.

​
Infants Feel Pain, Remember Pain

We know today that infants feel pain and they remember the pain. That memory is not verbally coded and therefore is not conscious. It has not been mitigated by time or by life experience. It festers in the nonverbal mind and threatens to overwhelm the person. The unfortunate individual is blind to the origin of the symptoms and usually attributes them to present causes, such as some physical or mental illness. Those survivors of infant surgery without anesthesia that do seek treatment might do so because of baffling symptoms of pain and fear or dissociative symptoms.

My Latest Blog
Blogpost by psychiatrist Dr. Louis Tinnin (1932-2014), excerpted from his blog Infant Surgery without Anesthesia
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Note: Dr. Tinnin, along with his wife Dr. Linda Gantt, offered healing help for those suffering from preverbal trauma at their clinic in West Virginia, which is now closed. Now, Dr. Gantt offers trainings in ITR, Instinctual Trauma Response, “a holistic, evidence-supported approach to full trauma resolution and recovery” at her website helpfortrauma.com. The website is full of important information not only for those seeking certification for training, but survivors of infant surgery without anesthesia. Please check out her offerings. What follows is an excerpt of a Dr. Tinnin post from 2010.
​
About Preverbal Trauma

It had been widely believed that babies will not remember pain and therefore will not develop post-traumatic disturbances. The medical establishment shared this delusion until 1987 when it was shown to be false by a heroic scholar, Dr. Anand, who published his definitive studies in The New England Journal of Medicine. Before that, newborns and infants up to 18 months of age were operated on without anesthesia. As a consequence, anyone now 26 years or older who had major surgery as a baby is at risk for chronic posttraumatic illness because the surgery was probably done without anesthesia, which was the custom in most hospitals prior to 1987. Abdominal surgery for pyloric stenosis and chest surgery for congenital heart problems were the most common forms of infant surgery. Together these surgeries were required for about eight cases per 1000 births. A rough estimate of the number of survivors during the single year of 1987 (3,829,000 live births) is 30,600. We do not know what proportion of these survivors is now suffering with posttraumatic symptoms but considering the severity of the pain and the helplessness of the infant, we would expect that the majority of these infants were traumatized.
Infant surgery without anesthesia is a glaring example of preverbal trauma, but there are many other traumas during infancy. Babies in pediatric intensive care units are subject to many painful experiences, such as injections, chest tubes, and breathing tubes. Aside from the hospital, trauma threatens infants in many ways. Accidental injuries, illnesses, maltreatment and the witnessing of violence are sources of trauma. People that have survived these early traumatic experiences usually cannot recall them verbally and they cannot forget them nonverbally.

​
Life-Long Symptoms

The symptom picture of the survivors is broader than the usual picture for posttraumatic stress disorder. Adult survivors report life-long symptoms of anxiety (constant nervousness and spells of terror or panic), hostility (temper outbursts and urges to smash or break things), depression, self-consciousness, distrust of others, and a high vulnerability to stress. The life-long aspect of these symptoms leads to the faulty clinical perception that they are personality disorders instead of recognizing them as persisting reactions first elicited by preverbal trauma. That recognition opens the way to curative treatment of the adult survivor.

​
Infants Feel Pain, Remember Pain

We know today that infants feel pain and they remember the pain. That memory is not verbally coded and therefore is not conscious. It has not been mitigated by time or by life experience. It festers in the nonverbal mind and threatens to overwhelm the person. The unfortunate individual is blind to the origin of the symptoms and usually attributes them to present causes, such as some physical or mental illness. Those survivors of infant surgery without anesthesia that do seek treatment might do so because of baffling symptoms of pain and fear or dissociative symptoms.

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Listen to Zoom lecture available on this site's homepage.
Marin Poetry Center
Mill Valley Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley, California
Thursday, April 2, 2026, 6:30 pm
About Wendy Williams
Wendy Patrice Williams is a writer intent on getting the message out about the fact that before 1987 in America and in many parts of the world, anesthesia and pain control were largely withheld from use on infants needing invasive medical procedures. As a result, their suffering is lifelong due to PTSD and other mental and physical disturbances.