What if Alice in Wonderland is not just a children’s story, but a map of moral injury and recovery? This article walks through a 12-step journey using Alice’s adventures to explain how we wake up, grieve, and rebuild life after madness.

I taught at a small private school once.... one of those places people call a “safe option” because the public schools were failing our Black kids. So families did what families do when the world won’t protect their children: they sent them to the nearest place that might be gentler. On paper, it was a refuge. In practice, it was something else entirely.