Stories arrive before they hold a shape.
Trauma-informed story consulting — shaping sensitive subjects into developed stories for documentary film, books, and podcasts. For creatives, for philanthropists, and for the person carrying the story.
This gap is where I work.
Stories arrive and develop within us before they hold a shape. A memoir waiting to be told, a survivor’s testimony, a cause a foundation has funded for years, a subject our culture keeps looking away from — someone is carrying it, searching for its articulated, nuanced, cared-for expression that will change both hearts and minds.
I am a trauma-informed story consultant who for two decades has worked across documentary film development and production, philanthropic development and engagement, and one-on-one healing consultations. I work with clients who are looking to transform ideas that relate to sensitive material into developed stories for documentary films, books and podcasts. Trauma-informed, in practice, means the story develops without costing its participants their wholeness: consent that stays alive throughout the process.
“To survive, you must tell stories.”
Three doors, one table.
For creatives
Directors, producers, podcast makers, and writers holding material that is wider in scope or more delicate than the treatment they have for it. Together we find the story’s true spine: whose story it is, who is best to tell it, and the ethical architecture that lets it be told fully.
For philanthropists
Individuals and foundations who know that the issues they fund need stories, not statistics, to move people — developed to the point where they are ready for a director, a production company, or a podcast studio.
For you
The person holding a story that lives within and never quite goes away. I guide a discovery process of the way the story wants to unfold and take shape — memoir outlines involving sensitive material, families seeking intergenerational healing through co-authoring a complex story. Sometimes this work is done in private and stays private.
Uniquely tailored, always the same care.
A complimentary discovery call. You bring what you are carrying, in whatever shape it is in. We listen for what the story is beneath its subject.
The spine, the arc, the participants, and the ethical questions — reflected back with precision, so the story’s true architecture becomes visible.
A treatment, a pitch, an episode architecture, a memoir outline — developed to the point where the story is ready for its makers, its funders, or its author.
Every documentary I have made began the same way: someone trusted me with something tender and true. I am here to listen.
Stories held to completion.
Tidal
A documentary short directed by Katrina Lillian Sorrentino. In the wake of divorce and alone in a new country, a woman matches with “the one” — and is pulled into the cycle of narcissistic abuse, until the support of other survivors helps her leave and begin to heal.
The Tidal film page →
Selling a Fantasy
A podcast of true stories of sex work, healing, and power, developed with artist and female empowerment coach Sara Sepehri — built around candid, intimate interviews, explicitly committed to trauma-informed storytelling.
Request the deck →
Dark Side of the Moon
A feature documentary co-created with director Sophia Banks, immersing viewers in the lives of four women grappling with women’s health across the whole life cycle — a celebratory portrait of womanhood, and a damning portrait of the state of women’s health in America.
Request the deck →
The Bobaleks
In the 1970s, a white family already raising four children adopted 12 Black children. Fifty years later, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, two sisters return to that history in their own voices — belonging, race, and identity.
Watch the short →
From Limpopo to Ikapa
A documentary concept following musician Xander Ferreira across South Africa to visit fifteen of its most prominent artists as they create one album — asking what a nation’s music can hold that its politics cannot.
Watch the trailer →“Write the tales that scare you. I dare you. … Do not be afraid to disappear — from it, from us, for a while — and see what comes to you in the silence.”
Every story starts with a conversation.
Every engagement begins with a complimentary discovery call — thirty minutes, no preparation needed. You bring what you are carrying; we listen together for what it wants to become.
From there, the work is scoped to the story: a single consultation, a development arc, or a sustained collaboration. Fees are shaped to the engagement and discussed openly on the call.
Prefer email? Write to alexandra@poettreepictures.com — or learn about the methodology beneath this practice at Poet Tree Collective.