ABOUT KAT SHAW
Author. Advocate. Someone Who Understands What You've Been Carrying.
Kat Shaw is an author and mental health advocate specializing in narcissistic abuse awareness and childhood emotional trauma. Through fiction, survivor-centered resources, and advocacy-based education, she creates space for teens, young adults, and survivors to feel seen, find language for their experience, and believe in a future beyond their pain.
Her work bridges storytelling and advocacy — using fiction as a doorway to recognition, language, and hope.
KAT’S STORY
This Work Comes From a Place
I Know Well.
I am a young adult fiction author, mental health advocate, and educator on narcissistic abuse. My work is shaped by lived experience and centers on survival, abusive family dynamics, rebuilding self-worth, and the strength it takes to believe a different future is possible.
I hold a B.A. in Education and am the author of Breaking Kylie, my debut YA novel. I create stories and resources for people who have felt unseen, misunderstood, or trapped in a life they did not choose. My writing is grounded in emotional honesty, survivor-centered storytelling, and the belief that books can help readers feel less alone.
I live in Chicago with my husband. When I'm not writing, I'm usually biking along Lake Michigan, exploring somewhere new, watching sports, catching a movie, or disappearing into a good story.
PRIMARY FOCUS
Teens, young adults, and survivors of narcissistic parenting and childhood emotional abuse
AVAILABLE FOR
Podcast interviews · Speaking engagements · School & library visits · Panel discussions
PUBLISHED UNDER
METTLE PRESS
MISSION
Why This Work Matters.
So much of the conversation around childhood trauma skips past the hardest part. The part that happens before healing. Where you're still in it. Where you don't yet have the language. Where you're not sure whether what you experienced even counts.
Kat's work lives in that space. She writes for the moment just before someone realizes they're allowed to want more.
01
Recognition
Giving survivors language for what they've experienced — so they can start to understand it on their own terms.
03
Hope
Showing survivors that a different future is possible — especially teens and young adults who can't yet see it.
02
Validation
Confirming that what happened was real, was not their fault, and that their pain deserves to be taken seriously.
04
Advocacy
Bridging storytelling and mental health education to reach audiences that traditional advocacy sometimes misses.
AREAS OF FOCUS
What Kat Advocates For
01
Wider recognition of narcissistic abuse as a serious and lasting form of harm
Access to honest, plain-language mental health education for teens and young adults
Survivor-centered storytelling that reflects the reality of abuse without minimizing it
02
Trauma-informed perspectives in schools, libraries, and public conversations
A world where no survivor has to spend years wondering if what happened to them was real
03
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