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Later this month, Alicia Johnson is launching her book Buried Treasure: A Field Guide to the Life-Changing Magic of Revealing Yourself. The book – which is part memoir, part scientific research, and part strategic action – provides a guide for working through trauma. 

“I know firsthand how trauma can dampen our natural capacity for play, discovery, and imagination,” Alicia says. “But I also know that movement can offer us a way back to these essential parts of ourselves. When the book launches, readers will be invited to explore not just through reading, but through movement groups where everyone is welcome. All movement can be modified and wonder gets to lead the way, because sometimes the deepest understanding comes when we let both words and movement reveal ourselves to ourselves.” 

About Alicia 

Professionally, Alicia has worked as a brand creative director and strategist for most of her life. Her brand agency, which she founded with her husband Hal Wolverton, is appropriately named Johnson + Wolverton and consults with luxury brands. 

Very recently, Alicia returned to her modeling career with Ford Models. At 64-years-old, that might seem like an unusual move, but that’s precisely why Alicia did it. 

“It’s part of my exploration of being seen. We live in a world with pretty particular beauty standards, and I have become more comfortable with being an exception to the rule,” she explains. “I was a plus-size model in my 20s before it was really a thing, and then I went ‘behind the camera’ for most of my career. I feel like showing myself is part of the work of this book, and I think that being truly seen, at any age, at any size, is important.”

Alicia is also a speaker, a member of the Board of Directors of A Billion Minds Institute – a NYC-based climate change advocacy organization, and an author, previously penning two novels. But Buried Treasure is the first time that she’s tackling nonfiction. 

“A lot of my professional experience is woven into the book, particularly the idea of leading teams. I use it as a metaphor for leading the team within yourself.” 

The process of uncovering trauma and putting pen to paper 

Buried Treasure started not as a novel, but simply as a form of research for Alicia whilst she struggled with feeling trapped at home during the pandemic in 2020. She conducted research about what “those who had been imprisoned did to come out of it sane,” and came up with three necessary daily habits: a physical practice, a spiritual practice, and a learning practice. 

The physical practice was fulfilled by a Pilates reformer and Alicia picked up meditation to check off the spiritual practice. All that was left was to decide what to learn. Throughout her life, Alicia has been gathering research about trauma as a way for her to understand and cope with the sexual abuse she experienced during her childhood, so it seemed natural that she continue this research to fulfill her daily learning practice. As such, she began synthesizing the information she already had, conducting more research to fill in the gaps, and following her nose on whatever sparked her curiosity and interest. 

“I am by nature a strategist. I love poring through data and converting it into understandable insights and actions. Looking at all the research, and my own life both personal and professional, I mapped out insights and actions for ways to live more fully,” Alicia explains. 

Indeed, that’s how the memoir aspect of the book came about. Alicia felt as though she needed to “walk beside the reader” and share how a particular insight had come to light, as well as be vulnerable in revealing her own fear, shame, delight, and other emotions in an effort to ensure the reader doesn’t feel alone in their journey. 

“The subhead of the book is ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Revealing Yourself,’ and throughout the book, I talk about the concept of revealing yourself to yourself,” she explains. “Part of revealing myself to myself was also revealing myself to the reader as a touchstone in their own exploration. Maybe part of revealing myself to myself is about the work I have to do, in the sense that we all have a story to tell. I’m not a huge fan of the story I have to tell and I wish it wasn’t mine to tell, but it is, and I think part of the story is showing how to move through it.” 

In fact, during the pandemic while she was compiling all of this research, Alicia had been working on a novel and encountering a stint of what she was reticent to refer to as “writer’s block,” but was a bit of a standstill nonetheless. 

“I knew what happened, but I couldn’t see certain things. I wasn’t quite sure what one of the main characters was supposed to do – the novel is, like my other stories, shaped by the trauma of sexual abuse. The character I was uncertain of is a thinly veiled ‘me.’ In retrospect, I think of it not as writer’s block, but as an authenticity block,” Alicia shares. “The character didn’t know enough to be the person the story needed. I think she has grown into what the story needs now and I’m working on it again now.”

A toolkit for healing trauma 

For Alicia, the most rewarding part about creating this guide is that it’s useful. At her core, Alicia describes herself as a pragmatist, so creating a guide that provides a plan of action to work through trauma has been incredibly beneficial for her, and she hopes it will be for others, too. 

“It’s like having a toolkit of sorts. There are bits of information, insight, and action that could help just about anyone,” she explains. “One of my favorite insights from the book is that trauma affects our brains, tamping down our ability to play, imagine, create – to experience wonder – and there are ways to bring those things back ‘on line.’”

One of the most important ways to do this is through movement, which is a big part of Alicia’s book. After reading The Body Keeps the Score by Besel van der Kolk, Alicia wanted to incorporate the idea of moving your body as a way of releasing and working through trauma. 

“So much of trauma recovery is done in talk therapy, which is super important. I have done years of talk therapy and I wouldn’t be talking to you today if I hadn’t, but this book is a companion to that,” she shares. “It’s about being in the world, moving, and taking small steps to increase levels of trust.” 

This idea has shaped the concept of workshops that Alicia plans to hold at spas and wellness centers in the region. Most recently, she partnered with Village Yoga in Kinderhook, NY, for a body/mind workshop centering around the ideas in the guide. The workshop featured movement practices like the “brain bath,” which consists of a series of movements that get cerebral spinal fluid moving, as well as discussions and journaling prompts. 

“The workshops are all about movement, play, and permission to dream – they are Buried Treasure’s equivalent to a book club discussion,” Alicia muses. 

Overcoming hardship and finding hope

Alicia notes that we have all experienced trauma throughout our lives, and while the term is a bit overused, she explains trauma as a defining hardship. Everyone has their own measure of hardship, and she notes that there can often be a twisted sort of competition as to who has had it worse. 

“We each have the worst thing that ever happened to us, and that is our measure of hardship. When it comes down to the work of moving through it, I believe that ‘worst thing’ is equal to someone else’s.”

A central tenet of the book is a quote that Alicia stumbled upon from Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Heaney wrote, “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.” 

“That expression encapsulates that hope is active. It’s an expression of our personal agency or the knowledge that we have a choice,” Alicia says. “I believe that our own lives should be filled with imagination, play, and wonder, and that is the good that is worth working for.” 

To learn more about Alicia Johnson and for more information about her book, Buried Treasure: A Field Guide to the Life-Changing Magic of Revealing Yourself, visit Alicia’s website here.