In a quiet suburban neighborhood in Virginia, two teenage sisters, Kristie and Stacie, were brutally attacked and sexually assaulted. Stacie did not survive and was given a burial with full military honors. For seven excruciating years, Kristie and mother, Lorraine struggled with survivors guilt and depression. The attacker pierced all of their hearts that fateful day. Lorraine started the S.T.A.C.I.E. Foundation in 2001 as an Impact Speaker seeking answers to questions she didn't know how to ask. The journey she has traveled has brought peace and healing from unique places, where she found forgiveness.
Healing the Wounds is the most revealing book ever written by a doctor about his own profession. In it, David Hilfiker breaks the code of silence surrounding the everyday practice of medicine and gives is a dramatically different personal account of how the family doctors gets by in a world of spiraling information and high anxiety. Drawing on his years of rural and urban experience, Dr. Hilfiker lets us all know what it really feels like to be a doctor. What do you do when you make a serious medical mistake? Is it enjoyable to play God? What do you say to a patient who wants reassurance when the essence of diagnosis is uncertainty? What about money? What happens when a patient is taking forever, your waiting room is full, and you want to get home? Dr. Hilfiker uses incidents from his own practice to examine many of the kinds of behavior for which doctors are criticized—aloofness, authoritarianism, lack of caring, and money. With compassion for doctor and patient alike, he shows how the stresses of medical practice lead to a climate of misunderstanding and hostility in which the goal of healing is the first casualty. Never before have we heard the voice of the doctor ever American is most likely to meet—the family doctor—telling the often painful truths of medical practice. A book for the medical community and the lay person alike, Healing the Wounds is a powerful exploration of what frustrates doctors (and infuriates patients) and what might be done about it).
Balancing sound biblical exposition with sensitive pastoral care, Stephen Seamands shows that because Jesus experienced abuse, shame and rejection, he understands the hurts we experience today. And Jesus' response to pain and suffering gives us hope that we too can experience forgiveness and new life.
In 1983, when Evans came up with the vision for the first-ever memorial on the National Mall to honor women who’d worn a military uniform, she wouldn’t be deterred. She remembered not only her sister veterans, but also the hundreds of young wounded men she had cared for, as she expressed during a Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.: “Women didn’t have to enter military service, but we stepped up to serve believing we belonged with our brothers-in-arms and now we belong with them at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. If they belong there, we belong there. We were there for them then. We mattered.” In the end, those wounded soldiers who had survived proved to be there for their sisters-in-arms, joining their fight for honor in Evans’ journey of combating unforeseen bureaucratic obstacles and facing mean-spirited opposition. Her impassioned story of serving in Vietnam is a crucial backstory to her fight to honor the women she served beside. She details the gritty and high-intensity experience of being a nurse in the midst of combat and becomes an unlikely hero who ultimately serves her country again as a formidable force in her daunting quest for honor and justice.
"This book will bring enlightenment and great encouragement to all seeking healing from the Triune God and knowledge and motivation to those already involved in the healing ministry to bring health and greater life into the Body of Christ." -from the Foreword by George A. Maloney, S.J.
Young author, Garett Sharp, delivers a raw take on heartbreak and mental illness in his newest collection of illustrated poetry + prose. In this undoubtedly emotional collection from the inside of Garett Sharp’s mind, readers are taken along on a journey filled with heartbreak, self-loathing, mental health issues, self-reflection, as well as finding the key to self-acceptance. As the author grows, he learns to acknowledge his life decisions, what it’s like to live with mental illness, how to cope with heartbreak and devastating loss, and find the strength of mending the wounds from within. Heal My Wounds is by far the largest, most impactful collection written by Garett. The poems range from sadness, rage, and pain to hopeful sources of light and finding peace.
In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Here is how Neil Boothby, Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, describes the book: "Mollica provides a wealth of ethnographic and clinical evidence that suggests the human capacity to heal is innate--that the 'survival instinct' extends beyond the physical to include the psychological as well. He enables us to see how recovery from 'traumatic life events' needs to be viewed primarily as a 'mystery' to be listened to and explored, rather than solely as a 'problem' to be identified and solved. Healing involves a quest for meaning--with all of its emotional, cultural, religious, spiritual and existential attendants--even when bio-chemical reactions are also operative." Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians. This book reveals how in every society we have to move away from viewing trauma survivors as "broken people" and "outcasts" to seeing them as courageous people actively contributing to larger social goals. When violence occurs, there is damage not only to individuals but to entire societies, and to the world. Through the journey of self-healing that survivors make, they enable the rest of us not only as individuals but as entire communities to recover from injury in a violent world.
Sure to become a classic on female empowerment, a groundbreaking exploration of the personal, cultural, and global implications of intergenerational trauma created by patriarchy, how it is passed down from mothers to daughters, and how we can break this destructive cycle. Why do women keep themselves small and quiet? Why do they hold back professionally and personally? What fuels the uncertainty and lack of confidence so many women often feel? In this paradigm-shifting book, leading feminist thinker Bethany Webster identifies the source of women’s trauma. She calls it the Mother Wound—the systemic disenfranchisement of women by the patriarchy—and reveals how this cycle is perpetuated by wounded mothers who unconsciously pass on damaging beliefs and behaviors to their daughters. In her workshops, online courses, and talks, Webster has helped countless women re-examine their lives and their relationships with their mothers, giving them the vocabulary to voice their pain, and encouraging them to share their experiences. In this manifesto and self-help guide, she offers practical tools for identifying the manifestations of the Mother Wound in our daily life and strategies we can use to heal ourselves and prevent our daughters from enduring the same pain. In addition, she offers step-by-step advice on how to reconnect with our inner child, grieve the mother we didn’t have, stop people-pleasing, and, ultimately, transform our heartache and anger into healing and self-love. Revealing how women are affected by the Mother Wound, even if they don’t personally identify as survivors, Discovering the Inner Mother revolutionizes how we view mother-daughter relationships and gives us the inspiration and guidance we need to improve our lives and ultimately create a more equitable society for all.
Alexis White spent much of her youth going after what she wanted and not caring who she hurt. She didn't care about Christopher's wife when she pursued an affair with him, but years later, she can admit that she was also wounded in the process. She's still dealing with the anguish of having aborted Christopher's baby and then losing the one man she believes ever loved her fully. In spite of her pain, Alexis realizes life must go on. More than a decade later, she has a successful pediatrics practice and is engaged to Jamar Duplessis. They have survived Hurricane Katrina, but with Hurricane Gustav threatening to strike, Alexis and Jamar must pack up and flee New Orleans. Unfortunately, Alexis finds herself right in the eye of another storm when she and Jamar decide to wait out the hurricane in Virginia Beach. Christopher and his wife Andrea live there, and are still nursing the wounds that Alexis helped to cause. Although Jamar is determined not to let this potential drama stress out his fiancée, an unexpected glitch in his finances demands his attention and nearly drives a wedge between him and Alexis. Someone is definitely out for revenge, but who? Is it Andrea? Christopher? Or maybe it's Alexis's former archrival, Nikki, who also makes a surprise appearance in Virginia Beach. Will Alexis be able to face the demons she thought she'd slayed years ago? This is a story of family, friendship, and forgiveness that proves that while time passes, some wounds never heal.
