Trauma Memoir

Are you experiencing physical or emotional symptoms that no one is able to explain? If so, you may be suffering a traumatic reaction to a past event, teaches Dr. Peter A. Levine. Medical researchers have known for decades that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure...

Designed for psychotherapists and their clients, Peter Levine's latest best-seller continues his groundbreaking exploration of the central role of the body in processing—and healing—trauma. With foreword by Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score In Trauma and Memory...

Homeless, running from a violent partner, and battling suicidal depression, she found herself sitting by a river holding a bottle of pills in one hand and a bottle of red wine to wash them down in the other. Out of the twilight sky a majestic blue heron circled and landed just a few feet away. Something in the heron's piercing eyes caused her to stop swallowing the pills. In that moment, she realized that there was just too much beauty and magic in the world to give up. Thus began a decades-long quest to understand how wondrous encounters can spark healing from trauma and grief.

A Life in Trauma is a frank, remarkable account of a career spent helping others, offering a positive outlook on the potential of Ireland’s healthcare system in the future. Concern. Compassion. Doubt. Despair. Anger. Hope. Imagine juggling these feelings every day in a situation where your work could mean the difference between someone's life or death.

Raw and riveting, Girl, Groomed is seasoned psychotherapist Carol Odell’s evolving story of deepening her understanding of how the crisis she blindly imposes on her marriage is rooted in her own history of sexual abuse and violence at the hands of a predatory horse trainer who, for far too much of her young life, held all the reins. Chapters toggle back and forth between scenes of her childhood growing up jumping horses on the show circuit in Virginia and the therapy sessions she later undergoes as an adult sitting in “the other chair.”

In this lyrical, radically expansive self-portrait, celebrated poet, author, and lecturer Sophie Strand explores—with searing insight and honesty—the intersecting spaces of her own chronic illness, the complex ecology of a changing world, and the very nature of the stories we tell ourselves...

An honest and lyrical coming-of-age memoir of growing up in South Africa at the height of apartheid, and an invitation to recognize and refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—from the bestselling author of Never Unfriended “Heartfelt, emotionally charged reflections . . . [a] bracing...

Set against a 20-year dialogue with her mother, Barbara, who suffers from long undiagnosed PTSD, author Elizabeth Wilcox opens her maternal history with the birth of her illegitimate grandmother Violet to a German house servant outside London in 1904. With her mother's encouragement, Wilcox goes on to trace the lives of Violet and her mother, Barbara, both of whom are deeply impacted by maternal separation and the complex trauma they have endured because of war.

*Longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction* 'Not simply a memoir. It is an indictment of failure at the highest levels of police, press and politics' Tom Watson 'Intensely personal ... turning fear into bravery and pain into power' Cosmopolitan 'A powerful memoir ... the astonishing...

The third of a nonfiction trilogy, this intrepid memoir tracks sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the life of a veteran American journalist. It also describes the long and ultimately successful psychotherapy the author undertook to heal.

'One of the funniest books I have ever read' HADLEY FREEMAN ‘A masterpiece’ SATHNAM SANGHERA 'The read of the summer' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Brilliant … funny and moving' ADAM KAY A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex...

“The Love You Save will console and inspire countless people."—J.R. Moehringer, New York Times bestselling author of The Tender Bar I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings meets Educated in this harrowing, deeply hopeful memoir of family, faith and the power of books—from acclaimed journalist and...

In Finding Myself Through Chaos!, Erica offers a candid exploration of her life, revealing the struggles of juggling motherhood, relationships, and a demanding career. When an unexpected illness disrupts her carefully crafted world, she is forced to confront her deepest fears and insecurities. Through her heartfelt narrative, Erica shares the raw emotions of betrayal and the complexities of modern life, illustrating how these experiences shaped her understanding of self-worth and purpose.

Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Mitch and his wife, Janine operate. Chika's...

One of life's biggest cliches becomes a horrific reality when Douglas Segal's wife and young daughter are hit head-on by a Los Angeles city bus. Miraculously, his daughter was unharmed, but his wife faced a series of life-threatening injuries. Following the accident, Segal began sending regular email updates to their circle of friends and family - a list that continued to grow as others heard of the event. Segal's compelling memoir is an intimate and honest chronicle built around these email updates and is a profound example of how people show up for one another in times of crisis.

"Bracing, brilliant, and fury-inducing.... a survival story like no other. With positively outstanding storytelling, this is a book that cannot be put down." —Booklist, starred review AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER One of Booklist’s Best Memoirs of 2024 One of Booklist...

A powerful and redemptive story of how the dazzling world of roller derby helped one young woman transform her fear and self-doubt into gutsy, big-hearted, adventurous living “A universal story of healing and triumph, made all the more beautiful, wild, and free by Gabe’s fierce love for...

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured. The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered.

From surviving an horrific dog attack as a toddler, to the tragic death of his father in a car accident, to the challenges of leaving the country of his birth and then finally to the very emotional divorce from his wife... this story has truth at its heart and purpose at its soul. Funny, tragic, and at times unbelievable, the story weaves its way from various towns in the regional Eastern Cape Province of South Africa to the cities of the Gold Coast, Sydney and Brisbane.

A powerful, unforgettable memoir about a girl who escapes her childhood as a preschool drug dealer in rural Indiana—only to find that no one can really “make it out” until they make peace with where their story began: home Home, it turns out, is where the war is. It’s also where the...