The Courage to Heal

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Heal-Survivors-Sexual-Anniversary/dp/0061284335/ref=sr_1_1?

I was a mess when I first severed ties with my bio-family. I escaped everyone and started my life again as a teenager without any experience or diplomas to show.

Starting from rock bottom is hard, but it can be done.

It didn’t take very long until the nightmares began, but I managed to push them away so that I could function at work. I don’t know how I managed to work without any sleep but I guess you do what you have to do. I needed rent money and food. Everything else was not even on my radar for the first few months.

Then things went from bad to worse, and I started to fall apart. I discovered a library where I lived and was drawn inside. One of the books that was displayed was the above “The Courage to Heal,” by Helen Bass and Laura Davis.

It called me over and something on the cover blurb made me sit down in a corner to read. The book taught me that there was a way to heal after trauma. I don’t know how long I sat there that first day, but it was dark when I left.

I came back the next day and read some more. A woman saw me reading in the corner, and remembered me from the previous day. She came up to me and said that I should get a library card and then I could borrow the book and read it at home.

Home — I thought. Where is that exactly? I was hired as a nanny at the time and the family asked me to leave the house when I was not working, even though I lived in the house. It made “relaxing at home with a book,” impossible.

Still, I took the librarian’s advice and got a library card. I kept the book in my back pack and read on park benches. I made notes about other people’s healing journeys and their testimonies. With every chapter, I started to find my own courage to heal from my past. I found it from knowing that I was not alone.

“You are not alone.” Boy did that revelation hit home. I had until then, thought that I was the only person in the world that had a traumatic childhood. That is what trauma does. It isolates you.

“The Courage to Heal,” showed me experiences of people who had lived through abuse and how they felt about it. I was given a front seat into what survivors did after the abuse to help them cope with daily lives. I had a real problem with dealing with my nightmares at the time and the book helped me through some very dark memories.

Once I finished reading “The Courage to Heal,” I looked for more books like it. I discovered that one of the authors, Laura Davis, had published a workbook for trauma survivors like me. I borrowed it and worked through every exercise in my notebook. I must have used several trees worth of paper because I never stopped writing. Every chance I got, I wrote and I was feeling better.

I have read many books about surviving trauma since these two, but for me they were the catalysts to my healing journey. The books were published before “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel Van der Kolk, which was published in 2015. If you are looking for books about how to heal from trauma, then check my recommendations below:

The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.

The Courage to Heal Workbook by Laura Davis.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.

The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk.

A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD by Dr. Arielle Schwarz.

The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach by Dr. Arielle Schwarz.

There are many books on Complex PTSD and healing. The above titles are what helped me the most. Once Dr Van der Kolk’s book was published in 2015, trauma became a hot topic for psychologists. Many great books have been published in the past ten years, but I haven’t read them because I don’t need to. I’m in a good place in my healing journey.

I wrote my own memoir: The Sex-Offender’s Daughter, to help other survivors like me. Reading other people’s stories helped me to find my own. Maybe my story will help you too?

Source: My book on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Offenders-Daughter-Story-Survival-Against/dp/B0CJ4FJQQ2/ref=sr_1_1?

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

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For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

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Here are a few links to my top articles:

Looking for a Change?

https://medium.com/activated-thinker/looking-for-a-change-f391e85abbd7

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https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-explain-complex-ptsd-to-loved-ones-769f81d437ab

A Search for Identity

https://medium.com/beyond-lines/a-search-for-identity-893df7c970c2

Dealing With Flashbacks

https://medium.com/illumination/dealing-with-flashbacks-1b8c0d94c19d

The Knock on the Door that Changed My World

https://medium.com/illumination/the-knock-on-the-door-that-changed-my-world-ff126c8c07cf

The Goodbye I Never Said Out Loud

https://medium.com/beyond-lines/the-goodbye-i-never-said-out-loud-dde14090bcc