Trauma Memoir

Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission to legitimize their conflicting emotions. Adoptee and counselor Cameron Lee Small names the realities of the adoptee's journey, narrating his own and other adoptees' stories in all their complexity.

Set against a backdrop of East End London, Georgia experienced a childhood few of us could imagine. Though brought up in a loving family, she watched her family break apart through deceit and her mother descend into heroin addiction. Escaping into what she felt was a loving sanctuary, Georgia ended up trapped in a violent relationship with a man who would beat and abuse her. After having her three children by him, she knew she had to escape to finally find safety. Now Georgia is sharing her story of survival to help others and prove there is hope even after trauma and heartache.

In her memoir, Jevranne explores the effects trauma has on the body and how it can often result in blocked-out memories. She shares her personal journey with grief and the struggles that appeared when silencing herself because of not feeling valid in her pain- a childhood and generational wound embedded through the years.

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.

Carmen Aguirre has lived many lives, all of them to the fullest. At age six she was a Chilean refugee adjusting to life as a Latina in North America. At 18 she was a revolutionary dissident. In her early 20s she fought to find her voice as an actor and to break away from the stereotypical roles thrust upon her - Housekeeper, Hotel Maid, Mexican Hooker #1.

At three years old, a father gives his triplet daughters away. This story follows the triplets as they navigate the challenges and hardships that life throws at them. Their lives unfold as a vast canvas, filled with vivid scars that tell tales of relentless battles, shattered hearts, and lost dreams.

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression.

A “daring, urgent, and transformative” (Brené Brown, New York Times best-selling author of Dare to Lead) exploration of Black achievement in a white world based on honest, provocative, and moving interviews with Black leaders, scientists, artists, activists, and champions.

Having struggled with gut-wrenching depression, a broken back, sexual abuse, a severe eating disorder, attempted suicide, and a brain aneurysm - all before she was 18 - Dawn learned to become a fighter and survivor. Her deepest desire is to turn everyone she meets into their own rock star through her strategy based coaching practice.

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me?

When her six-year-old daughter found her collapsed on the kitchen floor, Rachel had no idea how much her life was about to change. A brain scan revealed a dark shadowy mass, a huge abnormal growth of tissue that, whilst benign, was still growing and would surely kill her. It was too big to operate on. It needed to be "managed", and Rachel had, at best, two years to live. Refusing to accept the bleak prognosis, Rachel was determined to stay alive.

An Uncompromised Life takes listeners through Colleen Gallagher’s past unhealthy relationship which led her to compromise her soul. From this relationship, an unplanned pregnancy was created. Faced with a life-changing decision, and shocked because western medical doctors told Colleen it would be challenging for her to get pregnant after being diagnosed with cancer at age 14, she chose to let her child go.

First, I Believe You is an astonishing memoir of resilience and recovery from severe childhood trauma she had no memory of. Terrifying flashbacks haunted her for decades despite an affluent, advantaged childhood, resulting in severe depression, food addiction, anxiety, and nightmares.

A searing memoir about growing up in a fiercely loving, abusive rabbinical family in which the author's father, the charismatic head of a splinter Orthodox religious community, demands unswerving loyalty—and a commitment to guarding terrible secrets. Sara Sherbill was raised by a father who was both a representative of God and a broken man harboring an intricate set of secrets. Her riveting story explores what happens when a daughter is tasked with keeping those secrets, and the cost of keeping them. It asks: How do we live with suffering? What does it mean to heal?

Karlee Holden was just 22 years old when she was thrust headlong into the hectic and glamorous lifestyle of Hollywood, yet it wasn’t long before the darker side of fame and fortune reared its head, shattering her rose-tinted view of the high-life entirely. From escaping abusive relationships to battling crippling mental and physical health conditions, Can You Talk to My Trauma? follows Karlee’s life on an intimate level, bravely sharing her trials to bring hope to others.

Life of the Party Girl is a raw and inspiring debut memoir of a top wedding planner reflecting on the moments that define us as human beings, both the traumatic and fantastic.

What kind of childhood is possible with sexual assault? Is there a way to escape from hurt? How do you shed the victim identity? This gripping book details the life of a first-generation girl who went through hell. Born in England in 1980 with mixed Asian Indian ancestry, she narrates her story of hardship and resistance.

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.

Remember to Forget, a gripping and thought-provoking memoir that inspires as it teaches with all the skillful pacing of a psychological suspense novel. The author asks then suggests: What weapons do we have to defend ourselves against deeply hidden assaults from the past? Without the fragments of memory linked together into a full picture of our personal history, we may remain helpless victims.

In his unflinchingly honest memoir, Mitchell Raff candidly recounts his journey to overcome generational trauma and break free from decades of addiction. With raw vulnerability, he lays bare his destructive coping mechanisms and the far-reaching consequences they wrought on his life and on those around him.