Healing Wounds with Words

Excerpts:

“ .. Wounded Souls: A Collection of Poems and Songs, and its companion spoken-word CD (by) Ingrid D. Johnson .. A Winnipeg-based artist .. Johnson’s first book, Little Black Butterfly in Iridescent Sunlight, came out four years ago. According to Ingrid, it was a catalyst for major personal life transformations. This meant honestly confronting friendships and relationships that were unhealthy and manipulative. “I feel my new poems reflect my struggle to forgive and let go of the past, ways the abuse affected my voice and sense of personal boundaries, and my spiritual struggle to overcome all the anger, loss, pain, resentment, bitterness and sadness I felt and expressed in my first book. This new book is more positive. It offers truth, hope, healing and inspiration instead of anger, venom, rage, profanity and bitterness.”

“my love for people who are hurting and lost is also an inspiration to write, and my anger towards people’s ignorance and lack of care for other victims and survivors drives me to speak up for the voiceless. I work with kids in care and [my] sincerest hope is that my words, my life and my story will inspire at least one of them to be a success.”

Ingrid offers the following advice to people who find themselves in sexually abusive situations and relationships: “You are not alone. When you are ready, tell your story and don’t stop telling it until someone listens and helps you to do something good to counteract it. Overcoming sexual abuse begins with surviving — coping — but you have to confront the abuse and learn from its impact on you in order to overcome it before you can help others.”

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Book Review: Moon Cussers by Wade Younger

".. Moon Cussers tells of the true life journey of Wade Younger’s search for himself in order to find healing and resolution from his sexual childhood abuse … While Moon Cussers is certainly written to help the victims of sexual childhood abuse, sexual abuse victims rarely suffer alone. The complex emotional baggage often leads to other, more symptomatic, problems later in life including alcoholism, depression, and abusive behavior. The book peels back the layers of distrust, self-loathing, and vulnerability to help victims and their loved ones understand the sources of these feelings .. "

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Holistic Self Care for PTSD and DID

Free book available for download

Holistic Self-Care for Post Traumatic Stress and Dissociative Identity
By Dr Cindee Grace, naturopath

Can download from any of the following sites:
http://amyweintraub.com/HolisticSelfCareForPTS.pdf
www.amyweintraub.com/resources.htm

http://www.freedom-center.org/files/HolisticSelfCareforPTSD+DissociativeIdentity-CindeeGrace.pdf
http://veteransinfo.org/ptsd.html

Book Review: Hooked On The Story of Getting Hooked

" .. portrait of addiction offered by the Canadian author and physician Gabor Maté in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
.. Addiction is dangerous in any form. "There is no such thing as a good addiction. Everything a person can do is better done if there is no addictive attachment that pollutes it. For every addiction – no matter how benign or even laudable it seems from the outside – someone pays a price."
All addiction, whether accounted for by neurological, social, moral, emotional or spiritual factors, is based on the desire to escape one void and plunge into another. Addiction, which Maté cogently defines as "any repeated behaviour, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others" – is what happens when the only reasonable alternative to living with an incomplete self is oblivion

.. Dr. Maté's book is especially compelling for its expansive account of addiction as consisting of all these factors in infinitely variable degrees – addiction is a condition based on a fundamental misperception: that inside us there's a darkness, and that darkness can only be evaded by something outside of ourselves .. "

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Brother and Sister Write Book to Give Voice to Sexual Abuse Survivors

" .. In their newly released book, “The Lie That Binds: Overcoming the Tragic Effects of Child Abuse,” they share their story of abuse at the hands of their father while growing up on a small Ojibwa Indian Reservation in Ontario, Canada. Each and every member of the Sault family of sixteen brothers and sisters was brutally violated in a different, terrifying way. “We wrote this book to give a voice to the millions of people who have had their innocence stolen from them -- an estimated 39 million survivors of sexual abuse exist in America today,” say authors Claire Heath and Larry Sault. “We are living proof that the truth will set you free, and that it is never too late to find forgiveness and strength to get better.” .. "

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