Healing Through Connection

Stories of adversity, pain and healing

For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts

This is a memoir mixed with support and education around the experience of brown women in our culture. It is beautiful, informative and challenging of the White Privilege that is embedded in every aspect of our culture. I recommend this for women of color to feel seen and understood, and for men and people who are White to gain perspective and awareness of what minorities face and to grow in their own understanding of their privilege, with a hope of being able to do better.

Untamed – Glennon Doyle

We can do hard things! This is what Glennon Doyle challenges us to remember in her memoir about realizing as an adult she wasn’t living and authentic and happy life and instead showing up in the world as she was told she was supposed. With great courage, she took some huge steps to live a life worth living, not just surviving; leaving her husband, acknowledging her identity and finding a motherhood role not based in martyrdom. It will challenge you to consider your own roles and challenge you in your own healing.

A Place for Us – Brandon J Wolf

This is a memoir of one of the survivors of the Pulse Club (an LGBTQ+ club) mass shooting based in hatred. Brandon was there that night and lost one of his best friend’s to the shooter’s bullets. A gripping read that also gives insight into the experience of growing up gay in a family and country that often isn’t accepting and isn’t safe. Make sure to grab a Kleenex box, I was sobbing.

Books about trauma and how it affects us

The Body Keeps the Score – Besel Van Der Kolk

Okay this one is heavy but incredible if you have ever wanted to understand the ins and outs of trauma and how the effects trauma, continue long after we find our way out of it. Besel is, in my opinion, the leading voice in trauma treatment and understanding the connection between our mind and body, as well as what it takes to heal. This one is not for the faint of heart (I’m actually still working my way through it) but incredibly insightful!

The Tender Parts – Ilyse Kennedy

This is the home guide to getting to know your parts through the lens of Internal Family Systems, and working towards healing. It will kick your butt and it is so worth it!

How can we bring your vision to life?

How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk – Faber

This absolutely changed the way I parent and see parenting. Based on brain science of the developing brain and what we have learned about the factors that help children grow, learn and become the people we want them to be, these books lead you through a shift in thinking around what our kids really need from us in order to learn with strategies and examples. **There is also a How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen and Listen so Little Kids Will Talk and How to Talk so Teens Will Listen and Listen so Teens Will Talk

Siblings Without Rivalry – Faber

This is a must have, whether you are raising multiple kids, thinking about having another child or just wanting to understand yourself and your sibling relationships better. It is written as a narrative about a parenting group that authors ran that turned into so much more. We unintentionally pit our kids against each other and pigeon hole them into “the one”, causing pressure, resentment and shut down (i.e. “the smart one”, “the athletic one”, “the hard one”). And what happens when we remove “one” from how we describe our kids? They get to be themselves and can share qualities.

Parenting with Theraplay –

This book is packed full of attachment building activities to develop healthy and fun relationships with our kids where they feel connected and seen.

Parenting with Love and Logic – Foster Cline

A great book for strategies with tough kids that need more structure and less reactivity from parents.

Great books to learn about attachment disorder, how to support parents raising kids with attachment struggles, and strategies for parents in the trenches

Arania and the Bugs – Patrick and Justus McCrane

This is a “kids” picture book, written by two siblings of a child with RAD who had to be placed out of the home and the struggles up to that point. I have found this invaluable to share with glass siblings so they feel seen and validated, as well as those around us who don’t understand RAD or what we’re going through (or don’t believe us). It is short and to the point and an excellent look into the effects of trauma and validation of how different our child is in our home than how they present to others.

The Connected Child – Karyn Purvis

A great book on understanding and building healthy attachment. However, I want to note that this is more geared towards children on the mild end of the spectrum and can actually make our moderate to severe kids worse if they aren’t ready to accept in the love and attachment yet.

A Glimpse at Understanding RAD: Reactive Attachment Disorder, How it Affects Children, Families and Society – Karen Poitras

This is a quick 45 minute read that is great for an introduction to RAD and to share with others as a parent. It is easy to read, concise and gives an accurate picture of our attachment kids and what we go through.

When Love Is Not Enough – Nancy Thomas

If you have a kid with attachment trauma or difficult to manage, this book is an essential tool. Nancy is a foster and adoptive parent who is sent the kids that have killed, the ones that have been labeled as “too hard”. While I don’t agree with everything she says and some of her views are more extreme, she has some incredibly creative ways to deal with tough behaviors that help move parents out of the fight.

**The following are memoirs but specific to RAD so it made more sense to put them here than in the memoir section**

but, he spit in my coffee – Keri Williams

The memoir of Keri who adopted two children, one with severe RAD and her fight to get him the services he needed and to keep the rest of her family safe in a world dominated by insurance and lack of resources.

Detached: Surviving Reactive Attachment Disorder – Jessie Hogset

Written by an adult who was a child with RAD. A great view into the mind of a kiddo who struggled and how he perceived the world. I appreciate this as often kids with RAD don’t make sense in the behaviors they choose and the way the exist in the world. While he doesn’t have any big answers, I did find it insightful.

Dancing with a Porcupine: Parenting wounded children without losing your self – Jennie Owens

This is a story of another mom who adopted two kids from foster care that she met in residential treatment that she worked at. Her journey from losing herself in the world of RAD and working to regain her identity and survive the isolation of parenting children with attachment struggles.

Both for couple’s and individuals

Mating in Captivity – Esther Perel

This book takes a raw and honest look at our culture’s messages around sexuality, monogamy, kind and relationships, giving permission to shed the shame that’s been placed on us and ignite our internal fire.

7 Principles to Making a Marriage Work – John and Julie Gottman

A great book with activities to strengthen your relationship, to see unhealthy patterns and how to improve in these areas. John and Julie Gottman are leaders in couple’s therapy and able to predict divorce with 80% accuracy after seeing a couple in their love lab for one day.

Come As You Are – Emily Nagoski

I wish this book was required reading in high school and beyond. It is about female sexuality, self-image and the messages we receive in our culture, based in science. It empowers women of all kinds (and those that support the women they love) to love themselves and shed some of the messed up messages we receive and pass down around our bodies, pleasure, desires and worth. **She also has a great docuseries on Netflix called The Principles of Pleasure

Gain skills and knowledge around neurodivergence

How to ADHD – Jessica McCabe

Written by someone with ADHD for people with ADHD and the people who love them. So much good information about what ADHD is, how it presents and ideas for strategies to work with your ADHD. Such an easy read and so helpful!

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband – David Finch

After five years of marriage, David and his wife learned that he had Asperger Syndrome (ASD) and this memoir is his journey to be a better husband and to manage his ASD and the impact it had on his relationship. Filled with humor and self awareness, this is a must read.

Asperger Marriage and Relationships: Insights from the Front Line – Karen Slee

Karen and her husband break down, by topic, many of the struggles and predominant symptoms in ASD and how they navigate it. This book can be great for couples to read through together in order to open up conversations around struggles that can exist in NT/AS relationships.

Because she deserves her own section

The Gifts of Imperfection

Brene Brown has spent her professional life researching shame and how we overcome it. This is a very candid look at her own journey to live a, what she calls, WholeHearted Life, based on her research into what helps people develop shame resilience, and what things people who are living a WholeHearted Life do differently. It’s an easy but well worth it read!

The Atlas of the Heart

A great book breaking down and exploring our different emotions, what they are and aren’t and how to better understand ourself.

For the books I can’t figure out a category for