Curious, Healing
Books about healing, business, and fun
Recommended to me by: Meloukhia
This is a fairy tale, but no child’s story. It starts with incest and pregnancy and abortion, and continues with gang rape. Then Liga is magically placed in a world that matches her heart’s desire, peaceful and safe.
While examining the consequences of assault and the consequences of avoiding trauma, the story sings along, full of prickly, kind characters and vivid details.
Recommended, for a true look at life in fairy tale guise.
An interview with Margo Lanagan.
Subtitle: A woman explores the transforming – and, paradoxically, healing – experience of being ill
Recommended to me by: a client
Alchemists strive to turn lead into gold by heating it alone in a sealed container, a crucible. In the crucible of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Kat Duff turned inward and found healing in the stillness and isolation forced by her illness.
Weaving together symptoms, dreams, mythology, Jungian psychology, and alchemy along with anthropological research into illness and healing, Duff reveals new perspectives on illness. Instead of being an assault or a punishment, illness can be a natural consequence of our history as individuals and communities. She sees her illness as an agent of healing both for sexual abuse she suffered as an infant, and for the land theft her forebears committed against the Sioux tribe in Minnesota.
Duff is careful to avoid the painful idea that “sick people are personally responsible for creating their illnesses through some kind of wrong-thinking or wrong-doing.” Sickness isn’t bad. It just is.
She relates a story about Nan Shin, a Zen nun diagnosed with cancer and struggling with guilt and remorse.
Then an old friend, who was also a Zen student, visited. He threw his arm around her shoulders and wisecracked, “Good Karma, huh? Brings you close to the Way.” Shin wrote later, “The jolt I felt then showed me very clearly that I had been thinking, Bad Karma. Within a fraction of a second the molecules turned themselves round and reorganized. I am flatly grateful to him forever.”
Unfortunately, Duff conflates illness with disability, and occasionally uses phrases like “confined to a wheelchair.” People are not confined by wheelchairs any more than people are confined by bicycles, cars, or any other device that assists mobility.
I recommend this book for its kaleidoscope of new perspectives about illness.
Subtitle: Stories of Women Warriors Returning from the War in Iraq
Recommended to me by: A client.
I learned so much from these detailed descriptions of nearly 20 women soldiers, their deployments, and their returns to the US. What it’s like to be a soldier in a modern war. What it’s like in the war zone in Iraq. What it’s like to be a woman in the military. What it’s like to return from war, changed by becoming a solider, by being wounded, by witnessing and experiencing trauma, to find that home doesn’t fit any more.
Some of the women soldiers were wholly accepted into their units with camaraderie and support. Some experienced sexism and sexual harassment. Women of color experienced racism as well. The ones who were arbitrarily harmed by their fellow soldiers and superiors said that caused them more pain and distress than anything else in their tours of duty.
Many of the soldiers are in their late teens and early twenties. A few are closer to forty, and experience age-related harassment for that difference.
On their returns, the women struggle with distinguishing between “normal” difficulties of reintegration and the more severe difficulties of PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Some fight being diagnosed with PTSD and some fight for the help they need. They miss the structure, enforced closeness, and clear priorities of military life. The transition from skilled soldier to struggling civilian is a difficult one.
This is not an easy book to read, but I highly recommend its forthright, compassionate look at women returning from the war in Iraq.
Subtitle: And Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors
This is an anthology of fairy tales retold for adults, with the scary bits left in, and also the bits about resilience and survival. Yes, her father cut off her arms, but then the armless maiden rescues herself and her child through quick wits as well as magic.
The stories vary widely from beautifully retold tales, to heart-wrenching realities, to clunky pieces using child abuse for cheap drama. I imagine each reader would put different stories in the three categories.
Some of my favorites are:
This is a book to read slowly, with time for emotional processing, and plenty of permission to skip the stories that don’t resonate for you, or that resonate too much.
Subtitle: becoming unwounded, a memoir of transformation
Recommended to me by: Keelin Anderson
To tell her story of healing from incest and emotional abuse, Keelin Anderson weaves together daily narrative, fiction, quotes, tarot readings, and dreams, all in present tense.
As I read, I saw places where our paths have overlapped, and places where they have diverged. We have both struggled with finding respectful healers to help us, and have vowed to be respectful of our own clients and their individual processes.
She consciously decides to invite spirit guides into her process. I did that for a while, but found that not all spirit guides are trustworthy, and I was better off looking within for guidance. I think there are many ways of contacting Spirit and healing.
Subtitle: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith
Recommended to me by: Reading Martha Beck’s older books
I first read this years ago and loved it. I came back to it while writing a (forthcoming) article about spiritual abuse and faith. Since I last read it, I read her newer book “Steering by Starlight” and saw that her latest book is about weight-loss, so I started re-reading with trepidation. I still like this one, though!
This book is honest about extreme sexual and spiritual abuse and its effects, side by side with humorous details about daily life. She talks about forgiveness without preaching (much). She talks about how crazymaking it is to have someone casually deny reality. She talks about how wrenching it is to lose family connections because she tells the truth.
She also talks about her personal search for faith, first as the seeking camel, then as the discerning lion, then as the innocent, playful child.
In her last act as a practicing Mormon, she spoke to a huge crowd about domestic violence. “If something I said feels right to you, believe it. If it feels wrong, disbelieve it. The choice to believe or disbelieve, that’s what makes you free.”