Susan Oxford

An Impactful Read This book courageously and authentically shares a journey of healing. Not a how-to by any means, but such a representation of how you can heal and own your story, the beginning, ending and most importantly the messy middle. This writer took the hard road which is what it takes to heal from the inside out. She wraps words around hard and heavy topics and does not sugar coat a thing. Again, she owns her story fully. She provides a clear lens for how people are impacted by sexual abuse (not just by the events of abuse, rather how they imprinted on her and impacted her in every area of her life), family of origin trauma, as well understanding how the roles of the church and culture impacted her personally. This was both an easy read (very well written and I didn’t want to put it down) and a hard read (again she is real and shares details that are hard to digest at times but again absolutely accurate and in my opinion necessary for healing). I definitely recommend this read for those on a healing journey, those in a relationship (family, friend, or partner) with someone who is a survivor of abuse, clinicians or students in the mental health field…or really anyone wanting to better understand how we as humans come to be who we are at different stages in life.