RECOMMENDED: FOR PARENTS

• Raising a Secure Child: How Circle of Security Parenting Can Help You Nurture Your Child’s Attachment, Emotional Resilience, and Freedom to Explore (2016)
  Authors: Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell       
  This researched based text is geared to help parents understand how the attachment experience they had as a child impacts their parenting. 
• Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing (2006)
  Authors: Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline
  An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence – for parents, educators, and health professionals.

RECOMMENDED: LEARN ABOUT ADDICTIONS

• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (2008)
  Author: Gabor Maté, M.D.
  This physician challenges contemporary understanding of addiction, seeing it rather as a complex interplay among personal history, emotional, and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs (and behaviors) of addiction.  Promotes compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness.

RECOMMENDED: LEARN ABOUT IMPACT OF TRAUMA

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)
  Author: Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
  Seminal and engaging text on trauma, neuroscience, and recovery; very readable.
• The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity (2018)
  Author: Nadine Burke-Harris, M.D.
  A great text by a pioneering physician who tells of her discovery of the commonality of ACEs and connection with many major health problems.  She outlines how she began integrating the reality of childhood trauma into her medical practice.  Very inspiring and engaging.

RECOMMENDED: LEARN ABOUT BIBLE AND TRAUMA

• We were the Least of These: Reading the Bible with Survivors of Sexual Abuse (2011)
  Author: Elaine A. Heath
  Dr. Heath is the Dean of Duke Divinity School.  Text weaves scripture passages in with stories from abuse survivors who have experienced healing through the Bible.  She offers reflection questions and activities to try after each chapter.
• Healing in the Bible: Theological Insight for Christian Ministry (2010)
  Author: Frederick J. Gaiser
  Scholar reads biblical texts on health and healing in light of contemporary theological and pastoral concerns.
• Bible Through the Lens of Trauma (2016)
  Edited by: Elizabeth Boase and Christopher G. Frechette
  This collection of essays explores the usefulness of using trauma theory as a lens through which to read the biblical texts.

RECOMMENDED: HEALING RELIGIOUS OR SPIRITUAL TRAUMA

• Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church (2017)
  Author: Carol Howard Merritt
  An effective plan to help those suffering from wounds inflicted by the church find spiritual healing and a renewed sense of faith.
• Sacred Wounds: A Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma (2015)
  Author: Teresa B. Pasquale
  The author is a trauma therapist who offers healing exercises, true-life examples, and life-giving discussion for anyone suffering from the real pain of church hurt.

RECOMMENDED: THEOLOGY AND TRAUMA

• God and the Victim: Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom (2007)
  Author: Jennifer Erin Beste, Ph.D.
  Theologian challenges deeply-held convictions about human freedom and divine grace in light of realities of trauma’s impact.  She places Karl Rahner’s theology in dialogue with contemporary trauma theory and feminist theory.
• Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (2010)
  Author: Shelly Rambo, Ph.D.
  Excellent discussion of trauma’s impact in light of theological constructs and the Gospel of John.
• Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation (2000)
  Author: Flora A. Keshgegian
  The author reminds us that the witness of the church is to remember for transformation. The church as a community of remembrance honors and preserves memories of suffering, evokes and validates memories of resistance, and actively supports, embodies, and celebrates memories of connection and life affirmation.

RECOMMENDED: TRAUMA AND PHILOSOPHY

• Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (2002)
  Author: Susan J. Brison, Ph.D.
  The author is a former professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth who tells of the violent rape and attack she experienced in which she almost lost her life.  She tells of how her world and core beliefs were turned upside down, and the long journey back to discovering again her identity. 
  * Caution: Trauma details can be triggering. *

RECOMMENDED: FOR ALL WHO MINISTER

• The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (1972)
  Author: Henri Nouwen
  Ministers are called to identify the suffering in their own hearts and make that recognition the starting point of their service.  The author addresses those men and women who want to be of service in their church or community, but have found the traditional ways often threatening and ineffective.

RECOMMENDED: JEWISH THEOLOGY AND TRAUMA

• The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God (1990)
  Author: David J. Wolpe
  Rabbi Wolpe shows how God still speaks to us: to our daily struggles, to our anger over pain and loss, to our fear of death and annihilation, and to our deep need for healing and integration.
• Reading the Hebrew Bible After the Shoah: Engaging Holocaust Theology (2008)
  Author: Marvin A. Sweeney, Ph.D.
  The author highlights biblical texts in which  ancient Israel contemplated apparent divine absence and “divine evil.”  The insistence by Holocaust theologians that human beings are responsible for doing justice in the world is powerfully present in the Bible.

RECOMMENDED: BLACK, LATINX, AND KOREAN EXPERIENCES OF TRAUMA

• There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (1991)
  Author: Alex Kotlowitz
  The story of Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, two young boys growing up in a Chicago housing project, shows how much heroism is required to survive, let alone escape.
• Suffering + Salvation in Ciudad Juárez (2011)
  Author: Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Ph.D.
  This theologian argues that salvation is necessarily linked to active resistance against evil and to active solidarity for justice and good.
• Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (2008)
  Author: Grace M. Cho
  This text explores the repressed history of emotional and physical violence between the United States and Korea and the unexamined reverberations of sexual relationships between Korean women and American soldiers.

RECOMMENDED: BRUCE PERRY, M.D.

• The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook – What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us (2017)
  Authors: Bruce D. Perry, M.D. and Maia Szalavitz
  Extremely well-written text based on actual patients of Dr. Perry.  He integrates trauma information and neuroscience with the stories in a way that is understandable and touches your heart.  He also speaks to needed systemic changes.
  * Caution: Some detail of trauma is explicit - may be triggering. *
• Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential – and Endangered (2010)
  Authors: Bruce Perry, M.D. and Maia Szalavitz
  Another excellent book by these authors as they highlight how childhood trauma can interfere with capacity for empathy, which then influences decision-making and human freedom.  Includes stories based on Dr. Perry’s patients and speaks to the healing power of relationships.