Trauma Memoir

Craig Thayer’s destiny was mapped before he was even born. Saved is the story of a man who learned to see the sum of his parts and follow them like stepping stones throughout a miraculous life. Being put up for adoption at birth and finding his family at nine months was just the start of his unorthodox journey.

As a deeply authentic and heartfelt collection of harrowing true stories and reflections on sexual trauma, Echoes is a powerful anthology that seeks to shed light on the painful reality faced by male survivors of sexual abuse, along with the lasting mental and emotional scars that so many men carry with them. Compiling dozens of poignant real-life accounts, this groundbreaking book will open the hearts and minds of listeners, offering male survivors a safe place to find solace from their pain and begin building a road map on their journey to wholeness.

Those in uniform keep our world safe and often pay a high price for fulfilling their duty mentally and emotionally. Retired Sergeant Eric Weaver can attest to this, as he lives with mental illness and struggled with the issue of suicide on numerous occasions, including multiple hospitalizations, while serving as a police sergeant. In Overcoming the Darkness, he gives a raw accounting of his own experiences coupled with knowledge and pragmatic advice gained from 20 years of instructing literally thousands in law enforcement about mental illness, substance use, PTSD, and suicide.

Cyrus Jaffery has been on the move for as long as he can remember, rarely pausing to reflect. As a child, he was forced into exile and had to learn his own way, first in Pakistan and then the United States. After college, he was swept up in the whirlwind of marriage, starting a family, forming a business, and ceaselessly working to grow his personal and professional endeavors. In the process of writing this book, Cyrus realized that what keeps him moving is a hunger to make a difference, to be counted, to be part of something bigger than himself.

In Born in a Living Hell version 2.0, Darlene J. Clark courageously unveils the haunting realities of her tumultuous childhood, marked by abuse, betrayal, and unimaginable hardship. This raw, unflinching memoir not only recounts the painful moments of her past but serves as a beacon of hope and resilience for those who have suffered in silence. Through her story, Darlene calls for understanding, awareness, and the courage to stand up against abuse, reminding us all that survival is not only possible it’s a triumph. For those seeking a tale of strength amid adversity, Born in a Living Hell...

The subject of forgiveness and dealing with offense is a struggle for many. In her third memoir, author Ashley M Bennett realizes the damage caused by those she trusted and loved and was desperate to heal. She also had to deal with regret and how to forgive herself. During this journey, she cracks open a box of family secrets that was never meant to be found. Secrets that spanned over generations. "What happens in this house stays in this house" had become a family mantra she no longer wanted to adhere to. In her pursuit to find her own freedom from memories that taunted her since childhood...

I Had A Brother Once is a brilliant, genre-defying work - both memoir and epic poem - about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss. Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp.

Karlee Holden was just 22 years old when she was thrust headlong into the hectic and glamorous lifestyle of Hollywood, yet it wasn’t long before the darker side of fame and fortune reared its head, shattering her rose-tinted view of the high-life entirely. From escaping abusive relationships to battling crippling mental and physical health conditions, Can You Talk to My Trauma? follows Karlee’s life on an intimate level, bravely sharing her trials to bring hope to others.

Picking up the Pieces is a poetic memoir that explores the ups and downs of life after surviving trauma.

At three years old, a father gives his triplet daughters away. This story follows the triplets as they navigate the challenges and hardships that life throws at them. Their lives unfold as a vast canvas, filled with vivid scars that tell tales of relentless battles, shattered hearts, and lost dreams.

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

After witnessing the brutal, fatal stabbing of her mother and surviving being stabbed herself during the same attack at the age of nine, a young African-American woman’s struggle to live continues. Diamond shares the mental, physical, and emotional effects she has suffered and the challenges she has faced, including alcohol abuse, emotional detachment, suicidal thoughts and panic attacks stemming from post-traumatic stress disorders.

On December 10, 1953, tragedy was visited on a family when Nathaniel Allen was murdered on the Sampit River by his White employer, who lured him into the meeting under the false promise of reconciliation. Allen's death was recorded as an accidental drowning, a deliberate cover-up of the bullet hole seen by more than one witness. Three generations later, Phil Allen Jr. revisits this harrowing story and recounts the "baton of bitterness" that this murder passed down in his family.

The Afterlife Confessional follows Bill's journey for answers as he looks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of his clients' lives - the widower who escaped an aged-care trap to take her husband's ashes on the road trip of a lifetime; the man who spent his life paying it forward to try to make up for one shameful act; the closet dominatrix who quietly confronts her husband's infidelity by comforting those truly in need; the devoted couple who insist on going hand-in-hand into the afterlife.

HMP Graymoor. One of the UK’s most notorious prisons. Home to nearly 800 murderers, rapists and child molesters. Reporting for her first shift inside is Rebecca: twenty-two, newly graduated—and about to sit down with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. In this gripping, hard-hitting memoir, forensic psychologist Dr Rebecca Myers revisits her time in the ‘Hot Seat’ with Graymoor’s infamous inmates—who might not be as different to us as we think.

From battling a devastating childhood illness to unearthing untold trauma, this healing memoir is one of resilience and transformation.

Trauma, tragedy, and loss are experiences that can be profoundly challenging and life-altering. They can shake us to our core, leaving us struggling to make sense of our world and find a way forward. Yet, in the face of unimaginable adversity, many people have found a way to survive and thrive.

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me?

Marie has big dreams. Of course, a rocky road lies ahead. Lion Tamer Memoir: How It All Turned Out precisely captures the reality of human hope, depth, and folly as Marie learns the truth about neurotic attachments and herself.

In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Poland, a Jewish child was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That child was Karen Kirsten's mother, but she knew nothing about this extraordinary event until one day a letter arrived from a stranger. After eventually discovering the grandparents she loved dearly were in fact not her biological grandparents, Karen travelled the globe to uncover her family's past and to find the answers to some baffling questions. Irena's Gift weaves together a mystery, history and memoir to tell the story of a family torn apart by war.