Books like Healing Collective Trauma — picked by fans

I am a lifelong lover of books. As a child, one of my most prized possessions was my library card. It gave me entrance to a world of untold wonders from the past, present, and future. My love of reading sparked my imagination and led me to my own fledgling writing efforts. I come from a family of storytellers, my mother being the chief example. She delighted us with stories from her childhood and her maturation in the rural South. She was an excellent mimic, which added realism and humor to every tale. 

I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, deeply committed to healing intergenerational trauma and fostering healthy relationships. My passion for this field stems from witnessing the transformational power of understanding and addressing the roots of personal and relational issues. Having navigated the complex dynamics of family systems both professionally and personally, I've seen firsthand how unearthing and healing old wounds can lead to profound growth and stronger bonds. This fuels my dedication to guiding others on their journeys toward self-discovery and improved mental health. The books I recommend are ones that have not only enriched my professional practice but have also offered me invaluable insights into the psychology of human connections.

My version of a gutsy life journey was to find work abroad, buy a one-way ticket, and not look back - one place after the next. Long ago, girls didn’t do this, but I did. A struggle and worth it. Great memoirs have a geographical and an inner journey. They make me laugh and cry, both. This is what I love to read, and it’s my aim as a writer. My books are love letters to these adventures, plus some joking around in order not to scream or weep at some of what’s out there. I’ve been a teacher, a film editor, a comedian, a librarian, and now a writer.

I am a Canadian writer, teacher, and mother with Norwegian and Scottish ancestry. Since my twenties, I have been fascinated by ancestral memory, what Martha Graham (a late great dance pioneer) called ‘blood memory.’ Having spent many years in dance and therapy, diving into my own unique somatic symptoms, I started to realize that my mother’s (and grandmother’s) traumas were entwined and entangled with my own and that my body was holding on to all of it. What a relief to discover the research of transgenerational epigenetics! This curiosity fueled the narrative of my debut novel, Becoming Leidah, allowing me to explore Norse and Celtic mythology, as a way to speak about very personal truths. 

I'm passionate about stories that portray women as full human beings managing their passions, challenges, and obligations with grit because I grew up surrounded by a phalanx of them. Those who add “wife” and “mother” to their plate fascinate me all the more, especially as I grow older and better understand the pressures heaped on women. I saw my mother, sister, grandmothers, and aunties in all their complexities, building themselves up as they built families and businesses, starting over when they had to, overcoming the seemingly insurmountable, challenging the status quo, and never giving up. I gravitate toward female characters who share that spirit or grapple with how to get it. 

I’m a program host with The Shift Network and have interviewed hundreds of experts on the topics of ancestral healing, mediumship, and the “veil between the worlds.” I was drawn to these topics because of my discoveries of ancestral trauma in my family tree, including an ancient curse and a fiery mine disaster. Eventually, I realized we ALL have generational trauma. Just watch the news—we’re all acting out from inherited trauma, and we need to heal our own stuff in order to heal the global condition. I feel like it’s my life’s work to heal my family’s trauma-based dysfunctions and spread the word to others doing the same work.

I’m a program host with The Shift Network and have interviewed hundreds of experts on the topics of ancestral healing, mediumship, and the “veil between the worlds.” I was drawn to these topics because of my discoveries of ancestral trauma in my family tree, including an ancient curse and a fiery mine disaster. Eventually, I realized we ALL have generational trauma. Just watch the news—we’re all acting out from inherited trauma, and we need to heal our own stuff in order to heal the global condition. I feel like it’s my life’s work to heal my family’s trauma-based dysfunctions and spread the word to others doing the same work.

I’m a program host with The Shift Network and have interviewed hundreds of experts on the topics of ancestral healing, mediumship, and the “veil between the worlds.” I was drawn to these topics because of my discoveries of ancestral trauma in my family tree, including an ancient curse and a fiery mine disaster. Eventually, I realized we ALL have generational trauma. Just watch the news—we’re all acting out from inherited trauma, and we need to heal our own stuff in order to heal the global condition. I feel like it’s my life’s work to heal my family’s trauma-based dysfunctions and spread the word to others doing the same work.

I am an Associate Professor of political science at Colgate University. I grew up in a home with tremendous ideological diversity and rigorous political disputes, which caused my interest in learning more about why and how people become their political selves. This interest developed into an academic background in the field of political psychology, which uses psychological theories to understand the origins and nature of political attitudes. Out of this scholarship, I developed a theory about the relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, which I examine in my book. Now I am looking for ways to create open minds and foster a less polarized community.

In 2011, after years reporting on media and technology for Wired, I published The Art of Immersion, about how digital technology is changing the way we tell stories. Then I joined Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab, started the executive education course Strategic Storytelling, and put together the toolkit that inspired The Sea We Swim In. The ostensible subject of all this was storytelling, but the common thread, I came to realize, was the role stories play: They facilitate pattern recognition, the skill we need to make sense of our random world. The pattern that’s governed the past 15 years of my life, in other words, has been pattern recognition.