Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free
by Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW
GENRE: SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Self-Esteem
BLURB:
As a mental health clinician, Rebecca Brown has been a safe place for many to seek shelter from their secrets, silence and shame. Inspired to finally slow down, stop running from herself and share her own story, she found ways to seek and savour her own shelter.
Rebecca's personal journey takes us through sadness, tragedy, self-sabotage, the impossible pursuit of perfection, distorted thinking and eating, engaging with her shadow self, divorce, and numbing with alcohol, all in an attempt to avoid the story needing to be shared.
Dispelling the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves can unlock our limitless potential to reach goals we never dared to dream. From the Boston Marathon to working with horses, Rebecca sets out to prove to herself that anything is possible when you don't listen to the negative stories you tell yourself.
Everyone has a story. We become who we are because of what has happened to us, and because of the stories we tell ourselves. But do our stories continue to serve us well, or keep us stuck? Are our stories fact or fiction? Is it time to rewrite the versions we have been telling ourselves?
Shelter provides strategies to help reframe the thinking patterns we have developed, and offers tools to recognize when we are suffering from our own thoughts, feelings and actions. Resilience-building techniques are woven through the pages, and encouragement for the lifelong journey of collecting moments of awe and happiness.
Seeking and reading Shelter is a gift of self-compassion and self-discovery. Rebecca's hope is that it will be read with a highlighter in hand, pages folded down, re-read, recommended to a friend, and used as a guide to start sharing our own stories with those we love.
We may not have written our beginnings, but we have the ability to write every word from this point forward and just imagine where our stories can take us when we are free of secrets, silence and shame.
Get your copy of Shelter
INDIGO CHAPTERS ~ BARNES & NOBLE ~ SMASHWORDS
Excerpt:
Lives become divided into “before the accident” and “after the accident.”
This is where people learn that life is not fair.
But it doesn’t mean that life can’t be rich, rewarding, and happy again.
But it takes time, courage, pain, and most of all, resilience.
How do I know this?
Because I’ve lived it myself.
I watched as the first love of my life broke his neck.
I was not quite sixteen; he was eighteen.
Kids in the country do crazy things.
Like swimming in abandoned gravel pits and quarries.
Tailgates of pickup trucks make great diving boards.
At almost sixteen, I didn’t know how fragile life was.
I didn’t know how strong love could be.
I didn’t know how resilient the human spirit can be.
I didn’t know that this tragedy would change the trajectory of my life.
I spent my sixteenth birthday in the hospital Intensive Care Unit with him.
It was not sweet.
It was sad, and I was scared.
It was the only place I wanted to be.
He was paralyzed from the chest down.
He had holes drilled into his skull connected to metal pins and rods, called a “Halo” traction, to stabilize his fractured C4-5 vertebrae, which had been snapped, his spinal cord severed.
He was hooked up to a ventilator because his lungs had collapsed when he had sunk to the bottom of the gravel pit before our friends realized something was wrong and he hadn’t surfaced.
He had a breathing tube inserted into a hole in his throat.
He could only move his eyes.
I had to stand on tiptoes and lean over the rails of the hospital bed so he could see me.
And every time he saw me, he cried.
He couldn’t talk because the tube he was breathing through didn’t let sound come from his vocal cords.
So I did all the talking.
Telling him how much I loved him.
How much his friends loved him and were rooting for him.
Not many people were allowed in to see him, so I became the spokesperson for them.
When I ran out of words, I read to him.
I stroked his arm, held his hand.
Until I remembered that he couldn’t feel his hands; he would never again hold my hand back.
I stroked the side of his face, his head, ran my fingers through his hair.
He could feel this, and it comforted him when he was sad, scared, or angry.
I learned that love is powerful medicine.
As he healed, the halo traction and breathing tube were removed, and he was transferred from the ICU to a rehabilitation ward for months of physical therapy. He learned how to sit in a wheelchair.
I learned how to change catheter bags and how to be an adult before I was one.
Interview with Rebecca Brown
If you could
tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
What
a great question! This is very much the theme of my book, I was
asked who I was writing this book for? And my answer is, I am
writing this book for my younger self. I wish I knew then, what I
have come to know about life, love, pain, trauma, trust and
resilience. I would tell my younger self, “You’re going to be
okay. You are enough. Trust yourself and you will live the life
you were destined to live, and it will be an amazing adventure.”
What are the
most important magazines for writers to subscribe to?
Wait!
What? As a brand-new writer, are there magazines I should be
reading? Please let me know what the cool writers are reading!
I
do listen to several podcasts, and have found these really helpful.
What do you owe
the real people upon whom you base your characters?
My book
is a memoir based on my own life experiences, and the people I based
the characters on are, or were, real life people. I owe them so
much. My grandmother, in particular was an important catalyst in my
story, as I had a dream in which she came to me as a small child,
and said, “Share our story!” I had no idea, at the time what
this dream would come to mean, and how her hidden secret would
become a pivotal part of my own story.
What is the
first book that made you cry?
I’ve been an avid reader
since I was a child. If I had to remember the first book that made
me cry, I’d have to say it was “Charlotte’s Web”, followed
closely by “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
Does writing
energize or exhaust you?
Both! But manly energizes me. I
am a runner, and I will come in from a morning 5K run, and go
immediately to my desk and write down an idea that came up during my
run. I am most energized in the morning and particularly when I’m
running, so I like to capture these random thoughts and ideas when
they are fresh in my head.
Do you try more
to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
My
writing style is original and very similar to the way that I talk
and articulate ideas. I tried to write this book as I would like to
read it. I want the reader to feel like they are with me on my
journey. I tried to use words as artistically as I could, and I
wanted my words to feel like they were falling into place, almost
like fragments of memories which can get stuck in our minds, and it
is up to us to create meaning from the bits and pieces.
Where did your
love of books/storytelling/reading/writing/etc. come from?
Both
my parents are avid readers. I had access to many books as a child,
and I spent a lot of time alone reading as an escape from sadness at
times. I loved stories that were about horses, princesses and
adventures which allowed me to escape into another person’s
experiences. I kept diaries as a child and throughout my life, so I
have essentially been collecting my own story until the time it felt
right to turn it into a book.
As a mental health
clinician for over 35 years, I have kept notes on every session I
have with clients and patients, so I have been a collector of other
people’s stories also. We all have a story, and I finally felt it
was time to share my own. My hope is that my book will inspire
readers to look into their own lives and release any secrets that
might be buried, because we cannot heal what we keep hidden.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
REBECCA BROWN is a clinical social worker with over 35 years in practice ranging from medical social work, childhood trauma, vicarious trauma for first responders, international psychological first aid, and Equine Assisted Therapy. She is honoured to hold a faculty appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario. She teaches extensively on the topics of trauma and resilience and has delivered keynote presentations throughout North America. She shares her life and career with her husband, a family physician and trailblazer in the field of Lifestyle Medicine. Together they live and work on the shores of the Great Lake Huron, where they seek and share shelter with their six adult children, four grandchildren, extended family and friends, two dogs, two cats and one horse.
Connect with Rebecca L. Brown
WEBSITE ~ INSTAGRAM ~ GOODREADS
2 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Sounds very interesting.
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