Customer Reviews

REPAIR Your Life: A Program for Recovery from Incest & Childhood Sexual Abuse

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My fiance and I are both incest survivors. She has well over 200 psychological and self help related books. Half way through Repair she simply said "As it turns out- I only needed ONE book!"
This book has and is a huge part of our individual healing process and continues to be.
If you are reading this, most likely you have covered the same paths that we have.
It's a hard journey of not feeling worthy of love. Of sabotaging your happiness and your relationships. We could fill this entire review of stories of struggles or how we almost destroyed ourselves, but I think it's most productive to say, if you want to heal and to have peace- get this book.

REPAIR Your Life is a stage- oriented recovery program for adult survivors of child sexual abuse. This book is differs from other recovery literature for survivors in that it is written by a survivor and is based on her own experience of recovery.

Here stages of REPAIR are as follows:

* RECOGNIZE and accept your adult problems stemming from childhood sexual abuse
* ENTER into a commitment to transform your life
* PROCESS your issues with tools and techniques that you will enable you to become healthy
* AWARENESS to discovery reality as you gather and assemble the pieces of the broken puzzle your life became
* INSIGHT into the complete picture helps you begin to return to what you were prior to being sexually violated
* RHYTHM recovers the natural rhythm you had before the incest happened, the blueprint that is the essence of your true nature, becoming who you really are
(page 13).
This book is concise and I was impressed that she was able to convey information in a helpful and non-threatening manner. I did not see anything that would be terribly triggering, and I would feel comfortable passing this book along to someone new to healing. The stage system should feel comfortable for individuals who have worked the twelve steps or someone who appreciates taking something on that has step-by -step instructions.

Although the writer is not a therapist, her writing is evidence of plenty of her own work and reading. She emphasizes that she has found therapy and the 12 steps beneficial, but needed to find her own way. The book encourages healing work, whether it is done in therapy, support groups, or outside of these realms.

I was impressed by the writer's willingness to explore how her abuse, and the aftermath of her abuse, has impacted her children. Also, I like the drawings and the encouragement to journal on various topics throughout the book. The resource section is fairly detailed and there is a topic index.

I am a mental health therapist in private practice. I just read REPAIR Your Life. This is a MUST read and a MUST do for those who have suffered the pain of a childhood sexual trauma. Marjorie McKinnon uses simple language with practical advise and clear steps on how to recover and heal. Don't waste time.....Run to a bookstore and set yourself free.

I found this book to very helpful in my recovery. Would recommend this to all.

I read and reviewed the Courage To Heal many years ago. I mentioned
then how difficult it was to work through and complete...despite its
powerful ability to open up the painful past.
This book is more user-friendly and not so upsetting. Its possible
that being further along in my recovery is part of that as well,
however.
I think its a very good place to start.
The author makes a lot of sense out of a senseless experience.
Well worth the price.
Recommended without hesitation.

Hi Margie,
This is Brenda, I'm a Lamplighter in International Falls. I met you when you came to our group while you were here about 1 year ago. This month marks our 2 year anniversary of Lamplighter's.
I just want to thank you for your book and support. My life has changed so much in the past year. I'm right smack dab in my healing process and I'm so happy. It does work!
I have been writing my story and also telling my story. I've recruited many women to our group. I want to support and empower our members to let them know that you can recover and that life can get better.
I'm currently in my first intimate relationship, which I've never had before now, and I've found myself feeling, feelings I have never felt before. It feels wonderful. I trust my feelings and my new boyfriend is a God send. I really kept my faith through the past 2 years, and I lanced my wounds, which were so hard to do, and I've been feeling everything.
It still is an ongoing process, but I feel as though I am on the bridge and I want to thank you for that bridge.
I'm very grateful, Thank you Margie!
I'm so proud of all the Lamplighter's that have started groups thoughout the country. Such brave and courageous women!

Repair - a recovery journey from childhood sexual abuse. I am a victim advocate and have used this book with survivors I work with. I never get tired of readers saying to me ".... this is so what I have been experiencing" It is set up in such a way to let the reader go at their own pace. Details warning signs and it provides such incredible tools in a journey that otherwise is so dark and lonely. It truly is a miraculous book providing its readers with a glimpse of hope for the future.

If you or someone you care about is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, this book should prove invaluable to your recovery. Most people realize that childhood sexual abuse is traumatic, but not everyone understands or recognizes the serious and often life-long effects.

The author of this valuable book, Marjorie McKinnon, has written extensively how survivors can work to move beyond the trauma of abuse. With hard work and patience, it can be done. She pulls no punches, and never trivializes the difficulty of dealing with this problem. She has set the program forward with a really useful acronym, REPAIR, to illustrate the steps a survivor and their friends and family or therapist needs to take to begin the process of healing. Written in a style that is very easy to understand and to follow, the survivor will work through 6 different steps to recovery.

Numerous therapists have recommended this process, and I believe it could be an invaluable tool both for professionals and caring friends and family members of survivors. Any one wanting to move beyond the trauma of incest and childhood sexual abuse can find hope, healing and care within these pages. Information is also given about support groups and finding them, an invaluable resource that many people are unaware are available to them.

An American Authors Association review:

As we all know, many adults who were sexually abused as children, never received any help or therapy for this abuse. The result, as pointed out in this book, often results in picking an abusive mate and the cycle continues.

As Ms. McKinnon did so well in her book, Repair for Kids: A Children's Program for Recovery from Incest and Childhood Sexual Abuse, she points out what it takes to recognize and recover from the damage done to a person as a child. Though certainly more detailed than the children's books, the steps are similar though developed further for the use of adults.

The author reveals her own experiences to let the reader know that she truly understands what they are going through and that also knows the best way to overcome what the childhood abuse has done to her.

Highly recommended!

- Reviewed by American Authors Association member, Marilyn Meredith, a.k.a. F. M. Meredith, author of Kindred Spirits and No Sanctuary

The Program REPAIR, as delineated in the book REPAIR Your Life, took me from being married to my third abuser, suicidal, living part time in a womens shelter and filled with deapir to being the happiest person I know. After I completed this program my motto was: If I'd have known life was going to turn out this good I would have started it sooner." I spent five years developing and researching REPAIR, including interviewing other victims across the country to find out what they needed in a program. I included everything I had tried and had worked while I was in my own recovery. REPAIR Your Life: A Program for Recovery from Incest & Childhood Sexual AbuseThis program works because it follows a common sense thread that takes you through the acronym,REPAIR. Visualize yourself moving across the Bridge of Recovery as you go from despair to a healthy life.