Customer Reviews

Recovering The Self: A Journal of Hope and Healing (Vol. I, No.1)

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I just received the first issue of this joural. What a GREAT publication!!! This journal is full of interesting articles that are loaded with TONS of information. My recommendation for you is to subscribe to this publication. I promise that you'll be glad you did. I'm really looking forward to the next issue.

Recovering the Self is a collection of articles, poetry and other forms of short writing. The journal focused on personal tragedy and how different individuals dealt with problems. Some turned to God, some to friends and family and others sought comfort in medicinal form. There were a couple of pieces that I was truly amazed at! I wondered how they coped so well. If I were there shoes how would I have dealt? In one story a man loses his wife and almost his children to Genocide. Another article deals with forgiveness of someone who ended a loved ones life. The pieces covered almost every coping mechanism for stress such as anger, substance abuse, grief (depression) and hope. I didn't remember if denial appeared in any piece.
I enjoyed reading this journal. I wished some of the articles were longer because it seems just I really got into it the piece was done. Many times I was left wondering ok how does the story end what happened next? I don't usually read journals but this wasn't a bad one to get into. I don't know if I would read the next volume simply because it is not my favorite genre. Even though it isn't my normal reading preference it was worth reading! Several times I was on the verge of crying. Some stories made me grateful for the life I have. I would recommend this journal to anyone suffering a tragedy. Maybe they would become inspired by a piece. The journal might also give them ideas how to deal with the circumstance at hand.

Whether we have been emotionally wounded by trauma or not, recovering the self and carrying the feeling of hope and healing with us is a worthy human pursuit. "Recovering the Self: A Journal of Hope and Healing" (vol.I, No. 1) lives up to its name and the promise it offers.

The cover image of dancers by Cindy Moran sets the soothing tone of comfort and beauty. The 87 pages to follow provides a collage of writing styles ranging from memoir, academic, inspirational, fiction, and poetry. Publisher Victor Volkman says this intentional mix provides a different way in to reach a span of readers who may respond more to one form than to another.

Editor Ernest Dempsey does an admirable job of pulling this material together in a pleasing shape. Each piece offers a revelation, insight, or lesson for the reader to take away. The writing throughout is excellent.

Here's a passage I particularly found useful:

"When a trauma, a time of low resilience, gets re-stimulated, the sense of fragility, of helplessness in the incident is also evoked. Now the person is unable to cope with a number of situations that are only tangentially related o the original situation because of the feeling of fragility that arises in them because of the re-stimulation. This causes one's general level of resilience to drop markedly, and more and more aspect of life become stressful or traumatic, creating new sequences of traumatic incidents."

"Oh! So that's been what's going on," I thought.

Order your own copy and find out for yourself.

Janet Grace Riehl, author "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary"
Sightlines: a Family Love Story in Poetry & Music

Recovering The Self:
A Journal of Hope and Healing (Vol. 1, No.1)
Author: Ernest Dempsey (Editor)
Publisher: Loving Healing Press
ISBN: 978-1-932690-09-5

This is the premier issue of Loving Healing Press' quarterly journal "Recovering The Self, A Journal of Hope and Healing. This excellent publication contains a wide variety of articles, poems, fiction, humor, book reviews and book excerpts. This information is provided by numerous well known authorities in the fields of psychology, metaphysics, social work and counseling.

Specific works in the this volume include:

Victims No More by Barbara Sinor, PhD; an article to inspire the reader to let go of past programming and thought processes and recreate life to reach the successes desired.

Frank A. Gerbode, M.D., shares his professional insight into the theory of resilience and why some people seem to be more resilient when faced with trauma and/or stress. He discusses the use of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) to work through the situation and build resilience.

An article written by Sam Vaknin (author of 10 books about personality disorders and abuse in relationships) is entitled Sex, Gender and Personality Disorders. It takes an interesting look at gender identity and sexual preferences and whether thay have a specific genetic predisposition, along with a revealing look at the gender disparity found in diagnosing personality disorders. Interesting and insightful, with excellent quotes from key literature..

Dr. Janet Hall contributes the article "Helping Children Traumatized by Disaster" a well-done source of information to help children dealing with a variety of traumatic experiences.

I look forward to reading additional volumes of Recovering The Self. This anthology truly offers much useful and thought-provoking information.

"Recovering the Self" is more than just a journal. It's only 87 pages long, but these double-columned pages feel like a full-fledged anthology of diverse voices covering multiple aspects of healing, recovery, and human experience divided into departments of non-fiction essays, book reviews, fiction, poetry, and interviews. Although each piece may not appeal to every reader, "Recovering the Self" has something for everyone--most likely a lot for everyone--to enjoy and to help each one of us to grow.

It would be impossible to discuss every aspect of the journal, but I'll briefly summarize a few of the pieces that stood out for me to provide some idea of the broad definition of recovery involved.

Christy Lowry's "Forgiveness: A God Thing?" is about a woman who learns how to forgive the man whose car struck and killed her young daughter by speaking to another driver whose vehicle had killed another young girl, and who, seven years later, still felt anguish over the incident. Besides forgiveness, the article spoke to overcoming grief, definitely one of the strongest themes running through the journal and something we must all deal with.

Frank A. Gerbode's article, "A Theory of Resilience" provided answers and insight into how to deal with traumatic experiences, and the degrees of an experience that result in stress. He writes very clearly, using a personal example of a musical performance he bungled and how toppling over his music stand in practice would have caused less stress than it did during a performance. The article makes a person understand how stress is different in different situations and for different people. Needless to say, I was impressed that this fledgling journal got Frank Gerbode, the expert on metapsychology, to contribute, and it raises my expectations for future excellent issues.

Sam Vaknin provides a very thorough discussion about gender and sexuality in "Sex, Gender, and Personality Disorders" and whether the matter is biological or cultural. While this discussion is far from new, he provided much information to help people form their own opinions, much of the information new to me.

Among the fiction and book excerpts is Christine Bruness' "The Blue Room" about a lesbian coping with the murder of her partner, and the powerful story "Ten Thousand Francs for a Bullet" by Dicho Ilunga about genocide in Rwanda. What I really appreciated about these and all the pieces in the journal was the variety of voices, including foreign and "alternative" voices. This journal is not written simply for white Americans but for everyone of any color, race, gender, background or sexual preference.

Many of the pieces, such as Sherry Jones Mayo's "Shadows on the Wall" about a woman attempting to commit suicide because she can no longer cope with being a responder to trauma, will make readers want to search out more works by the author, such as Mayo's upcoming book "Confessions of a Trauma Junkie."

The Help Desk section was also useful, this month featuring Dr. Janet Hall's "Helping Children Traumatized by Disaster," which was logical and well thought out. I hope to see more of this department in future issues.

The Poetry was accessible and enjoyable to read, and perfectly placed in the middle of the volume to provide a break from the somewhat heavier articles. The book and film reviews at the end of the book were also perfectly placed, recommending additional reading for people that will tide them over until the next issue of this quarterly journal.

I wish I could comment on more of the pieces ranging from near amputations to coping with Lyme Disease. To get some sense of what future issues will contain, the back cover of the journal states that "Recovering the Self" will explore "themes of recovery and healing through poetry, memoir, essays, fiction, humor, media reviews and psycho-education. Areas of concern include aging, disabilities, health, abuse recovery, trauma/PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Contributors come from around the world to provide a mirror of the experiences of peoples of all cultures and beliefs." If that is this journal's mission statement, it certainly lived up to it in this volume, making me look forward to the second issue.

For more information about "Recovering the Self" and to order a copy, visit www.RecoveringSelf.com.

-- Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., author of the award-winning Narrow Lives