Soul Repair

The first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides. And though treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has undoubtedly alleviated suffering and allowed many service members returning from combat to transition to civilian life, the suicide rate for veterans under thirty has been increasing. Research by Veterans Administration health professionals and veterans’ own experiences now suggest an ancient but unaddressed wound of war may be a factor: moral injury. This deep-seated sense of transgression includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs. Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, who both grew up in families deeply affected by war, have been working closely with vets on what moral injury looks like, how vets cope with it, and what can be done to heal the damage inflicted on soldiers’ consciences. In Soul Repair, the authors tell the stories of four veterans of wars from Vietnam to our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—Camillo “Mac” Bica, Herman Keizer Jr., Pamela Lightsey, and Camilo Mejía—who reveal their experiences of moral injury from war and how they have learned to live with it. Brock and Lettini also explore its effect on families and communities, and the community processes that have gradually helped soldiers with their moral injuries. Soul Repair will help veterans, their families, members of their communities, and clergy understand the impact of war on the consciences of healthy people, support the recovery of moral conscience in society, and restore veterans to civilian life. When a society sends people off to war, it must accept responsibility for returning them home to peace.

Jeff VanVonderen, Dale Ryan and Juanita Ryan offer help in understanding abusive spirituality, addictive spirituality, codependent spirituality, anorexic spirituality and how to build a healthy, balanced spirituality.

Repair of the Soul examines transformation from the perspective of Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis, addressing the question of how one achieves self-understanding that leads not only to insight but also to meaningful change. In this beautifully written and thought-provoking book, Karen Starr draws upon a contemporary relational approach to psychoanalysis to explore the spiritual dimension of psychic change within the context of the psychoanalytic relationship. Influenced by the work of Lewis Aron, Steven Mitchell and other relational theorists, and drawing upon contemporary scholarship in the field of Jewish studies, Starr brings the ideas of the Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical tradition, into dialogue with modern psychoanalytic thought. Repair of the Soul provides a scholarly integration of several kabbalistic and psychoanalytic themes relating to transformation, including faith, surrender, authenticity, and mutuality, as well as a unique exploration of the relationship of the individual to the universal. Starr uses the Kabbalah’s metaphors as a vivid framework with which to illuminate the experience of transformation in psychoanalytic process, and to explore the evolving view of the psychoanalytic relationship as one in which both parties - the analyst as well as the patient - are transformed.

Lauren McKinley's raw glimpse of how to survive life in a destroyed marriage has inspired many by reminding women they're not alone. In Stop Wrecking My Home, she shares her personal story of the destruction an affair brings to a marriage, family, and community. Her words invite the brokenhearted to fight for their marriage while maintaining their self-worth. Her writing provides healing, hope, and restoration to the victims of betrayal. The pain you have endured may have broken your heart, but it does not have to break you.

Offers a powerful perspective that affirms the deep damage war does to the psyche and addresses how to truly heal war trauma in veterans, their families, and communities, drawing on history, mythology, and soldiers' stories--from World War I to Iraq. Original.

In this thought-provoking book, Mossbridge maintains that each person's life is one of continuous transformation and that there is no such thing as a single moment of enlightenment.176 pp.

If we can share our burdens, we can bear them. If we can bear them, we can change the circumstances that brought them about. In a world where anything goes, people have a hard time deciding what is right and what is wrong. Pastors have a hard time helping people discern right and wrong because the church’s theological language of sin and redemption have so little currency and even less cultural relevancy. How can pastors help people deal with their feelings of guilt, shame, and responsibility when most many people don’t believe in sin and have a limited or “flexible” moral framework? People need help assessing moral alternatives, reconciling what they have done with what they think is right, recovering from burdens of guilt and shame, and imagining moral options to serve the common good. It is the call of pastors, chaplains, and other spiritual caregivers to help people move from moral injury to pardon and, eventually, to sustained recovery and resilience—in essence this book will help pastors reclaim their pastoral tasks of soul care and moral guidance without succumbing to the temptation of moralizing. Using vivid examples, the author will look at how various religious communities seek, promote, and achieve personal wholeness and realize the common good. This understanding will inform pastors, so that they can help their congregants and communities become vital agents in a sea of, often, conflicting moral voices. The book will provide resources for identifying core assets, and how to assess the various codes and moral claims interacting within the kaleidoscopic climate in which we live. Drawing upon neuroscience, narrative spirituality, and collaborative communal engagement, the author gives tools to aid pastors, chaplains, and spiritual caregivers ameliorate the distress caused by dissonance and resulting in moral injury. The book will also provide resources for helping people bear the burdens of moral responsibility and for navigating the sometimes unbearable consequences of particular moral actions. The author concludes with suggestions for helping people suffering from injury to their integrity from misdeeds they endure, either as a result of their own actions or from those actions of others, move toward sustained resilience and more mature moral imagination. "There is no better guide, or collaborative partner, for navigating the moral territory of post-traumatic living than Larry Graham. In Moral Injury: Restoring Wounds Souls, Graham sounds a clarion call for religious leaders to cultivate habits of mind and body to meet the complex situations of our day. Rather than offering a birds-eye-view of the moral terrain, Graham invites readers to feel the earth under their feet and attune themselves to the climate of their moral environments. With his careful definitional work and theological acumen, he revivifies theological ethics for progressive Christians. [And beyond this audience, Graham displays the importance of theology in contemporary discussions of moral injury.]" – Shelly Rambo, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston University School of Theology "Larry Graham has created an extraordinary workbook for moral resiliency and healing. He restores hope for the excruciating pains of a broken conscience. A treasure house of timely and practical applications sure to enrich pastoral conversations!" - Paul W. Dodd, Chaplain (Colonel), U.S. Army (Retired) "This book is a must-read if we care about recovery from moral injury, not just in the wake of immediate trauma, but also in historical legacies that haunt us. Larry Graham illuminates how questions of God can be addressed in that process with grace and compassion, and he shows, via the experiences of people from a variety of cultures and faiths, how moral injury can be healed." - Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph.D., Senior Vice-President for Moral Injury Programs at Volunteers of America. She is the former Research Professor of Religion and Culture and Director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX

Does it sometimes seem like your life is unreal? Perhaps it seems that your existence is more a nightmare than a dream. We never know about the private lives behind the façades people create for public consumption. Yet what shapes our lives is the raw, unvarnished, unstated, and camouflaged reality that defines our everyday existence. I grew up in such an illusion and suspected that my life was closer to the nightmare side than the dream. My dad was a recognized and renowned jazz musician. He played with and made records with the great musicians of the late twentieth century. Behind the mask of success and notoriety lurked a monster whom no one from the public would have recognized or believed existed. His own insecurity, fear, addictions, lies, and bad choices led him to be a violent abuser. Bars on the windows, secrets behind locked doors, terrors behind the mask of normalcy. I lived in a nightmare world and needed a way out. In the end, for me, there is a happy ending. What I didn't know was that, while I was able to escape the abusive situation, the abuse itself followed me. It sapped my joy and creativity. It wasn't until I fell into a hole of depression as a supposedly successful adult, a doctor, and the mother of three children that I realized there was a purpose to my pain. What did it take to crawl out of this hole? Join me as I take you on a journey of Reboot, Repair, Rebirth. Reboot your soul by breaking the silence, speaking your truth, and ending the isolation. Get to physical and emotional safety. Repair by getting help and consciously healing your mind, heart, and body. Conquer your demons and discover your inner light and resilience. Celebrate your Rebirth as a new, healing, wiser, loving, and centered being. Live intentionally and abundantly.

Do you fear that God is angry with you? Do you wonder if God is really FOR you? If God really loves you? Deep down many of us believe that we are not good enough, and never will be good enough, to have a meaningful relationship with God. This is because we have been spiritually trained in ways that have left us with distored and inadequate spiritualities of four different kinds: abusive, anorexic, addictive, and codependent. And we are left with a toxic combination of fear and shame. We may try to get it right. We may try to control ourselves and others. We may try to please God and to earn God's love. After a while we find ourselves exhausted and discouraged, and we may feel even more alienated from God. Jeff VanVonderen, Dale Ryan and Juanita Ryan understand this problem because they have been there both personally and professionally. And they are prepared to help you rebulid your spiritual life. If you find yourself living out a burdensome and unfulfilling spirituality, this book is for you. If you are longing to have a relationship with God that works, this book can show you the way.