Try Softer

As a devoted Christian, a childhood trauma survivor, and a licensed counselor, Aundi Kolber has a lot of valuable wisdom to share, as well as practical coping skills to teach, and she does so with gentleness and compassion.  She gives you practical suggestions and exercises at the end of each chapter to apply what you learned.  I recommend this book to anyone sincerely seeking wholeness and healing from past wounds.  Below are a few of my favorite quotes from her first book, Try Softer, (which I read cover to cover in two days, which may be a personal record):

"We come by these tendencies honestly.  We've learned to white-knuckle our way through life to armor up against pain and difficulty; we believe minimizing our wounds is the only way we'll be loved."

"You don't have to dismiss your pain here.  You don't need to shrink it down or pretend living through it wasn't hard. We know God is with us through it all, but that doesn't mean life hasn't cracked you open... The wounds you have experienced are valid.  What's happened in your life matters."

"The work of trying softer begins when we release our desire for the quick fix and tend to the wounds underneath the surface.  Otherwise, we're going to stay stuck."

"Change happens in layers and is rarely linear. It takes as long as it takes. It's okay to be unfinished... The process of blooming is as valuable as the flower it produces." ❤

"Part of my brain knew I was deeply loved by God, but because of my own unresolved trauma, I couldn't think myself into experiencing His love for me... It's only been through intentionally working with my own pain that I have come to experience the true reality of a good, kind, and compassionate God."

"Research shows that taking longer to exhale than to inhale signals to our nervous system that we are safe."

"The way in which you move through hardship matters greatly.  It can predict whether something becomes integrated into your experience and loses its intensity or builds in power to the point that you feel it might overwhelm you."

"It's difficult to build toward compassion - toward ourselves or others - if we continue to be highly critical of everything around us."

"Before we know something is happening in our conscious mind (including our emotions), we know it first in our body... We must begin to listen to what our bodies are telling us. We always pay a price when we try to live disembodied lives. Our memories and experiences do not simply go away.  Our bodies are their keepers, for better or worse."

"No matter how hard we try, we can't hate or shame ourselves into change. Only love can move us toward true growth."

"I pray you remember to be gentle with yourself as you grow, knowing condemnation never leads us onward but instead stunts the process... And when you are weary, may you never - no, never - lose heart.  May you know in an experiential, personal, and transformational way that the One who has called you is faithful." ❤