I liked Lisa Weinert's Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story. It gives me a new way of my own healing. Four and a half stars.

Narrative Healing is a well-written and engaging book that provides a comprehensive and practical approach to healing through storytelling. Weinert's six-step process is easy to follow and can be adapted to fit the needs of individual readers. The book also includes a variety of helpful resources, such as journaling prompts, exercises, and a list of recommended reading.

I'd recommend Narrative Healing to anyone who is interested in using the power of storytelling to heal from trauma, find connection with others, or simply learn more about themselves. It's a valuable resource for both writers and non-writers, and it can be used by individuals or in group settings.

I loved this book!!!! Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story is a captivating and empowering book that encourages readers to reclaim ownership of their narratives and embark on a path of healing and self-discovery. Lisa Weinert's expertise as a psychotherapist and her profound understanding of the human experience make this book a valuable resource for anyone seeking to find solace, resilience, and empowerment through the power of storytelling.

"Narrative Healing" by Lisa Weinert is an insightful and transformative exploration of the profound connections between the body, storytelling, and the healing process. As a reader who has always been fascinated by the power of narratives and their impact on our lives, this book resonated deeply with me.

The book also delves into the scientific and psychological underpinnings of narrative healing, providing a well-rounded and evidence-based perspective. Weinert's writing style is accessible and engaging, making complex concepts easy to comprehend, even for those unfamiliar with psychology or therapy.

Throughout the chapters, Weinert introduces practical exercises and techniques that readers can incorporate into their lives to harness the healing potential of storytelling. These exercises not only empower individuals to explore their personal narratives but also encourage self-reflection and emotional growth.

Furthermore, "Narrative Healing" stands out for its inclusive approach. Weinert emphasizes that anyone can benefit from narrative healing, regardless of their background or experiences. The book's universality ensures that it can be a valuable resource for a wide range of readers seeking self-discovery and personal growth.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hatchett Books for the opportunity in reviewing this arc, it's been a pleasure.

I must start by saying I was the perfect audience for this book. As a lifelong writer and someone who has always been deeply interested in mind/body connections through yoga and organic movements, and as someone who went through the trauma of an extremely abusive relationship a year ago, a book that is “intended to accelerate, deepen, and inspire whatever healing journey you are on and uncover the story that needs to be told now.

The author starts by discussing how the effects of trauma show up in how we experience creativity and storytelling. Depending on how our nervous system responds in traumatic or dangerous situations (fight/flight/freeze/fawn), the stories we tell and the ones we experience are affected accordingly. Rather than focus solely on the holistic aspects of her teachings, the author takes every opportunity to support her thinking and reasoning with science and logic. The author is also extremely intentional about making the activities and practices in the book accessible to all - regardless of age, gender, body ability, and more.

One of the main points of this book involves the necessity to become more connected to your physical body in order to uncover what story the spiritual body/mind is trying to tell. The point is made very clearly that we live in a Western culture where, historically, the fallacy of a mind-body split is the prevailing idea. Despite that, the way we are with our body impacts how we are on the page. And as we heal and become more self aware, our writing experience likewise improves. The nervous system, the author says, can be thought of as the genre, format, pace, tone, voice, speed, lens, filter, and temp.

Based on these ideas, the author guides writers through 6 stages: Awaken, Listen, Express, Inspire, Connect, Grow.

Each stage builds on the last and includes numerous exercises, techniques, and lessons to benefit your writing practice - meeting you wherever you may be on your current healing journey.

After reading the book through in its entirety, I am so eager to read it again and start trying the exercises. I believe this book could help countless people - writers or otherwise - heal, reclaim their writing practice, and reclaim their story after trauma.

A special thank you to #NetGalley and #hatchettebookgroup for sending this incredible arc.

Narrative Healing by Lisa Weinert offers exercises and toolkit for aiding emotional healing, increasing self-awareness, and igniting creativity. Have highlighters, pens, and notebooks at the ready, as there are a multitude of ideas to explore and contemplate. A thought provoking workbook.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

DNF @38%

While I appreciated the concept of this book, the execution was rough. I expected more journaling/writing related advice based on the title and synopsis, but much of what I read was general meditation tips and practices.

The meditation practices were difficult to follow. I struggled to read the instructions and complete them at the same time.

The author also repeated herself over and over again. It almost felt like this book was a collection of blog post strung together without much connection.

I definitely think this idea has potential. It’s just not working at the moment.

Narrative Healing by Lisa Weinert offers readers both an opportunity to practice receptive prescriptive bibliotherapy (healing through reading) because of the personal accounts shared and expressive creative bibliotherapy via the writing prompts and exercises contained in the text.

Lisa is the founder of Narrative Healing, a program that offers a paradigm for healing from trauma through creativity and sharing our stories with the world from an embodied approach. Lisa has led a successful career in publishing and journalism and throughout all of her success has navigated mental health challenges that resulted in her experiencing a mental health crisis in college. As far as she was concerned, she was doing well as long as she was functioning and able to go to perform. However, in sharing her story she honors that there are many of us who, while we are functioning, are truly suffering emotionally and are in need of more support than we are often offered.

Narrative Healing is full of writing practices that can be done at the reader's own pace. If you do not choose to engage in the writing practices, you will still learn a lot about a narrative therapy approach and how it can help you rewrite and reimagine the multiple story lines and experiences of your life so that you can empower yourself to revise and write storylines that are truer about who you are and who you are becoming on this life path.

Thank you to the publisher and author for the e-arc copy!

I’m sure that this book will be helpful to many people, but it’s a little too woo-woo for me. I wasn’t excited or energized about the writing exercises. I think that people who are into the hippie lifestyle will like it more than I did.

This book is a comprehensive toolkit for supporting emotional healing, fostering self-awareness, and sparking creativity. For anyone who likes to journal or has contemplated starting to journal, this is a wonderful resource to be cherished for its sensitivity and scope in addressing significant issues for achieving health and well-being.

The book is divided into six sections entitled: Awaken, Listen, Express, Inspire, Connect, and Grow. Each section progressively leads the reader into multiple chapters that provide background information, quotes from other authors, and a host of exercises that lead to writing prompts. I appreciated the author’s inclusion of body/sensory-based exercises, which support her premise that our bodies record and hold our stories. This is an area often overlooked in the self-help genre that focuses on psychological themes.

My thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This review is being posted immediately to my GoodReads account and will be posted on Amazon upon publication.

This is more of a workbook than a book you read, absorb, and ponder over. There are those tiny prompts and exercises and while it is always super tempting to just read some theory and wisdom, actually doing the inner work, going deep within and looking inside you is where the real changes and keys to any growth can be found.
I feel like this book is filled with many powerful tools to make your life better, one page at a time. This is so well thought through, so thorough, and written in such a loving way, I believe it has some serious power to change and improve the lives of those who approach it seriously and follow through.

What a detailed and thorough book by Weinert. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars! It's filled to the brim with exercises to get you to tune into your body in order to write your story. Be prepared to have time to go back and do the steps and mark the pages for the items that pertain to you.