Item: Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free
Author: Gina

Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free by Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW | $15 Giveaway, Spotlight, Excerpt

Genres: SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Self-Esteem, available now from Tellwell Talent

A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.

What's in this post!

Book Details

Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free by Rebecca L Brown
Published by Tellwell Talent on 01/07/2021
Genres: Non-fiction, Self-help, Self-Help / Motivational & Inspirational, Self-Esteem
Format: Paperback
Pages: 294

As a mental health clinician, Rebecca Brown has been a safe place for many to seek shelter from their secrets, silence, and shame. Inspired to finally slow down, stop running from herself, and share her own story, she found ways to seek and savour her own shelter.

Rebecca's personal journey takes us through sadness, tragedy, self-sabotage, the impossible pursuit of perfection, distorted thinking and eating, engaging with her shadow self, divorce, and numbing with alcohol, all in an attempt to avoid the story needing to be shared.

Dispelling the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves can unlock our limitless potential to reach goals we never dared to dream. From the Boston Marathon to working with horses, Rebecca sets out to prove to herself that anything is possible when you don't listen to the negative stories you tell yourself.

Everyone has a story. We become who we are because of what has happened to us, and because of the stories we tell ourselves. But do our stories continue to serve us well, or keep us stuck? Are our stories fact or fiction? Is it time to rewrite the versions we have been telling ourselves?

Shelter provides strategies to help reframe the thinking patterns we have developed, and offers tools to recognize when we are suffering from our own thoughts, feelings and actions. Resilience-building techniques are woven through the pages, and encouragement for the lifelong journey of collecting moments of awe and happiness.

Seeking and reading Shelter is a gift of self-compassion and self-discovery. Rebecca's hope is that it will be read with a highlighter in hand, pages folded down, re-read, recommended to a friend, and used as a guide to start sharing our own stories with those we love.

We may not have written our beginnings, but we have the ability to write every word from this point forward and just imagine where our stories can take us when we are free of secrets, silence, and shame.

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Excerpt from Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame

Lives become divided into “before the accident” and “after the accident.”

This is where people learn that life is not fair.

But it doesn’t mean that life can’t be rich, rewarding, and happy again.

But it takes time, courage, pain, and most of all, resilience.

How do I know this?

Because I’ve lived it myself.

I watched as the first love of my life broke his neck.

I was not quite sixteen; he was eighteen.

Kids in the country do crazy things.

Like swimming in abandoned gravel pits and quarries.

Tailgates of pickup trucks make great diving boards.

At almost sixteen, I didn’t know how fragile life was.

I didn’t know how strong love could be.

I didn’t know how resilient the human spirit can be.

I didn’t know that this tragedy would change the trajectory of my life.

I spent my sixteenth birthday in the hospital Intensive Care Unit with him.

It was not sweet.

It was sad, and I was scared.

It was the only place I wanted to be.

He was paralyzed from the chest down.

He had holes drilled into his skull connected to metal pins and rods, called a “Halo” traction, to stabilize his fractured C4-5 vertebrae, which had been snapped, his spinal cord severed.
He was hooked up to a ventilator because his lungs had collapsed when he had sunk to the bottom of the gravel pit before our friends realized something was wrong and he hadn’t surfaced.

He had a breathing tube inserted into a hole in his throat.

He could only move his eyes.

I had to stand on tiptoes and lean over the rails of the hospital bed so he could see me.

And every time he saw me, he cried.

He couldn’t talk because the tube he was breathing through didn’t let sound come from his vocal cords.

So I did all the talking.

Telling him how much I loved him.

How much his friends loved him and were rooting for him.

Not many people were allowed in to see him, so I became the spokesperson for them.

When I ran out of words, I read to him.

I stroked his arm, held his hand.

Until I remembered that he couldn’t feel his hands; he would never again hold my hand back.

I stroked the side of his face, his head, ran my fingers through his hair.

He could feel this, and it comforted him when he was sad, scared, or angry.

I learned that love is powerful medicine.

As he healed, the halo traction and breathing tube were removed, and he was transferred from the ICU to a rehabilitation ward for months of physical therapy. He learned how to sit in a wheelchair.

I learned how to change catheter bags and how to be an adult before I was one.

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Purchase Links for Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame

Amazon – OneLink for every country

Bookshop/IndieBound Chapters/Indigo

AppleBooks/iTunes The Book Depository Blackwell’s

Waterstones Smashwords The Wordery BN

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About Rebecca L Brown

REBECCA L BROWN is a clinical social worker with over 35 years in practice ranging from medical social work, childhood trauma, vicarious trauma for first responders, international psychological first aid, and Equine Assisted Therapy.

She is honoured to hold a faculty appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario. She teaches extensively on the topics of trauma and resilience and has delivered keynote presentations throughout North America.

She shares her life and career with her husband, a family physician, and trailblazer in the field of Lifestyle Medicine. Together they live and work on the shores of the Great Lake Huron, where they seek and share shelter with their six adult children, four grandchildren, extended family and friends, two dogs, two cats, and one horse

Website | Goodreads | Amazon | Instagram

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Guest post from the author

CHAPTER NINE
2017

People say that I’m good with people. I’ve always been in the helping field.
People and animals seem to be naturally drawn to me. Maybe it’s feminine
intuition mixed with maternal instinct. I’m able to feel an energetic
connection with people, and I prefer to be around others than on my
own.

All my formal training, although helpful and a great foundation, just
helped to lay the groundwork for what was to come: working with people
to enhance their connection, healing, and promoting growth and learning.
I’ve had my own struggles. Haven’t we all? I was separated from my family
at an early age and taken in by a family who had the best of intentions.

They wanted me to fill a void in their lives, but after a few years, I became
invisible, a burden, and was left to myself most of the time. I felt that I had
done something wrong. I became sensitive to strong emotions and could
sense someone’s energy from a distance, particularly the negative. Negative
energy is louder than positive energy.

It takes me longer to trust people,
and I withdraw myself sometimes. It’s a primal instinct. Some may say a
coping strategy. Sometimes it’s more comfortable being alone, than risking
being hurt and rejected, again.

I have a big heart.
I can hold space for people’s pain.
I can see into their soul.
I know when their insides don’t match their outsides.
I recognize the walls people put up
to protect themselves.

I help them to break down their barriers and obstacles.
I lead them to a new understanding of themselves.
I teach people to trust themselves,
to trust in others again.
Like I have learned to do.

We met on a cold and dreary day.
She approached me with gentleness and a bit of trepidation.
She wanted to make a connection.
Trust takes time for me.
She seemed like she was going to invest the time.

Our connection grew day by day.
She asked me to trust her.
I tested her to be sure she deserved my trust.
We found a new home together.
We work well together.

We take long walks together; we run together.
We can read each other’s body language now.
We have made other friendships together.
We have a strong relationship.
We respect each other.
We trust each other.
We challenge each other.
We work together.
We play together.
We help each other heal.
We help others heal.
I have blonde hair,
brown eyes.
I weigh over one thousand pounds.
My name is Dolly….

……check out my book to find out more about Equine Assisted Therapy and how horses can become the true therapists to help humans heal from a lifetime of trauma.