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Title: Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Past with Kindness Changes Everything
Author: Adam Young Baker Publishing
Publication Date / Details: March 4, 2025

What It’s About

The book is a Christian / self-help work by a trauma therapist (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) whose goal is to help readers explore and make sense of their past in order to live more fully in the present.
Young argues that many people struggle even after reading books, attending workshops, or talking to therapists, because they’ve never truly “engaged” with their own story—how their past shaped them.

The premise is that our experiences shape our brains, which in turn shape how we see life now; understanding that connection is essential to transformation and healing. Baker Publishing

Key Themes & Content

Young guides readers to examine various “stories” or narrative threads in their lives, including:

• Family of origin: how early family influences inform beliefs, patterns, and emotional responses.

• Body story: how our physical selves and experiences with our bodies carry meaning and influence well‑being.

• Sexual story: how sexual history, culture, identity, and perhaps trauma shape identity and relationships.

• Cultural story: how broader societal, ethnic, or cultural narratives feed into one's sense of self and worldview.

• Story with God / spiritual story: engaging faith, disappointment, hope, and how one’s understanding of God interacts with personal narrative.

A central aspect is doing this with kindness rather than judgment—meaning a posture of curiosity, compassion, and gentleness toward one’s own past. Connect to Baker Publishing to purchase a copy today!

Resource Center

Tools and guidance for ongoing mental health support.

Title: What's Wrong With You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Authors: Dr. Bruce D. Perry & Oprah Winfrey.
Published: 2021

What It's About

The book explores how trauma, especially early in life, shapes how people think, feel, react, and relate to others, often in ways that persist into adulthood. It argues for shifting from the question “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” — recognizing that many behaviors, difficulties, or “symptoms” are adaptations or responses to experiences rather than defects. It provides insight into human development, how early relationships and experiences physically shape the brain and nervous system, how trauma shows up (often in surprising or hidden ways), and ways in which healing and resilience are possible.

Key Themes & Concepts

Here are some of the major ideas in the book:

• Early Development & Brain Architecture
  The structure of the brain develops in layers, starting with more primitive systems (survival, emotion) before moving toward higher cognitive functions. Experiences in early childhood strongly influence how those systems are wired.

• Trauma’s Long Reach
  Trauma isn’t only about single big events—it also includes neglect, chronic stress, inconsistency in caregiving.

• Stress, Regulation, and Dysregulation
  How people regulate emotional / physiological stress is key. Trauma often disturbs regulation: so things like hypervigilance, overwhelming emotions, shutting down, difficulty calming oneself, all relate to how well regulation has been supported (or not) in early life.

• Relational Health & Connection
  Relationships matter enormously— Safe, responsive caregiving or meaningful relationships later in life can help rewire or restore regulatory systems.

• Healing & Resilience
  Healing involves more than talk therapy; it often includes rhythm, movement, rituals, safe environments, predictable relationships.

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Good Reads

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