Trauma Women

Sandra Pankhurst founded her trauma cleaning business to help people whose emotional scars are written on their houses. From the forgotten flat of a drug addict, to the infested home of a hoarder, Sandra enters properties and lives at the same time. But few of the people she looks after know anything of the complexity of Sandra's own life. Raised in an uncaring home, Sandra's miraculous gift for warmth and humour in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy, mark her out as a one-off and make this biography unmissable.

Are you still carrying the weight of an emotionally abusive relationship long after it’s ended? Struggling to break free from the heavy chains of a trauma bond that keeps pulling you back? Jennifer Alushan, an experienced educator with several degrees in education and specialized training in trauma processing, guides you on this journey of recovery and self-empowerment.

Are you constantly feeling emotionally tortured by someone you used to love? Do you see no point in trying to get out because your abusive partner has taken control of your life? Abuse survivor turned domestic violence advocate, Marjorie Lise, knows this all too well. In her audiobook, she talks about how she was able to successfully stop suffering in silence and finally escape her abusive partner whom she had stayed with for an entire decade, with the hope that her experience will inspire you to take back control of your life, too.

Angry, opinionated, mouthy, aggressive, hysterical, mad, disordered, crazy, psycho, delusional, borderline, hormonal.... Women have long been pathologized, locked up and medicated for not conforming to whichever norms or stereotypes are expected of them in that time and space. Sexy but Psycho is a challenging and uncomfortable book that seeks to explore the way professionals and society at large pathologize and sexualise women and girls.

In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict. It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months. After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, still in her teens, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. After her mother's death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents' relationship. They had been unhappy for so long - should she have known that it would end like this?

From trauma educator and somatic guide Kimberly Ann Johnson comes a cutting-edge guide for tapping into the wisdom and resilience of the body to rewire the nervous system, heal from trauma, and live fully.

Barrister Charlotte Proudman has represented countless women in cases spanning rape, domestic abuse, child abduction, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. She has seen first-hand how the family court deepens the trauma of vulnerable women, staking their futures on the biases of individual judges and forcing them to endure the torture of a judicial process that stretches over months and sometimes years.

Every morning is the same for Eliza: she swims in Hampstead Ponds, diving into her memories, reliving the heady days of her teenage friendship with Eric and Maggie. The obsession, the adoration, and the sense of belonging she always craved was perfect, until everything was destroyed in a single afternoon. With guilt never far from the surface, she still asks herself: what really happened that day?

Marina and her husband, Jacob, were each born on a kibbutz in Israel. They meet years later at a university in California, when Jacob is a successful psychiatrist with a young son, Ben, from a disastrous marriage. The family moves to a brownstone in Harlem, formerly a convent inhabited by elderly nuns. Outside the house one day Marina encounters Constance, a young refugee from Rwanda, and her toddler, Gabriel. Unmoored and devastated, Constance and Gabriel quickly come to depend on Marina, and her bond with the little boy intensifies.

Emotionally battered and neglected by her personality disordered parents—and manipulated by Mormon beliefs—16-year-old Sarah was convinced her boyfriend Michael would save her. When her parents discovered that they’d committed the sin of premarital sex, the aftermath left the teenagers irrevocably bonded.

When Nell’s father makes a deathbed declaration that hints at a long-held secret, it reignites feelings of isolation that have plagued her for years. Her suspicions about the family’s past only deepen when her mother, Annie, who is losing her memories to dementia, starts making cryptic comments of her own. Thirty-five years earlier, Annie’s life was upended by a series of traumas - one shock after another that she buried deep in her heart. The decisions she made at the time were motivated by love, but she knew even then that nobody could ever understand what she did.

With an intimate look inside the pain of complex PTSD, author Irina Ember paints a sympathetic and insightful portrait of a person unable to enforce boundaries. As the listener roots for Ruby to recognize and advocate for her own needs, they will come to a greater understanding of how the ghosts of the past are difficult to dispel. Bad Agency is a poignant novel. If you like real-world characters, emotional journeys, and the genuine challenge of self-healing, then you’ll adore this captivating drama. A raw, revelatory novel about the ways trauma can shape a life.

South Korea, 1970. San is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path. We next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters.

We have all heard of post traumatic stress, but few of us think about the possibility of post traumatic growth—the positive ways in which we can be transformed by our trauma. Yet this is precisely what can happen when we face our hurts, struggle through the rubble of our broken relationships, and unearth the ways God wants to use our trials to refine and mature us.

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured. The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered.

First, I Believe You is an astonishing memoir of resilience and recovery from severe childhood trauma she had no memory of. Terrifying flashbacks haunted her for decades despite an affluent, advantaged childhood, resulting in severe depression, food addiction, anxiety, and nightmares.

As a young, single mother, Sara Schulting Kranz discovered her path to forgiveness and healing from the scars of sexual abuse and the trauma of an unexpected divorce started with a daily practice of actively embracing the power and beauty of nature. Along the way, Sara learned a key lesson that to heal from anything you must walk through it on your own terms.

HMP Graymoor. One of the UK’s most notorious prisons. Home to nearly 800 murderers, rapists and child molesters. Reporting for her first shift inside is Rebecca: twenty-two, newly graduated—and about to sit down with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. In this gripping, hard-hitting memoir, forensic psychologist Dr Rebecca Myers revisits her time in the ‘Hot Seat’ with Graymoor’s infamous inmates—who might not be as different to us as we think.

From a junkie addicted to methamphetamines to a federal judge, Mary Beth O'Connor's memoir shares her inspiring journey from rock bottom to resilience as she forged a personal path to recovery from trauma and addiction. Searing, unsettling, and ultimately triumphant, Judge O'Connor's debut memoir takes listeners on a wild ride through the rock-bottom underbelly of intravenous drug addiction to the hallowed halls of justice, where she rose to the pinnacle of success as a federal judge.