Strong Like Water Guided Journey

A five-session guided study for groups or individuals based on the acclaimed Strong Like Water. Do you know what it's like to feel afraid of your own story or your own life? Are you exhausted from the kind of strength it's required you to keep going--but have wondered what other choice can there be? In this five-session guided journey through Aundi Kolber's Strong Like Water, you'll discover that it's possible to be both soft and strong; in fact, they sustain and empower each other. Designed for individual or group use, Aundi will walk readers through the deep work of becoming strong like water--of learning to internalize connection, love, and safety to experience greater healing and resilience. Each session includes: Extended reflection and teaching on themes and principles from Strong Like Water Practical body-centered exercises and invitations to reflect and journal (for individual and group discussion) Creative space for continued processing Introductory video available for streaming

In the wise and soulful tradition of teachers like Shauna Niequist and Brene Brown, therapist Aundi Kolber debuts with Try Softer, helping us align our mind, body, and soul to live the life God created for us. In a world that preaches a “try harder” gospel—just keep going, keep hustling, keep pretending we’re all fine—we’re left exhausted, overwhelmed, and so numb to our lives. If we’re honest, we’ve been overfunctioning for so long, we can’t even imagine another way. How else will things get done? How else will we survive? It doesn’t have to be this way. Aundi Kolber believes that we don’t have to white-knuckle our way through life. In her debut book, Try Softer, she’ll show us how God specifically designed our bodies and minds to work together to process our stories and work through obstacles. Through the latest psychology, practical clinical exercises, and her own personal story, Aundi equips and empowers us to connect us to our truest self and truly live. This is the “try softer” life. In Try Softer, you’ll learn how to: Know and set emotional and relational boundaries Make sense of the difficult experiences you’ve had Identify your attachment style—and how that affects your relationships today Move through emotions rather than get stuck by them Grow in self-compassion and talk back to your inner critic Trying softer is sacred work. And while it won’t be perfect or easy, it will be worth it. Because this is what we were made for: a living, breathing, moving, feeling, connected, beautifully incarnational life.

The Try Softer Guided Journey is your next step toward wholeness and healing. Based on the groundbreaking book by trauma-informed therapist Aundi Kolber, the Try Softer Guided Journey is a five-session workbook that will help you grow in self-compassion and grace. Whether you’ve read Try Softer and feel ready to dig deeper into its principles or you’ve been doing this work for a while and are looking for more guided support, the content in these pages is designed to help you engage with and explore your inner world, your creativity, and your hopes for the future. Easily adapted for either individual or group work, Try Softer Guided Journey provides an empathic foundation for conversation and growth. Trying softer is deep, sacred work. Let this guide be exactly that: a gentle guide, a companion helping you come home to yourself. May it give you profound courage and ground you in goodness with every step.

There's a cost to being a certain kind of strong. When it comes to difficult circumstances, we’ve all heard the platitudes: “No pain, no gain.” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But if we spend our lives trying to be “the strong one,” we become exhausted, burned-out, and disconnected from our truest selves. What if it were different? Could there be a different way to be strong? Could strength mean more than pushing on and pushing through pain, bearing every heavy burden on our own? What if, instead, true strength were more like the tide: soft and bold, fierce and gentle, moving together as one powerful force? In Strong like Water, author and trauma therapist Aundi Kolber offers a framework for true flourishing. With each page, you’ll: Learn how your nervous system shapes your experience so that we can move through pain instead of being stuck in it. Explore various practices, rhythms, and resources to support you in challenging circumstances with compassion and hope. Discover how to internalize connection, love, and safety—empowering you with greater resilience. A different, more expansive way of healing, wholeness, and possibly—especially—strength is possible. We were made to be strong like water.

If I asked you to name your favourite things-the things you love-how long would it take for you to name yourself? If you're anything like me, you've tried to love God and love others without thinking too much about yourself. Wanting to avoid self-centeredness, I doubted myself and condemned myself-I even hated myself-until I noticed the ancient words of Mark 12:31, "Love your neighbour as yourself." A gentle whisper led me in a new direction and everything in my life began to change. In You Are Enough, Jonathan Puddle teaches how to: Love your body and embrace the space you take up. Discern God's presence and feel safe with your creator. Get to know your emotions and inner life. Encounter love in the most scarred, scared, and sacred places of your heart. Love your whole self the way God does, with gentleness and compassion. Drawing from Scripture, trauma-informed therapy, Christian inner-healing, breathing and embodiment exercises, and silent prayer & contemplative spirituality, You Are Enough is a holistic healing journey towards abundant life. Daily readings are easy to understand, with practical exercises to help you embrace the truth of your beloved-ness in every part of your mind, body, soul and spirit. Features guided audio and video meditations to take your journey to the next level. "This simple yet profound devotional will help you grow in love as it reveals unhealthy thinking, replacing it with truth." - Kim Walker-Smith, Jesus Culture "I anticipate deep heart healing and a new sense of wholeness for everyone who embraces Jonathan's gentle meditations." - Brad Jersak (PhD), theologian and author "Practical and poignant, personal and scriptural, this devotional packs a punch!" - Danielle Strickland, spiritual leader, justice advocate and author Jonathan Puddle is an award-winning writer, speaker, husband and father who hosts the popular interview show, The Puddcast. Having travelled the world and lived in many nations, Jonathan teaches from a culturally rich & spiritually inclusive framework. He writes about freedom, hope and sacrificial love at jonathanpuddle.com. Jonathan and his family reside in Ontario, Canada where they pastor families and children at a thriving community church.

Dr. Alison Cook uncovers the conflicting thoughts and emotions that keep us stuck and teaches us how to name, tame, and transform them into clear solutions that help us move forward in confidence. We all want to live godly lives and navigate through the issues that arise with confidence, but so often we find ourselves wrestling with conflicting thoughts and feelings. I want to be a good daughter, but I can't trust my parent. I should pray more, but I'm frustrated with God. Instead of naming these thoughts and working through them, we try to force ourselves to act based on what we've been told. But this inevitably ends with us feeling stuck, trapped between the people we think we should be and the way we really feel. What if this sidelining of our own thoughts and feelings is what's keeping us stuck? Building on psychological and spiritual insight, Dr. Alison Cook guides us through a practical strategy for acknowledging the tension and seeing the fuller truth. She shows us how to . . . uncover the mixed emotions that keep us confused; distinguish fact from fiction in our relationships; make decisions that account for the entirety of a situation; and start getting honest with ourselves, God, and other people. As we learn to take a step back from our mixed emotions and see the fuller picture of the challenges we face, we stop feeling paralyzed and start seeing our way through the haze, moving forward with clarity and confidence.

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--