What Keeps Us Here Songs From The Other Side Of Trauma

This anthology features authors from Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine focusing on trauma and healing.

New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell's epic fantasy, the Simon Snow trilogy, concludes with Any Way the Wind Blows. In Carry On, Simon Snow and his friends realized that everything they thought they understood about the world might be wrong. And in Wayward Son, they wondered whether everything they understood about themselves might be wrong. Now, Simon and Baz and Penelope and Agatha must decide how to move forward. For Simon, that means choosing whether he still wants to be part of the World of Mages — and if he doesn't, what does that mean for his relationship with Baz? Meanwhile Baz is bouncing between two family crises and not finding any time to talk to anyone about his newfound vampire knowledge. Penelope would love to help, but she's smuggled an American Normal into London, and now she isn't sure what to do with him. And Agatha? Well, Agatha Wellbelove has had enough. Any Way the Wind Blows takes the gang back to England, back to Watford, and back to their families for their longest and most emotionally wrenching adventure yet. This book is a finale. It tells secrets and answers questions and lays ghosts to rest. The Simon Snow Trilogy was conceived as a book about Chosen One stories; Any Way the Wind Blows is an ending about endings—about catharsis and closure, and how we choose to move on from the traumas and triumphs that try to define us.

THE HOTLY ANTICIPATED SEQUEL TO THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER CARRY ON Simon Snow is back and he's coming to America! The story is supposed to be over. Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after... So why can’t Simon Snow get off the couch? What he needs, according to his best friend, is a change of scenery. He just needs to see himself in a new light. That’s how Simon and Penny and Baz end up in a vintage convertible, tearing across the American West. They find trouble, of course. (Dragons, vampires, skunk-headed things with shotguns.) And they get lost. They get so lost, they start to wonder whether they ever knew where they were headed in the first place. With Wayward Son, Rainbow Rowell has written a book for everyone who ever wondered what happened to the Chosen One after he saved the day. And a book for everyone who was ever more curious about the second kiss than the first. It’s another helping of sour cherry scones with an absolutely decadent amount of butter. Come on, Simon Snow. Your hero’s journey might be over – but your life has just begun.

For the first time in my life, I had to fight for it. COVID attacked me, my family, and the world. Being a trauma nurse in the emergency department, I often find myself (as do all of my coworkers) meeting people on the worst day of their lives. Now for the first time, I started meeting people during the worst time of mine. This book is written to illustrate how we should be able to fight the devastating effects of this virus together. There is an army that is available to everyone, and every single person can become part of the army that everyone needs in their life. We can focus this army to support one another, or to tear us apart because someone thinks differently than we do. This is an age-old problem that continues to face us today, something I call self-righteous indignation. It continues to tear apart our friends, families, and even countries. We need each other’s strengths, not each other’s opinions. There is a person in that medical bed—someone with family, friends, and a health care team. They need us. They need support. But so do those who are on the outside looking in. I hope this book offers a glimpse into what it was like to be a caregiver who found himself changing from bedside care to needing care from the other side of the bed and to see how that need extended into my family and friends.

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

You pull me in. I resist. I run away but want to crumble. Your eyes: only one glance, one look, hits me like a tidal wave. I can’t breathe. I’m plunging. Rescue me before I drown. I hide but wish to be found only by you ... Salty understands first-hand the devastating effects of trauma as well as the importance of showing ourselves compassion during these moments rather than placing unreasonable expectations on ourselves to “get over it” after a certain time period. In a poetic story of love, loss, and lessons learned, Salty shares writings that lead others on a journey through the depths of the heart as she bravely confronted the emotions associated with unrequited love, self-doubt, and heartache, ultimately learning how to lift herself up and face the future with a new perspective. In poems and prose that speak to the universal human experience, Salty helps us all map a course through one of our most relatable struggles in life. Trauma, Tears & Triumph shares poems and prose that lyrically chronicle a young woman’s powerful journey to and from the self as she struggled with and eventually healed from heartache and loss.

A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life “Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a tool for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. Guided by the Buddha's life as a profound example of the power of trauma, Epstein's also closely examines his own experience and that of his psychiatric patients to help us all understand that the way out of pain is through it.