The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing
A funny and profound memoir about trauma healing written by a Reiki Master, witch and tarot reader. The debut non-fiction by a YA, crime and romance novelist, Anna's story is heartbreaking, compelling and hilariously ridiculous.

What would you do to heal emotional trauma?

Anna was screaming at full volume into a pillow in a grey industrial estate when it dawned on her that maybe this was a slightly unusual way of processing grief. It wasn’t the first time she had done something a little odd to try and make sense of things.

There was the time she sobbed along to Elton John with a room full of strangers. Or the very special experience of trying to enact the spirit of a deer in a school hall.

She's tried Reiki, reflexology, BodyTalk, shamanic healing, past life regression, breathwork, guided visualization, dreamwork, magick ritual, (disastrous) gong baths and meditation – her journey has been long and twisting, but eventually it led to real understanding, and real healing.

This book is about acknowledging our trauma, looking at what it actually is, and feeling our feelings. Interviews with practitioners and experts delve deeper into what alternative therapies offer. Ultimately, Anna hopes to trigger much-needed conversations about emotional health and the non-mainstream ways we can communicate with ourselves and others.

Content warning: suicide, child illness, depression, bereavement, explicit medical detail
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The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing
A funny and profound memoir about trauma healing written by a Reiki Master, witch and tarot reader. The debut non-fiction by a YA, crime and romance novelist, Anna's story is heartbreaking, compelling and hilariously ridiculous.

What would you do to heal emotional trauma?

Anna was screaming at full volume into a pillow in a grey industrial estate when it dawned on her that maybe this was a slightly unusual way of processing grief. It wasn’t the first time she had done something a little odd to try and make sense of things.

There was the time she sobbed along to Elton John with a room full of strangers. Or the very special experience of trying to enact the spirit of a deer in a school hall.

She's tried Reiki, reflexology, BodyTalk, shamanic healing, past life regression, breathwork, guided visualization, dreamwork, magick ritual, (disastrous) gong baths and meditation – her journey has been long and twisting, but eventually it led to real understanding, and real healing.

This book is about acknowledging our trauma, looking at what it actually is, and feeling our feelings. Interviews with practitioners and experts delve deeper into what alternative therapies offer. Ultimately, Anna hopes to trigger much-needed conversations about emotional health and the non-mainstream ways we can communicate with ourselves and others.

Content warning: suicide, child illness, depression, bereavement, explicit medical detail
16.95 In Stock
The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing

The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing

by Anna McKerrow
The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing

The Path to Healing is a Spiral: One woman's journey to emotional healing

by Anna McKerrow

Paperback

$16.95 
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Overview

A funny and profound memoir about trauma healing written by a Reiki Master, witch and tarot reader. The debut non-fiction by a YA, crime and romance novelist, Anna's story is heartbreaking, compelling and hilariously ridiculous.

What would you do to heal emotional trauma?

Anna was screaming at full volume into a pillow in a grey industrial estate when it dawned on her that maybe this was a slightly unusual way of processing grief. It wasn’t the first time she had done something a little odd to try and make sense of things.

There was the time she sobbed along to Elton John with a room full of strangers. Or the very special experience of trying to enact the spirit of a deer in a school hall.

She's tried Reiki, reflexology, BodyTalk, shamanic healing, past life regression, breathwork, guided visualization, dreamwork, magick ritual, (disastrous) gong baths and meditation – her journey has been long and twisting, but eventually it led to real understanding, and real healing.

This book is about acknowledging our trauma, looking at what it actually is, and feeling our feelings. Interviews with practitioners and experts delve deeper into what alternative therapies offer. Ultimately, Anna hopes to trigger much-needed conversations about emotional health and the non-mainstream ways we can communicate with ourselves and others.

Content warning: suicide, child illness, depression, bereavement, explicit medical detail

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781786786159
Publisher: Watkins Media
Publication date: 09/13/2022
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 5.37(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Anna McKerrow is a poet and writer of Young Adult and adult novels. She also writes women's fiction and cozy mysteries under the name Kennedy Kerr. Following Anna's critically acclaimed YA Greenworld trilogy, about a feminist and ecopagan community of witches in Devon and Cornwall, she wrote Daughter of Light and Shadows, an adult fantasy romance set in Scotland and the faerie realm, which was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelist Award, followed by the sequel, Queen of Sea and Stars. In 2019 she published a standalone occult novel, The Book of Babalon, and in 2021 self-published a magical story about bereavement, death and the process of a spirit's passing into the next world, The Bird Atlas. Anna is a Reiki Master, having used reiki since 2004, an eclectic witch and reads the tarot.

Table of Contents

Prologue vii

Chapter 1 Welcome to the World of Pain 1

Chapter 2 Crying with Strangers in Community Centres 13

Chapter 3 They Fuck You Up, Your Mum and Dad (and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents) 31

Chapter 4 Crying While the Spirits Watch: Bereavement and My Experience of Spiritual Healing 47

Chapter 5 Healing the Witch Wound 59

Chapter 6 Remembering the "Magical Me" and Witchcraft as an Empowering Force 77

Chapter 7 Mooing with Your Eyes Closed: Motherhood and Shamanic Journeying 95

Chapter 8 A Trial by Blood: Babalon, Endometriosis and Me 113

Chapter 9 Screaming on an Industrial Estate with Strangers: Breathwork 137

Chapter 10 A Trial by Blood: Part 2 155

Chapter 11 Talking to the Angels in Lockdown: Angelic Healing or "Maybe Alt This Love and Light Stuff Isn't So Bad After All" 171

Chapter 12 Lockdown Magic 183

Chapter 13 A Healing Manifesto and a Nice Cup of Tea 189

Recommended Reading 205

Acknowledgements 211

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