Taken at face value, Rebecca L. Brown’s SHELTER FROM OUR SECRETS, SILENCE, AND SHAME: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free delivers precisely what it promises. A mental health physician, Brown examines the many shades of trauma and offers readers a litany of insights and all sorts of actionable advice. And while that may seem like ‘par for the course’ when it comes to the self-help genre, Brown has crafted something truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Following a deeply personal introduction (featuring a moving piece of prose), Brown retraces her story to her ‘first’ career in the medical social work field. Inspired by a series of tragedies (including a horrific accident involving her first love) and driven by a desire to help others, Brown’s aspirations solidified into a sense of purpose during an internship at a rehab program specializing in spinal cord injuries. From there, Brown rolls up her sleeves and dives headfirst into her life’s darkest seasons. In the process, she delivers a compelling story that, with the benefit of hindsight, reveals an abundance of powerful lessons. Brown’s own trials and tribulations are the driving force behind SHELTER FROM OUR SECRETS, SILENCE, AND SHAME. The narrative bounces around her timeline, touching upon various applicable traumas, both big and small, including bouts with bullying and self-sabotage. Comprehensive reflections and selections for ‘Recommended Reading’ serve as mile-markers along the way, emphasizing the idea that healing is a journey that often involves a long and winding path. Brown’s eventual reconciliation with her Mother underscores this point, illustrating the culmination of a lifetime-in-the-making process that began in earnest with the onset of the COVID pandemic.

All throughout SHELTER FROM OUR SECRETS, SILENCE, AND SHAME, Brown leans heavily on her thirty-five years of experience as a mental health professional, but the author’s writing is anything but clinical. In fact, much of this book’s success can be attributed to the author’s personal anecdotes conveyed with a candid, conversational tone. At the points where Brown chooses to don her ‘professional advice’ hat, she does so with a sense of compassion that’s both heartfelt and informed. Sure, she can personally attest to the validity of her psychological approach, but Brown shares her thoughts with a sort of measured authority. Not unlike what one might experience within the confines of a trusted therapist’s office, everything Brown shares about herself and her experiences ultimately ties back into her message of mindfulness. The major takeaway here is that our paths are not set in stone, and contrary to what many of us believe, every day is an opportunity to start again.

Utilizing her personal journey as a decades-long case study, Rebecca L. Brown’s SHELTER FROM OUR SECRETS, SILENCE, AND SHAME is a self-help-infused memoir that offers practical tools and strategies to aid in silencing the inner-critic within us all.

~James Weiskittel for IndieReader