Alice Miller is widely written on trauma, the body, and how childhood affects everything. This book in particular is addressing the true self v. the false self, not so much having to do with attachment, but the way we hide our needs and expect children to meet our own needs that we are searching for. Miller advocates for letting one's true self "free" by acknowledging the repressed pain (meaning, letting go of the 'gift' of the coping skill that was needed at the time to survive) from each of his/her childhoods (which is inevitable in any family).

I read this fairly quickly, but I'll probably do a much slower read the next time I go through it. The book is short, but there is a lot of information. The book was also timely for me. Recommended.

Helping a friend sort through some information.

This is one of the better books covering this topic, so I've heard from other women in this situation. I did liked that she slowly works women toward not just forgiveness, but becoming a whole person themselves (meaning they can love their spouses and pray for change while still being whole people standing "on their own" whatever their situation might be). My friend and I listened to a podcast with Tiede which is why we got the book, and we both enjoyed her a little more as a "speaker" than a writer, though there is still a lot to glean from this book.

This book is written from a Christian perspective, and I would not recommend it to anyone who was not okay with this perspective. I'm not in this situation, but I would definitely recommend it to any woman struggling with this issue, though!

Helping a friend read through some books.

This is a book I would recommend to a person in a situation where a discovery of , whether you are the partner or the one whose brain has been "on porn." This book is from a secular standpoint and provides lots of resources and first person accounts of people all over the map who have quit porn (men, women, married, dating, single, old, young, mostly straight but some gay) for the author's argument. Let me repeat - this book is not rooted in any kind of religion or morale-policing system. It is secular and scientific.

This book allowed me to be more compassionate towards my friend's partner and gave my friend hope that this addiction (which is a tough thing to define - he addresses this some in the book, and I'd love to learn more) can be reversed. The author talks about several studies and explains why this particular issue (is pornography addictive) is so hard to research. He dives into many of the studies that have been done into pretty good detail. I admit that I don't know a ton about these studies, but it sounded to me like he knew his stuff.

Towards the end, he talks about a particular researcher who has made the news about pornography NOT being addictive, and I'd like to look more into these arguments.

Mostly, this book is rooted in hope that the more we are learning about addiction and how it works (especially internet and pornography) the more hope we have in the neuroplasticity of the brain and that new connections can be made, and that the symptoms that men and women face when overusing CAN be erased.

Using the framework of the Holocaust and many other horrid events in history, Zahnd examines what radical forgiveness can look like because of the Cross. This forgiveness does NOT sacrifice justice or cause us to "forget" what happened, but rather it's absorbing the wrong so that the cycle of revenge does not continue (because avenging is not our job). This is what Jesus did on the cross - he broke the cycle of revenge, because a life without revenge is a better life. This is not looking at forgiveness in an academic classroom or in a theoretical, ideal world - this is grappling with the real issues.

This was the first book by Zahnd that I've read, and it definitely won't be my last. Zahnd's writing is fresh and daringly prophetic, but please understand when I write "prophetic" I don't mean hell-fire-brimstone, I mean the office of the prophetic that is the heart revealer of the church that reveals all in grace, mercy, and truth. Highly recommended.