HEALING OUT LOUD: How to Embrace God’s Love When You Don’t Like Yourself by Sandi Brown & Michelle Caulk, PhD, LPC – Christian Counseling, Memoirs, Friendship

Two writers – friends, and former counselor and client – combine forces to create Healing Out Loud, a dynamic book aimed at understanding and overcoming the deficits that life hands us.

Sandi Brown, a radio personality with more grit than she realizes, seeks professional help. Michelle Caulk’s therapeutic methodology perfectly suits this case. The two offer examples of wishing for and finding true mental health through the development of a remarkable communicative relationship.

Each chapter of the pair’s psychological explorations begins with a memory from Sandi, accompanied by her expanded view of incidents from childhood and beyond. These ruminations are then matched by counselor Michelle’s personal grasp of Sandi’s specific dilemmas, and well-constructed guidelines for a healing process that readers can incorporate into their own lives. Sandi, grappling with low self-esteem, was traumatized as a child when her father left her mother and brother, loudly and finally, with no explanation.

This was followed by her mother’s marriage to a gruff and unloving stepfather who abused the little girl starting when she was six.

As Sandi opens up to Michelle about this period of her life, she remembers once refusing to properly excuse herself from the supper table, simply sitting there for a protracted period in silent defiance. To this, Michelle declares that Sandi was “a fighter,” and this becomes a working theme in their therapy sessions as Sandi’s emotional grasp expands.

She begins to realize she can confront and overcome her long held shame; she has a voice and she is loved, not only by those in her current life, but by God, who has a plan for her success. At each stage of her self-discovery, Sandi is offered another step in “The Unpacking Process with Dr. Michelle.” The day Sandi buys make-up is a notable turning point, since previously she considered herself too unattractive to draw undue attention to her features.

Sandi and Michelle, whose relationship gradually enters the realm of friendship as both reveal their deepest aspirations, have constructed this vibrant manual to help others take on the task of self-healing.

Part of the process, as is made clear in a variety of ways, is to speak out and invite others to share their own inner doubts and fears. The writing is both educated and plain, emphasizing their shared drive for outreach and their common Christian outlook. Useful metaphors include taking the plunge off a high diving board, throwing unwanted feelings off a bridge, and Sandi’s youthful memory – expanded now to include her greater understanding – of being a kite, learning to fly past her problems, accept life’s inevitable scars, and share her experiences with other battered flyers.

Healing Out Loud is a most unusual literary experiment that combines a woman’s need to find a better path and greater fortitude, and another woman’s wish to help her see that the positive qualities she seeks already dwell within her. The resulting work has the power to evoke threads of memory and longing for improvement among its readers and can doubtless serve in both individual and group contexts.