Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free by Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW

 Please welcome  Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW author of Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free

Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free

by Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW

 

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GENRE: SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Self-Esteem                       

 

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

As a mental health clinician I have been inspired by books which are relatable to the general population, but introduce people to the world of resilience, strength and empowerment which is the world in which I live and work.  So people like Brène Brown, Elizabeth Lesser, and Glennon Doyle are the inspiration to me writing my own story, which is the goal of my book, to inspire others to share their stories.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?
In the genre of mental health, self-empowerment, resilience, and memoirs the most important component to me, as both a reader and writer is authenticity.  This genre is all about life, experiences, healing and relationships, so if an author is not authentic and does not write from their own truth, then the book loses credibility for me.  

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?
I have spent over 35 years as a mental health clinician hearing other people there share their stories with me.  I have been humbled and in awe of their strength, vulnerability and courage. I know that we cannot heal what we keep hidden, so I needed to start sharing my own stories.  I had time over the early part of the pandemic to pause, reflect, read and eventually start to write my story.  

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

I have been a mental health clinician for 35 years, I have a Masters Degree in Social Work, with additional certification in trauma and crisis response.  I have worked in the medical and child protection fields, and eventually discovered equine assisted therapy which includes horses in the sessions.  This has become my passion, and it also plays an important part of my journey in my book.

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

Well, since my life is now an open book, literally, I share so much of my life story that I feel readers will know me better than I know myself by the end! 

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I actually had enough material to fill another book, so the option is always open about writing another book focusing entirely on equine assisted therapy and the power of horses to heal humans.

7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

Well, since the main character in my book is actually me, I’d say I’m pretty happy with this role now.  It only took me 50+ years to figure the character out!  And I’m still learning something new every day.

8. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book? Yes, of course!  I think the introduction will give you a better idea what is to come.  Hopefully, you’ll say after you’ve read the intro, “Buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy ride, but I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next…”

 

 

INTRODUCTION

I haven’t been sleeping well.

When I don’t sleep well, it’s usually because my subconscious is trying to

come to the surface of my conscious mind. There’s something tugging at

me, pushing and nudging me to finally do it.

It is a deep longing to share the story, and not just my own story.

I hold a place in me for the stories of others.

I believe that this is the reason for my work; it is time for me to share these

stories.

I have worked in the world of trauma for over thirty-five years, and

although I know that I have helped the people I interact with personally,

I can’t help feeling that I can help many more people if I write a book.

A book to share the insights, ideas, experience, and strategies I have learned

from the stories I’ve collected over a lifetime.

A word, or perhaps a title, keeps coming to me: Shelter.

Shelter from our secrets, silence, and shame.

Is this the time to offer what I can to the world in an effort to provide meaning,

affirmation, validation, and tools to help others in their own shelter-seeking?

While I have a collection of stories from the people with whom I’ve worked

over the course of my career, I have taken an oath to protect their stories

and their secrets. I won’t be sharing any of them directly but more as part

of the collective themes I’ve observed. As I work from a trauma-informed

perspective, I won’t be telling any graphic, horrific, or triggering stories

that could further perpetuate people’s own traumas. Narrative therapy

should never prolong or perpetuate trauma by sharing stories that could

harm the teller, or the listener.

I’m also hoping to provide shelter for my grandmother’s story, my father’s

mother, which has come to light out of the darkness, the shadow, and the

grave, where it was been buried with her for over twenty years. During

the quiet months of early 2020, I had time to go through some old family

albums, and I came across material I had tucked away in a box with some

photos and papers about my grandmother’s life. The papers were from the

search I’d started a few years earlier online.

It’s ironic that I’ve been working in the field of trauma for my entire

career yet had no knowledge of the traumatic secret buried deep within

my own family. I have a profound need to understand my grandmother’s

pain and suffering as a young girl, a young woman, a wife, a mother, and

a grandmother. To our knowledge, she never spoke of this to anybody.

Ever. And that’s what makes this trauma a tragedy. We’re all helpless to do

anything to ease her pain. It also explains so much about her personality,

her vulnerability, her strength, her resilience and her suffering … in silence.

I want to tell her story in a way that releases its silence. I will endeavour

to treat her secret story with the utmost respect and compassion. As I

unwrap it, I will gently present it and cradle it in the most delicate lace

handkerchief, as she would have wanted. I will be that safe space for her

secret to finally be set free, and I’ll give her story shelter and honour it with

understanding, love, and compassion.

She died when she was ninety years of age. I was thirty at the time. Twenty

years after her death, the story came to light. It was like a bolt of lightning

struck our family. We’re spread out all over the world: Canada, England,

the United States, Australia, and Hong Kong. Staying in touch through

social media has helped me feel somewhat connected to my cousins. My

father is still very close to his sisters, and they all speak with great pride

and love about their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It’s

a family connected by loyalty and love. I know my grandmother was proud

of all of us, but it’s now with a heavy heart that I realize her own childhood

was nothing like the happy, safe, and connected lives she helped create for

her own children. I understand now how important that was to her.

 

I feel both compelled and encouraged by her memory, which is giving me

the voice to share her story and release the secret and the silence, because

secrets only survive in the darkness. When we release them to the light

and let them rise to the surface, they lose their power and control over us,

and this is how we become free of the shame. This is my hope in telling

her story.

I also want to write this book from the perspective of the child I was and

from the lens through which I viewed the world around me at the time.

My understanding of events and situations that happened to me, or around

me, impacted me in profound ways. I’ve held on to a great deal of pain and

shame, and through my own inner work and working with many people

who had similar experiences, I’ve learned how to reframe and understand a

different perspective to the stories I told myself and held on to for so long.

Stories are often recalled in fragmented snapshots of moments, which get

stuck in our minds. I’ve learned how to connect the dots of these moments

and weave meaning and understanding through them to create a mosaic

of memories that has become the fabric of who I am.

I now understand that I was hurt and angry for a long time, and that I

created a protective barrier to hide behind. I’m now able to see how and

why things played out for me the way they did. I’ve done a great deal of

work in the past few years, and I’ve been able to work through this pain,

so I don’t want this book to come across as angry or blaming, but from the

perspective of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness.

I too have caused a great deal of pain to the people I love most in my life.

It’s also my hope that by releasing my story and secrets, my shame will

diminish and I’ll find shelter. By sharing my story, perhaps others will feel

less alone with their secrets and shame, and they’ll trust enough to start

sharing their stories in a way that releases them and allows them to seek

shelter.

It took almost an entire lifetime for my mother and me to begin to heal

our relationship. It’s still a work in progress, but we have begun. It started

in the fall of 2020, somewhere between the first and second wave of the

COVID-19 pandemic, when I realized that life was too short to stay stuck

in the anger and hurt. I had wanted to go on a journey of my own life’s

timeline and visit all the places I had lived as a child. This is an exercise

I often suggest to people I work with. When we create a life timeline and

reflect on it, significant events, defining moments, and experiences—good

ones and not so good ones—become the turning points that determine our

choices and paths. When we visualize every experience as a steppingstone

that has led us to exactly this moment in life, it can have a profound impact

on how we see and understand ourselves.

Otherwise, as in the case of my dear grandmother, the story may stay

buried and secret for over one hundred years.

My story begins with childhood, and as tragedy and trauma propelled

me too quickly through adolescence, I got lost for a time in my life of

responsibility, perfectionism, and people pleasing. I started to see myself

unravelling and tried desperately to hold on to who I thought I was

supposed to be. My long and winding road takes me through valleys of

pain, shame, and self-loathing … and then gradually, one step at a time, up

and out the other side to a place of honesty, acceptance, and authenticity.

I write this book because I’d like to share the collection of knowledge,

wisdom, and expertise I’ve collected along my journey. I have sought

shelter in the words of wise ones who have written their stories long before

my own. I am sharing, referencing, quoting, and encouraging you, dear

reader, to go on your own journey, to seek shelter in the footsteps of those

who travel this road with you. It’s too lonely a road to travel on our own.

When we become too focussed on the goal or the destination, we risk not

seeing the beautiful possibilities and moments of happiness and awe right

before our eyes, in this present moment.

We can turn to our drugs of choice: alcohol, caffeine, cannabis, pain killers,

food, chocolate, potato chips, exercise, work, self-harm, sex, competition,

shopping, social media, or a million other things.

xOr, we can seek shelter through music, mindfulness, nature, laughter,

yoga, running, working out, tea, meditation, cooking, creating, reading,

connection, animals, hobbies, art, or a million other things.

Essentially, the question to ask ourselves is: Do I want to numb out or tune

in to what I am thinking, feeling and doing?

There is so much hidden beneath the surface of calm water;

hidden secrets and buried treasure.

But we cannot heal what we keep hidden.

When we become quiet and stop listening to the stories we have told

ourselves, and instead seek shelter in our wisdom, when we are willing to

risk being vulnerable, open and authentic we can start to imagine the new

stories waiting to be written.

I hope that my words will help lighten, enlighten, and lead you through

your own journey to find the shelter you are seeking.

 

9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so, how does this help or hinder your writing?
No I don’t.

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?
I actually talk about my writing process and experience in the book itself. I hope readers fine it helpful.

11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

I actually didn’t really tell many people I was even thinking about writing a book until I had almost finished it, and then I needed to share parts with the people that the chapter impacted.  This included my parents, my sisters, my husband, my adult children, and my ex-spouse.  By then, I was receiving so much support to go forward with it, that it just naturally felt like the time to start talking to a publisher. 

12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

To some degree.  Each of my chapters is a separate area or experience in my life, both personally and professionally.  These experiences are woven into my professional experiences and I hoped to create an educational, informational and therapeutic journey for readers.

13. How do you maintain your creativity?

My book is my life story, both personally and professionally, so as long as I am passionate about my work, then I’ll always have a story to tell.

14. Who is your favorite character in the book? Can you tell us why?

My favorite character in my book is Dolly.  At the risk of giving away the spoiler, I’ll just say she’s very much like Dolly Parton, in that she doesn’t mind when people call her a dumb blonde, because she knows she’s not dumb, and she knows she’s not blonde!

15. Are your plotting bunnies, angels or demons? 
Wait!! What??  I’ll go with angels!

16. Anything else you might want to add?

Thanks SO much for hosting me and highlighting my book.  I sincerely hope your readers enjoy it, and I’d love to hear from people if it resonated with them, and hopefully inspires them to share their own stories.

BLURB:

 

As a mental health clinician, Rebecca Brown has been a safe place for many to seek shelter from their secrets, silence and shame. Inspired to finally slow down, stop running from herself and share her own story, she found ways to seek and savour her own shelter.

 

Rebecca's personal journey takes us through sadness, tragedy, self-sabotage, the impossible pursuit of perfection, distorted thinking and eating, engaging with her shadow self, divorce, and numbing with alcohol, all in an attempt to avoid the story needing to be shared.

 

Dispelling the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves can unlock our limitless potential to reach goals we never dared to dream. From the Boston Marathon to working with horses, Rebecca sets out to prove to herself that anything is possible when you don't listen to the negative stories you tell yourself.

 

Everyone has a story. We become who we are because of what has happened to us, and because of the stories we tell ourselves. But do our stories continue to serve us well, or keep us stuck? Are our stories fact or fiction? Is it time to rewrite the versions we have been telling ourselves?

 

Shelter provides strategies to help reframe the thinking patterns we have developed, and offers tools to recognize when we are suffering from our own thoughts, feelings and actions. Resilience-building techniques are woven through the pages, and encouragement for the lifelong journey of collecting moments of awe and happiness.

 

Seeking and reading Shelter is a gift of self-compassion and self-discovery. Rebecca's hope is that it will be read with a highlighter in hand, pages folded down, re-read, recommended to a friend, and used as a guide to start sharing our own stories with those we love.

 

We may not have written our beginnings, but we have the ability to write every word from this point forward and just imagine where our stories can take us when we are free of secrets, silence and shame.

 

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EXCERPT:

 

I give my talk.

 

The room erupts in applause.

 

A dozen people line up to thank me or say a few words at the end of my session.

 

One man in particular stands out.

 

He is well over six feet tall and wearing a full Texas sheriff uniform.

 

He has greying hair and is likely close to the end of his career.

 

He pumps my hand as he shakes it, almost leaving it numb.

 

He thanks me for my talk. “Great stuff,” he says.

 

And then he hands me his business card.

 

But it’s not quite a business card.

 

It’s a photo card, like a baseball card, or a kid’s hockey card, with the player’s name, position, and smiling face as they stand posed to take a shot in their team uniform.

Only this is of a man on a black horse.

 

More precisely, it’s this man, a Texas sheriff on his beautiful black police horse.

 

“I thought you’d like to have this,” he says. “My horse is Canadian, like you.” And then he says something that has stayed with me, because he couldn’t be more right: “Everyone in this business should have a good horse!”

 

He meant the business of trauma.

 

I couldn’t have agreed more.

 

I still have his “business card.”

 

Two years later, I went back to Texas to teach a three-day workshop on resilience to youth detention workers. I tried to look up my Texas sheriff, but he had retired. I hope he’s finding more time to enjoy his good horse. I’ve shared the story of our brief encounter and his photo card with many police officers over the years. And every one of them agrees: horses can heal humans. I’ve found shelter with horses. Sometimes in the saddle, but mostly not. My story will get there. Eventually. 

 

I finished my keynote address and spent the rest of the day at the conference on Youth in the Justice System. People stopped me in the halls of the hotel, telling me how much they enjoyed my talk. Later that evening, I went for a run.

 

And then I drank a bottle of wine and went to bed.

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

REBECCA BROWN is a clinical social worker with over 35 years in practice ranging from medical social work, childhood trauma, vicarious trauma for first responders, international psychological first aid, and Equine Assisted Therapy. She is honoured to hold a faculty appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario. She teaches extensively on the topics of trauma and resilience and has delivered keynote presentations throughout North America. She shares her life and career with her husband, a family physician and trailblazer in the field of Lifestyle Medicine. Together they live and work on the shores of the Great Lake Huron, where they seek and share shelter with their six adult children, four grandchildren, extended family and friends, two dogs, two cats and one horse.

 

Connect with Rebecca L. Brown

 

WEBSITE https://rebeccabrown.ca/

 

INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/rebeccabrown.ca/ 

 

GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22150115.Rebecca_L_Brown 

 

Get your copy of Shelter                    

 

AMAZON.COM https://amazon.com/dp/0228859417 

 

AMAZON.CA https://amazon.ca/dp/0228859417

 

INDIGO CHAPTERS https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/shelter-from-our-secrets-silence/9780228859420-item.html

 

BARNES & NOBLE https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shelter-from-our-secrets-silence-and-shame-msw-rsw-brown/1140865116

 

SMASHWORDS https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1125515 

 

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 

Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

RAFFLECOPTER:

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4099

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NOTE: The author is hosting a Goodreads giveaway for the first month of her blog tour, from March 1-31st. It can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/339258-shelter-from-our-secrets-silence-and-shame-how-our-stories-can-keep-u