Where Tenderness Lives: On Healing, Liberation, and Holding Space for Oneself

A journey of self-exploration, forgiveness, and individual and collective healing.

Where Tenderness Lives is a loving exploration of what it means to unravel what we’ve learned from our families, societies, religions, and cultures in order to heal and create a purposeful and joyful life. In this illuminating book, acclaimed author Heather Plett reveals:

• How trauma—from the earliest patterns of our upbringing to devastating events—can shape our lives and our personalities
• How treating ourselves with radical tenderness can be the balm of healing for our wounded selves, and how this healing can invite others into their own healing
• How learning to hold space for ourselves—our hopes, our aspirations, and our desires—is one of the most worthwhile pursuits of a life well-lived

Each chapter in this heartfelt and honest book contains a revelation about how to move from shades of fear and doubt to freedom and joy. Through stories that range from what it meant to grow up Mennonite to surviving a horrific assault; from leaving a marriage that no longer worked to the poignant moment her grown daughters leave home, Plett provides a vocabulary of understanding how we grew into the people we are and how to move on from what no longer serves us.

By reflecting on her own life with vulnerability and self-compassion, Plett provides a springboard for your own self-exploration, as well as a path to individual and collective healing.