Book Review: Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky
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Maybe you’ve been overwhelmed with the state of our world or you’ve been grappling with challenges from your past, but you don’t quite know where to start or what to do about it. Books about trauma can be overwhelming, complicated, and can leave you feeling even more lost than when you started. Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky offers both a framework for examining how trauma exposure may be impacting us AND what we can do about it.
So What is Trauma Stewardship?
Laura defines trauma stewardship as a “daily practice” where we tend to hardship and the human experience, in ourselves, others, and our larger communities. As we come face to face with trauma at the personal, organizational, and societal levels, we can respond at these levels too!
How Trauma Changes Us (Trauma Exposure Response)
In the book, Laura also highlights 16 changes we can notice about our experiences and behaviors that can serve as clues to the way trauma might be transforming us. These can range from anger and cynicism to grandiosity (or a savior complex) to numbing or even lowered creativity. While some of signs might be more well-known and easy to recognize (like feeling helpless given the enormity of global traumas), others (such as black and white thinking) can be more difficult to notice within ourselves. Laura offers a straight forward way to break down and notice these signs in a way that elicits self-reflection.
How We Care for Ourselves (The 5 Directions)
Just when you might be feeling overwhelmed about all the signs that you’re impacted by the trauma around you, Laura offers a new framework, The 5 Directions, to explore how we can care for ourselves. Filled with practical examples, tangible practices, and realistic suggestions, the book truly does serve as a guide for how you can integrate deeper care for yourself into your daily life. This creates a structure that can contain those overwhelming feelings of managing trauma and leaves you feeling like there is a reasonable way to move forward.
Highlights
Clear & Simple Concepts. While the topic of trauma can feel huge and overwhelming, Laura has a way of cutting things down to a profound simplicity with direct questions like “is this working for me?”. For those of us who have experienced trauma or work closely with those who have, complexity can often take over. By presenting things in a clear way without oversimplifying, Laura leaves you feeling like you can manage your own response to trauma. It is empowering to sift through the demands of trauma in order to tune into our own needs.
Feasible Applications. Have you ever gotten a piece of advice and thought “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if it was that simple?”. Laura does a stellar job of acknowledging the real barriers we face when navigating trauma, while also showing us a path forward. This supportive structure, without being overly prescriptive, creates the same feelings of agency and empowerment that I already appreciated about this book.
Acknowledging Systems. In both the mental health fields and in books about daily practices of self-compassion, the impact of environment and systems in our experiences can often be under-identified or even completely ignored. While systems are not necessarily the focus of this book, Laura continually acknowledges how they impact our experiences and our capacity to steward trauma. This validation can create space for us to appropriately distinguish between what’s within our control and what’s not.
Hurdles
Be Ready to Work. Looking for a book that you can breeze through to feel suddenly enlightened? Look elsewhere! The book holds up to its title of a “guide” - requiring reflection, internal work, and action in order to implement the concepts and practices. There were times where I sat with a concept for several weeks and other times where I had to take a hard look in the mirror, at how I was feeling and the choices I was making, in order to really apply trauma stewardship to my life. Yes, this book is going to be work! But hey, that’s why we’re reading it, right?
Stories & Interviews. Laura highlights so many individuals working closely with trauma and creates space for them to speak honestly about the impact trauma has had in their lives and how they have responded. Of course, not every story will resonate with you, but the variety of activists, environmentalist, social service workers, and more means that there will likely be at least one experience you can connect with. However, you may find yourself connecting with a trauma you didn’t realize impacted you and sometimes reading about MORE trauma in the world means you might need to take breaks while reading this book.
Ready to Learn More?
Between clear concepts, a wide approach, and supportive structures, this book can really appeal to anyone. Whether you’re in a profession where you help those with trauma (like a therapist or social worker) or you’re an activist or caregiver in your community or even if you find yourself overwhelmed when scrolling on social media, this book can help you connect deeper with yourself and your community.
If you’re ready to jump in and read the book, you can find it on Amazon or on Bookshop. It’s also available on Audible, if you’d prefer an audio format.
In addition to writing this book, Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky has started the Trauma Stewardship Institute, which features digital downloads. You can also listen to her podcast, Future Tripping, on Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts. Finally, Laura has a TedTalk, Beyond the Cliff, available on Youtube.
Thank You for Reading!
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