I’m always on the lookout for useful help on my journey toward emotional wellness, no small thing given my traumatic childhood.

Awareness is one of the best tools in this quest and my ears are always open and tuned in to anything that will answer the many questions rising to the surface of my mind.

Today I watched an in-depth interview with a successful doctor with his own lived experience. What he has to say speaks to where I am at this moment. I will be watching again, this time taking notes to help this become part of who I am. Dr Gabor Maté has also written a new book, the reason for the interview, and I’m planning to read it too. For years I’ve been walking the awareness path he lays out and at this point in the road I expect this book will take me even further in the right direction.

I’m sharing both the book and the podcast. I want to be able to find this material again but I also hope that sharing it will be helpful to my readers on their own journey. Our physical struggles are rooted in the emotional. By experience I know this to be true. The question forever before me is: what is behind this new set of ailments? Usually it is some new piece of old brokenness that has shaken loose and risen to the surface.

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Gabor Maté’s internationally bestselling books have changed the way we look at addiction and have been integral in shifting the conversations around ADHD, stress, disease, embodied trauma, and parenting. Now, in this revolutionary book, he eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their health care systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
    For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. In The Myth of Normal, co-written with his son Daniel, Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society, and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. The result is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.

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Here is the podcast.