The Journey of a Wounded Healer: The Mystical Web of Mental Illness and Spirituality

This is a book about hope. It is also a brave and courageous book, written by a woman who navigated the unknown lands of undiagnosed mental illness for over 6 decades. Her experiences of despair and hopelessness throughout those years eventually left her in a place of anxiety and depression that nearly took her life. With insight and self-compassion, she reveals a journey of a terrifying childhood, cycles of profound depression and anxiety, anorexia, addiction, spiritual anguish, and eventual diagnoses. From all this arose a profound yearning for coherence, wholeness and healing. In her story toward healing and understanding, Carol speaks with brutal honesty about her childhood, adolescence and relationships along the way which caused her great pain. She talks of her many attempts to discover the cause of her depression and constant anxiety. More importantly, she tells the story of her most serious breakdown and how at 63, she finally discovered her Bipolar Disorder and other diagnoses and became stable for the first time in her life. Throughout her life, her spiritual explorations expanded; and, she speaks honestly of her troubled relationship with conservative Christianity and, decades later, her discovery of the freedom of Energy Healing, the practice of Reiki, the wonders of the supernatural world of Celtic mystery and magic, and the profound sacred transformation of the restorative practices of ancient Shamanism. This is a book for those who experience mental illness, those who love and care for them, spiritual seekers and teachers, and healing practitioners of all kinds.