A raw and honest account of one woman's life, from an abusive childhood, life through University and modelling, to then gaining her PhD in Psychology before embracing the world of spirituality.
A very interesting read in which the author opens her life and her experiences to the reader, showing her life in true detail.
Inspirational and giving hope to all, I enjoyed this book and I think most people will too!

Gabrielle shares her story about overcoming childhood trauma & finding healthy ways to do so & cope with her life as it stands .
I loved her honesty & respect her determination to make herself into a better human . Because honestly we all have trauma of some sort & maybe you don't vibe with her methods of handling it but I'm sure anyone can pick up a positivity from this memoir.

#netgalley #healinginnature 🖤
Thank u Netgalley for the Arc.

At age 20, Gabrielle Pelicci returned from her modelling career in NYC to her hometown of Scranton, PA where her mother suddenly passed away. Gabrielle studied a dozen healing practices, from alternative medicine to yoga, including travel immersions in Europe, Asia and Africa. Over the next 10 years, her complex PTSD symptoms persisted. Little by little, Gabrielle's childhood experiences of domestic violence, and her parents' mental illnesses and addictions are revealed.

At age 30, still grieving the loss of her mother and disgusted with the fact that she couldn't overcome her anxiety and depression, Gabrielle attempted to take her own life. Luckily, she survived and continued on her journey of healing and trauma recovery, earning a PhD and becoming a professor of Holistic Medicine, with a dissertation on Women Healers.

In this deeply personal and vulnerable account, Gabrielle reveals how childhood trauma impacts our physical and mental health and adult relationships. She explores how you are only as sick as your secrets and telling your story is the medicine that can save your life.

The theme of self-exploration and self-finding is the ingredient of this beautiful journey and the author - @drgabbypelicci has done a fantastic job at getting this across. The outcome of reading this is one of healing, engrossing and finding strength through connecting with ourselves.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Not for me. I feel bad saying that I didn't enjoy this author's life story because it is her story but... I really didn't vibe with it. I thought this would be a more "Body Keeps the Score"-esque trauma-overcoming memoir and it was actually an deep dive into ~alternative medicine~ and I was not into it at all. I can't not finish a book so I did but I seriously considered it. The writing itself is not bad per se, I just did not enjoy it; I think those are two separate things.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

This memoir was poignant and vulnerable. It held my attention through to the very last page… but as a memoir on healing written by a PhD, it was also not what I expected. The book spans about 20 years, ending in 2019. Over that time period, the Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci seems to be chasing healing through various modalities spanning from western psych to holistic, eastern, and spiritual. I say that she seems to be because many of the reflections are of her racing against her past traumas, finding some level of healing in a new modality in the form of a retreat, then returning to the real world, falling into a new crisis and ending in a search for a new path to healing. I can relate to the search for healing, but in all the reflections she’s made, the new modalities appear more as a bandaid to avoid the past.

The book was a roller coaster to the finish, but personally, I would have appreciated more pages to the healing aspect of her journey. The book ends as she finally faces her past and works toward integrating the past traumas.. The integration of trauma is necessary to healing, but she devoted only one chapter to it in her memoir. My experience is that the work with the therapist is only the start of the hard work of integrating- in fact, she mentions the therapist indicated the full process of integration could take six months, but that’s where the author takes her leave. I would have loved to see how she used some of the other skills and modalities to further her healing once the trauma was integrated and she was healing from it all. For instance, did meditation get easier when her inner critic, who plays a prominent role in the book, begins to heal? Does the inner critic become her cheerleader? I feel this book ended at the beginning.

I’d like to thank Literally PR Ltd and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I am truly grateful to Dr. Gabby for sharing her memoir with the world. I just finished reading my ARC from NetGalley and I'm giving it five stars! The writing is beautiful and the story flowed so well that I began it one day and finished the next morning. Her story is captivating and her healing journey commendable.