Survival: Radical Spiritual Practices for Trauma Survivors, by Karen O’Donnell 

'Remarkable book about how trauma survivors can remake themselves, rather than be healed'
 

Survival: Radical Spiritual Practices for Trauma Survivors
By Karen O’Donnell 
SCM 
ISBN 978-0334065036
Reviewed by Shaun Lambert

 

This remarkable book about how trauma survivors can remake themselves, rather than be healed (as if trauma can just be wiped away), resonates deeply with my own experience. The core conditions for that remaking are being in a place of safety, to pay attention to the body, to be believed, and finally seeking how to reconnect with the world. To enable this remaking the author has developed key spiritual practices, some of which are eye-catching and counter-cultural: the practices of unforgiveness, anger, hopelessness, deconstruction, protest, pleasure, eating good food and rest.
 
Drawn into the realm of trauma theology and post-traumatic remaking through personal experience of endometriosis, multiple pregnancy losses, and the inadequacy of much of the theology she encountered, this is a powerful book of deconstructive and constructive theology. Her own chapter on the practice of deconstruction is a helpful introduction to the potential of deconstructing (and reconstructing) theology without putting it in the ‘scare quotes’ that many do.
 
The strapline of her book is Radical spiritual practices for Trauma Survivors: and practices of anger, unforgiveness, hopelessness, embodied pleasure, are radical and unsettling, frank and earthy. However, there are good reasons for her creative approach, for in it she is the opposite of irresponsible. I think these practices, apt in the face of trauma, make sense to trauma survivors in a way they might not to someone who has never experienced trauma. She suggests finding others to do the practices with, in a corporate setting. I also hope they get picked up by researchers so that a developing evidence-base supports them further.
 
Saying ‘be hopeful’ to a trauma survivor doesn’t work. Saying forgive doesn’t work, saying don’t be angry doesn’t work. We must learn to stay with hopelessness, unforgiveness and anger for much longer. This is where her theology of Holy Saturday roots these insights. There is a necessary remaking of theology on the journey.

As I read the book, I felt safe, I felt believed, it affirmed my quest for an embodied spirituality, I felt my own journey to embodied remaking and reconnection was possible.
 
In trauma and the fight and flight, freeze, and flop reaction, we can get frozen, immobile, unable to move on, with no direction to follow. The practices, theology and theory of trauma offered in this book I think enable movement, unfreezing to begin.

In the practice of anger, she has a beautiful breath prayer in which we can be remade:

Inhale: ‘Lord, let this anger burn brightly.’
Exhale: ‘Let it illuminate my path.’
 
May this book illuminate your path however dark it is.
 

Karen O’Donnell is Academic Dean and Lecturer at Westcott House, Cambridge. A feminist, ecumenical, practical theologian, her interdisciplinary research interests span theology, spirituality, and pedagogy. She is the author of Broken Bodies and The Dark Womb, which was longlisted for the 2023 Michael Ramsey Prize. 

Shaun Lambert is a Baptist minister, psychotherapist, writer and mindfulness researcher whose latest book was published in 2024: Mindful Formation: A Pathway to Spiritual Liberation