BETWEEN WOUNDED AND WELL

A nurse practitioner offers a memoir of her spiritual journey, featuring self-help elements.

Palmer divides her book into four sections, based on the four stages of wound healing: “Bleeding,” “Burning,” “Building,” and “Transforming.” In the first part, she covers her childhood and her experience of becoming pregnant at age 13. Palmer demonstrates impressive vulnerability as she explains how she advocated for herself and her child, setting expectations for her future. She notes that she made many personal sacrifices to get through a traumatic adolescence and later become a nurse. Palmer’s experiences were full of challenges—recurrent childhood trauma, career setbacks, miscommunications—and, in the book’s second part, she discusses how she dealt with the intense emotions she felt along the way. In the third part, Palmer is candid about her experience of raising children with her second husband. She says that she wanted to help people by becoming a medical advocate, and she continued to challenge herself through certification and training. She also learned that, even if one processes past trauma, it still can affect one’s present. The author is open and revealing about her career, marital, family, and financial struggles. In the fourth part, she recounts finding her purpose and a path forward, as well as resolving many past conflicts. Palmer’s memoir is heartbreaking at times, but ultimately encouraging and hopeful, showing the benefits of working hard to accept oneself and others: “The final stage of our emotional and spiritual healing requires acceptance of what we have no control over. Unlike physical healing, emotional and spiritual healing continue throughout our lives. There is always hope and possibility for more healing.” The thematic section and chapter titles, and other aspects that draw on the author’s medical training, feature jargon that some readers may sometimes find difficult to understand. However, the book, which the author wrote “to inspire and encourage others on complex journeys,” is likely to help many readers looking for a greater sense of balance in their lives.

An often inspirational and ultimately joyous life story.