Book of the month – March 2022

Julia Samuel, the bestselling psychotherapist and author of the new book ‘Every Family Has a Story: How We Inherit Love and Loss‘ explores how trauma and anxiety can pass through generations in a collection of eight family narratives. A reflective and fascinating read.

One reviewer had this to say: Family is the subject of psychotherapist Julia Samuel’s latest book, it is the basic building block of society’s structures, many may believe that families provide love, care, safety and security, there to insulate its members against the madness and dangers of the real world. In truth, families can be so much more complicated, more problematic and with their own peculiar dysfunctions that may include violence, neglect, and abuse. Families have their own family systems, those who hold power, the roles played within, intergenerational traumas that are never acknowledged or talked about, irrationalities, containing closely held secrets and silences that inhibit the ability to be open and address issues. Here the goal is to address some of those issues, so that in the future, family dynamics have the potential to become healthier, resulting in its members becoming more resilient and stable.