You Were Meant for This World
A Memoir and Guide Through the Stages of Healing from Trauma
A Story of Survival. A Guide Towards Healing.
Part memoir and part guide, You Were Meant for This World explores what it means to move through trauma—not by forgetting what happened, but by finding a path through safety, mourning, and reconnection.
What does healing from trauma actually look like—not in theory, but lived, day by day?
After decades as a psychotherapist trained in trauma therapies, Lisa Grinnell answers with her own life, in her memoir and guide.
The daughter of parents who lived through World War II—her mother survived the London Blitz—Grinnell traces how trauma travels silently through generations, and how it can stop. From getting sober in Silicon Valley's boom years, to her work as a therapist in a women's prison, to the convent doorstep in England where her grandmother was raised, she interweaves an unflinching memoir with a clear, compassionate guide through the three stages of trauma recovery: Safety, Mourning, and Reconnection.
Each part shows what a stage asks of us, why pacing matters, and how practices like mindfulness—and therapies like EMDR, IFS, DBT and Brainspotting—support the work of coming home to yourself.
For survivors who quietly wonder whether real healing is possible, and for the therapists who walk beside them, this book answers plainly: it is. You were meant for this world.
BOOK REVIEWS
As a person with decades of recovery from substance and process addictions, as well as healing from childhood and 9/11 trauma, I was amazed at how much I learned from this informative yet quick read. Lisa’s frank, honest, vulnerable telling of her personal story quickly drew me in. Although the details of our stories are different, I could easily relate to her experiences and insights. Woven throughout her memoir are concrete exercises and resources. I immediately used these to boost my mindfulness practice, which has helped me through a recent family crisis. This book stands on my reference shelf of essential, self-care reads; I refer to it frequently on my continuing recovery journey.
— Amazon Reviewer