Picking Up The Shards: Healing the Pain of Mother-Wounds, Discovering the Mother-Heart of God
International Book Awards Silver Medal Winner, Best Book Award Finalist, and Bestselling author of her book Picking Up The Shards, Anita M. Oommen, shares, with brutal honestly, her gut-wrenching personal account and soul-wounding from childhood trauma, neglect, rejection and abuse. In this poignant memoir, Anita examines decades of her battle with attachment wounds from the toxicity of her early caregivers that led to attachment dysfunction in her current relationships, including her marriage and parenting.
If you have experienced abandonment, rejection, neglect, attachment dysfunction; suffered a toxic relationship with a family member who has Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder or is on the narcissism spectrum; struggled your entire life to be seen, heard and loved; or failed to experience a felt sense of belonging in this world, this book is for you!
If you like personal stories, thought-provoking, self-reflection questions and exercises, then you'll love this inspirational memoir. The book’s end-of-chapters are laced with Words of Encouragement. Picking Up The Shards speaks to pain and brokenness, but also provides you a safe space for gaining insight and perspective along your healing journey.
Through the author’s intimate, personal stories and narrative style, you will learn how to walk through:
◆ the emotional roller coaster and chaos of narcissistic abuse and the effects of attachment dysfunction on childhood and adult relationships;
◆ impacts of childhood trauma, neglect or abuse from attachment figures;
◆ the confusion and devasting effects of emotional, physical and sexual abuse; and
◆ the effects of gaslighting and psychological manipulation; and
◆ the need for boundaries in toxic relationships.
This educational memoir will help you identify dysfunctional and crazy-making behavior, heal the damage from the effects of childhood abuse, and move forward to live your best life possible. Discover diamonds of wisdom mined out of the broken shards of the hero’s journey to counter worthlessness, fear, and discouragement by learning to trust again.
Picking Up The Shards testifies to the unbroken resilience of the human spirit to thrive in recovery through safe relationships and authentic community. The broken shards of your past do not need to define your future.
Picking up the Shards is also about the author’s awakening moment – when the despair of her mother-wounds met the mother-heart of God – which was the final catalyst to her ultimate healing and forgiveness.
Anita shares her memoir and teaching stories to help you stop suffering, regain your birthright to feel secure, seen, heard and loved and experience a felt sense of belonging in this world.
What’s stopping you from beginning your healing journey? Take back your life today!
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Reviews (63)
Sharing vulnerability is both beautiful and healing
I was immediately attracted to the book title and sub-title, because my own mom was the biggest pain and abuser in my life. While reading author’s memoir, I felt her stories resonate so much with me, and it stirred heavy emotions in me. Most importantly, it helped me recognize those deeply-hurt feelings and set them free. It was very healing for me. I am very grateful that the author shared her personal stories and her vulnerability with us, so we can heal together with her. Many of us carry some kind of emotional abuses from parents. Like the author, I had a broken childhood. My mom left me with my aunt when I was six months old. My aunt is a kind person with a golden heart, but she had six children of her own, and a husband who abandoned the family. She tried her best to take care of me, but she didn’t have the education nor the time to nurture me. To make things worse, I was taken out of my aunt’s life completely when I turned nine years old. I returned to live my parents so I could walk to school with my younger sister when she reached school age. In my mom’s 30s and 40s, she was facing health challenges, a boss that made her life miserable, and she did not have emotional intelligence to handle the challenges. She accused me causing all the troubles in her life. She constantly points out my weaknesses and everything I did was wrong in her eyes. She repeated told me that I couldn’t find a husband and she had to take care of me until I am old. It gave intense insecurity later in life. Seeing the author going through similar situations and made me realize that the mothering problem is extensive. The childhood feeling of abandonment, neglect, insults and punishment went with me well into my adult life. I too, questioned about my self-worth and self-esteem. It took me many years of self-discovery, learning and healing to finally able to build loving and trustworthy relationship with my husband and children. I also believe spiritual healing is the highest level of healing, and I am grateful the author uses her Christian faith to teach and heal. The best part I love is “forgiving the unforgivable” message, it is very powerful and it speaks directly to my heart. I also love the reflection questions and words of encouragement at the end of each chapter.
An Odessey Of Suffering With Too Much Repetition Of The Same Ideas
"Picking Up The Shards" is a very personal odessey of suffering and self-realisation. It is too long and could be improved by careful pruning but as with so much very introverted writing about trauma, the author (authors) are often unable to stand back. Anita M. Oommen takes her readers on a very long journey and the pain is too obvious to ignore. A sensitive, gifted daughter is put aside by a ridiculously ignorant and overbearing family. The great virtue of the tale is in the way in which Oommen chronicles how our early years really do haunt us until we find ways of forgiving, “forgetting”, and liberating ourselves from unhealthy patterns which we tend to ignore because acknowledging and bearing up to them with fortitude to change are too difficult. “Picking Up The Shards” is also praiseworthy in its clear mission to single out the mother-child-daughter relationship and put it under the microscope however hard and pain-filled that may be. Oommen could easily have become another vehicle for women’s liberation and the outrage that movement expresses through many of its most vehement and fanatical mouthpieces. It seems, however, that she tries to choose religion to help her spell out what functional and dysfunctional families represent and perpetrate rather than an aggressive, respected, very worldly movement - Women's Lib. For me the religion is fine but very obtrusive, and I certainly don’t see the sense of drawing attention to certain aspects of Biblical writing which are suspect. For example, the overdone, seemingly blind references to the eagle. That bird is certainly not as courageous as the robin redbreast and in the ornithological world is well known to be a scavenger - maybe a noble scavenger (unlike the vulture) - but a scavenger, none the less. The Bible is not only the inspired word of God but it is also a work of literature, and its authors are not always up to it! All told, Oommen’s tale is painful, somewhat repetitive, and puzzling in the sense that an unsympathetic reader may well sit back and say, “You blame so much yet your opportunities and successes are so great. Why do you paint your family in so many poor shades of grey and black?” Well, that’s only one of many responses that may be forthcoming. For me, it’s never particularly relevant to dismiss the pain by proclaiming the ultimate gain. That gain could be, could have been, far greater had the origins been happy, sensitive, positive, genuine and generous. Too many grown-ups, in this instance, mothers, have jobs to do which they can’t do because of their own inner trauma, their own bad families, their own ignorance, jealousy, twistedness and overwhelming egoism. But DNA and bad blood run in the genes, and those who find a way into the light stand there exposed. Is any of this relevant to “Picking Up The Shards”? Just possibly, because lurking beneath the surface are unresolved issues, I feel…but that’s the case for all victims of unsuccessful families, problematic mothers, and insensitive family criminal controllers and tool-fools.
A soul wrenching story of perseverance, faith and forgiveness
Anita’s story touched me deeply. Her mother wounds are so horrific, they seemed beyond recovery. Her unrelenting perseverance (what her mother and others critically called her “stubbornness”) ignited a need to pursue Gods word, over decades, as it pertains to hurtful mother-daughter relationships. With tremendous vulnerability, she lays aside “self” to undertake a life-long journey of learning, understanding and following Gods word, strengthening her faith and relationships with each new revelation. Throughout this experience, she is continually shown the transformative power of persistence, love, faith and finally, forgiveness. It is a powerful testament and validating read for anyone who desires to heal their mother wounds. Thank you, Anita.
Passionate. Vulnerable. Courageous.
Kicked to the curb by an emotionally abusive mother, the author loses her sense of personal identity as a child. Like most abused children, the wounds linger into adulthood. Anita’s extremely well-written memoir shares her Christian path to healing. She faces her darkest emotions and ferrets out the limiting conclusions she drew about herself as a child. She adamantly calls for the Truth of her God-given identity to be restored. I love the way Anita formatted the book. Reflection Questions and Words of Encouragement at the end of the chapters provide a summary and clear guidance that every abused person can use to heal. Kudos to Anita Oommen for doing the rigorous work to restore her Authentic Self and deepen her relationship with God. Her beautiful voice, which she shares so eloquently in this book, is a reflection of all the healing work she’s done. Thank you for giving the world another solid demonstration of how we can rise above the pain of our past. I'll be recommending this book to my Christian clients with a mother-wound. – Review written by a licensed professional counselor and bestselling author of The Gifted Highly Sensitive Introvert: Wisdom for Emotional Healing and Expressing Your Radiant Authentic Self
Life changing book
I was drawn to this book because I have wounds from the relationship I had with my mother. I want to heal so I can improve my relationships with women in general. God fills a lot of the void in my heart. Anita makes herself vulnerable in her story. She includes deep reflection questions. She wrote, " You can subconsciously sabotage yourself through the words you choose to speak to yourself." She provides paragraphs of words of encouragement in her book. She expresses that she developed "shutting inward". I went through that too. The statement," Perhaps the river of Mother's love was flowing upstream against resistance and withdrawal as I wasn't fulfilling the role of "scapegoat daughter" or "fantasy daughter". This last quote resonates with me. She calls herself the black sheep of her family. That resonates with me. She defines emotional abuse as, " True emotional abuse brainwashes the victim to systematically wear at the core of a person's self-confidence and self-worth, to where he or she develops mistrust in his or her perception of self-concept." "Gaslighting is a term used to describe when the abuser makes another person doubt her character, her perceptions, her memory, and her own sanity." This resonates. She writes about the four different attachment styles. They are secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized. She quotes Scripture throughout her book and refers to the feminine side of God. Another quote that resonates is, "God's ways and God's timing are amazing!" I call it Divine timing. She refers to forgiveness, "If we give it all to God it allows us to become all God make us to be - authentic, free, transparent, and not stuck in the wounds of the past."
Healing and encouraging
This is very authentically written with loving intentions and provides an avenue for healing for anyone who struggles with feelings of neglect or abandonment from childhood memories that feel difficult to move past or let go of. You are meant to be feeling good about yourself and your life, and nothing from the past needs to have its hold on you. This book could help you give yourself permission to let go of it and begin loving and accepting yourself enough for everyone. How you feel about yourself sets the tone for all your life experiences. And it’s time for all of us to begin living in the moment and being in the joy of who we are. I started believing in myself more and feeling fortunate to be who I am a long time ago. And I hope you will too. Its life-changing in the best possible way.
A brave deconstructionist...
Most of us who’ve been abused have become brilliant illusionists with deathly secure psychological constructs that can survive whatever the world throws at us. But....can we really survive what’s deeply mirking beneath, known only to us, felt only by us? These constructs and belief systems stemming from childhood abuse have so efficiently trapped us between fear and shame like a Newton’s cradle. Anita dared to take a wrecking ball to all....because they didn’t work,...they failed, they were bound to...for us all. She let God speak truth and light into these shadowy webs. And the webs were incinerated. It came at a cost, but one that is fleeting as this life on earth. What she exposed no longer has a hold, what she espoused are treasures in heaven.
Courageous
The author has written her deeply personal story with intense honesty. She bravely recounts her history of attachment disorder, emotional abuse, physical and sexual abuse. Her account of finally recognizing the affects of her story on her adult life, resulting in her pursuit of professional help, is inspiring. I appreciate her understanding of brain development and neuroplasticity, and it’s role in her recovery. She weaves a story of healing that involves brain science, therapeutic treatment, and the love of God, a rare but necessary combination. I love how she makes available to the reader her own knowledge and experience of very personal healing and recovery, including her thoughts on the need for forgiveness. The author’s visions of God’s mother love are profound. This book can be the catalyst for many more healings/recoveries!
Opened my heart to God
This is a well written story and blueprint to healing deep wounds from childhood. Probably the toughest is a broken mother relationship. It made me realize more of the harm that my inner child needed to heal from my own mother. The thing that surprised me was how I digested the scriptures and stories from the bible. Because my father was a Christian hypocrite - I shy away from preachy bible toting people. But that is not the case here at all. The author makes bible stories understandable and relatable to the topic. It made me realize that God is my protector and that he can be a mother/father entity. Thank you.
Overcoming abuse and rejection is possible in Christ!
If you have ever suffered rejection, abuse, or mistreatment that left you broken and wounded, you need to read this book. The author faced rejection, manipulation, and deep wounds at the hands of her mother and other women in her life, but she overcame by finding her identity in the Lord and His love for her. Her story is one that will stay in my heart for a long time. We don't have to allow the words and rejection of others to define us. We can pick up the shards of brokenness and place them in God's hands. He will restore and use the story to be a blessing to someone else.
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