Anjuli Sherin - Joyous Resilience: A Path to Individual Healing and Collective Thriving in an Inequitable World

Joyous Resilience is the book our hearts have been waiting for. In the midst of these unprecedented times, I know we are all searching for joy, hope, inspiration, and ways to nurture ourselves amidst our activism. Anjuli Sherins lens is culturally affirming, profound, inspiring, and engages us all in what it means to be alive and thrive and find strength in our vulnerability. The tools she provides are groundbreaking, heart-centered, nuanced, and grounded in anti-oppression frameworks. As a woman of color and trauma educator, I have been searching for a comprehensive resource of this nature that honors the lived experience of so many communities who are often left out of the conversation. This book is filling a much-needed gap in service delivery and will change the way mental health professionals approach their work, as well as how clients approach their healing. I am in complete awe of this work of art.

Zahabiyah Yamasaki, m ed, ryt, program director of Trauma-Informed Programs, UCLA; founder of Transcending Sexual Trauma through Yoga; and author of Trauma-Informed Yoga for Survivors of Sexual Assault (forthcoming)

Joyous Resilience is perfectly right-sized for this historical moment. In a rigorous yet heartfelt voice, Anjuli Sherin identifies the wounds we carry, how they can be healed, and the doorways they are for living a life of joy and affirmation. This is not an academic overture, but a book written with the deep experience and wisdom of a somatic healer across an inclusive intersectionality.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, author of The Leadership Dojo and The Art of Somatic Coaching

At a time when the cries of collective trauma are reverberating across the world, Joyous Resilience is a poignant and profound anthem to survivorsa reminder that we all carry the light of resilience inside of our bodies and hearts. Through an intersectional lens that considers the impact of race, power, and privilege on the color and texture of our wounds, the practices offered in this book serve as a map, guiding us to access our innate power to heal, so that we can reclaim the joy that is our birthright.

Amy Paulson, global trauma healing advocate and founder and CEO of Gratitude Alliance

This book offers a powerful vision for individual and collective healing rooted in resilience. Through helpful practices and illuminating case studies, Anjuli Sherin combines insights from her years of clinical experience and theoretical study to help each of us joyfully thrive. Its a powerful offering for the world at this time.

David Treleaven, PhD, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing

If one lives, one suffers to some degree, and in truth, we all could use help in healing trauma. This book is a healing journeyfor the reader and even for the author who speaks, listens, and learns along with us. The content and practices introduced can help mitigate the roots and residue of historic and ongoing trauma, especially trauma that results from inter-generational, cumulative, and collective traumas. Healing from trauma need not be a solitary journey. In fact, we heal best and deeper when we are in connection, when we are in relationship, and when we are in community. If we open our hearts and our minds, together, we can cultivate and create a joyously resilient world.

Lakiba Pittman, senior adjunct professor, Menlo College, and senior instructor of compassion cultivation training at The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, Stanford University

Copyright 2021 by Anjuli Sherin. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art gettyimages.com/Lightboxx

Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak

Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

Joyous Resilience: A Path to Individual Healing and Collective Thriving in an Inequitable World is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

The examples provided in this book are composites drawn from thousands of clinical sessions. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy and confidentiality of individuals.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sherin, Anjuli, 1979- author.

Title: Joyous resilience : a path to individual healing and collective

thriving in an inequitable world / Anjuli Sherin.

Description: First Edition. | Berkeley : North Atlantic Books, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020034283 (print) | LCCN 2020034284 (ebook) | ISBN

9781623174231 (paperback) | ISBN 9781623174248 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Resilience (Personality trait) | Emotions. |

Self-acceptance.

Classification: LCC BF698.35.R47 S44 2021 (print) | LCC BF698.35.R47

(ebook) | DDC 155.2/4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034283

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034284

This book includes recycled material and material from well-managed forests. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

for my parents
for a love that set me free
to be joyful and resilient
thank you

and
my beloved clients
for trusting me to walk beside you
as we do this great good work
you are the change we need in the world

T his story is set in our deeply complex, perplexing, wondrously beautiful and terrifying world. Not every character in this story is set up to succeed as easily as another. Yet inside each person are three great forces: the power to feel deeply protected, the power to feel lovingly nurtured, and the power to be joyously free to thrive. These powers unleash a magic called resilience: the ability to live with a deep sense of inner joy, to flourish despite great stressors, and to reshape the very forces that threaten our lives in order to create a whole new world.

At the heart of this book resides this core truth. Resilience matters. Joy matters. In the increasingly difficult times we live in, our thriving mattersnow more than ever.

Our life and well-being are our greatest wealth. Learning to nurture, grow, and sustain our aliveness is perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves and pass down to our children. We are at a moment in history when our ability to flourish reverberates beyond our own lives. Toward the end of writing this book, I, like billions across the world, found myself quarantined and sheltering in place in an act of social solidarity to help slow down the coronavirus pandemic. In the months since this pandemic reshaped every aspect of our daily lives, it also brought into stark, glaring focus the massive inequities and gaps in community care in the United States and across the world. External stressors became so forceful, making it abundantly clear that if we dont learn how to care for ourselves and work toward a different reality, our species may not survive.