Joyous Resilience: Nurturing, Loving, and Protecting Ourselves in an Inequitable World

(Paperback)

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An intersectional guide to building resilience and reclaiming joy. Building resilience is usually seen as a solo pursuit- face your history, accept your insecurities, and conquer your fears to awaken your best life. As individuals, we each experience negative pressures and stressors--but viewing their effects through an individualistic lens obscures the fact that resilience is a community effort, and that inner resilience powers wide-scale transformation. Oppression, stress, and trauma disproportionately affect members of marginalized communities, like people of color, women, religious minorities, and LGBTQ+ populations. But the self-help remedies offered up by mainstream wellness culture don't quite make space for the ways in which race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and environment intersect to prevent resilience-building--and they don't address the systemic and structural issues that produce trauma and oppression in the first place. The way we frame resilience and center the experiences of the individual prohibits it from being truly accessible to everyone and can unintentionally eclipse how your identity (or identities) shape your mental health. Here, clinical therapist Anjuli Sherin explores empowerment, identity, oppression, and resilience, and explains how they relate to your own resilience practice. Offering guided meditations, reflective prompts, and case examples to help you heal from both individual experiences and collective trauma, this is a culturally-informed and community-centered roadmap to resilience that will help you become your best ally, empower you to thrive under stress, and reconnect to joy.

Reviews

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. 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

Joyous Resilience is perfectly right-sized for this historical moment. In a rigorous yet heartfelt voice, 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

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 . . . 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

This book is a healing journeyfor the reader and even for the author who speaks, listens, and learns along with us. The 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, Lakiba Pittman,senioradjunct professor, Menlo College, and senior instructor of compassion cultivation training at The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, Stanford University

Author Bio

ANJULI SHERIN is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in trauma recovery, resilience building, and cultivating joy. She has fifteen years of practice with immigrant, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and LGBTQI populations. Sherin received her B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Mary Washington University and her M.A. from CIIS. Sherin also trained and mentored with leading figures in trauma recovery and energy psychology, including Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Staci Haines, and Vianna Stibal. In addition to awards for academic excellence and community service, Sherin received the 2007 Emerging Leader Award from the E-women Network and has been featured in O Magazine as a finalist for the O Magazine/White House Leadership Project.