The Story You Need to Tell

Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness, or Loss

By: Sandra Marinella, Christina Baldwin - foreword

Narrated by: Allison Reilly

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression. Each of the techniques, prompts, and exercises she presents helps us “to unravel the knot inside and to make sense of loss.”

©2017 Sandra Marinella (P)2019 New World Library

Critic reviews

“One does not have to be a writer to gain insight from this book...especially relevant for those who are inclined toward journaling and putting their feelings on the page.” (Library Journal)

“Sandra Marinella brings keen research skills, a brilliant storytelling voice, and a distinguished teaching career to this cohesive guide for writing the unspeakable. Her vivid prose twines her own powerful cancer story with dozens of other courageous voices, each writing the road from devastation to reclamation.” (Kathleen Adams, LPC, director of the Center for Journal Therapy)

“In The Story You Need to Tell, Sandra Marinella inspires the vulnerable in all of us to be the strength in each of us. She has a unique form, transforming a sentiment of safety and empowerment through writing into healing. Her own story highlights the power of the written word and provides a guide to healing through writing. Her book and her work are transformational.” (Courtney Klein, cofounder and CEO of SEED SPOT)

very insightful

I love this book and it help me think through a lot of things about my own writing!

Inspiring Book That Changed My Life

I loved this book. It changed my life. I had been writing stories of growing up with a mentally I'll mother, but the prompts and stories in this book gave me the motivation I needed to keep going and dig deeper.

The author fills the book with her own personal story of dealing with cancer and how writing about it helped her manage the emotional roller coaster of that experience. She adds the stories of others and then she gives the reader a writing prompt at the end of each chapter.

I did not connect with the narrator of this audio book. Her delivery was too perfect as if she was trying too hard to enunciate each word perfectly. it felt very staged and impersonal. Despite that, the content was so wonderful that I finished the book and I will recommend it to others.

loveeeeeee

I suffered two traumatic brain injuries Within 2 years the second traumatic brain injury changed my whole life due to a car accident I've been having such a struggle writing my story since listening to this book I have been able to start putting my story on paper! Which is been huge for my healing process thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for writing this book I will definitely be sharing this book with everybody that I know!

A Must Read

Something for everyone in this memoir of the author's road to healing through writing, including stories from others who also found solace in their own reflections and words, From years of experience teaching writing, Marinella includes guidance and prompts at the end of each chapter for readers to start their own storytelling journey. A wonderful read and listen!

Transformational impact

Although an often used buzz word, transformational is how I was moved by this book. I've read it, I've listened to it, I've taken twoof the author's work shops. An author's goal is to move the reader, to change the reader, the story arc filling expectations for a difference and change. This book nailed that goal for me. And reflecting on it as I write, I think it is a lesson for every age, culture, place in life and the world. I highly recommend this and Sandra!!