Fabulous Friday Reads: The Restore Coaching Series

The Restore Coaching series is a collection of three booklets, each dealing with an aspect of divorce/separation caused by domestic violence. Jenna Brooks, an DV advocate with over a decade's worth of experience, brings her knowledge, compassion, and typical unflinching honesty to these issues, offering insight, support, comfort, and a path forward. Brooks' philosophy is that the best way to recover from divorce, domestic abuse, and parental alienation is to move ahead, building a life of dignity and worth that every woman deserves.

Not suffering from any of these tragedies (being a single, childless woman whose history of romantic entanglements is so passive as to be rather boring), I read these books from the point of view of some one trying to help a friend in need. Its a heartbreaking, difficult subject to read about. The pain and confusion caused by this kind of abuse and neglect can take years to repair. Women coming out of these situations can create defensive barriers - emotional and physiological - which are complex and painful to dismantle, and off-putting to the well-meaning friend. 

But that is not to say that these victims are without hope. Indeed, the over-all view, while frankly admitting the obstacles and the difficulties, is still an uplifting one. This series isn't a self-help one so much as a chat with a best friend who has been there and back and survived to the tell the tale. Brooks' experience has taught her not only how long a road there is to recovery and restoration, but that such healing is possible and achievable. With faith, hope, love, and a resumption of dignity, women can shed their tormented past and create the life they deserve. Of that, Brooks' has no doubt.

Highly recommended.

There are three books in the series:
1. How to Help a Battered Woman (which I thought was the most striking of the three)
2. Alone Again... Happily: A Post-Divorce Coaching Session
3. Banished: The Alienated Mother
They can be read as a series or as stand alone. 

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