the deepest well

I must begin this post by acknowledging the source of the title. The Deepest Well is a book published in 2018. It was written by Nadine Burke Harris, MD, and it has changed my life. For me, usually things that "change my life" are faith-oriented. This is not. However, I can certainly see the medical and social-emotional information in this book being used in a faith-based manner.

I bought this book for personal reasons. Several of my children (currently in and out of my home) and many of my students over the years have had experiences with childhood adversity. Plus, my own childhood was full of adversity. I thought I might learn something that would help me parent better or live better.

What I got was much bigger than that. When I started reading, I realized that this woman has made remarkable connections, well-backed by science, among many of the concerns of my entire life. My 30+ years as a teacher. My 30+ years as a parent. An adoptive parent. A foster parent. A step-parent. My 40+ years as a caring person trying to understand poverty, discrimination, trauma, and recovery. My 8+ years of friendship with a woman who has made it her life's work to interrupt the cycle of dysfunction among African and African American youth.  My 4+ years as a resident in the community of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, where the endemic struggles of Native Americans are apparent.

There are so many situations, both personal and professional, where I have wondered how someone got into the situation they're in or why they continue to respond in ways that are self-destructive. I've read broadly, listened even more broadly, and pondered for many hours trying to figure out how to help someone, especially a child, who is deeply traumatized by events in their life.

This book opens a new way of thinking about intractable problems. It suggests dealing with an underlying difficulty instead of the symptoms of that difficulty. In constructivist terms, it's a shift in paradigm.

The new paradigm builds our understanding of biological stress responses and how they can get hyper-triggered to the point that the stress response is dysfunctional. That dysfunction leads to illness in addition to dysfunctional behavior. By addressing the biological dysfunction, many of the consequences can be improved, or even reversed.

I know that our only hope is in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. He is the one who created human minds to inquire and search for ways to better our lives. I see in this book a way for Christians (and others) to to frame our understanding and to focus our desire to help our neighbors. I highly recommend that you read it.