Priests, lay leaders recommend My Peace I Give You as a vital pastoral resource for healing sexual wounds

A special notice for visitors from ZENIT's Daily Dispatch:

Welcome, ZENIT readers! I am the author of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, which has been recommended by many leaders in pastoral ministry as a valuable resource for bringing healing to those who have suffered sexual abuse. Click here to read an online sample.

Here are some of the things that priests and other pastoral caregivers are saying about My Peace I Give You:

• Fr. David Meconi, S.J., editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review: "[Dawn Eden's] efforts ... serve as a microcosm of a greater story—the wounds of Christ’s body being healed by the grace of God—enabling a broken creature to stand up and announce that she is the daughter of an incessantly loving and ever-protective Father."
• Fr. James Brent, O.P., Director of the Dominican Friars' Angelic Warfare Confraternity: "For anyone who has suffered from sexual abuse, Dawn’s book is a must read. The testimonies of victims who have read it are powerful testimonies indeed. But in my opinion, anyone who suffers from the wounds of sexual sin in any way whatsoever will also find in this book a powerful aid for healing and renewal."
• Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V., Superior General, Sisters of Life: "An inspired work ... powerfully moving and hope-filled. ... It is my hope that this book may become a resource readily available: in churches, schools, counseling centers, young adult ministries, libraries, and hospitals. Through it may many whose human dignity has been offended come to know their beauty in the eyes of God, and learn to sing in joy of His love and His mercy. I pray that for every reader this book will be an instrument of grace and instruction.”

My Peace I Give You has also been endorsed by Jennifer Fulwiler, Alice von Hildebrand, and Fr. James Martin, S.J.

You can find My Peace I Give You and the book's Spanish edition, Mi Paz Os Doy, at Amazon.com, Aquinas & More, and wherever fine Catholic books are sold.

For more information, write to me.

"Jesus did not live according to his fear"I talk to Rachel Balducci about what it means to suffer in union with Christ

Today, Rachel Balducci, co-host of Catholic TV's "The Gist" and best-selling author of How Do You Tuck In a Superhero? And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys, has an interview with me on her Testosterhome blog about my book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.

At one point, Rachel gives me the opportunity to talk about how Jesus, through his sufferings, shows us how to live authentically:

I love this quote from the book: “We begin to see that even our most painful times contain beauty, inasmuch as they led us — however tangled our path — to our present life in the love of God.” So are you saying we shouldn’t be afraid to suffer?

Fear of suffering is part of being human. St. Thomas Aquinas points out that Jesus himself was fearful of suffering; he quotes Augustine, who said that the One who had the true body and the true spirit of a man did not have counterfeit human feelings. What harms us is when we live according to our fear. Jesus did not live according to his fear. He lived according to his Father’s will, and he had confidence in that will. We need to have that same confidence. It is very hard–it means taking up our cross daily–but it is the only way to live authentically, learning to pour ourselves out in love of God and neighbor.

Read the full interview for more on redemptive suffering and healing. Many thanks to Rachel for the opportunity to share the message of My Peace!

I like to be in America!

The online home of America magazine today features "How God Heals Sexual Abuse: An Interview with Author Dawn Eden." An excerpt:

What do you want readers to take away from your writings?

I want people to know that Jesus, in winning the victory over sin, has won the victory over all the sins committed by us and against us. This is true for each one of us. The good news is that the evil we’ve suffered or that we’ve done in the past no longer needs to define us. We are defined by our union with Jesus in his passion, death and resurrection. The victory of Jesus on the cross frees us from all of the wrong or self-hating ideas we may have acquired from our abuse or from our mistreatment of ourselves.

The interview also includes my thoughts on Pope Francis's meeting with abuse victims, news of the upcoming Thrill of the Chaste: Catholic Edition, and more, so do read the whole thing.

I am deeply grateful to Sean Salai, S.J., a summer editorial intern at America, for enabling me to share the message of My Peace I Give You with the publication's audience, and to David Paternostro, S.J., for recommending me to him.

And speaking of great Jesuits, if you are in the Washington, D.C., area on July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, come to the Catholic Information Center as I speak on "Healing the Memory: What St. Ignatius Loyola and Pope Francis Can Teach Us."

Anthony Esolen: My Peace I Give You a "remarkable and profoundly wise book"

Looking for information on my speaking tour of the United Kingdom? Click here!


I am honored that the outstanding essayist and author Anthony Esolen has written a powerful op-ed for The Catholic Thing, "Blessed Be the Peacemaker," on why our culture needs the message of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.

Esolen begins:

When I was a small boy in grade school, we had no cartoons of naked men and women, boys and girls, strutting and slouching across the pages of “health” books. We had no sly suggestive come-ons into the world of porn and trivial sex. We were not encouraged to abuse ourselves, or given hints as to how many ways we could do it, or with whom. We did not know that our bodies were tools for mutual and meaningless seizing and consumption.

We were not, in other words, the objects of massive, publicly sponsored, selfish, soul-flattening child abuse.

That is but one conclusion I’ve drawn from the remarkable and profoundly wise book by Dawn Eden, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. I don’t wish to give the impression that Dawn’s book is mainly condemnatory. It isn’t, not at all. She understands what it is to have your childhood torn from you, because of the selfishness or the heedlessness or the outright cruelty of adults. But she does not dwell upon old crimes. She does not tug at the scab to open it up and have it bleed afresh. She does not delight in exposing the evil.

Instead, she shows, in biographical meditations upon the lives of various saints, how people who have been hurt by those who should have loved them best can have peace, by hiding themselves in the wounds of the suffering Christ.

Read the rest at The Catholic Thing.

Life in Eden update: Director of Dominicans' Angelic Warfare Confraternity endorses My Peace, new recorded talk available online, & more

As I prepare to leave for Birmingham, Alabama, to appear on EWTN's "Women of Grace" tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern time (click here for details of my upcoming talks and interviews about My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I have a few pieces of happy news to share:

• My Peace I Give You has been endorsed by the director of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity (an apostolate of the Dominican Friars), who urges all members to read it regardless of whether they have suffered sexual abuse. Read the endorsement and learn more about the AWC on my Patheos blog Feast of Eden.

• EWTN TV host Johnnette Benkovic has invited me to discuss My Peace I Give You on her show "Women of Grace" in a live broadcast tomorrow, May 3, from 10:00-11:00 a.m. Eastern. Not only that, but while I'm on-site, Johnnette plans to tape another two hours' worth of interviews so that she may feature me on her show for a full week, discussing not only My Peace but also my first book, The Thrill of the Chaste. Please pray for Johnette, for me, and for the viewers, that hearts may be touched.

• My April 23 interview for Sean Herriott's "Morning Air" show on Relevant Radio can be heard online (click here—the interview starts at 1:44). Sean has really put his heart and soul into outreach to adults who have suffered child abuse. He has had me discuss My Peace on his show several times, and is open with his listeners about having suffered abuse himself. I greatly admire him for the courage, depth, and persistence with which he tackles a topic that many in the media shy away from, always doing so within the light of Our Lord's healing love.

• A newly recorded talk of mine on My Peace is available online for download in podcast format (click here). I delivered the talk April 18 to TASTE, a Catholic women's lecture series in Laurel, Maryland.

• Thanks to some kind people who have donated in support of my apostolate, I have a budget to make a mission trip this summer to speak about My Peace to prison inmates or to others in particular need—e.g. Native Americans on a reservation, or people in Catholic parishes in a rural area that would not normally be able to afford to have a traveling speaker. Now all I need is to find someone who would like to book me to speak to such an audience. (I am already planning to give a talk to convicted prostitutes, which will be sponsored by a nonprofit in Philadelphia, but that will not require raiding my mission budget—only my frequent-traveler Amtrak miles.) My number one wish is to speak at the New Hampshire state prison for men, as inmate Pornchai Moontri, a convicted murderer, has written a beautiful account of how My Peace helped him find healing in Christ.

• Come July, I am looking forward to addressing the annual conference of the Courage/EnCourage Apostolate, which has invited me to speak about My Peace I Give You.

As I've mentioned, blogging is light as I am wrapping up the spring semester (I am a graduate student of theology). Please pray for me as I prepare for my comprehensive exams for the S.T.B. degree, which is a prerequisite to study for a pontifical licentiate and doctorate. Thank you and God bless you!

Talking about My Peace with NRO's K-Lo

Two new articles came out yesterday about My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints: a feature in The Tidings of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which is the largest diocesan newspaper in the country, and Kathryn Jean Lopez's Q&A with me in National Review Online.

I'm thrilled to get the Tidings press in advance of my upcoming speaking tour of Los Angeles and San Diego (see my tour itinerary). And of course, for an author, there's nothing like the K-Lo treatment in NRO. Lopez played devil's advocate, resulting in some questions I hadn't been asked before—and so causing me to give some answers I hadn't given before. Here is an excerpt from the NRO piece, "Peace the World Cannot Give":

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: How can saints help with much of anything, particularly anything having to do with sex?

DAWN EDEN: The saints don’t just give us help here and there; as one of the Eucharistic Prayers puts it, we rely upon their constant intercession for “unfailing help.” I write in My Peace I Give You that, in manifesting God’s design for humanity’s total vocation, the saints show us what it means to be fully human. To be fully human means first and foremost to love — to love God, and to love my neighbor as myself for the love of God. That is the highest virtue — the theological virtue of charity — and virtue by its nature is a power given to the entire person, which for human persons means body and soul. Therefore, if I am to have true virtue, I cannot just love in a disembodied way. I love as I love because I have a female body, and that body is part of how I love—whether I am engaged in a physical act of love or just thinking about a loved one.

Now, for the Church to recognize a saint, it is not enough that the candidate for sainthood have ordinary virtue. A saint has to possess heroic virtue. So we know that every female saint not only possessed charity, but possessed heroic charity, loving fully, as a woman, in every relationship, according to the type of relationship. If she was a daughter, she loved fully in the manner proper to being a daughter; if she was a wife, she loved fully in the manner proper to being a wife. And likewise with friendships — hers was not a disembodied friendship, but a fully present friendship, loving her friends as their sister in Christ. And likewise for every male saint—he loved others fully as a man, according to the type of relationship.

Why is all this important for victims of childhood sexual abuse? Because the problems faced by victims are not primarily problems having to do with the action of “sex.” They know how the marital act works: Everyone does, in my experience. Speaking for myself and for fellow victims I have met, what they need is help with the noun “sex”: learning how to be fully integrated as a man or woman. That’s where the saints can help.

LOPEZ: Isn’t the Catholic obsession with dead people, their bodies, and their things a bit odd?

EDEN: First of all, the saints, although dead in this world, are alive in the next. What’s more, they’re united to God, who cares about each of us individually. So, to call them “dead people” is misleading. It’s people on this earth who lack faith, hope, and charity—including myself at times when I fail to live up to the graces and calling of my baptism—who are the real “dead people.” Jesus told the Sadducees that, when we speak of God as being God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we affirm that he is not God of the dead but God of the living. So if anything, the saints are more alive than we are!

Second, we respect the body, whether living or dead, because the body is properly united to the soul. It’s the body and soul together that make the person. The saints in heaven await reunion with their bodies, which will be restored by God in a new way on the last day. So, the relics of a saint are very important in that they share in the holiness of the saint’s soul, and they point to the reunion of body and soul that will come with Christ’s return.

Read the full interview at National Review Online.

"I can’t remember the reasons I stayed silent"After reading My Peace, blogger begins to come to terms with his childhood abuse

As I spend the summer speaking around the country about My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I am constantly humbled to see the courage of people who, after being silent for years, gain the courage to speak publicly about being a victim of childhood sexual abuse. By their witness, they encourage others, showing them they are not alone.

Now Michael Barrick has joined the ranks of witnesses. A Christian author and blogger, Barrick had recently reviewed My Peace I Give You. Yesterday, he revealed on his blog that the book stirred up deeper emotions in him than he was initially willing to admit:

In short, I read much of it through tears. While Dawn’s accounts of the abuse she suffered are compelling, that isn’t why I was crying. The tears came because memories of the sexual abuse I was subjected to when I was a child came flooding back. The tears, by the way, were far beyond my control. Many times I had to get up and walk or even take a fairly long hike.

The experience moved him to open up to his wife about what he had suffered:

"Good God," I found myself saying, "That was 50 years ago. I can't remember all that, and I can't remember the reasons I stayed silent." Yet, individual moments remain very vivid.

Do read Barrick's entire post; it is intense, but ultimately inspiring. He concludes that the most important first step to healing for victims of childhood sexual abuse is to tell the truth—meaning to stop repressing painful memories, and instead reveal your pain to someone you trust. I couldn't agree more. May Barrick inspire other wounded souls to follow his lead.

Offering "insight and hope ... to any person of any faith"

One of the joys for me of having My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints featured at the Patheos Book Club is that the club's roundtable discussion of the book includes reviews that show how it reads for people who are not Catholic.

One of the most sensitively written reviews is by Christianity Today freelance contributor Michael Barrick, who writes on his blog:

While Eden examines the consequences of sexual abuse upon her own life—and how she has drawn upon the examples and intercession of various saints of the Catholic Church—her musings offer insight and hope to not just Catholics who are victims of sexual abuse, but to any person of any faith who recognizes the human body, mind and soul as sacred. ...

Without providing needless graphic details, Eden easily provides enough detail from her childhood experiences and memories to serve as an authentic witness to the damage done to one’s psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being when adults fail to keep a youngster from being treated as a junkyard by other adults. She finishes the answer by sharing the stories of saints, encouraging you to quietly lean forward, hand cupped against an ear, to allow their voices to whisper their stories from the past. As you listen closely, you will hear that, though we picture them with halos, they were just as broken and hurt as any human. Perhaps even more so, which is why the reason Eden is able to relate to their life stories and count upon their prayerful intercession. [Read the full review on The Barrick Report.]

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Are you in or around New York City or Connecticut? Come hear me speak about My Peace! I'll be in NYC tomorrow and Connecticut next week. See my Author Events page for more news about my speaking tour.

My Greece he gives you

My new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints just received its first review from an atheist, courtesy of my friend Todd Seavey, who does me the great honor of likening me to Plato:

[Dawn] reaffirms the wisdom that good character can endure—and be more important even than physical survival—under circumstances that test body and mind alike. From my secular perspective, I'd say the peace she describes saints knowing even in the face of death is akin to the phenomenon Socrates was likely describing when he claimed that no harm can really befall a good man. There are parts of us that attackers cannot ultimately reach.

I'll be seeing Todd this Thursday, June 21, at 8 p.m., when he interviews me about My Peace I Give You as part of the Dionysium, his live monthly variety show at Muchmore's, a new bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Muchmore's is at 2 Havemeyer Street, on the corner of North Ninth Street, just three blocks east of Bedford Avenue, which is the very first subway stop into Brooklyn on the L train.

It will be my first time taking part in one of Todd's nightclub events since January 2007, when he hosted a debate between me and author Virginia Vitzthum over the question, "Is chastity a good thing for singles?" As you can see in the video below, I said yes, it is!



To find out where I'll be speaking about this summer about healing sexual wounds with the help of the saints, see the listing of my upcoming events, part of the Patheos Book Club section on My Peace I Give You.

"Reading the book is like watching Eden open a jewelry box"Patheos Book Club features My Peace

Today, readers of Patheos, one of the most popular religion websites, were introduced to my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints as the book became the latest to be featured in the Patheos Book Club.

As part of the promotion, Patheos is featuring a new video interview with me (above and on the book club page) in which I talk about how, being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, I wrote My Peace I Give You to help others find the healing I found in Christ through the lives of saints who suffered such abuse.

Along with the video interview, I have a new essay on Patheos about healing sexual wounds with the help of the saints, sharing for the first time about how Blessed Laura Vicuña's witness gave me the courage to tell my own story.

Two Patheos bloggers also weighed in today on My Peace. I was so happy to read Eve Tushnet's jewelry-box analogy:

This is a very personal book. It’s the story of Eden’s own discovery of these saints and their stories, and her use of those stories in order to heal her own wounds. Reading the book is like watching Eden open a jewelry box and draw out each of her most treasured, personal, and beautiful items one by one, because she wants you to have them too.[Read Eve's full review.]

Elizabeth Scalia, a k a The Anchoress, draws parallels to physical healing:

Dawn has done something new with a subject that has been relegated to the self-help or explore-your-victimhood bookshelves for a couple of decades; she takes the deeply painful, deeply personal stuff that comes up when you dredge old demons out of the murky waters, and then treats her wounds with the antiseptic of faith and the balm of the saints, in order to bring about healing and something more: real hope for the rest of one’s life. And she shows others how to apply these remedies, too. [Read Elizabeth's full review.]

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If you are in or around New York City, I'm coming your way this Thursday night. See my "Author Events" page on Patheos for more details, and please pray for me and those I seek to help as I tour the country sharing the message of My Peace I Give You.

Speak softly and carry a little mustard seed

I'm a great fan of the mustard-seed theology of our Holy Father. So it's a joy to see my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints cited by Father Phil Bloom in his homily for next Sunday as a work that will help people appreciate the parable of the mustard seed in that day's Gospel reading. (That's Father Bloom at right with me and Mark Shea during my May 2008 Seattle trip.)

Father Bloom writes:

The first book that will help appreciate the mustard seed is My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. In it, Dawn Eden courageously reveals her own traumatic childhood experiences. She tells how those experiences led to fear, anger and destructive behavior.

How does a person overcome that negativity? Dawn had the benefit of therapy, but she discovered something more. As she embraced Christ in his fullness, she learned that some saints had experiences similar to hers. By God's grace, they were able to change evil into good, hatred into love, revenge into forgiveness." The transformation begins with something small - a "foothold of goodness."

Dawn uses the example of St. Josephine Bakhita. Kidnapped and sold into slavery, Bakhita experienced abuse that few people could imagine. She eventually wound up in a non-religious Italian family. One day a man named Illuminato Cecchini presented her with a small crucifix. Before entrusting it to Bakhita, he kissed it with devotion. The young woman did not know who Jesus is, but the crucifix had a "mysterious force" on her. Bakhita gradually realized that she could take her own scars to [the] Man depicted on the cross. That "foothold of goodness" led to an amazing transformation.

In My Peace I Give You Dawn tells how St. Bakhita -and other saints - helped her find healing for her own wounds. They show how things small - like a mustard seed - can bring results beyond imagining.

Abbot and (Blessed Margaret of) CastelloFather Homick reviews My Peace

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to get kudos from the author of Joy Comes With Dawn. Even so, it is an honor to have my new book My Peace I Give You praised by Ukrainian Catholic Abbot Joseph Homick in a review with the lovely punning headline "The Dawn of Peace and Healing." (Although his review doesn't mention Blessed Margaret of Castello, I think I can still get away with the headline above, since that holy woman is featured in my book.)

The abbot observes:

Dawn is open (but not graphic) about her experiences of being sexually abused as a child, and while this phenomenon is all too common today, her approach to healing is quite uncommon—also uncommonly refreshing and, I’m sure, spiritually fruitful. While she did rely on psychological counseling (before she entered the Church; her spiritual pilgrimage runs the gamut from Jew to Protestant to Catholic), it was not always helpful and sometimes downright harmful. For example, a well-known New York City psychiatrist’s “therapy” consisted not in helping her heal from the wounds and subsequent inappropriate persona she adopted, but rather in trying to get her to eliminate every last sexual inhibition she might still have! She still recommends psychotherapy if one can find a good Catholic counselor, but she has recourse to another avenue of healing that many would not even think of: the saints. ...

Peace is offered by Our Lord, as is healing. It is neither an easy nor a quick process, but one’s attempt at recovery does not have to play out in interminable psychotherapy sessions, re-living past traumas or settling for soul-numbing medications. There’s a light from Heaven that brings understanding as well as peace and healing. There’s a way into the wounded heart, a way that leads to the Pierced Heart of Christ, a way upon which Our Lady and the saints can lead us, if we invite them into our struggles, our pain, and our hope. Dawn Eden sets this out clearly and cogently, and her own life is a testimony that one’s life need not be permanently wrecked by past experiences. [Read the full review on Abbot Homick's blog.]

My Peace now available on KindlePlus: My Our Sunday Visitor interview now online

As I prepare to continue my summer-long speaking tour to spread the word about My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints with a talk tomorrow night at St. Peter Church in Danbury, Connecticut (click here to see my tour itinerary), I'm thrilled to learn that the book is now available on Kindle.

Also, the interview that I gave to Our Sunday Visitor is now available online. Here is a taste of it:

OSV: You have said that this book is not just for those who have experienced sexual abuse. Do you think many people are carrying deep emotional and spiritual wounds they have not begun to heal?

Eden: Oh, there’s no question. Government statistics tell us that two-thirds of adults report having had at least one traumatic experience in childhood, and more than a third report having two or more. And that’s not even counting the wounds people have suffered as adults. So, yes, I do believe that nearly every one of us carries the effects of past pain. How we cope with those effects is largely determined by how deeply we are involved in prayer, the sacraments and the life of the Church.

That doesn’t mean that being devout delivers us from all mental pain or disorder in this life. I think of the author Evelyn Waugh, who was known for being personally abrasive. Once, when the hostess of a party asked him how he could be so rude when he was a man of faith, he responded, "You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I were not a Catholic." [Read the full interview.]

Many thanks to all the readers who have been praying for me as I spend the summer spreading the word about healing sexual wounds with the help of the saints. If you would like to also support my apostolate financially, I am grateful for your contribution. Click here to donate.

"The encouragement we are looking for"Father Angelo Mary Geiger F.I. reviews My Peace I Give You

Father Angelo Mary Geiger, a Franciscan of the Immaculate, a friend whose writings on Our Lady have been a deep source of inspiration for me, has written a beautiful review of my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints:

With her new book, Dawn has taken these ideas to the next step, as a kind of bridge between our own brokenness and the immaculate integrity of the Blessed Virgin. The saints underwent the transformation from the brokenness of original sin, the history of sin within their families and their own lives, to healing and re-creation in Christ Jesus. As Dawn points out, some of them experienced even the wound of sexual abuse, and subsequently had to struggle against great odds to live authentic spiritual lives. The stories of the saints, thus offers us who are broken the encouragement we are looking for and the powerful presence upon which we can rely.

Read the full review on MaryVictrix.com.

Saints for healing: Sebastian and Photini

Koinonia, the blog of Orthodox priest Father Gregory Jensen, today became the latest stop on my My Peace I Give You blog tour, hosting a guest post by me on St. Sebastian and St. Photini (the Samaritan Woman).

James Kushiner of Touchstone magazine responds to my post with some lovely observations:

[At] 60 as I see new light arriving from time to time, as it should if one is to grow in Christ, that light not only heals, but encourages, as it also illumines the past. The scattered fragments and threads of one’s life come together, bit by bit and strand by strand, into a whole life redeemed. We still don’t see clearly. Even some of our own choices remain a mystery to us, let alone things that happened to us. The Samaritan Woman and residents of that town all had stories to tell, but the Greatest Story Ever Told had just arrived, and even years later he would shake things up when fire from heaven fell in the pentecostal tongues of the healing Spirit of God.

Read my guest post here and Kushiner's response here





Image: Mimmo Rotella, "St. Sebastian"

"This was not the book I expected it to be"My Peace on the blogs & in Library Journal

My new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints got some nice nods on blogs yesterday, plus I had the exciting news that Library Journal's reviewer gave it a thumbs-up.

On the blogs, first there's Lindsay Wilcox, Catholic campus minister at the University of Texas, who writes on the Austin Catholic New Media site:

This was not the book I expected it to be. It was better. I was worried that Eden would let me too much into her life, that I would feel uncomfortable as an observer on her road to healing. She approaches this highly difficult subject with grace, however, presenting a valuable resource for victims of sexual abuse and those who care for them.

Read Lindsay's full review here. (Note: The review, titled "Jesus Had Battle Scars, Too," includes a photograph of a person's scarred wrist. I do not find it too graphic, but I mention this in case you are sensitive to such images.)

On First Things' blog First Thoughts, in a post titled "Healing the Mind and Soul," Mark Misulia links to my Fox News Live interview. He says of My Peace I Give You, "The book explores the effectiveness of grace and prayer to heal deep emotional wounds caused by sexual abuse, reminding that 'the kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power.'"

Last, there is the Library Journal review by University of Hartford writing instructor Graham Christian, which I'll quote in its entirety, since it isn't available online:

This new volume is one of those hybrids of spiritual writing--at once a memoir, a study in spirituality, and a guide for the lost and perplexed. Eden (The Thrill of the Chaste), a convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, recalls her past sexual abuse with candor and shows how the lives and spiritualities of Sebastian, Aquinas, Gemma Galgani, and others shed light on her journey. VERDICT: A touching self-help memoir, with interesting insights into the lessons of the saints; best for Catholic readers and parishes.

Photo: Father Scott Hurd, author of Forgiveness: A Catholic Approach, and I each hold up the other's book at Guadalupe Radio Network last month.