Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time by Brenda Hammon is a beautiful collection of stories of personal transformation, stories of different women who choose to break the silence and look at the dark experiences of their past with utter honesty. In this book, readers listen to different compelling voices as they share their stories of betrayal, abuse, abandonment, divorce, and a lot more; those experiences that leave a dark cloud in the heart and leave it broken. These are stories about healing, hope, and redemption, but they also consider the consequences of trauma and abuse in our lives. The collection features stories from twenty-five women, each unique in their experience of pain, but they share something in common — the desire not to let their past determine who they are.

They understand that they can choose their responses to the tragedies and traumas of their lives. Brenda Hammon has done a wonderful job in putting together these stories and making them available to readers, because there is a lot in this book that the reader will resonate with. We all have our traumas and, at times, they pursue us in ways we don’t even understand. This book communicates the hope that we can be free by courageously confronting our past and determining how it should affect us. The stories are filled with many insightful passages and lessons for readers. Written in a style that anyone can understand, these are compelling stories. Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time will change the way we read our stories and how we look at others.

Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time is a non-fiction collection of short tales from a variety of women from all walks of life. The book provides a brief introduction at the beginning to inform the reader on what the book is about, what inspired it, and a little bit about the theme of the book, which is about women overcoming obstacles in their lives. The book then contains many short stories by individual women from all walks of life and backgrounds, and how each of them has overcome or dealt with adversity in life. The adversity can take many forms including physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, assault, mental illness, trauma, grief, loss, thoughts of suicide, terminal disease such as cancer, etc. All of these and more have been explored in the words of these women themselves. The stories are also accompanied by photos and a brief life sketch about each of them.

I really liked the idea behind Sacred Hearts Rising of consolidating these stories of courage and hope about women in the words of the women themselves. They are all so different, but the underlying link between them is they have all faced extraordinary challenges in life. The unique voice and writing style of each also brings a nice flavor to this book and turns it into an educational and, at times, even entertaining read where I found myself genuinely happy for the ones who truly found peace. This is a very inspirational book that I would certainly recommend, especially for those who may have undergone similar hardships in life.

Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time by Brenda Hammon is a compendium of stories from different people, stories about their journeys to inner freedom, stories about the things most women suffer and keep hidden in their hearts, and stories about their silent sufferings. The stories in this collection are well-crafted and touching, and it is no wonder that most of us will feel echoes of the voices in this book in our own lives. The stories are courageously shared and one can find in them some form of therapy. After reading some of these stories, I said: “I am not alone.”

Brenda Hammon’s book is a wonderful offering to women of all ages suffering from abuse of any kind, a gift that began as her personal experience of grief and morphed into something big and transformational. In this book readers will find stories — some disturbing while others are very encouraging — about “various forms of abuse, grief, suicide, cancer, near-death experiences, mental illness and abandonment, and more.” The stories are well-written to have a friendly feel, with a narrative that readers will find familiar. Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time is one of those books that will encourage you to take your own journey to freedom courageously and to face the reality of your life. It’s a book about healing and one that communicates the powerful message that our pain doesn’t define us, that our experience of neglect and abuse doesn’t define us, and that we can choose to embrace ourselves and move towards the inner light of healing. It’s very inspirational, a book to read and pass on.

Sacred Hearts Rising: Breaking the Silence One Story at a Time by Brenda Hammon is an anthology of stories told by women. The stories vary considerably, but each is told in its own individual way to inspire, encourage, enlighten, or empower its reader. There are those who struggled to deal with personal loss of a loved one, or rape, or abuse, or sometimes all of those. Others have faced and overcome illness such as cancer. Each story is emotive and shows how the writer was able to come to terms with their particular situation and learn ways to deal with it and, more importantly, to overcome and to rise above their individual trauma and to go on to lead a fulfilling life.

Brenda Hammon, who spent time researching and compiling this anthology of short, personal stories, has done a credible job in bringing together heart wrenching accounts of the awful situations that many people go through. But these stories are not just accounts of often life-threatening situations, but detailed explanations on how they were able to make a better life for themselves, notwithstanding their past. Each story is well written and told from the heart. The reader is left feeling empathy for each writer, and encouraged that it is not necessary to accept any type of negative or abusive behaviour, and to take control and direct your own path. Acknowledgement must also be given to each writer for having the courage and inclination to relate their experiences with the intent of bringing hope to others who might unwittingly find themselves facing similar experiences.