A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Educator and trauma survivor Janyne McConnaughey translates trauma research into guidance for congregations, classrooms, and ministries. Combining personal narrative with accessible accounts of adverse childhood experiences, attachment, dissociation, triggers, and nervous-system responses, she shows how ordinary church practices can unintentionally reproduce danger—and how consistent, informed relationships can make religious spaces less isolating for survivors.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
Many resources explain trauma to individuals; this one asks what a faith community must notice and change. Its value lies in moving the question from ‘What is wrong with this person?’ to ‘What might this environment be communicating to a body shaped by danger?’ It offers church volunteers and leaders a humane starting vocabulary while keeping survivors’ experience visible. The Library includes it as an orientation to trauma-aware practice, not a certification in trauma care.
Good starting place if…
You want an accessible Christian introduction to trauma and practical questions for making congregations, ministries, or religious classrooms more attentive to survivors.
Know before you begin…
The book discusses childhood abuse, dissociation, religious triggers, and institutional failures that may be activating. Its broad explanations simplify a complex clinical field, and good intentions or trauma-informed language do not establish that a church is safe. Congregations still need qualified safeguarding, clear reporting pathways, attention to disability and culture, and referral relationships with licensed clinicians. Survivors do not owe a community disclosure, education, forgiveness, or return.