When I was four and a half years old, I found my mother passed-out on her bedroom floor. She had overdosed-shortly after giving birth to my baby brother, and she went on to spend six months in a psychiatric hospital. On one of the many days she was away, I remember sitting in the backseat of our car with my older brother as my father drove us to the store, when suddenly our car collided head-on with another vehicle. I was too young to understand everything happening at the time, but, in the months that followed, I became parentless for a span of time that seemed like years. That experience set the stage for a lifelong interest in the impacts of childhood trauma. It also sparked my passion for healing others.

Today, based on the model created by best-selling author and trauma expert Pia Mellody (Facing Co-dependence (c)2003), I share with you, Gifts from a Challenging Childhood: Creating a Practice for Becoming Your Healthiest Self. In these pages, you will:

- Learn and adopt 5 Core Practices for healthy living
- Cultivate a framework for your functional adult Self
- Gain clarity about your family-of-origin history
- Reparent your historically hurt places
- Speak your truth, and learn to have your own back
- Gather and use resources to help you heal from childhood trauma

"In Gifts from a Challenging Childhood, author Jan Bergstrom describes with empathy and clarity the exact emotional, intellectual and neurological ways that children's brains respond to trauma, and how the impact of that experience endures in the child's life throughout adulthood. Bergstrom explains how our basic needs as children for love, protection, validation and expression must be met by our parents; and how, when these needs are not met in childhood, we can end up with one-up or one-down self-esteem and over-protective or under-protective boundaries as adults. In-depth descriptions of supportive, therapeutic techniques abound in this book, from mindfulness to grounding to writing a letter to yourself. Whether you experienced traumatic neglect or excessive control and enmeshment at the hands of your parents, this book will not only help you identify what went wrong for you, it will also provide you with validating, supportive and compassionate ways to reparent yourself."

Jonice Webb, PhD
Bestselling author of Running On Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect and Running On Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships.

"Jan's book is a precious guide to untangling the complications and difficulties many of us have in our adult lives, arising from traumatic childhoods. Read it, underline it, take it with you on your personal journey. This book will bring you home."

Nick Morgan.
President of Public Words, Inc, a communications consulting company, and author of Can You Hear Me? How to Communicate with People in a Virtual World.

"The devastating consequences of childhood trauma for the individual, families, and society at large are far-reaching, and cannot be overestimated. Jan Bergstrom's new work builds beautifully on Pia Mellody's Post Induction Therapy model, offering hope and a detailed path forward for healing childhood wounds and living an authentic and empowered life."

Vicki Tidwell Palmer
Author of Moving Beyond Betrayal: The 5-Step Boundary Solution for Partners of Sex Addicts