Choosing New Ways Forward is a book series that will invite conversation around shifting our relationship with ourselves, each other, and our world. Book 1: Shifting Our Relationship with Trauma begins this conversation. By taking the mystery out of trauma, we can learn to recognize our relationship with it and the role that we play. In taking a moment, with curiosity and care, we can realize where we are and actually hear ourselves, creating the possibility of a new relationship with ourselves and our lives.

There are many conversations about trauma and more are finding a voice every day. As we find our voices, our practices of inhumanity are being brought into the open. The trauma that we've each experienced is more apparent and is being recognized perhaps for the first time.
In this process of realization and conversation, trauma has been given many roles. From a force that torments us to an evil presence that can be avoided, we have been refining our definitions and looking for ways forward.

Although trauma is largely understood as a given and integral part of human experience, it is actually a relationship. Trauma is a relationship that we as individuals, and as the whole of humanity, have been cultivating and growing. This relationship exists between who we are and how we experience the world. Trauma has a part in how we experience ourselves and how we perceive each other.