The Art of Healing Trauma: Finding Joy Through Creativity, Spirituality and Forgiveness
by Alison Perry-Davies
#1 Amazon Best Selling Book (in 7 Categories!)
Over the past six decades, Ali Perry-Davies has learned many lessons about how trauma can impact our lives and what we can do to to bring balance and joy and thrive in a world that suggests surviving is enough. In this book, she shares her own history with trauma and the long and winding path she has taken toward healing. Ali’s studies have taken her deeper into understanding the science behind how trauma impacts our bodies and how creativity can bring healing. Years of study about minds, emotions, and spirituality have been combined with her own experience of forgiveness and creativity, to guide the reader on the healing path. She shows how trauma can show up in our lives and ways to combat triggers, with many creative outlets and tools such as meditation, relaxation, and mindfulness. She has found ways to heal and love and not just to accept our differences but celebrate them.
Through it all, she shares an important message: There is always hope; you too can find love, peace, balance and so much joy!
“Ali’s story is raw and captivating. I had a visceral response as I turned each page of her book. A life of tragedy that shakes you to your core, and then inspires anyone who dares to follow her journey of self discovery. An amazing, fearless, inspiring, beautiful woman warrior whom selflessly becomes an open book.’
Francis Dick Kwakwaka’wakw artist
“Based on the author’s life-long learning, including study and front-line work with trauma survivors, she shows how creative expression may offer a path to healing. The book is filled with insights and suggestions for engaging in this creative healing process that may be useful to trauma survivors as well as therapists who are looking at fresh approaches to supporting their clients.”
Marion F. Ehrenberg, Ph.D., Psychologist
“Ali brilliantly weaves threads of creativity, courage, love, honesty, forgiveness, and most important of all, healing, through her story. This book will lead others to their path of healing through creativity – a true gift.”
Janelle Breese Biagioni, RPC, MPCC-s
CEO, CGB Centre for Traumatic Life Losses
“This book will be an inspiration for those who are walking their own dark night of the soul and need encouragement to believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that it is worth every step. Highly recommend!”
Rik Leaf Singer/Songwriter, Producer, Author “Four Homeless Millionaires”
“Ali courageously, and against all odds, brightly shines light on the darkness with honest vulnerability and love. A true wisdom keeper and storyteller, she takes you along on her inspiring journey to healing. Her strength and authenticity will resonate deeply and touch your heart like it has mine.”
Gwen Rowe – Heart and Sole Wellness
About the Author
Ali has been using art as part of her healing journey—both personally and
professionally—for over forty years. She has been writing songs, poems, and stories and is a
best-selling author. She has embraced painting and photography as avenues to release trauma
and bring hope.
Ali is trained in several counselling modalities including the humanistic approach, basic
counselling skills, and Elijah House training. She has diplomas in both theology and ministry
and worked in ministry for over twenty years. Ali also earned an advanced diploma in human
resource management as well as a diploma in holistic integrated creative arts therapy. As a
lifelong learner, Ali has found many ways to facilitate communication and healing.
Ali worked as a disability case manager for the British Columbia Aboriginal Network
on Disabilities Society where she learned so much from the beautiful culture and traumatic
history of Indigenous people in Canada and around the world.
Ali has many years experience as a volunteer for a variety of nonprofit organizations
and is certified in nonviolent crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and as a Lifeline phone
counsellor for crisis intervention.
She has sat on the boards for Esquimalt and Aldergrove Military Family Resource
Centres and the National Board for Military Family Resource Support serving as chairperson,
secretary, and public relations, and she was a board member for Family Support Institute of
British Columbia and the National Board for Visitable Housing.
Ali lives a life poured out into building healthy relationships in families, organizations,
and the communities she serves in.
Email: aliwayart@gmail.com
I Invite the Reader on Their Own Healing Journey, Interview with Alison Perry-Davies
Please share a bit about your journey to become a published author?
I started my journey by first being a co-author in three different collaborative books. This was so good for me as I learned so much about the process on a much smaller scale. Once I was “ready” to write my own book, Julie and I started to meet and work towards my book.
First, there was discovering what this book would actually be about as I had several possible ideas. Julie had a brilliant way of helping one discover which book it is that is bubbling up inside! Once I did that we began the process of weekly zoom meetings where we explored deeper and deeper into what my book would actually become. Julie surely must have been a miner in a previous life as she can dig up and discover treasures buried inside a person that I, for one, did not know existed.
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How does the writing process work for you? Do you schedule a time every day, work madly when inspiration hits or ?
I think all of the above! Creating with my “new brain” (I have an acquired brain injury) is a different world. I need so many more breaks and rests now, and can literally forget what I am thinking mid-sentence and need to try to find my way back.
I write best when an inspiration hits and things start to pour out of me. AND I found that using discipline, and if I was not actually writing, then making sure to make notes of things I want to write about, worked best for me.
What did you find most difficult about the writing and publishing process? What was the easiest?
I think the very first time I wrote a chapter in a collaborative book, I learned about the “big red pen” as I came to lovingly call Danielle, the editor. It can feel jarring at first to have all I poured out come back with corrections or suggestions. Here is the thing about that – after three chapters in collaborative books, I was so excited to see what editing would bring in my own book. Danielle has a wonderful way of understanding how to keep an author focused on what our message is. She actually asks this going in, and then keeps me on track. It was difficult, but I learned to love and respect her incredible talents and know it made my book so much better.
Easiest…well that is easy, meetings with Julie! She is an incredibly inspiring person and soon became a bit of a muse for me. Working with the whole team has been a wonderful experience. Working with Tara at the end, and realizing how clear a vision I actually had for my book, was a beautiful surprise. It was good to see how comfortable and confident I felt by the end of it all. I can tell you, I did not start that way.
What title(s) have you released? Can you share a bit of what it is about?
I was in Book 6 and 7 of the WOW, Woman of Worth series with Christine Awram. That was such a great spring board for me, I was also in Rebecca Harrison’s Family Tree Series in the Mother/Son edition. That was also wonderful experience.
My first solo book is called, The Art of Healing Trauma; Finding Joy through Creativity, Spirituality and Forgiveness. In it, I share a bit about my experience with the impact of trauma on my life. I don’t share about the trauma I experienced other than to name a few experiences, but I don’t describe them at all. Then I talk about the impact trauma can have on our lives, recognizing triggers, and finding strategies to move forward. I share stories entrusted to me of friends living with the impact of trauma. Most importantly I talk about ways I found healing through creativity, spirituality and forgiveness, and invite the reader on their own healing journey.
Do you have any new books in the planning or writing stage?
YES!! I am so excited for my next adventures which will be a collection of children’s books I am working on with my niece, the brilliantly talented artist Carly Fallon who will be doing the illustrations. “The don’t be scared be prepared” collection is a series of stories where Ginger and the gang, along with their dog Tilly and their Nana G, find themselves facing challenges and learning coping strategies so that they can learn how they can be prepared and not scared.
The stories are fun and inviting and the illustrations are bright and colourful. They offer a way to empower kids and help them find healthy ways to live and grow, to find their way in the world with a sense of confidence and control over the way they see and experience the world
What would you like readers to know about you?
I suppose that I believe in the power of hope and forgiveness and new beginnings. I believe we can reinvent ourselves every day if we want to. How we see ourselves and the world around us requires intent and we are worth it.
I am also creating courses on healing and self exploration through creativity that I will be sharing on my website and social media in the new year.
Why did you feel led to write this book? What do you hope readers will take away from it?
My hope in writing this book is in layers, much like everything else in my life. I see a person, sitting alone in their home, +and feeling isolated, and not sure if there is a way out of this dark place. They feel trapped. Then they read my book and know, really know, that they are not alone and that there is a way to breathe and feel and live that is good and joyful and hopeful.
I wrote this book because I really couldn’t not write it. Layers of healing came to me all over again. My dream is that even one person would read this book and think, I can do this, because really and truly, they already are. And just maybe, my book will remind them of that, and maybe offers some strategies and hope.
Website – www.aliwayart.com
Facebook – Ali Way Art
Instagram – @ali_way_art
YouTube – Ali Perry Davies
LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/ali-perry-davies-5a162921/
Twitter – @alioopnana