Owning Our Struggles

A Path to Healing and Finding Community in a Broken World

By: Minaa B.

Narrated by: Minaa B.

Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Discover the power of collective healing in this research-based and real-world guide to moving past trauma and adversity—together.

Adversity comes in many forms, and can make us feel alone in our pain, even years after the fact. But as wellness coach and licensed therapist Minaa B. observes, we can’t heal in isolation. The best way to move past individual trauma is through connection and community—healing ourselves and one another.

In this powerful and practical guide, Minaa shares therapeutic tools, client stories, and actionable insights to help you on your healing journey, along with reflections from her personal experiences. Each chapter focuses on a common emotional struggle—from overcoming dysfunctional family patterns to developing emotional maturity, finding our village, navigating racial trauma, and moving past isolation and despair.

Through her unique mix of deeply honest personal stories, proven practices, and prompts for writing and reflection, Minaa helps listeners finally face their struggles, get unstuck, and transform their thinking—to claim agency in their own lives and circumstances, and to use that power to help heal a broken world.

©2023 Minaa B. (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Owning Our Struggles is a book that fills in so many of the gaps often present in traditional self-help books, which tend to over-emphasize the importance of 'the self' in healing, and under-estimate the importance of community and culture. Written through the lens of deep expertise, lived experience, and sincere compassion, it reminds us that healing does not happen in individual silos. And that wholeness comes when we own our brokenness—especially the parts of ourselves that dominant culture has taught us to believe are broken. Through storytelling, reflections, and practical exercises, Minaa B. teaches us how to own our struggles—so that our struggles no longer own us."—Layla F. Saad, New York Times-bestselling author of Me and White Supremacy

“Minaa’s writing is a gift to us all. She gracefully and compassionately invites every reader to acknowledge and face confronting truths about a broken system that we live in, contribute to, and for many, often deny. In her debut book, Minaa generously shares her own story, the stories of others, as well as research to make a powerful case for a path forward for BIPOC individuals to heal pain and trauma. Community care is the answer. And as Minaa suggests, the ways we connect with one another and care for one another in our communities is the catalyst for the change we seek. This book is for every human because healing happens when we have a community upon which we can count. We don’t arrive alone; we arrive with others.”—Vienna Pharaon, LMFT, bestselling author of The Origins of You

"This book is a treasure. A collaborative tool for your healing journey. Minaa effortlessly weaves personal stories with deep research and hands-on exercises that feel like a bright light in a dark world. There is space, care, and a feeling of love for us to be free from trauma in the pages. A book to read slowly with a journal and pen."—Tricia Hersey, Founder of the Nap Ministry and author of Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

Healing journey

This book was absolutely eye-opening and amazing. I will purchase the hard copy for myself and a few others because everyone needs to read this book.