Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse Paperback – January 8, 2019

A well written and thoughtful exploration of the core wound, protective self and the way back to wholeness. I recommend reading with pauses when you feel a trigger or ah-ha moment.

Whole Again offers Sunshine, and Jackson's thesis is that we find it not at the end of some tunnel, but inside ourselves.Jackson did a great job clarifying what it means to be whole again with an emphasis on personality disorders, which seem to be more and more a cultural norm. I've been eating up all the PD content I can because it causes damage in my family and I don't want any of that damage to come from me; I want to be a part of the solution. This was the first writing that I have read so far where he really clearly guides the reader into what healing looks like instead of just talking about the problem and different coping techniques.I loved his honesty about where he was at on his spiritual walk. I'm a Christian and it was good for me to differentiate my perspective from his in certain moments in his book; where he talks about "unconditional love" I see as 1 John 4:7-8 "God is love," God is agape (the term agape means unconditional love in Greek)... so it was a pretty clear parallel although we might have some different things to say regarding the ins and outs of what unconditional love is and means. I loved the part about our hearts being "unstruck," I loved your painting of the "protective self," and I really needed to hear about how we don't have to constantly be in the healing process, but that once we're out of our shells we'll just know it. It was the lightbulb moment I needed to break out of the rest of my shell. Yay!As a Christian, I see that once I have accepted Jesus (unconditional love) into my heart, the protective shell is no longer needed, since the love of Jesus (unconditional love) will heal me enough to allow me to see and even sometimes repel or avoid altogether situations and people who are unsafe for me, and to make it more of my identity to stand up for myself to create healthy, loving boundaries, and to just transparently and freely be who I am.I appreciated this book and not a week went by after I finished it that I gave it to a friend of mine who was going through her own recovery process. In fact she probably would not have accepted it if it were written by a Christian since she's been burned by some, so it was a good bridge for the two of us. Thank you, Jackson! xo

I purchased this book in 2020, and I have read it four different times in two years. I have read other reviews from people who said that they found this book confusing or discouraging to read and they do not recommend the book. I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe these people are blocking/dismissing the content out of fear.This book has many layers within it. It examines core wounds, shame, abusive relationships, boundaries, personality disorders, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and forgiveness. I read this book four different times in two years because I realized I had to be ready to receive and understand the content within the book. When I first read it, I appreciated one angle, but could not register the other angles. My brain blocked out abstract and painful concepts. Every time I took a step forward or experienced a painful yet significant growth in my healing journey, I reread this book. The a-ha happened. The next layer of content within the book registered for me. It clicked.The content notes that a person needs to sit with discomfort and pain in order to grieve the loss of a relationship, as well as come to a radical acceptance that the relationship was abusive and that it is non-repairable. I had to be ready to digest that truth and experience, and it takes time to get to that place.I have many books on healing from toxic relationships. I’ve attended many hours of therapy and workshops. This book affirms all that I’ve learned about healing from a traumatic relationship: self-examination, self-acceptance, grief, mindfulness, and boundaries.I hope this book helps you as much as it helps me. I read it whenever I need to get back on track and/or feel affirmed. I’m grateful for this book.

This book was an eye opener in so many ways. It was the choice of the women’s book club I’m part of and at first I didn’t think it was going to help me at all since I thought I hadn’t been in a toxic relationship. Came to find out I was the toxic one. Ouch! A lot of what I done was due to decades of abuse, that started when I was as young as 8 years old, by my own father. As they say, hurt people hurt people. I’ve hurt people, I’ve hurt myself. And right now I’m a work in progress of a better me. I wish I could say “thank you so much for changing my life, Jackson”, but I hope that this comment at least encourages somebody else to give this book a try, just like I did, and hopefully, by the time you finish it, you’ll be several steps closer to your true self, as I am. RIP Jackson, you were an angel yourself, and your legacy is to give hope and encouragement to so many people, and a needed reminder that everyone deserves unconditional love. I hope that you all can find this unconditional love in the same person as I did: God. Grace and peace.