Undaunted Hope: Twenty-One True Stories of Recovery from Trauma, Depression, and Addiction

Claudia Black, along with over a dozen world-renowned psychotherapists including Resmaa Menakem, Peter Levine, Patrick Carnes, Richard Schwartz, and Tian Dayton, provides clinical, human-focused insights on healing, treatment, and recovery.

According to the CDC, people today are struggling with an unprecedented rise in mental health concerns such as depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, behavioral addictions, suicide, and more. The greatest barriers to getting help are their shame, their self-loathing, and the belief that their situation is hopeless. Undaunted Hope destigmatizes these disorders and invites readers to take the first step to help: asking for it.

Undaunted Hope recounts that even in some of the most complex and dire situations, people can and do recover and find happiness. Through the narratives of twenty-one alumni from The Meadows, a world-renowned treatment facility headquartered in Arizona, there is great potential for readers to see themselves in parts of the stories--and ultimately find the courage to ask for help.

Each story is told in the alumnus’s own words, revealing the origins of their struggles, the chaotic course of events leading up to treatment, what help entailed, and how their lives became richer, fuller, and more hopeful once they were willing to take the first step toward healing. In this urgent and timely narrative, The Meadows presents the stories of the therapeutic work that occurs in its facilities, recognizing that trauma is most often the underlying issue to people’s struggles. The groundbreaking work at The Meadows has been validated by the landmark Adverse Childhood Experience Study (ACES) carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the past twenty-five years. These studies repetitively demonstrate the relationship of various traumas to mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral health care problems. For more than forty-five years, The Meadows has been addressing these issues with complex clients.

Claudia Black, PhD, is the clinical architect of and actively involved in the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows. She works with the executive director and clinical director and their team assessing and enhancing the quality of the program. She is frequently on site speaking with clients and family members. She serves as a Senior Fellow and has been a clinical consultant at The Meadows Treatment Center in Arizona since 1998.

Claudia Black’s seminal work with children impacted by substance abuse in the late 1970s created the foundation for the ＂adult child＂ movement. Today Claudia is a renowned author and trainer internationally recognized for her pioneering and contemporary work with family systems and addictive disorders. She sits on the Advisory Board for the National Association of Children of Addiction, and the Advisory Committee for Camp Mariposa, The Eluna Foundation’s national addiction prevention and mentoring program. Her work and her passion has been ageless and offers a foundation for those impacted by addiction to recover, and gives our professional field a library of both depth and breadth.

Dr. Black is the author of It Will Never Happen to Me, Changing Course, and her most recent book, Unspoken Legacy. She has produced several audio CDs and over twenty DVDs. All of Dr. Black’s materials are available through Central Recovery Press on her website www.claudiablack.com.