Selected as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2023 by Spirituality and Practice

"This is an amazing book that I couldn't put down once I started it." -Richard Schwartz, PhD, developer of the Internal Family Systems model

"You were like this once. What did you do to get better?" A day out from a mental institution, a woman devastated by flashbacks from childhood trauma poses this question to her big brother. Within a few weeks, she took her own life. This book is the answer that her brother wished he could have offered.

Spiritual director and professor Frank Rogers had been there. As a young adult, he too was tormented by trauma suffered in the same family. Wracked by depression, he was on the cliff edge of suicide. From intense despair, he set off on a quest-for answers, for sanity, for a credible God to see him through. Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is at once a narrative of psychological transformation and a spiritual autobiography that details the survivor's journey. Rogers shows how he found recovery through a combination of reflective retreats, therapy, creative expression, and an extraordinary application of imaginative meditation that spiritual seekers and practitioners will find utterly fascinating. The ensuing discovery evolved into the uniquely self-restorative process known as the Compassion Practice.

Frank Rogers' account reveals that a compassionate sacred presence sustains this wounded world, and that this presence can be known, even in the sewers of life's most damaging traumas.

One of the few male accounts of childhood sexual abuse and fewer still that charts a spiritual course for the transformation of trauma.

"Like all good memoir, Cradled in the Arms of Compassion has a robust narrative engine-the reader is led along, page-by-page, with questions, curiosities, and a desire to see what 'happens next.'" -Spirituality and Practice

Part I

San Mateo, CA-Age 8 3

Upland, CA-Age 35 9

Claremont, CA-Age 57 33

Part II

Presbyterian Seminary, NJ-Age 27 55

Part III

Foster City, CA-Age 10 99

Upland, CA-Age 35 105

Part IV

Whitethorn, CA-Age 36 139

Claremont, CA-Age 38 165

Claremont, CA-Age 40 185

Part V

Claremont, CA-Age 42 203

Santa Rosa, South San Francisco, and Foster City, CA-Age 43 225

Upland, CA-Age 46 233

Part VI

Eureka, CA-Age 46 243

Claremont, CA-Age 46 247

Claremont, CA-Age 46-47 263

Lincoln, OR-Age 50 301

Part VII

South San Francisco, CA-Age 57 319

Claremont, CA-Age 57 323

Claremont, CA-Age 58 329

Half Moon Bay, CA-Age 60 335

Afterword: Synthesizing the Journey 339

Author's Apology 345

Acknowledgments 347