Title: A Light Through the Cracks
Author: Beth Rodden

Beth Rodden’s book, A Light Through The Cracks, is one to read.

As someone who is both a mental health therapist and adventurer, I’ve fully appreciated the vulnerability portrayed in Beth’s writings. She starts off describing her almost immediate stress and trauma responses following a climbing expedition turned kidnapping. Her descriptions help readers get a glimpse into the belief systems that change with trauma and the nervous system’s quick rewiring toward hypervigilance. Beth also writes about how her social support system impacted her return home.

Even more than that, though, since we are not only our traumas, Beth explains her relationship with climbing and the overall importance of evaluating when in our lives an activity brings us fulfillment, and when in our lives we need to perhaps recalibrate to courses not so foreseen.