Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut: Learning to Understand and Help Those Who Self-Injure

This book is wonderful and I fervently thank Mr. Penner for writing it! I struggle with self-injury, and whenever I get discouraged with the battle, all I have to do to renew my hope for recovery is to reread this book. It doesn't have all the answers, but it helps. It comforts and restores the will to fight the habit.

This book lives ups to its title in that it really does help you understand why a teen would purposefully cut or injure themself. Marv Penner has a lot of experience with and a lot of compassion for kids who are struggling with these self-destructive addictions. My husband and I had our eyes opened to a world about which we had little understanding. We really appreciated the Christian and scriptural balance brought out in this book.

I enjoyed this book so much! As a cutter of five years who is trying to get into helping teenager understand why they are cutting this was very helpful and insightful. Through this book I was able to see some things about my own life that I had never figured out before.

I found this book to be very helpful and hopeful. I believe it will be helpful to the cutter and those who care about them.

I read a pre-publication version of this manuscript in mid-November, and I read it in one sitting on a plane ride across the ocean! (because the author's writing style is simple and so easy to understand). As a former self-injurer and the author of InterVarsity Press's narrative --but also practical--e-booklet on cutting (Cutting: Self-Injury and Emotional Pain), I struggled with cutting for almost six years and have read a dozen books on the topic, but I still learned something new from this book! The information Marv gave on the developmental stages of adolescents was probably the most helpful section of the book for me; it made sense of why all the "issues" in my early childhood (child of divorce, part of a blended family, feelings of abandonment and rejection) that didn't seem to be a big deal as a kid came to a destructive head during adolescence. Overall, Marv's book provides a balanced look at why people self-injure AND how to help them. It's a worthy contribution to the growing body of Christian literature on the subject.