Bouncing Forward shows us how adversity can turn us toward our deepest inner resources of trust, wisdom, and love. Through a wonderful mix of inspirational interviews, current science, Buddhist teachings and her own deep understanding, Michaela Haas guides us in discovering the sacredness and grace that flows through these human lives.
―Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge

Michaela Haas's latest book Bouncing Forward breaks through our great confusion around how to be happy. Full of goodness, this book shares stories, including her own, of people who have suffered in many ways and come through it into strength and love. Together, these varied, living examples reveal an important truth: ultimately there is no way to avoid pain in life, and turning toward our challenges, whatever they may be, is the way to real happiness. ―Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

Bouncing Forward propels our entire understanding of posttraumatic growth to a new level. Dr. Haas’s integration of the life stories of survivors-thrivers with the latest scientific research about discovering the advantages of adversity and finding meaning in the messiness and her very practical tools for working with difficulties, even disasters, shows the reader how to cultivate the mindset of resilience that can catalyze healing and growth from catastrophe. Brilliant, inspiring, to be read, re-read, and treasured.
―Linda Graham, MFT, author of Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being

In Bouncing Forward, Dr. Haas weaves engaging stories of modern survival with uplifting and often surprising takeaways. Readers are given tools for not only surviving life’s inevitable tough times, but consciously thriving because of them.
—Gay Hendricks, PhD, author of The Big Leap and Conscious Loving

Michaela Haas has written one of the most helpful, engaging, informative nonfiction books I've read in a long while. It will be useful for absolutely everyone. Highly recommend.
―Samantha Dunn, author of Failing Paris and Not by Accident

Bouncing Forward is a testament to the strength, resilience, and hope of the human psyche and spirit. Michaela Haas deftly weaves interviews with a dozen individuals from across the world combined with her experiences, ideas, and guidance to help readers understand that “we are stronger than we think.” Bouncing Forward is a wonderful and entertaining read as well as a reasoned and reasonable guide to resilient living. 
―Sam Goldstein, PhD, co-author of The Power of Resilience and Raising Resilient Children

This groundbreaking book offers a path to peace and contentment in the midst of life’s most difficult challenges. Michaela Haas shows us how struggle and trauma can lead to wisdom, growth, and happiness. Bouncing Forward is a rich collection of inspiring and heartfelt interviews, personal recollections, and scientific research. We can train the mind to be resilient and to find life’s blessings no matter what hardships we’ve faced or are facing. This is a book to treasure and to read over and over.
―Toni Bernhard, author of How to Be Sick, How to Wake Up, and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness

In this volume Michaela Haas applies the wisdom of Buddhist mind training to real-life experiences in the modern world, thereby enriching the Buddhist tradition as well as our current understanding of ways to fruitfully transcend the miseries of the past, present, and future.
―B.Alan Wallace, author of Genuine Happiness and The Attention Revolution.

Reviews

Great job! This is so beautiful. The world needed that!
―Jenny McCarthy, Sirius XM

Bestselling author Michaela Haas has inspired millions.
―Deb Scott, The Best People We Know

Bouncing Forward is remarkable. It’s a rich collection of inspiring and heartfelt interviews, personal recollections, and scientific research. You’ll learn how to train your mind to be resilient and to find life’s blessings no matter what hardships you’ve faced or are facing.
―Toni Bernhard, Psychology Today

A structured but flowing discussion of the nature and social perception of trauma and recovery. Drawing on her interviewees' insights as well as her own experiences with Buddhist meditative practices, she makes a thorough case that what counts as trauma can vary greatly from person to person, that overly narrow clinical definitions can be detrimental to healing and progress, and, most importantly, that trauma can help people adapt in radically new ways. ... An often masterful hybrid of self-help and firsthand history.
―Kirkus Reviews

There's a great message of hope in the book, that even if you're not genetically resilient and didn't grow up with the best parenting, there are things you can do to grow from a setback... Haas opens readers' eyes to surprising possibilities and offers perspectives on pain and a renewed sense of optimism. This book isn't just for people who've experienced great trauma. Haas's aim is to also help people going through divorce, job loss or bereavement, which can be devastating for those experiencing it.
―Claire Fordham, The Huffington Post

I highly recommend this book! This book is so important in the conversation about resilience....[and offers] some of the most interesting research I`ve ever read. I don't think this has ever been done before.
―Sheila Hamilton, Kink FM Radio

It’s not a “flighty, woo-woo, let’s all feel good self help book whatsoever.” It’s a “dig deep, here’s the shit, dig in and get real/find some perspective/look at things a different way/you got this” book. It’s a guide to how to face pain and grow from it...To have this book to rely on as a support during these difficult times has been an absolute blessing. I highly encourage you to pick it up for yourself, friends and family who are looking to cultivate a new way of relating to trauma and suffering. I only hope this post does it justice for how remarkable and helpful it has been to read this book as I work towards healing.
―Tanya McGinnity, Full Contact Enlightenment

Written for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, Michaela Haas examines the science of post-trauma recovery with an eye to the similarities between Buddhist mind training and Western trauma psychology. ... Bouncing Forward focuses on developing a deeper perspective through mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom when life seems too hard to bear.
―Lindsay Kyte, Shambhala Sun, November 2015

This book is phenomenal! I love that [Bouncing Forward] is written for all of us. Most anybody who has either gone through some level of trauma or knows someone who has, can pick it up and find something of value.
―Allen Cordoza, Answers for the Family LA Talk Radio

One of the most inspirational books of 2015!... Bouncing Forward is about hope, that no matter what we have seen or experienced we can come out the other side stronger and ready for the journey ahead. If you can get that and walk in that truth then every experience will be just another lesson for us to learn from and to share.
―Cyrus Webb, host of Conversations Live! and Conversations Book Club

This book is a balm to the soul during those dark times of loss and tragedy.
―Virginia Rodriguez, International Yoga Association

What a great read! This is an important book!
―Marilu Henner, The Marilu Henner Show

I feel it is such an empowering book – for everyone, but particularly for trauma survivors, and that includes sexual trauma survivors. Bouncing Forward is focused on the idea of posttraumatic growth – the ways in which it is actually possible for individuals to grow and develop in positive ways in the aftermath of trauma, not just ‘survive.’ ...These interviews [with Maya Angelou, Temple Grandin, etc.] are organized in such a way as to each highlight a particular trait or practice which has been shown in studies to contribute to posttraumatic growth. In addition to highlighting Dr. Tedeschi’s research and the interviews with survivors, Dr. Haas covers the work of other researchers focused on trauma, shares her own personal story of trauma and growth, and includes tools for building resilience within one’s own life. This makes the book a unique blend of social research, biography, memoir, and personal development guide, and for this reason I think it will be helpful and interesting to almost anyone – especially since almost all of us will experience trauma at some point in our lives, or will know someone who does.
―Lisa Erickson, Mommy Mystic

It’s important to say at the outset that this is not a feel-good or pie-in-the-sky promise that good times are coming. Haas, a journalist and well-known author, has done deep research to pull together researchers passionate about the topic and the personal stories of recovery from trauma making the book delicious flow of intertwining narratives.... Haas is careful to show in each of the personal stories that it is not an easy path to posttraumatic growth. In fact, it is a lifetime process of discovering that very strength that is quietly sustaining us...And Haas pulls together a remarkable community to speak this process of growth. Well known individuals like Maya Angelou, Coco Schumann, and Temple Grandin offer their experiences alongside others. Their stories are far from saccharine or filled with angelic overtones; they are human in their frustration, honest about times of hopelessness, transparent about the dark alley and neighbourhoods in which they took residence. Better yet there’s no righteousness in their recovery because each one is clear that getting better is not a noun but a verb. Haas includes the strategies each person in her book used that helped them. It’s a huge table set with many different approaches that are physical, mental, and spiritual. And woven through all this are helpful conversations with researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun who specialize in the field of posttraumatic growth. This is a book I highly recommend because in the face of all the struggles we encounter as we try to manage and work with posttrauma symptoms, it helps to know there are also supportive dimensions that can and are developing from these struggles.
―Lynette Monteiro, Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic

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