Getting Up When Life Knocks You Down

by Jerry White and Jerry White

Book Overview

The loss of a loved one, a bitter divorce, a serious injury or financial crisis--we must all, at some point, face those unavoidable moments that divide our lives into "before" and "after." How do we muscle through tough times and emerge stronger, wiser--even grateful for our struggle? In 1984, author Jerry White lost his leg in a tragic accident. He has personally endured the pain of loss and the challenge of rebuilding. As cofounder of Survivor...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312564953
• ISBN13: 9780312564957
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

excellent

I am a public health nurse working with victims of violence in Oakland. I found this book extremely helpful both professionally and personally! Jerry White outlines actions and attitudes which assist people in recovering from life's unexpected events. His stories about his personal experience coupled with those of others are an inspirational and practical guiding light. What a rare treat. I recommend this book highly.

A great book for overcoming tragedy...

This book by Jerry White is very uplifting and provides practical steps to overcoming tragedy. It is extremely remarkable in it's approach to reaching deep inside a person to reveal hidden strengths and the power to overcome. Mr. White does an amazing job of bringing together the stories of many people who could have chosen to fall victim to their circumstances yet instead chose to thrive and beyond that, be full of joy. His own story of losing a leg in Israel at a young age is uplifting and challenging to the reader. I appreciate how he reminds us to make self-assessments and to choose how we will feel instead of falling victim to situations. This five steps to freedom are also practical and very helpful in the process of overcoming tragedy. Overall, this is an encouraging and uplifting book and it is definitely worth reading for anyone who has suffered a tragedy in their life.

A hope-filled and practical book

I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis Just finished reading I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White and this is an amazingly uplifting and hope-filled book. In 1984, Jerry White lost his leg in a landmine accident while on vacation in Israel. He later became a co-founder of the Landmine Survivors Network, which has recently changed it's name and broadened it's mission to become Survivor Corps The book is a compilation of Jerry's own experiences and the lessons learned in surviving by many other people he's met, and it's subtitled "5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis". The book breaks down the keys to surviving and Thriving during that survival, into the 5 steps,which you can find listed on the website for the book, and for me, that was part of why I felt the book would be such an invaluable tool for anyone recovering from a cataclysmic loss in their life. Because of my volunteer work with Soldiers Angels , I was particularly thinking of wounded soldiers while I was reading this book. Many wounded soldiers refer to the day they almost lost their life in combat as their "Alive Day", and although Jerry doesn't use that term in his book, I found this sentence on page 7 that seems to epitomize what "Alive Day" means...." I want to encourage all of us to honor our toughest dates - the tragedies that bind us - in an effort to transform victimhood into survivorship." The book does a wonderful job, in my opinion, of giving practical advice for How to "transform victimhood into survivorship",and is also filled with the stories of How so many Other survivors of tragedies have done exactly that. It's an easy read, and I would recommend it highly to anyone who is currently facing a life-altering tragedy in their life, or the life of someone close to them.

Very inspirational

I must admit I was a bit reluctant to start reading this book because I thought it might be a bit depressing. I knew that the point of the book was that people can learn to thrive (not just survive) after trauma and tragedy; however, I was concerned that reading about so many people's experiences of tragedy would be difficult. I was wrong! I was completely wrong! It is a very inspiring and uplifting book! Once I started reading, I didn't want to put it down. The author of this great book, Jerry White, suffered the loss of his leg after stepping on a landmine in Israel in 1984. I have to say that Jerry has done a phenomenal job weaving together his story and the stories of many other people into a very uplifting book. I believe Jerry's book is genius in action. Even though he shares details of tragic events and raw emotions, the pages are filled with hope and positivity. He provides a clear road map for moving from surviving to thriving. I think this is a must read for anyone who has had some type of challenge in life - I think that is probably everyone! I have benefited spiritually, mentally, and emotionally from reading the book so I feel obligated to pay it forward by writing this review and letting you know about Jerry's organization - Survivor Corps. To sum up - this is a great, enjoyable, uplifting, and powerful read. It provides a great roadmap to help you recover and learn to thrive after loss or tragedy.

This Book Drawn on What We Can Do

When he was a college student in Israel in the mid-1980s, a landmine--leftovers of the 1967 War--blew Jerry White's world apart, taking a leg but leaving him with a big choice. Would he become a victim of an accident and live in bitterness and self-pity, or would he choose life? First with the help of the do-or-die Israelis who had no time for self-pity or any other form of self-destructive self-indulgence, and then with the help of family and friends and countless wise others, White chose life and transformed his traumatic experience into his life's work. Today he is the leader of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (for which he was corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1997), and cofounder of Survivor Corps. He describes his journey from victim to survivor to "thriver" in his new book I Will Not Be Broken. The book outlines a program of five steps for coping with disaster. He draws on his experiences as well as those of famous persons such as Lance Armstrong; Diana, Princess of Wales; Christopher Reeve, the American Psychological Association, and the not so famous--his college roommate, his mom, Bosnians who survived the warn in their country, a little Cambodian girl who also lost a leg to a landmine. His drawing on the wisdom of persons from all walks of life underscores he beliefs that wisdom is a collective resource as well as an individual one and that all life is interconnected. White's book approaches the challenge of trauma positively by focusing on individual strengths rather than dwelling on what went wrong and why. I Will Not Be Broken is an earthy, conversational, and real testament of the beauty and wonder of all life. Here are some highlights of the book in White's words. "Each of us has seeds of victimhood, survivorship, and thriving potential within us." "The challenge we face is integrating our experiences--sorrowful and joyful--to help us evolve from victimhood to thriving." "For many people, there isn't one precise moment of crisis [but an accumulation]--a few unpleasant things overlap, and a crisis sneaks up from behind." To prevent being broken by crisis, First, face the facts. "Great teachers and prophets admonish us to get real with ourselves, no matter how humiliating the facts." "None of us will get very far without first examining our circumstances, relationships, and feelings. We will need to be ruthless in our self-assessment." Second, we need to choose life. "We must consciously choose for our lives to go on in a positive way." We can accomplish this by "nurturing a positive view of ourselves, keeping things in perspective, and maintaining a hopeful outlook." Having crossed the threshold to survivorship, we can take the third step of reaching out because no one thrives in isolation. "We have to let people in our life into our life." As Albert Schweizer has said, "'At times our own light goes out an dis rekindled by a spark form another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratit