These books and podcasts have shaped the thinking behind Story Group. Each one takes seriously the weight of the stories we carry — and points toward what it looks like to tell them truthfully and live more freely.
Written after catastrophic personal loss, Sittser explores what it means to grieve honestly — and how suffering, when faced rather than avoided, can become the ground of new and unexpected life.
Essential reading for understanding why honest storytelling is so hard. Thompson unpacks shame’s roots — neurological and spiritual — and offers tools for dismantling the narrative it writes over our lives.
A rich and demanding guide to the emotional life. Dodd argues that our feelings are not obstacles to faith but the very language through which we become fully human — and that learning to name them honestly is an act of courage and devotion.
The book that has shaped more of this work than perhaps any other. Allender writes with unflinching tenderness about the long reach of childhood sexual abuse — and what genuine healing, rather than mere survival, actually requires of us.
For anyone who has wondered whether their suffering can amount to something. Allender makes the case that healing is not about resolving the past but about learning to use it — allowing pain to draw us into deeper relationship and purpose.
A quietly luminous work of Old Testament theology. Claassens recovers three overlooked images of God — mourner, mother, midwife — and in doing so opens a language for suffering, loss, and deliverance that feels both ancient and urgently alive.
A companion for those carrying wounds that haven't fully healed. Allender and Loerzel explore how unresolved heartache shapes the way we relate to God, others, and ourselves — and how the path forward runs through the pain, not around it.
A mythopoetic companion to the work of Story Group. Shaw uses two ancient fairy tales to trace the exiled, unspoken parts of ourselves — and makes a compelling case for why storytelling is how we bring them home.
A grounding text for anyone who wants to love others well without losing themselves in the process. Allender and Longman argue that real love is not agreeable or conflict-averse — it is courageous, shrewd, and sometimes disruptive.
A practical and accessible entry point into the work of engaging your own story. Adam Young walks readers through how to begin listening to the specific scenes and patterns of their lives — and what it looks like to make sense of what they find there.
