New Book Released Today – Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling

On the eve of the Allender Center’s 10 year anniversary of training people to address the impact of trauma and abuse through skilled narrative focused care, co-founders Dr. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel, MA, release Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling.

Dan and Cathy completed the manuscript for Redeeming Heartache during the global pandemic and the collective traumas we were all navigating. Dan says he and Cathy “used the disruption of that time period to be able to enter into the larger reality of: How do we live with trauma? How do we live with the kind of heartache that these days, months, and years have brought us to.”

Cathy says what she really loves about this book is that it “feels like sealing the last decade of our work together. The Allender Center is based on some of these core concepts and it has been such a sweet gift to honor the decade of our work in a book that we get to hold in our hands.”

Redeeming Heartache is a book for anyone healing from isolation, trauma, and fear, and invites you on a journey not to resolve past suffering but to discover true connection and healing with ourselves, God, and others.

Dan and Cathy enter the conversation admitting that tragedy and pain inevitably touch each of our lives in some way, but we are often taught to ignore or minimize our suffering. We long to feel whole, but more often than not, the way we’ve learned to deal with our wounds pushes us away from the very restoration we need most. This book will help you find freedom and healing from painful memories and relational struggles and identify how suffering sets the trajectory of true calling. Drawn from modern research and their pioneering work at The Allender Center, they will help you identify your core trauma in one of the three outcast archetypes–the widow, orphan, or stranger–and chart your path of growth into the God-given roles of priest, prophet, or queen/king.

Watch Dan and Cathy discuss their behind-the-scenes process of how Redeeming Heartache was written:

Redeeming Heartache helps you to discover:

• What to do about feeling out-of-pace and directionless
• How your coping mechanisms create a false sense of health
• How to embrace your divine calling and find lasting reconciliation
• How your heart wounds are your unique invitation to true strength and purpose

Join us on this journey of profound inner transformation–from the shame and hurt of old emotional wounds to true freedom and healing.

To celebrate the release of their new book, Dan and Cathy will be hosting Redeeming Heartache Virtual Conference, a special, one-day event with four hours of teaching on September 18. This event will go deeper into the themes of the book and help participants find direction towards a fulfilling future.⁠ Learn more about this event and register to attend

If you’re interested in spending more in-depth time with Dr. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel, we invite you to a special Meet and Greet on September 18. Limited to only 10 guests, you’ll get 45 minutes to talk personally with Dan and Cathy, a ticket to the Redeeming Heartache Virtual Conference, and a signed copy of the book. Proceeds will benefit scholarships for training programs at The Allender Center. Register for the Meet and Greet.

Praise for Redeeming Heartache

“With unflinching honesty and boundless kindness, Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel have provided the metaphors and meaning that will, should we embrace them, allow God to find us, heal us, convict us, and recommission us to join him in cocreating the beauty he has destined for us to become.”
— Curt Thompson, MD, author, The Soul of Shame and Anatomy of the Soul

“Somewhere in this book you will find some part of your own story, something that rings true to your experience. You’ll also find comfort in knowing you’re not alone and that suffering can be redeemed by love, in community, through wise counsel. Everyone who reads Redeeming Heartache will be better for having done so.”
— Peter Wehner, senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center; contributing opinion writer, The New York Times; contributing writer, The Atlantic; former White House senior adviser

“Dr. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel invite us to courageously grapple with the pain, suffering, and trauma we all experience “east of Eden”—living outside of the perfection and wholeness that characterized humanity’s first home—and identify our fear, shame, and grief. Dan and Cathy insist there is a way to metabolize the heartache, allowing it to be the means by which we become a beautiful blessing in our world, a living testament to the redemption and goodness yet to come.”
— Kay Warren, cofounder, Saddleback Church