what people are saying
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Darkness Was My Candle: An Odyssey of Survival and Grace tells the captivating story of how one woman, despite a devastating and exploitive childhood, used her tenacity and brilliance to not only survive, but to thrive. At times searing and raw, Lora DeVore’s story reveals the transformative power of others’ care and love, as well as the capacity of the human spirit to endure the unspeakable and to emerge whole. Lora calls into account the institutions that fail us and offers us a vision of a more conscious way to bring healing to the world. This is a perfect book for these challenging times, as it encourages us to move beyond old boundaries and see ourselves and all of life in a fresh, new way.
—Marci Shimoff, is a widely acclaimed happiness expert, transformational leader, and the #1 NY Times best-selling author of Happy for No Reason and all the books in the Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul series. She’s also a featured teacher in "The Secret" and narrator of the award-winning movie "Happy". -
Darkness Was My Candle is a story of horror and hope, a searing indictment of individual and institutional cruelty, and a soaring celebration of our human capacity to find light in the darkest places and saving grace in small kindnesses. Lora DeVore shows us how a terribly exploited, fearfully isolated, wounded child can learn to trust her own inner wisdom and grow into a deeply compassionate woman who brings hard-won understanding and skillful healing to others. She inspires each of us to look within the darkness of our own life's traumas for the warmth and light of transformation. Lora DeVore is a wonder, and so is "Darkness Was My Candle."
—James S. Gordon, MD, is a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, is internationally recognized for using self-awareness, self-care, and group support to heal population-wide psychological trauma. He is founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., a clinical professor at Georgetown Medical School, and was chairman (under Presidents Clinton and GW Bush) of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He is the author of Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing. -
Lora’s story is one of almost unimaginable trauma, abiding memory, and the triumph of the human spirit. It is a true “hero’s journey”. Told with intelligence and with the intent to teach, it shows us how hope can be kept alive by simple acts of kindness by ordinary people, how easy it is to fail the most vulnerable young people in our midst, and how presence and compassion can change the course of a life. This book deserves to become a classic in the literature of trauma and healing. It should be required reading for all students and practitioners of the healing arts as well as for educators, who have more power to transform young lives than they may realize.
—Penny George, PsyD, is Co-chair of the George Family Foundation and a philanthropic leader in the national movement to increase health and well being for individuals and communities through the principles and practices of whole-person care.
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To read Darkness Was My Candle is to experience a deep and profound healing. Lora DeVore's memoir has a revolutionary premise: spirituality and compassion may blossom from the basest of soils, may arise from abuse and trauma. As Lora takes us on an intimate journey from trauma to transcendence, the impact of her story has the power to evolve us. This author is someone who truly embodies the soul of the world.
—Janet Elizabeth Coli, Ph D, Psychotherapist and Author of “The Dark Faces of Heaven: True Stories of Transcendence Through Trauma”. Also a consciousness researcher, Dr. Coli integrates psychology with extraordinary human experience and healing. Dr. Colli holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and is among the most skilled psychotherapists in the Pacific Northwest.
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This book is an exquisitely authentic account of Lora's life journey filled with powerful stories of trauma, healing, and transformation. Lora's writing mirrors her courage to not just survive, but to embody a wise, creative, and empowered voice. In a humble yet captivating way, Lora models the potential that each of us carries to heal. As a fellow trauma survivor and psychiatrist with a focus on integrative approaches to mental health, I recommend this memoir to both mental health professionals and anyone searching for hope, healing, and meaning.
—Noshene Ranjibar, M.D. Assistant Clinical Professor, Chief Division of Child and Adolesent Psychiatry, Training Director, Integrative Psychiatry fellowship, Medical Director, Integrative Psychiatry Clinic, University of Arizona college of Medicine - Tuscon -
Darkness Was My Candle by Lora Devore is a riveting, can’t - put - down read, sensitively detailing the author’s harrowing and dark life experiences, starting at birth and extending well into adulthood. Unlike many individuals who suffer these intolerable, shaming, and life-threatening circumstances, Lora managed, over and over, to grasp the slender lifelines offered her. She learned and searched and, eventually, turned her knowledge and understanding into a vocation of healing and helping others. From the bleak cauldron of her life emerged a magnificent therapist/healer, who shines a brilliant beacon of hope to the literally thousands of lives she lifts up. Don’t miss this rare, astounding book.
—Jan Thatcher Adams, MD, is a physician, humanitarian, and writer with a forty-seven-year career in womb-to-tomb proactive, Urgent Care, Emergency Medicine, and humanitarian care worldwide. -
If you want to explore the darkest realms of human suffering and the potential of survival of unimaginable atrocities, this breathtaking journey into the abyss of trauma is a must-read. The author takes us on an excruciating process of excavation to retrieve her wounded soul from the hell of familial, systemic, and institutional violence. Illuminated most poetically with quotes from the wisdom traditions, is a healing path through a threatening perilous world of utter darkness to love, spiritual awakening, luminosity, and transcendence. Far from narrating only her personal history of abuse and exploitation, she reveals also the shocking collective shadow in psychiatric institutions, pharmaceutical companies and the therapeutic profession. I highly recommend this memoir of a transformative individuation process of dying and becoming.
—Ursula Wirtz, Dr PhD. Author of Trauma and Beyond. The Mystery of Transformation. Routledge 2020 -
From the first shocking pages to the last ones of inspiration, Lora DeVore shares the unvarnished truth of her life, her inner responses to all that happened, and we feel her helplessness and vulnerability. It is a story of the longing for life that was kept alive like a sacred flame inside her, flickering, but never going out, even in the most devastating circumstances.
Readers also have the benefit of a skilled writer and natural storyteller with the perspective and insights of the wise woman who is now a skilled psychotherapist and teacher to others. Every aspect of this page turner is a true saga as she shows us how the heroine - herself - not only survives multiple terrors of darkness, but conquers them through the alchemy of spiritual and psychological transformation.This is a timely book, a cautionary tale, in this era of secrets, abuses, and systemic injustices that are surfacing. Through Lora’s courageous testimony, she invites us to look with clear eyes and awareness at what can happen in any system, including those designed to help, if we look away, refuse to listen, or require accountability.
This book belongs in the libraries and teaching labs for all people who desire to live and serve consciously. It certainly should be required reading for doctors, therapists, ministers, lawyers , judges, social workers, prison personnel, teachers and volunteers in human service. I will be proudly and gratefully recommending this book to clients, workshop attendees and friends.—Gloria D. Karpinski is a holistic counselor, spiritual director, teacher, and author of two books, Where Two Worlds Touch & Barefoot On Holy Ground, with a third coming out late spring 2022. She has presented workshops, intensives, and keynote lectures in seven foreign countries (Italy, Germany, England, Switzerland, Scotland, Iceland, Bali, Greece), 16 states in North America, as well as in over 50 cities.
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Darkness Was My Candle is a must-read for anyone that is interested in transforming hardship into personal growth. The life story of Lora Devore, a gifted mind/body/spirit guide, is both heartbreaking and inspirational. The lessons learned through her suffering easily apply to all that want to add meaning and purpose to their lives.
—Joel M. Evans, M.D.
Director, The Center for Functional Medicine
Stamford, CT
Senior Advisor to the CEO,
The Institute for Functional Medicine
Federal Way, WA
Senior Faculty,
The Center for Mind-Body Medicine
Washington, D,C -
Darkness Was My Candle: An Odyssey of Survival and Grace is a work of the divine which guides us through the tenacity of the human spirit to endure the unspeakable, the untenable and emerge with the light that had fallen and has now been resurrected and restored back to its original brilliance. In this expedition of the heart and spirit, Lora gives voice to the many dark hallways of the soul, the raw honesty of experiences that left her reeling from betrayal and abuse in all its unforgiving forms. We watch the metamorphosis take place that will transform her from the inside out and the powerful recognition of being “beloved” when she discovers that she was never alone and her sharing that neither are we. Her journey to becoming an unwitting Sage has come full circle and as a result of this work, she has created a reverberation of hope for all those who sit in hopelessness and despair, those who have lost their voice and those who think there is no way to heal from the damage done to them over their lifetime. Those who read this work, will truly be forever changed.”
—Dr. Rita Anita Linger, PhD, CPC, CMBP
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In captivating and lyrical prose this is a story of one individual’s fortitude, determination and luminosity of the human spirit to survive, and ultimately to prevail. Darkness Was My Candle: An Odyssey of Survival and Grace depicts the challenges in the life of an unloved, and profoundly abused childhood. It reveals hope and healing ignited through the caring acts of others as we traverse the depths of life’s pain and disillusionment, to discover the power of love to ignite, evolve, and transform us. Lora DeVore speaks for those with no voice and illuminates the shortcomings of some of our medical systems today as she invites us to envision with her a more loving way of bringing healing to the world. The time is ripe for this message. Today we are called to become conscious of a deeper, more awakened version of ourselves, and in an unprecedented way, express ourselves as profoundly and soulfully empowered.
—Dr. Sue Morter, Instant National Bestseller of The Energy Codes: The 7-Step System to Awaken Your Spirit. Heal Your Body and Live Your Best Life.
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As a sexual abuse survivor, I long for authentic tales of the human experience to help me reassemble the pieces of my life in a way that creates meaning for it. Lora’s story, Darkness Was My Candle encompasses the disturbing and haunting reality of our humanity along with astonishing moments of beauty and exquisite tenderness that buoy our capacity to heal. She illuminates a spiritual path forward beyond traditional therapy that eases my soul-shaking traumas and offers an invitation for all of us to examine one of the greatest struggles of our lives: Will we and our collective energies remain incomplete or courageously step into wholeness, for ourselves and one another?
—Sheila Bauer, M.Ed., Parent & Family Educator, Faculty with The Center for Mind-Body Medicine -
The integrative and multi-disciplinary approach to the inner psycho-spiritual work that Lora describes in Darkness Was My Candle is a blueprint for a new humanity that comes about through the pioneers on the frontiers of consciousness suffering deeply, and daring to brave new inner vistas and possibilities for the human race.
This book is a testimony to the grace, devotion, hard work and vision she has had to share her process with the rest of humanity. She describes the labor and birthing of this new Self out of the degradation and misery of suffering, in a way that inspires us all to continue to search and devote our lives to the inner path. The great turning and transition from an externally focused life, to an inner life of integration of all aspects of our being is described. It is the great turning and shift that is required of us all if the planet is to heal, and humanity redeem itself so that true and lasting change can happen on this planet. The failure of every system in her life is well documented, and impeccably researched. Her capacity to find a way through the horrors of the systems in place to “help,” is the map we all need to aspire to.
She introduces us to a community/communion of "saints" in her life, angels in situations of hell - but they could not have done anything unless she had wanted to become one herself. Lora used every scrap of care that came her way, from every walk of life, every discipline, every opportunity, to learn to relate to herself in a loving, reverential, dignified, and integrated way. And so, through this inspiring account, we are all called to the inner path as well.
—Lyndall Johnson M.A., L.P.
President, Aslan Institute
Executive Director, Sacred Service at Aslan Institute