An extended review of a 2025 book by Hillary L. McBride
Note: Our print issue contains a shorter version of this review. Faith Today welcomes your thoughts on any of our reviews. We also welcome suggestions of other Canadian Christian books to review: Contact us.
Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing
By Hillary L. McBride
Brazos, 2025. 272 pages. $31 (ebook $23, audio $25)
I first encountered Hillary McBride in 2017 when she became a co-host of The Liturgists Podcast. For a season of my life, that podcast was revolutionary for me and for many others in my generation (Gen Z - Millennial) who were feeling disenfranchised by the Church and disillusioned about faith. It helped us along our journeys of healing from spiritual trauma, and McBride’s voice and contribution paid no small part.
In her new book she does it again, creating space for the tender wounds the Church has so often caused us, without telling us what the one right next step is. If you’re wanting a biblically based prescriptive or academic take on spiritual and religious trauma, this book is not for you. This book is beautifully open-ended, creating space for the gifts the Church has offered us in one hand and the wounds that have often come from the other hand.
Holy Hurt bears witness to the suffering while offering context to help make sense of it. McBride does not force anyone to stay or go, to look at faith or churches one way or another. Instead she offers clear and dependable information about what spiritual trauma is, how it happens and how it might manifest in our lives. She does this with the gentleness of a psychotherapist (she is one, based in Victoria) alongside the clarity and passion of a researcher (which she is in equal measure, including a PhD from UBC).
Holy Hurt could be roughly divided into thirds. The first two-thirds explores the wounds, and the final third explores healing and moving forward after spiritual trauma.
As trauma is nonlinear, so the book does not prescribe one straight path forward through trauma. It allows for the curliness of hurting and healing, wounding and recovery to seep into each chapter. McBride’s chosen chapter structure helps with this.
Each chapter begins with a story or metaphor and then dives into the research and exploration of the topic. McBride does not end there or simply move on to the next topic. Rather, she leads the reader through an embodied practice with which to hold the weight of what they have just explored, and ends with a story or reflection from someone with a different lived experience to her own.
This structure allows the reader to learn intellectually about spiritual trauma, while also being led through personal, embodied reflection on their own experiences of spiritual trauma.
In the final third of the book, McBride begins to explore what healing from spiritual trauma might look like, as well as some of the communal and social implications of spiritual trauma. I found myself drawn to these questions, especially as someone who has already undergone much healing from my own spiritual wounds and is curious to apply the literature around spiritual and religious trauma to communal experiences and expressions.
In Chapter 6: Seeing and Believing, McBride talks about the idea of “witnessing” or “bearing witness to” spiritual trauma, whether that of the self or another person. Coming from the Anabaptist tradition, I found her use of this language profound and striking – to bear witness to another’s suffering is what Jesus did, and what we as Jesus-followers are called to do in turn.
So, the work of the therapist, but also the work of the self-uncovering and tending to spiritual wounds, is the work of Jesus. This strikes me as deeply true – how are we to tend to others’ woundedness if we cannot at least acknowledge our own? How are we to create trauma-informed and courageous faith communities if we are out of touch with what trauma has looked like in our own selves?
I find the language of “bearing witness to” spiritual trauma to be theologically rich, as well as socially, psychologically and practically helpful. It invokes the suffering of Christ, which is often a helpful thing to be reminded of, and it also gives us a sense of where to go from here, whether walking with a friend on their trauma journey or accompanying ourselves gently through hurting and healing.
Holy Hurt was an informative and personally challenging read. It prompted me to think through new lenses about personal and church-wide issues, and to have compassion for myself and others who are unveiling tender wounds. McBride’s emphasis on the innate goodness of the human person is helpful and profound and may cause those who hold firmly to doctrines of original sin to pause. If you are one of those readers, I encourage you to read Holy Hurt anyway, and to do so with an open heart and mind – McBride surely has wisdom to share with every spiritual person – that is, with every one of us.
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