Good Morning, Monster

so casually cruel in the name of being honest.
no, but you have to read this. It's toughie but it will stay with you for a long time.

This was so good! Devastating but inspiring and absolutely uplifting. I've always been fascinated by the wonders of therapy and psychology, and this satisfies all my interests in it and more. The stories were expertly told and I could see everything behind my eyes as I listened to the audiobook - suffice to say, I cried a few times. Highly recommend but please know this comes with trigger warnings!

Good Morning, Monster is one of those books that quietly wrecks you and rebuilds you in the span of a few chapters. Catherine Gildiner profiles five patients with such raw, layered trauma that you almost forget you’re reading nonfiction—it feels like sitting in on therapy sessions that somehow reflect pieces of your own emotional architecture. It’s not sensationalized or overly clinical; it’s deeply human. The strength these people show isn’t loud or cinematic—it’s survival in slow motion. For someone like me who values resilience, self-awareness, and the long game, this book hits like a reminder that healing isn’t linear, and strength often looks like just showing up again and again. It’s heavy but worthwhile—quietly powerful in the way a good finance model is: simple, deep, and built to endure.

There's something mesmerizing about reading a book where a therapist shares stories of patients she has treated, something that's almost like listening in on the secret lives of people. That's what Good Morning, Monster is, and the stories Gildiner shares are about five patients who move heroically toward emotional recovery, despite the gross abuses each suffered. It's a startling book, reminding us all, in the words of Plato, to be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

#2020ReadNonFic

This is an inspiring and humbling book – five stories of people who came through childhood neglect and abuse, repairing a damaged sense of self and bravely reconnecting to the world and other people. If I get upset about anything that happens to me, I just have to think of what they endured, and try to emulate their strength and courage.

Written by a therapist, this gives an interesting glimpse into the therapeutic process, including failures and setbacks along the way, and the path to recovery and renewal. While this can be extremely valuable for those going through similar issues, it also made me a little uncomfortable at times. There is a voyeuristic element in looking through the private window into someone's life, witnessing such horrible things. We are meant to empathize with them, but there is also a sense of distance that can be disturbing. How can we truly understand another person's suffering, how can we possibly treat it with enough reverence and respect? This includes the author's own abusive upbringing, which she reveals at the end in an oddly naive way, not seeming to fully realize how much it mirrors her own patients' inability to recognize what they have been subjected to. It made me wonder if she herself needed therapy more than she realized.

That said, this is a fascinating, compulsively readable book which gives a glimpse of true heroism, of the noble side of humanity that lurks in the darkest places. We need such images today. I am grateful to the subjects for making their stories available and to the author for sharing them with us.