Designed to Heal: What the Body Shows Us about Healing Wounds, Repairing Relationships, and Restoring Community

Our bodies are designed to heal. We fall off our bikes and skin our knees―and without effort on our part, the skin looks like new in a few days. But while our skinned knees easily heal, it can sometimes feel like our emotional and relational wounds are left gaping open, broken beyond repair. If our bodies instinctively know how to heal physical injuries, could they also help us understand how to restore painful emotional and relational ruptures? In their groundbreaking debut book, physician Jennie McLaurin and scientist Cymbeline T. Culiat write Designed to Heal: a fascinating look at how the restorative processes of the body can model patterns we may adapt to heal the acute and chronic wounds of our social bodies. Through engaging patient stories, imaginative travels through the body's microcellular landscapes, accessible references to current research, and reflections on the image of God, Designed to Heal offers a new perspective for healing our social divisions. By learning how the body is created with mechanisms that optimize a flourishing recovery from life's inevitable wounds, we are given a model for hopeful, faithful, and enduring healing in all other aspects of our lives. Our wounds don't have to have the last word.

About the Author :
Jennie is a pediatrician, writer, and public health expert with particular interests in culture, bioethics, and theology. She graduated from Salem College with a degree in chemistry and then received an MD from Wake Forest University, an MPH from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MA in theology and ethics from Regent College (Vancouver, BC). She has worked with marginalized and underserved communities in the US for over 30 years, caring for migrant, homeless, indigenous, and special needs populations. Nationally, she is a consultant for the federal Health Resources Services Administration and for the National Association of Community Health Centers. In these capacities, she has collaborated in programs to advance food security, reduce childhood obesity, improve immunization access, and reduce health disparities. As a federal consultant, she provides technical assistance and training to many of the nation's 1,400 community health centers. Her work has taken her to all 50 states, several territories, and a number of countries. She also serves as a mentor and teacher of health professions students as well as graduate students, with past faculty appointments at medical schools and at Regent College, where she was Dean of Students and Associate Professor of Bioethics. Clinically, Jennie is currently the medical director at two sites, one serving at-risk adolescents and one providing multidisciplinary early intervention services to 0- to 3-year-olds with special needs. Writing has always been a part of Jennie's life, whether academically or creatively. She describes herself as a wonderer and wanderer, always interested in the relationship of the spiritual to the everyday. She aspires to integrate life so that the yearnings of the heart, the needs of the world and the callings of the spirit are holistically attended. Jennie finds herself most fully known in a Trinitarian Christian expression, but she welcomes the wisdom and friendship of all who journey in faith. Jennie's first book, Designed to Heal: What the body shows us about healing wounds, repairing relationships and restoring community, is scheduled for release in August 2021. Jennie lives in Northwest WA state with her incredible husband Andrew.