Home, by Amy Smyth Miller

A Memoir of Family, Forgiveness, and Healing from Complex PTSD

Her past held the answers—if she was brave enough to face it.

After nearly losing her husband, Amy Smyth Miller’s panic spirals out of control. Therapy reveals a diagnosis she never expected: Complex PTSD. In search of healing, Amy embarks on a harrowing excavation of her past—childhood neglect, homelessness, parental addiction, and a family history shadowed by suicide. Amid the wreckage, she discovers the people and circumstances that kept her safe and helped to shape her life: her wise great-grandmother’s teachings, the watchful eyes of caring adults, and her own fierce determination. Each memory is a clue, each family story a piece of the puzzle. But the most elusive truth is buried in a forgotten childhood memory—one that holds the key to her deepest fear.

Part investigation, part love letter to survival, Home is a courageous story of trauma and transformation, love and forgiveness, and realizing that sometimes the home you’re searching for is the one you build inside yourself.

“Home: A Memoir of Family, Forgiveness, and Healing from Complex PTSD is for anyone needing help putting the pieces together around what happened to our families and ourselves. Amy Smyth Miller helps us process the confusion and disconnection between our past and our present through her story. A wonderful resource for those who have experienced childhood trauma.”

— Patrick Teahan, LICSW, psychotherapist and expert on childhood trauma

“Amy Smyth Miller’s inspiring memoir shimmers with honesty, tenacity, and her ability to find beauty among the shards of a painful history. While there is no simple formula for understanding and addressing intergenerational trauma, this sensitive book offers meaningful glimpses of hope.”

— Elizabeth Rosner, author of SURVIVOR CAFE: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory and THIRD EAR: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening