Cradled in the Arms of Compassion

A Spiritual Journey from Trauma to Recovery

By: Frank Rogers Jr.

Narrated by: Frank Rogers Jr.

“You were like this once. What did you do to get better?” A day out from a mental institution, a woman devastated by flashbacks from childhood trauma poses this question to her big brother. Within a few weeks, she took her own life. This book is the answer that her brother wished he could have offered.

Spiritual director and professor Frank Rogers had been there. As a young adult, he too was tormented by trauma suffered in the same family. Wracked by depression, he was on the cliff edge of suicide. From intense despair, he set off on a quest—for answers, for sanity, for a credible God to see him through.

Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is at once a narrative of psychological transformation and a spiritual autobiography that details the survivor’s journey. Rogers shows how he found recovery through a combination of reflective retreats, therapy, creative expression, and an extraordinary application of imaginative meditation that spiritual seekers and practitioners will find utterly fascinating. The ensuing discovery evolved into the uniquely self-restorative process known as the Compassion Practice.

Frank Rogers’ account reveals that a compassionate sacred presence sustains this wounded world, and that this presence can be known, even in the sewers of life’s most damaging traumas.

One of the few male accounts of childhood sexual abuse and fewer still that charts a spiritual course for the transformation of trauma.

©2023 Frank Rogers Jr. (P)2023 Frank Rogers Jr

Critic reviews

“This is an amazing book that I couldn’t put down once I started it. In Frank’s brutally honest and remarkably disclosive telling of his story you will find a hope-filled model.”—Richard Schwartz, PhD, developer of the Internal Family Systems model

"Like all good memoir, Cradled in the Arms of Compassion has a robust narrative engine—the reader is led along, page-by-page, with questions, curiosities, and a desire to see what ‘happens next." —Spirituality and Practice

Practicing Compassion

The author was courageous to share his experience of child abuse and recovery in a way to help others. The narrative stories are stunning. It is a tough read but worth it to learn of the healing power of compassion.

Epic Odyssey of Healing from Sexual Abuse

i don’t usually take reviews like, SUPER seriously but i have been mulling over this one for days. how do i communicate the depths of how this book touched my life? how do i explain the epic odyssey of healing and authenticity and truth and LOVE that Frank Rodger’s Jr leads us through in this book?

Frank Rodger’s wrote “Cradled in the Arms of Compassion” to honor the life and death of his sister who died by suicide. He writes to try to answer the question she asked him shortly before she died which was “how did you get through this?”

He shares the raw, horrific details of his experience of childhood sexual abuse, not to glamorize or encourage sick fascination but to bring the horrors out of the darkness where they so often thrive.

Frank doesn’t shy away from the pain, from the horror, from the anger or the real process that survivors experience in seeking healing from sexual abuse. While i am not a survivor myself, this topic has often been one I have struggled with when considering the goodness of a God seemingly complicit to such horrors. Frank stares all this dead in the face and takes you on his journey to the answer he found in the womb of Mother God.

I listened to the audio, read by Frank, and i highly recommend it. He does an excellent job. I will also be ordering the hard copy and gifting it to everyone i know for the rest of my days

Profound, raw, poetic and real

I loved to be able to participate in the author’s healing journey and spiritual path with his own voice. Amazing book.