The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child: How Persistence, Grit, and Faith Created a Reluctant Healer

By Tana Amen

A shocking and hopeful account of one woman's extraordinary courage to face her past and embrace truth in order to help others find hope and healing

In The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child, Tana Amen shares her incredible story of transformation—of growing up in poverty, a bullied latch-key kid raised on sugary cereal and junk food, to becoming a world-renowned food and fitness expert.

Her challenging past of neglect, poverty, sexual abuse, thyroid cancer, and bouts of anxiety and depression set her on a path to find healing. Through her remarkable journey, we see more clearly the light that can shine through our own broken places and ultimately heal us: body, mind, and soul.

At once tragic and heartwarming, Tana’s story integrates cutting-edge psychology and proven wellness techniques from the Amen Clinics in a moving exploration of the healing available to each one of us, no matter the pain in our past.

“What a journey! With in-your-face honesty, Tana reveals how she was able to turn her pain into purpose. For anyone who has been faced with unspeakable loss, this message is so important.” 

—Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk, storyteller, purpose coach, and former monk

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781400220779

Tana Amen

Tana Amen is a New York Times bestselling author, vice president of the Amen Clinics, a neurosurgical ICU trauma nurse, and a world-renowned health and fitness expert. She has won the hearts of millions with her simple yet effective strategies to help anyone optimize their lifestyle and win the fight for a strong body, mind, and spirit. Tana holds a second-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Tana and her husband, Dr. Daniel Amen, have four children and five grandchildren.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

GOD PICKED THE WRONG PERSON

If you win an argument with God, you lose. If you lose an argument with God, you win.

—MARK BATTERSON

Our tastes of heaven sometimes require a trip to hell—preferably roundtrip. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d been down this road, but this particular journey would forever change me. Though some people lose baggage while traveling, on this day, I would find it—baggage I didn’t even know I had.

On a clear afternoon in May, I drove along the Pacific Coast Highway toward my destination. Sailboats rocked on the crystal-blue Pacific Ocean glimpsed beyond palms that swayed to their own rhythm. But the beauty around me only highlighted my growing distance from the safety of my home—as if I wasn’t already acutely aware of the enormous abyss between me and the personal nightmare I was about to face.

The task? Speak to a couple hundred junkies at one of the largest inpatient chemical-addiction recovery centers in the country.

Bad fit, me and them. Not that I didn’t have plenty of experience dealing with addicts. They had been prevalent in my past, and I avoided them in kind of the same way that cowboys avoid rattlesnakes. As far as I was concerned, you couldn’t tame them, you couldn’t trust them, and you’d better keep your distance if you didn’t want to get bitten.

Each mile I drove lessened the safe space between my hard-won heaven and their self-inflicted hell. I could feel the demons closing in, the dream killers I’d banished as vigilantly as I’d banished some family members who threatened the serenity of the life I’d finally created. The safety I cherished. The home I would give my life to protect.

Stoplight after stoplight, the questions hounded me like an irritating backseat driver. Why had I agreed to do something that caused me to feel such anxiety and resentment? As my humanity grated against my faith, I wondered, Will I still get brownie points in heaven if I’m this bitter about helping?

I’d said yes to this speaking engagement because of Leslie. She was the director of this particular facility, a woman who, velvet hammer in hand, managed the nearly two hundred addicts there. Nearly all had criminal backgrounds. Most had been court-ordered to be there. All were high-risk projects. And she loved every one of them—in a way I did not. Could not.

Leslie and I had met through my husband, Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist specializing in brain health. She had become fascinated by Daniel’s research showing that good nutrition improves brain function and that a better brain leads to a better life. Even more enlightening to her was his research about how poor nutrition could lead to having a smaller brain and typically lower quality of life.

Her interest in Daniel’s work had led her to me, because I had applied my nursing training and research in metabolic medicine and nutrition to help create the nutrition and lifestyle protocols for the patients we saw at Amen Clinics. Because of my passion for helping others heal through food, I also taught twelve-week courses based on my book, The Omni Diet, that emphasized the power of food in decreasing inflammation, reversing illness and aging, and increasing focus and energy. Leslie had completed one of those courses and told me it changed her life. She’d lost nearly fifty pounds, her skin had cleared, her hot flashes had stopped, and her brain fog had cleared. She’d learned the impact of food on our bodies—that it could be either medicine or poison—and come to the startling realization that the food the rehab center served was inadvertently feeding the residents’ illnesses. The toxic standard American diet—high sugar, low fiber, full of processed, genetically modified foodlike substances that lacked micronutrients—was making it harder for them to overcome their addictions and learn how to make good decisions.

Originally Leslie asked Daniel and me to help educate the residents and revamp the menu at the facility. Daniel agreed to help with the former, and I agreed to help with the latter. That was an easy yes for me. I would receive the reward of helping without the risk of dealing with addicts, a task Daniel was much better suited for.

But then Leslie wanted more, and when it came to these residents she loved, she could be quite persuasive. Tana, she asked during one of my visits, I’d really like you to come and help them personally with their nutrition, the way you helped me. Then she invited me to get to know them by attending a graduation ceremony that marked a major achievement for the residents who had completed the intensive program.

By then, I had come to appreciate the way the program worked. For twelve to twenty-four months, the residents lived in a cavernous industrial building transformed into a comfortable residence. The sofas, ping-pong tables, and donated art created an oddly pleasant ambience. They even had a quaint little chapel. But although it involved an all-expense-paid stay, the program was no vacation. It was purposeful. With all their physical needs met, the residents could focus on healing through therapy, acquiring job skills, and learning to live without relying on substances.

The nurse in me appreciated the structure, the mission, and even the stories of triumph. Another part of me—a wounded, cynical part, sneered, What’s the point? Most of them will be back within the year. Yet my perfect why, of course smile masked my inward groan as I thought, I agreed to help with the menu, not the people. But I agreed to go to the graduation if my husband would accompany me.

When Daniel and I arrived at the event, I immediately noticed the meticulous planning that had gone into it. The chef had prepared a delicious spread using recipes from my cookbooks, and the common room had been converted into a banquet hall complete with a dais and festive decorations. There was a buzz in the air as the graduates waited their turn to speak.

When the time for the ceremony arrived, I sat next to Daniel and listened, searching my heart for a thread of empathy for their pain. And I almost found it—until, that is, I could no longer ignore their repeated refrain about how drugs had ruined their lives and the lives of those they loved. Their stories brought back painful memories from my own past. (Exit empathy, enter judgment.) I wanted to be encouraged by their successes, but I felt myself numbing to what I perceived as an endless loop of stupidity, entitlement, and total disregard for others. I tried to laugh at the humorous comments when everyone else did, but my laughter felt hollow and disingenuous. None of it was remotely funny to me. These people weren’t discussing harmless traffic violations; some had done time for burglary, rape, even manslaughter.

I thought, What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just follow the rules put in place to keep everyone safe, the same rules the rest of us follow?

I hated my judgmental musings even as I mentally defended them with indignation. My heart pounded. Instinctively I clutched my purse closer and began scanning the room. I was forty-three years old, a black belt in both Taekwondo and Kenpo Karate, and a trauma-unit nurse. I’d overcome difficult life experiences in excess. When I spent time at the range, I was not hitting golf balls.

In other words, I liked to believe I was a card-carrying bada**. I was also a big fan of order and predictability, and I liked the concept of taking responsibility. So why were fear, apprehension, and resentment the only noticeable reactions I could muster in this moment?

By the time the evening ended, I was nearly overcome with emotion. But only when Daniel and I were safely ensconced in our car did I let it out. I’m not a crier by nature, so the sight of my mascara-stained tears startled him.

Did something happen? he asked with his usual gentle concern.

I don’t think I can come back here. My voice quivered. I can’t do this.

Why not?

The ugly honesty spilled out. I don’t have the compassion I need to help these people, Daniel. I think most of them are full of crap and only here because they have to be. I hate drugs, and I don’t much like the people who use them. They scare me. How can I help someone I don’t feel compassion for?

My words hung in the silence of the car like a pall.

God picked the wrong person this time, I muttered dejectedly.

With a smile I think only husbands and psychiatrists can produce, a smile that was as irritating as it was warm and reassuring, he took my hand.

Honey, God picked the perfect person. You just have to tell them your story. You have to tell them the truth.

Daniel was as confident as I was not. He thought my background would be a blessing, while I saw it as a barrier. He thought our involvement with a rehab center was a great idea, and not simply because we had helped to educate the residents and make their menu more nutritious.

Unlike me, Daniel loved people’s stories. It’s why he’d become a psychiatrist. He liked the walkie talkies— people who preferred to talk about their experiences so that they could heal.

Not me. What he called history, I called excuses. As a former trauma-unit nurse, I was the person you’d call if your skull had split open when you did a flip off the high dive while drunk and missed the water. I preferred dealing with patients who were sedated and intubated.

Daniel was the guy you’d call for the years of PTSD that followed a traumatic episode. He listened to people’s stories. I didn’t want to hear excuses.

His motto was: It’s easy to call people bad, harder to ask why.

My motto was: Stop sniveling and take responsibility. Do whatever it takes to get the job done. Meanwhile, don’t whine like a little twit. No one promised you that life would be fair. Fair is a place with bad food and farm animals.

Clearly, I was the wrong person to meet face-to-face with a bunch of people who’d made choices I despised.

So why in the world had I said yes when Leslie asked me back to speak to her people? I honestly had no idea. I just knew I was going to do it.

Standing in the main room, listening to Leslie introduce me before my talk, I looked down at my freshly painted toes, peeking out of my heels. The perfect red nail polish looked as out of place as I felt. As a health expert, I usually dressed to show my level of fitness—it was my calling card. I could only assume that my mostly male audience would be sporting an array of tattered sweatshirts, threadbare jeans, and an occasional T-shirt spouting Socrates-level wisdom like A day without beer is like . . . just kidding. I have no idea.

As the butterflies churned in my stomach, I appealed to God with half a dozen fleeting thoughts. I usually wasn’t this nervous before a talk.

As I climbed the steps of the platform stage, it’s hard to say who was shouldering the biggest chip, me or my audience. I could feel their eyes on me before I looked at them. It was a well-honed survival instinct I’d developed as a child, one that told me I was being watched. A blink—that’s how long it took for me to know the intent behind a look: lust, admiration, envy, jealousy, disgust, or just plain boredom. Every such look elicited a visceral feeling, warning me when anything around me was wrong, dangerous, or suspicious.

My Spidey sense had saved my life more than once, so I never ignored it. And what I sensed in the room that day was resentment. Distrust. And, frankly, the feeling was mutual. I knew the men and the sprinkling of women in the audience were perusing my physique and assessing the quality of my clothes. I was being judged by a jury of two hundred recovering addicts who were at varying levels of withdrawal or sobriety. The obvious verdict, of course, was that I was shallower than low-tide backwash.

My confidence ebbed. Gone was the strong, successful businesswoman and health professional I usually displayed to the world. Instead I felt like the knock-kneed girl in the school cafeteria trapped in a game of mean girls—as if it was only a matter of time before someone threw the Monday mystery meat at me. I felt defenseless . . . and defensive. Am I a healer or a hostage?

I tried to break the ice with some light comments, but my audience was less animated than the presidents on Rushmore, which made me all the more annoyed. Why do any of you have the right to judge me for being healthy, for looking successful, for not being a law-breaking addict . . . for not being like you?

I scanned the room and saw a sea of bored, empty eyes and an occasional look of mild curiosity. People whose arms were crossed and bodies were slouched. A few had already checked out, open-mouthed and dead to the world, their drowsiness triggered by the need for drugs and the effects of detox.

I highly doubted that anyone in this crowd cared about the evils of sugar and gluten. Most of them were still jonesing for a pipe or a needle with a tequila chaser. If they were willing to risk jail, losing their children and even their lives to follow their addictions, why would they care about the effects of leaky gut or insulin resistance? We were on opposite shores of a vast ocean, speaking different languages, and I had no idea how to cross over—not that I really wanted to.

I’d just begun my speech when my hands started shaking and my heart started racing. I was doing something I never did—panicking. I thought I’d left all the memories behind, buried them deep. Now they were stalking me like some horror-flick zombie popping up to kill again.

Stop it, Tana, I told myself. Get your act together! Toughen up!

But then something deep within me whispered a reply that stopped me in my tracks. Tough isn’t what this group needs. They just need you . . . being real.

I wasn’t sure I could trust the voice that was nudging me to drop my guard, but I decided to listen. That voice was telling me that I needed to level with them. Needed them to see beyond the facade created by the designer shoes and the well-coifed hair and the never-let-’em-see-you-sweat disposition. In short, I needed my audience to see that, although substances hadn’t been my addiction, I might have more in common with them than they assumed.

And then it happened. As if it were a time-release pill that wouldn’t work unless I surrendered my pride and narrow-mindedness, the quick prayer I’d said before my speech finally took hold:

God, please help me set aside my own needs, my pride, and my fear and focus on the purpose You have for me. Use me as an instrument; speak through me. If one person out there needs to hear Your message, open their ears. I am broken and angry, but You have promised that You can use anyone for Your purpose. So, here I am. Prove it. This is not about me. This is about the people in front of me. Finally, please give me patience with these people—like right now! Amen.

I stopped and scanned the room, taking time to look beyond the doubting looks and shabby clothes. I know what a lot of you are going through, I said. I know—

A woman in my field of vision twisted her body with an exaggerated harrumph that few could ignore.

Yes? I asked, thinking a question from her would ignite some buy-in from the audience.

How would you know? she asked.

I’m sorry?

How would you know what I’m going through? Look at you. Your life is perfect. You can’t know what I’m going through.

With a flick of her wrist she dismissed me, the way one might shoo a pesky fly. In that moment I went from concern to anger to total deflation. The words I’d hoped would break the ice had brought me a frigid slap in the face.

The group perked up, waiting for my response. I half expected to hear them chant, "Fight, fight! Hit her back!" like kids jeering and egging on an after-school brawl. My first thought was to snap, How could you judge me? You don’t know me! Then, as quickly as I’d had that thought, I was haunted by another one: How can I blame her?

In a sense she did know me. I was standing on a stage, literally looking down at her, projecting exactly what I’d wanted them to see. Since adolescence I had engineered the perfect mask, designed to prevent all but the most persistent eyes from seeing beneath the surface. I had felt protected behind my shield of meticulously applied makeup and carefully chosen clothes—until she saw through it. No doubt they all had.

Lord, why am I here?

As quickly as the question flashed in my mind, the answer came in the words Daniel had said in the car: God picked the perfect person. You just have to tell them your story. You have to tell them the truth.

I exhaled.

So, I said with a blend of defiance and candor, keeping my tears in check, how many of you are judging me right now?

As if I’d pulled a fire alarm, I suddenly had their attention. A couple of them rolled their eyes or furrowed their brows. Two or three crossed their arms. A few snickered. Though briefly encouraged, I didn’t see anybody raise a hand.

Really? I asked. "That’s interesting—because I’m certainly judging you."

The room quieted, as if my honesty had shattered their own protective armor. In that screaming silence I thought, What are you doing, Tana? I tend to crave security, and what I was doing felt anything but secure. This was raw and wildly unpredictable. Instead of seeking shelter behind my protective walls, however, I decided to forge ahead.

Let’s be honest, shall we? I said. We’re judging each other.

I raised my hand. Seriously, how many are judging me?

After an awkward pause, one hand in the third row went up, then another in the back. I simply nodded, more than willing to wait for the truth to touch other hearts. Another hand here. Another hand there. Soon hands were popping up throughout the audience as we confessed to passing judgment without even knowing one another—without knowing our histories, our deeper selves.

In that moment I saw truth. And, as the truth shall set you free Bible verse suggests, I could already feel it diluting the presumptions I’d made about my audience. For the first time since I’d walked in that room, I didn’t see addicts or junkies. Instead, I saw wounded children. And I saw me—the me I thought I’d left behind many years before.

Each person in front of me was dealing with adult problems and adult consequences, but the common thread that superseded our diverse backgrounds was childhood pain. As their hands went up and my pride faded away, my purpose for being there was suddenly crystal clear: If I could help just one person in this room, there would be one less scared child in the world. One less scared little girl who felt like an afterthought. One less scared little boy who had tried to go unseen because invisible felt safer. One less scared child who would go on to become a scared adult in need of healing and forgiveness.

But the payoff wouldn’t end there. With one less scared little girl or boy in the world, with more of us choosing differently at the proverbial fork in the road, the carryover would benefit not only this generation but the one to come and perhaps the ones to follow. I could help change the world, one scared child at a time.

Maybe I could even change me.

I took a deep breath, peeled back what remained of my mask, and looked at my audience. I was about to meld my mind with people whose lives, I realized, had been no messier than my own. In that moment I wasn’t healer or hostage. I was just another beggar looking for a piece of bread.

When I first took to that podium, the gap between me and my audience had made the Grand Canyon seem like a sidewalk crack. But as we began letting down our guards, the gap became a mirror. We weren’t nearly as different as I’d imagined. We all were—or at least had once been—in the same boat: the Titanic. Just like them, I knew what it was like to find myself alone in cold, treacherous water, wondering if anyone was going to come and throw out a life vest. The only difference was that I’d made it safely to shore while they were still flailing in the choppy sea.

Beyond that, something else was suddenly crystal clear: the stage did not belong to a warrior, a black belt, or even a skilled trauma nurse. On this day the stage belonged to the vulnerable part of me I had worked so hard to leave behind. And yet the very thing I’d been so afraid to do—deal with my past—was the very thing that, when revealed, would make this perhaps the most powerful talk I would ever give.

In the next hour, in the next weeks, in the next months, these men and women and I would build an amazing bridge between us—a bridge built of bricks only God could provide, mortared with the pain of everyone in the room—my own not only included, but the most conspicuous. It would be as if the open their ears part of my prespeech prayer had been for my own ears, the ones most in need of hearing.

It wasn’t my first come-to-Jesus moment, nor would it be my last. But the experience would teach me a powerful lesson: sometimes God calls us to help those we don’t want to help so He can provide healing for the broken parts of us. In other words, the help was for them, but the healing was for me—and for the rest of us willing to enter the fray, even if it means facing the past and exposing a terrifying vulnerability.

Okay, I said, completely going off script, let me tell you a story. The room stilled with what seemed like a new sense of genuine curiosity, perhaps even a side dish of respect. It’s a story about a scared little girl. Her name is Tana.

CHAPTER 2

MURDER, PSYCHICS, AND SAVED BY A DOG

The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our heart.

—MAX BROOKS

The musty smell of orange shag carpet and peeling yellow paint—those were my first memories. I woke with my cheek pressed against the carpet and one eyeball staring at the wall. I couldn’t move. While I slept I had somehow wrapped myself in the blanket and was now trapped between the bed and the wall.

I started yelling. Nobody came.

Mommy! I cried again. No answer.

Why wasn’t anyone answering? Managing to wiggle free, I toddled to the window to look for my mommy. Maybe she was in the pool.

Nope. Terror set in. I started screaming. Shaking.

I wondered if I could find Mommy on that funny thing she talked to people on. I picked up the part she held to her ear and started turning the dial like I had seen her do. Nothing. I kept turning.

How can I help you? I heard a woman ask.

Where is Mommy? I choked through broken sobs.

I don’t remember the details of that call, only a voice on the other end telling me not to put the phone down. She kept asking me questions, things I didn’t know how to answer. Except about my dog! How did she know I had a dog?

Is the dog big or small?

He’s big. Oso not here.

She told me not to go outside or near the pool. When she asked

Reviews for The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child

[Amy Hagberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read Tana Amen’s book just after Thanksgiving and was inspired by her journey toward emotional and physical health. Her memoir about growing up in poverty, neglected and abused, with God’s help. It was interesting to discover that her husband, Daniel Amen, developed The Daniel Plan for Saddleback Church.

Although her book was well written, there were a couple of major flaws. First, including Covid and the riots that took place in 2020 weren’t necessary and detracted from her life story. Second, parts of her narrative sounded like commercials for her other books, and those of her husband. For more reviews visit amyhagberg.com.