What People Are Saying

Practical tools to move from simply coping to gaining embodied strength

Strong like Water beautifully acknowledges the courage that survival requires and offers practical tools to move from simply coping to gaining embodied strength. Over your own deep waters, Kolber’s voice will rise as a wise and gentle guide, calling forth your inner strength and testifying to God’s redeeming love.

Clarissa Moll
author of Beyond the Darkness

Excellent, well-researched, and heartfelt.

Emily Freeman

In Strong like Water, Aundi Kolber emerges as one of the most trusted and approachable voices at the intersection of faith, trauma, and body-centered therapy. The practices alone are worth reading this excellent, well-researched, heartfelt book.

Emily Freeman
author and host of The Next Right Thing podcast

Strong like Water is both an anchor and a lighthouse

In a culture full of conflicting messages about the value of strength, where to find it, and how to use it, Strong like Water is both an anchor and a lighthouse. Aundi’s book is full of gentle, resourceful tools and generously offered stories. What a gift this book is for all the weary souls who aren’t sure if they have what it takes or what they need, or are afraid of what they might find within themselves.

Tasha Jun
author of Tell Me the Dream Again

A beautiful gift for anyone who has felt like they have to stay strong to survive

Strong like Water is a beautiful gift for anyone who has felt like they have to stay strong to survive. With wisdom drawn from her own story and her clinical expertise, Aundi Kolber reimagines strength as a dance of tenacity and tenderness, of holding tight and of learning to release. This brave and insightful journey through resilience is a revelation―one that honors both the grit it takes to survive and the compassion it takes to heal.

Dr. Alison Cook
psychologist and author of The Best of You and Boundaries for Your Soul

An encouraging guide that will help you gracefully navigate life

Strong like Water is such a timely book as so many of us deal with the pressure of needing to be the “strong one” in one way or another. This book is an encouraging guide that will help you gracefully navigate the many experiences of life that call for strength.

Morgan Harper Nichols
artist and writer

Try Softer is an antidote for frazzled and fractured souls.

Aundi’s gentle voice is so needed in the chaotic days we live in. Try Softer is an antidote for frazzled and fractured souls. It’s exquisitely beautiful and eminently practical.

Chuck DeGroat
author, therapist, and spiritual director

Strong like Water adds direction, lightness, and hope to a worthwhile journey

Kendra Adachi

I was deeply moved reading Strong like Water and felt comfort and confidence from Aundi’s practical, compassionate words. The work of healing and integration often feels heavy, like it’s easier left undone, but Strong like Water adds direction, lightness, and hope to a worthwhile journey.

Kendra Adachi
New York Times bestselling author of The Lazy Genius Way and The Lazy Genius Kitchen

You will be met in the wild of where you are.

I knew that the moment I opened this book, I wouldn’t be able to put it down. Aundi Kolber’s words will meet you where you are: here, in the present moment, shining light in the direction of “connection and joy,” in places where it is often a challenge to find. Her writing draws you into the depths as she gives you practical, grace-filled words of wisdom for every step. While reading this book, you will feel mirrored through Aundi’s beautiful way of giving language to our experiences. You will be met in the wild of where you are, while also receiving the tools to carry on for the rest of the journey.

Morgan Harper Nichols
artist and poet

Try Softer gives us hope for a different way.

In a world that tells us that we’d better be crushing it or killing it if we want to make it, Aundi Kolber has a revolutionary approach—trying softer. With grace, wisdom and candor, Try Softer gives us hope for a different way—lives of connection and attention instead of competition and distraction. If you’re weary of trying so hard (who isn’t?) then try softer. You’ll be glad you did.

Nicole Unice
pastor, counselor, and author of The Struggle Is Real

The gentle way of hope awaits

Shannan Martin

Strong like Water is a trustworthy guide away from fear and into the safe embrace of love, where healing resides. I will carry Aundi’s words into the corners of my everyday life—as a neighbor, parent, spouse, and friend. This book is for the hurting, the rattled, the stuck, the numb; which is to say, it’s for each one of us. All is not lost. The gentle way of hope awaits.

Shannan Martin
author of Start with Hello and The Ministry of Ordinary Places

The abundant life we long for is less about striving and all about surrender.

Far too often the Christian recipe for abundant living involves mustering up more faith, doing more for God, and trying harder to  make life work. In Try Softer, Aundi Kolber helps readers understand why such an approach never works. Then, she invites us to a radical new way of living—compassionately connected to ourselves, God, and others. With an extraordinary blend of personal vulnerability, scriptural acumen, and compelling neuroscience, Aundi ultimately shows readers that the abundant life we long for is less about striving and all about surrender.

Michael John Cusick
CEO of Restoring the Soul and author of Surfing for God

Try Softer is a masterpiece.

Not since The Body Keeps the Score has a book made such a profound impact on my healing as a trauma survivor. Try Softer is a masterpiece, a seamless blend of competent clinical understanding and nurturing pastoral care. Aundi’s unique dual  perspective as both trauma therapist and trauma survivor give her work an unparalleled depth of empathy, wisdom, and tenderness. She’s created a powerful therapeutic tool that is an essential read for not only those who have been personally affected by trauma, but for therapists, pastors, educators, and caregivers as well.

Stephanie Tait
author of The View from Rock Bottom

Try Softer is exactly what a stressed-out world needs to hear.

If you’re exhausted from dragging your body through life and white-knuckling your way through pain, Aundi Kolber offers wise advice: Try softer. By learning to listen to your body instead of fighting it, you can become more resilient and more self-compassionate. Try Softer is exactly what a stressed-out world needs to hear.

Steve Wiens
author of Beginnings and Whole

This is a book I need

The process of navigating hard things is not a linear path for any of us, but with clarity, resources, research, and the deepest wells of compassion, Aundi lends her heart and expertise as she guides us through this road map of healing and discovery in her latest offering. Strong like Water contains truths that ultimately lead us back to ourselves and the ever-present reminder that God has and always will be with us on our journey of becoming more beautifully human in the midst of adversity. This is a book I need now and will surely return to as often as necessary.

Patricia A. Taylor
writer and antiracism educator

Reading Try Softer feels a lot like exhaling.

Reading Try Softer feels a lot like exhaling. In a world that simultaneously pushes us to hustle and hide our pain, Aundi Kolber wisely, tenderly, and skillfully offers us a new way forward. While it’s certainly counter-cultural, the message of Try Softer is both biblical and timely — a presentation of the gospel that powerfully invites us to live fully in the grace and healing Jesus freely offers.

Ashley Abramson
writer

Try Softer is the book I’ve been searching for on the bookstore shelves.

Try Softer is the book I’ve been searching for on the bookstore shelves. As someone who has been high-strung and try-harder since childhood, I’ve always wondered “why?” Why does my body feel on high-alert even when my mind is quiet? Thankfully, Kolber’s smart, informative approach and kind voice are here to help us all understand the complicated happenings between our head, our heart, and our body.

Hayley Morgan
author of Preach to Yourself and coauthor of Wild and Free

A personally moving, healing, and formative experience

Steve Carter

I’ve never had such a personally moving, healing, and formative experience while reading a book. Aundi offers wisdom on every page as well as practices for your mind, heart, body, and soul that will help guide you through pain and that embody what true flourishing and resilience are all about.

Steve Carter
pastor and author of The Thing Beneath the Thing

This book will speak to your soul

With careful thought and gentle intention, Aundi is a trusted guide who distills what she’s learned as a trauma-informed therapist. If you’re feeling like you’re holding the weight of the world, Strong like Water will speak to your soul, offer needed resources, and invite you into the sacred work of healing.

Kayla Craig
author of To Light Their Way

Try Softer gives faith and hope.

For those souls feeling alone in their suffering, Try Softer serves as a companion guide towards feeling connected and whole. Aundi Kolber’s spiritual journey demonstrates that the way to transform pain is to surrender to the healing power of embodying compassion. Try Softer gives faith and hope that light can be created out of darkness.

Barb Maiberger, MA, LPC
founder of the Maiberger Institute and author of EMDR Essentials: A Guide for Clients and Therapists

A gentle and self-compassionate approach

Chuck DeGroat

Aundi shows a way beyond “toughing it out” and “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and it’s a gentle and self-compassionate approach. Ultimately, it’s the way of Jesus, and Aundi is a wonderful guide into it.

Chuck DeGroat, PhD, LPC
professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality; interim D.Min. director, Western Theological Seminary

Try Softer will be a book I return to.

In a culture teeming with anxiety and feelings of being “not enough,” Aundi Kolber is the friend and guide we need for this present moment. Packed with a perfect blend of relatable storytelling and practical methods, Try Softer will be one I return to and pass forward to others. This is one of those rare lifelong reads you pull out for a refresher course again and again.

Hannah Brencher
author of Come Matter Here and If You Find This Letter

This kind, courageous book is right on time.

In Try Softer, licensed therapist Aundi Kolber walks us toward the gentle understanding that our scars hold clues to our wholeness. Life is hard. Pain finds us. But as we learn to pay attention to our full selves, patiently excavating compassion from the rubble of  critique, we will know healing. This kind, courageous book is right on time.

Shannan Martin,
author of The Ministry of Ordinary Places and Falling Free