"This brilliant and passionate book debunks all the myths we have about the Hero - beyond fear, beyond evil, beyond us, soon to be arriving to our rescue. It is a call for the new hero - ordinary, struggling with insecurity and fear, life-affirming, in process. This is the hero I trust and long for: the one that lives in each of us, the one we make in our gathering, in our activism, in our struggle. The Hero in the Mirror is nothing less than a call for a new consciousness and a new way of being." - Eve Ensler, activist and playwright, The Vagina Monologues"Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, The Hero in the Mirror is a book for our time. In the world of traditional heroes, everyone loses; trapped by the cultural imperative that constructed them, heroes are denied intimacy and tenderness, while those who idealize them diminish themselves by denying their own capacity for agency and courage. From the most personal to the most political, from childhood fantasies to psychoanalytic impasses, Grand redefines what it means to be heroic. This is a hopeful book, a call for a collectivity of small heroes who will resist the false comfort and polarization of the heroic cycle with ordinary goodness. Sue Grand leads the way." - Ghislaine Boulanger, Ph.D., author, Wounded by Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma"Sue Grand has given us a series of compelling meditations on the lure and the risk of heroism. In these generous, personal, and creative clinical stories, I was particularly struck by the links between heroism and intergenerational transmission of trauma. This book is a gift to our profession." - Susan Coates, Ph.D., coeditor, September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds