Deserts to Mountaintops: Choosing Our Healing Through Radical Self-Acceptance

In 2011, Jessica Buchanan found herself in the middle of a nightmare she could never have prepared for; she was a hostage in the desert, captured by Somali pirates, who held a 45 million dollar ransom demand on her head. Taken at gunpoint while on a routine field mission for her non-governmental organization, Jessica was forced to live in deplorable conditions, regularly tortured, and kept on a starvation diet for 93 days. On January 25, 2012, Jessica was successfully rescued by SEAL Team VI, upon order of President Obama, and finally brought home.

While Jessica experienced many opportunities for reflection and self-transformation during her time as a kidnapping victim, one of the most powerful truths she uncovered about herself was her disordered relationship with food. In the months that nourishment was repeatedly withheld as a form of punishment for failed ransom negotiations, Jessica realized she had been holding herself hostage for most of her life—with food. Throughout the course of her captivity, Jessica committed to the journey of examining her pattern of disordered eating and vowed to find a way to set herself free.

Deserts to Mountaintops: Choosing Our Healing Through Radical Self-Acceptance is a collection of nineteen women's voices, born out of Jessica's own struggle to love and accept her body, soul, and mind. Operating under the belief that we cannot heal fully in isolation, she has assembled a group of courageous women to generously share their stories of mental health disorders, chronic illness, disordered eating, sexual identity, and body reclamation. The result is a transformational guidebook for any woman who is committed to exploring self-compassion through the lens of radical self-acceptance.