Between Wounded and Well: Lessons in Healing

by Debra Palmer, Candace Joice (Narrator)

What if the wounds you carry could become the source of your greatest strength?

Between Wounded and Lessons in Healing shares a nurse practitioner journey of resilience and hope through the lens of wound healing stages. Debra Palmer, PhD, nurse, researcher, educator and survivor shares an extraordinary story of a childhood marked by trauma and chaos, in which she chooses to not let her past define her future. Through decades of personal struggle and professional insight, she discovered that healing begins with courage.

Drawing on both her lived experience and her clinical expertise, Debra offers an honest, empowering look at the four stages of emotional Awareness, Acknowledgments, Activation, and Acceptance. With each chapter, you’ll find stories that reveal the hidden wounds many of us carry and practical steps for moving from pain to purpose.

Whether you’re healing from childhood trauma, supporting others on their path to recovery, or simply seeking to live a more whole and joyful life, this book will show you that brokenness need not define our stories. It can be the beginning of a beautiful new chapter.

Audible Audio

Published December 2, 2025

Reviews

[Catalina Coello · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a four part memoir where Dr. Debra Palmer shares her extraordinary trajectory from the time she became pregnant at 14 to her spiritual recovery later on in life. It’s a profound and very personal narrative where she compares her emotional healing to physical recovery; hence the title: Between Wounded and Well. Few books bring tears to my eyes as this one did. I ended up with profound respect and admiration for her journey and her resilience and quest to achieve above many barriers. I highly recommend reading it!

[Carole Hair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Debra Palmer shares her remarkable life story in this memoir filled with personal and professional challenges and successes as she progressed in her nursing career to become a nurse practitioner and doctorally prepared professor of nursing. She uses descriptions of wound healing as a framework to describe her transitions between positive and negative life experiences. The author emerges as a healthy and stronger person through her faith, persistence, resilience and ongoing self-reflections.

This inspirational book will appeal to readers seeking to find direction and meaning in their own lives as well as those interested in a realistic depiction of the opportunities, rewards and challenges of a professional nursing career.

[rdkpiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

My life is forever changed by the author's sharing of her life.
Her story is a circle of realizations stemming from a wounded heart, suffering physical and emotional neglects and abuse; her circle begins with awakenings of negative behavioural coping mechanisms, continues through the self-diagnosis of a fragmented relationship with Spirit, and ends with a victorious and peaceful reconciliation with those in her life who could not see their own light, let alone hers.
Debra Palmer teaches us how to recognize, accept, turn around, and let go of life's circumstances and reinterpret them as lessons towards healing. She navigates her Wounded Heart into Wellness: in the end, she is a higher physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being, offering others the same hope and encouragement to follow along on their own healing path.

[Nancy Hanson]

Dr. Debra Palmer's memoir, 'Between Wounded and Well, sends a powerful message to her readers. Life is full of surprises; many are life changing. She reaches deep inside to share her story of a traumatic childhood filled with adversity. She is a child making adult decisions choosing at 14 years old to step into adulthood and all that goes with. She takes us through her many challenges and shows the reader there can be a great life for those who want it.
"Life is not a private affair. A story and it's lessons are only made useful if shared." Dan Millman wrote those words. Dr Palmer is testament to them.