Finding Comfort
During Hard Times

A Guide to Healing after Disaster, Violence, and Other Community Trauma

One of the founders of the Red Cross’s Spiritual Care Response Team, Earl Johnson helped to organize and provide on-site comfort care to both victims and front-line staff. When he started working on Finding Comfort During Hard Times, he never guessed we’d be in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic at its publication.

But we’re fortunate that the book is here, now.

Whether you’re actively preparing for a disaster, managing volunteers, planning a community memorial, or simply looking to understand our current crazy reality, Finding Comfort is an accessible reminder that communities can continue to thrive in the face of incomprehensible trauma, and provides much-needed guidance in how to navigate and process these traumas.

Where to buy Finding Comfort in Hard Times

Praise for Finding Comfort in Hard Times

There have been both natural and man-made disasters throughout history, but fires, floods, and mass shootings seem to be daily events in the twenty-first century. On the scenes of catastrophes are men and women willing to hand out coffee and blankets, provide medical attention, put out fires, and listen to the survivors. Johnson, an openly gay hospital chaplain and one of the founders of the Spiritual Care function in the American Red Cross, has himself comforted survivors at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, counseled AIDS patients, and provided spiritual help to 9/11’s first responders. In this thoughtful book, he uses his experiences to lay out guidelines for offering solace and support to victims and caregivers alike the first day, first week, even the first year following a disaster. . . . Opportunities to help are all around, and Johnson suggests ways to reach out to others who are suffering loss, illness, and loneliness. Disasters will continue, and Johnson’s informative and moving book will help readers offer succor.,

Booklist Starred Review

We live in very troubling times, unfortunately. . . Finding Comfort, written with great empathy and clarity, will be an invaluable resource for victims of trauma and disasters.

James Reginato

Writer-at-Large, Vanity Fair

Earl Johnson learned the hard way how to minister comfort in the worst of circumstances. He did it. In /Finding Comfort during Hard Times/, Johnson uses his experiences in the aftermath of catastrophe and unbearable loss to share the art of comfort, for those who need it and those who want to offer it. A timely read in a world where comfort is in short supply.

Candy Crowley

Journalist

Earl Johnson has written a thoughtful and helpful book for anyone who serves as a chaplain.

Harry Baker Adams

Dean, The Divinity School, Yale University