Written by Cherionna Menzam-Sills, PhD
Reviewed by Kate White
“Physiology responds to and is intertwined with consciousness.” (p. 121)
I am always looking for information and research to support the prevention and treatment of birth trauma. The information is even better if it presents the baby’s experience. As an educator, organizational director, trainer, and practitioner of prenatal and perinatal somatics and the former Founding Director of the Department of Education for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPH), I gather articles and books that support the birth psychology paradigm. I utilized these resources to develop and facilitate APPPH’s Prenatal and Perinatal Educator Certificate program, also known as PPNE. It is noteworthy that one of the most relevant, yet accessible texts was Thomas Verny’s book, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, published in 1981. That book remains a seminal work that is applicable today. Now, in 2025, a new work with equal application and gravitas is Cherionna Menzam-Sills latest book, The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Trauma Experienced Before and at Birth.
Menzam-Sills offers readers an in-depth exploration of birth shadows, providing insights on how to address and heal these aspects to fully realize our inherent potential. As an experienced clinician and participant in prenatal and perinatal healing, I appreciate her straightforward approach to bringing the reader into contact with possible early shadows. She makes the distinction that our earliest experiences are implicit memories (not conscious or verbal). She supports her work with scientific explorations of the autonomic nervous system’s stress and threat responses, research from what we have learned about earliest development starting in utero from credible sources (Levine & Frederick, 1997; Van der Kolk, 2014; Porges & Furman, 2011; Porges, 2021), and cellular research on memory (Verny, 2023). She also incorporates representations from energy work, discussing research from HeartMath (2008), Bruce Lipton (2015), and other cellular studies.
The Prenatal Shadow is accessible to the lay reader and satisfying for the experienced practitioner in prenatal and perinatal somatics. For the lay reader just discovering the paradigm, Menzam-Sills has a friendly, gentle, and encouraging voice born out of decades of study and experience. Her authority is evident as she weaves a narrative of early development, autonomic nervous system states, trauma-informed care, embryonic development, prenatal and perinatal dynamics, and therapeutic interventions. Her ability to access research and quote pioneers who have influenced her work lends the narrative depth, while narratives from clinical studies provide the work with breadth. Her voice also illustrates the command of someone who has deeply explored the experiences of the “little one,” or the sentient baby. This is someone everyone can learn from.
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