Early on in the process people generally tell victimization stories. When you hear that from a person you know they're on the road to recovery. Well, I got the idea several years ago that in traditional societies mythology was the social story that helped people switch from victimization to empowerment. As it turned out, that's really true. So that's really where the source ideas for the book came from.
Myths are what help people switch from victimization stories to empowerment stories.
One thing in the book that I found very powerful were the myths that a certain tribe of people created about the slaves that were taken away. That was one of the key stories. My hypothesis is that, in traditional societies, myths were used to heal long-standing trauma. Then, quite by accident, I was in a library researching something totally different and came across a myth. But a hero adventure were they would travel to this deserted barren land and would suffer these horrendous trials and tasks, just as many of the heroes of this culture did in their myths.