Aliza Hava Turns a #1-Charting Album About Childhood Trauma Into a Book for Survivors

Into the Light: Ten Songs & Stories Transforming Trauma to Triumph arrives August 20, expanding the acclaimed album into a multimedia experience of memoir, music, reflection, and self-reclamation

ASHLAND, Ore. — August 19, 2026 — Award-winning singer-songwriter and social-impact artist Aliza Hava releases Into the Light: Ten Songs & Stories Transforming Trauma to Triumph on Thursday, August 20, bringing the stories behind her #1-charting album into a deeply personal book about surviving childhood abuse, confronting its lasting impact, and reclaiming the possibility of a life beyond trauma.

Released November 14, 2025, Into the Light reached #1 on the Roots Music Report’s 2025 Folk Rock Album chart, while individual songs from the album also earned significant positions on the publication’s annual Folk Rock charts. Produced, mixed, and engineered by multi-platinum Grammy winner Mikal Blue, the ten-song album transforms Hava’s lived experience of severe childhood abuse into a musical journey from shame and fear toward agency, empowerment, self-love, and hope.

The new book expands each song into a personal narrative, pairing lyrics with reflections, psychospiritual insights, and prompts for self-examination and integration. QR codes at the beginning of each chapter allow readers to listen to the corresponding song as they move through the story.

Accompanying the book is the Into the Light Companion Journal: A Guided Space for Reflection & Integration, which invites readers to move beyond witnessing Hava's story and begin exploring their own patterns, experiences, and possibilities for transformation.

“This is not a story I ever planned to tell,” says Hava. “If I could have avoided revisiting my childhood altogether, I would have. But eventually I realized that the silence I had carried for so many years was standing between me and the life I wanted to create.”

That realization emerged in 2021, when Hava appeared to be on the verge of a major career breakthrough. After a severe neck injury abruptly left her unable to play guitar, the professional opportunities she had been pursuing disappeared. Forced into stillness, she began confronting memories and experiences she had spent decades trying to outrun.

She returned to songwriting at the piano, where she wrote “Love Who You Are,” the final track on Into the Light. Over the following year, she and Mikal Blue developed the album, transforming previously unspoken experiences into songs.

But the project's purpose ultimately became larger than Hava's own story.

Years earlier, while working as a summer camp counselor in Manhattan, Hava witnessed a toddler being violently assaulted by his father on a crowded sidewalk. Despite being terrified, she confronted the man and called the police. The child's face stayed with her for years.

Because of her own childhood, Hava recognized the child's terror.

Looking back, she realized that the same instinct that compelled her to stand up for that child ultimately compelled her to tell her own story.

“Silence perpetuates suffering,” Hava writes in Into the Light.

The book has received endorsements from figures in psychology, trauma recovery, spirituality, social impact, and the arts. Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder and CEO of Agape International Spiritual Center, calls the book “a courageous testimony to the indestructible nature of the human spirit,” praising Hava's transformation of childhood trauma into “a pathway of truth, self-reclamation, compassion, and healing.”

Clinical trauma specialist and therapist Norma J. Burton, M.A., M.Div., who wrote the book's foreword, describes the integration of music and narrative as “a multisensory pathway” that invites readers to engage with healing through multiple layers of experience.

Beyond her work as a recording artist, Hava has spent more than two decades using music and the arts to advance social justice, peacebuilding, human dignity, and connection. She has headlined at the United Nations, produced international events focused on social justice and peace, received Talent for Humanity's Human Spirit Award, and had music featured in Sharon Stone's documentary FEMME: Women Healing the World.

At its heart, Into the Light asks a simple but consequential question:

What can happen when we refuse to let the worst things that happened to us define the rest of our lives?

Publication Details

Into the Light: Ten Songs & Stories Transforming Trauma to Triumph

Aliza Hava | Amoraelia Entertainment, LLC

Publication Date: August 20, 2026

Full-Color Paperback — $24.99 | ISBN 9798295789687

Black-and-White Paperback — $17.99 | ISBN 9798295617126

Companion Journal — $12.99 | ISBN 9798295802850

Ebook — forthcoming

Available through Amazon and Aliza Hava's online store: www.alizahava.com

Upcoming Events

Virtual Book Launch

Sunday, August 30, 2026 | 3–4 PM PT | YouTube LIVE

Get details at www.alizahava.com/shows

Media Availability

Aliza Hava is available for television, radio, podcast, print, virtual, and in-person interviews.

Media Contact: info@alizahava.com

www.alizahava.com

About Aliza Hava

Aliza Hava is an award-winning singer-songwriter, musician, and social-impact artist whose work explores transformation, resilience, human dignity, and social change. Her album Into the Light, produced by Mikal Blue, reached #1 on the 2025 Roots Music Report Folk Rock Album chart. For more than two decades, Hava has used music and the arts to advance social justice, peacebuilding, and human connection, including performances and events at the United Nations. Her music has been featured in Sharon Stone's FEMME: Women Healing the World, and she is a recipient of Talent for Humanity's Human Spirit Award.