Blog Archives
Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines
Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines tells the story of a childhood shaped by violence, poverty, mental illness, and constant upheaval. The author shares scenes that feel almost too real to read, moments where survival hangs by a thread, and small flashes of love keep her moving. The book follows her from her earliest memories with a schizophrenic and abusive mother, through years of instability, family trauma, homelessness, and danger. It is a memoir that traces pain in sharp detail but also draws a clear line toward resilience and the stubborn spark of hope that refuses to go out.
I felt pulled into the author’s voice in a way that left me raw. Her writing hits hard because she does not hide. She tells everything straight, letting each moment speak for itself. The simplicity of the language works in her favor. It keeps the story grounded. It also makes some scenes feel heavier because the words do not soften them. I kept thinking about how young she was during the worst moments and how she managed to hold on to any sense of self. The honesty in her storytelling is powerful.
I also found myself drawn to the way she describes small joys. A homemade sour treat from her grandmother. A moment of kindness from an aunt. A flash of sunlight during a hopeless day. These little details gave me something to cling to as a reader. They also gave the memoir a sense of rhythm. I appreciated how the author allowed those memories to stand beside the darkness without trying to smooth them together. Life often feels jagged that way. The book captures that unevenness with real heart. I found myself caring deeply about her younger self and feeling frustrated at how many systems failed her at every turn.
The story is heavy, no doubt about it. Still, the author’s insistence on survival leaves a clear message. Pain shapes us, but it does not have to end us. I would recommend this book to readers who appreciate personal stories told without filters, to those who work with vulnerable communities, and to anyone who wants to understand trauma from the inside out.
Pages: 221 | ASIN : B0FHY52WZ2
Grow, Evolve, and Blossom
Garden Quartz and Paper Flowers is a collection of stories and poems centered around a girl navigating the trauma of abuse and the healing process. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important for me to write, Garden Quartz and Paper Flowers as a way to finally close a chapter of my own life. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember: poetry, music, and short stories but I lost all my original works in a very traumatic incident. That use to haunt me, endlessly.
I don’t know of many stories that tell the tale of resilience, that transcends through time with authentic but healthy coping mechanisms. In this story, the main character Calla recognizes that self-work was required to set her free. For you never have to be your childhood or adulthood circumstances. Those moments will shape you but you should not allow them to break you.
My fondness for precious gemstones and flowers with inspirational meaning were the metaphorical tools necessary to breathe life into this piece. Stones are shaped by their environment. Flowers can weather the storm. Both survive under tough pressure.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting together this collection?
My biggest challenge was simply starting. For years, I dwelled on it subconsciously, should I pick up my pen again and recreate what was destroyed. Eventually, I got to a place where I said this is going to be therapeutic for you and it’s time to get it done. My second challenge was struggling with remembering much of what I originally wrote, but once I started to complete the individual pieces one by one, I was able to weave them together into one fluid story. You can delay the inevitable but it’s still has to get done, even when it’s overdue. I also needed to live a little bit longer, to complete this work of art in full circle.
Have you received any feedback from readers that surprised or moved you?
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on this piece of art. I’m honestly VERY surprised. I didn’t think it would move so many people to connect with it so deeply, especially since it’s a fiction. I know Art imitates life, and I know that some of the things I wrote could align as a lived experience rather than a collection of different occurrences. I just didn’t know it would resonate with some many people.
“Not for the faint of heart,” was the common themed remark. Which to me, shows I planted a seed and I hope it grows. Uncomfort as it relates to knowledge, has always been a sign that I’m headed in the proper direction. I remind myself every day, learn something new, try something different and feel something real.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from Garden Quartz and Paper Flowers?
I want readers to know that it’s okay to feel every emotion in the moment—but it’s not okay to live in the negative ones. We have to find the strength to rise, overcome pain, and to keep pushing forward. It’s not easy, but NOTHING in life is simple. After the all hard work, aches and pains, I promise greatness is waiting on the other side, ready to greet you.
You’re not your past. You’re not even your present. And you’re not even alone. Continue to actively grow, evolve, and blossom into who you’re meant to be. It’s time to do your due diligence. It’s time to rediscover your resilience. It’s time to heal. Let’s do this!
Pain has Transformed me. . .
Step into this immersive garden of ruin and bloom— a memoir told in fragments of memory, poetry, and survival.
This is the story of a girl named Calla, rooted in silence, shaped by shadow, and determined to rise.
Because not all wounds bleed. Not all truths are spoken.
And you never have to become what tried to break you.
Garden Quartz and Paper Flowers
T.L. Garrett’s Garden Quartz & Paper Flowers is a raw and unflinching collection of stories and poems that trace the life of Calla, a girl navigating the deep scars of trauma, abuse, and healing. The book reads like a patchwork of memory. Each chapter a petal torn from her past, revealing a life marked by generational pain, silence, and survival. Garrett writes in a style that blends memoir and fiction, pulling readers into scenes that feel heartbreakingly real. The imagery of flowers, roots, and stones threads through the work, symbolizing growth from ruin and the fragile beauty that comes from endurance.
The writing is heavy with emotion, but there’s a strange softness to it too. A tenderness that lingers even in the ugliest moments. Garrett doesn’t hold back, and it shows. The prose feels like a scream written into poetry. I found myself pausing often, sometimes just to process. There’s a rhythm in her storytelling that’s both jarring and intimate. Her voice feels lived-in, like someone telling a truth they carried for too long. Some passages are uncomfortable to read, not because of how they’re written, but because of how real they are. You can feel the child’s confusion, the teenager’s anger, and the adult’s reckoning all colliding in one soul. It’s unsettling. It’s human.
What struck me most was Garrett’s way of turning pain into purpose. She doesn’t ask for pity. She asks for understanding. The book dives into spiritual themes like healing, intuition, and forgiveness, but never in a way that feels forced. Her honesty feels sacred. I loved how she wove resilience through the narrative like a vine wrapping around broken glass. It’s not a perfect book in a technical sense, but that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. Her writing feels like it’s bleeding onto the page, and yet, there’s beauty in every wound.
Garden Quartz & Paper Flowers isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for readers who have lived through darkness and clawed their way toward light, or for those who want to understand what that fight looks like. It’s for anyone who believes survival itself is an art form. If you want something real, something that cracks you open and reminds you what it means to be alive, this book is worth every page.
Pages: 258 | ASIN : B0FJ4XM2JL
You Can Thrive
Sociomom is a raw and gut-wrenching memoir about surviving a childhood dominated by abuse, manipulation, and the long road toward emotional healing. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important to me to author this book not to share my story, but to illustrate that no matter what your past is, where you come from or what your current circumstances are, you can overcome and thrive.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
There are several:
- You are not alone in your struggles.
- If you want something different and better in your life you have to try different and better options to heal.
- No matter how hard you try, you can not and are not meant to do it on your own.
- There is no one size fits all approach but you have to lean into physical, mental and spiritual health options to move forward.
- Overcoming trauma and mental health challenges is a journey not a destination.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
The most challenging part was having to relive my journey and put all of my “stuff” out there for the world to see.
The most rewarding was the validations from reviews and other feedback how the book has helped others be seen and be inspired to move forward in their journey.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
It is never too late, and you are not too broken to move forward and change your path to healing.
Author Links: Website | GoodReads | Instagram | Facebook | Tik Tok | YouTube | LikedIn
Hope of Recovery
In Being Broken, you share the traumas of your childhood, heartbreaking losses, and how you were able to face the damage that shaped your life. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I had to understand how things could have gone so terribly wrong that my sister had to pay the ultimate price, with her life. I’m not a spiritual person, so I needed to believe that this was preventable; that there was a rational and reasonable explanation for this tragedy. Not only that, I needed to better understand my part and be able to forgive myself for either my inability to act in time, or if I had become apathetic to her plight from years of dealing with it. But the journey allowed me to view my own life from a better perspective. It allowed me to dig deep into the traumas of my past and move forward with forgiveness of myself and the fact that I was not responsible for what happened to either of us.
I appreciated the honesty and raw emotion throughout your memoir. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Top of that list is my sister’s death. I was so overcome with shame and guilt about not being able to save her, the only way to deal with it was to write about it. I was having a hard time articulating what I was going through, and to write it all out was relieving since the rumination during grief can be very overwhelming. However, equal to how difficult her death was, learning and writing about my sister’s rape was extremely difficult. As I wrote in the book, our parents downplayed my sister’s rape to the point where they were trying to convince me it didn’t happen. Because of their manipulation, I believed them, and the guilt and shame I felt when I read about it in her journals was heartbreaking. Knowing that I wasn’t there for her like I should have been while she was dealing with that trauma, alone, made me feel absolutely horrible. Understanding now it is not my fault, but the fault of my parents’ manipulation of me, that I wasn’t there for her during the most difficult time of her life allowed me to forgive myself.
What is one misconception you believe many people have about growing up in abusive homes?
That children, and even adults, can see and understand that they are being abused, and that escaping the situation is obvious. Many people in abusive relationships are unaware that they are experiencing abuse. I didn’t understand that my sister and I were being abused by our parents until after her death. The narcissistic front of family perfection that our parents projected out into the world made it very difficult for anyone to believe us when we talked about what was going on in that house. Further, the nature of the abuse caused us to live in fear of talking about it. To even consider sharing what was going on with us, we knew the consequences would be severe. And lastly, the amount of control my parents had over my sister’s life precluded any ability for her to escape. They had full control over everything in her life: her car, her lease/rental properties, her phone, money, even her son when she was deemed incapable of caring for him – and they constantly threatened to take it all away if she didn’t behave as they wanted. Truly understanding what was happening to us took a lot of study on my part; years of work through my sobriety, and then grief. By then, it was too late for her, but it continues to help me heal.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your experiences?
That if you are experiencing the same type of abuse, or have in your past, that you are not alone and there is hope of recovery. The common statistic is that 1 in 4 children experiences a form of abuse. It doesn’t have to be physical or sexual abuse, the most horrific types; it could be any type of mental or emotional abuse. Everyone experiences trauma, even the same trauma, differently based on their formative childhood years. Studies show that a child who experiences repeated forms of abuse has a very altered brain than one who does not. However, through neuroplasticity, therapy, and work, we can manage the challenges of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to rewire our brains to live healthy, improved lives and still accept and integrate what we faced as children.
Author Links: GoodReads | Bluesky | Facebook | Website | Amazon
The son, brother, stepson is the only one left to pick up the pieces. He begins a journey of the self and finds out the truth of his family. After going over letters, notes, emails, videos, and text messages, he uncovers a disturbing picture of the abuse his sister suffered at the hands of their parents. He also begins to better understand his own struggles with mental health and substance addiction because of the trauma and abuse he also suffered from their parents.
Follow the son as he looks through his family history to discover the generational abuse that trickled down through the years. Learn about how parents who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder emotionally abuse and manipulate their children. See how the abuse and trauma becomes mental illness in the abused, and how they fall into vicious traps of addiction, eating disorders, self-harm, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Witness the transformational change of the son as he works on the recovery of his inner child and tries to become the man he was meant to be.
Sociomom: My Story of Terror, Truth, and Triumph
Kevin Hughes’s Sociomom is a raw and gut-wrenching memoir about surviving a childhood dominated by abuse, manipulation, and the long road toward emotional healing. The book begins with a haunting scene at the deathbed of Hughes’s mother, a woman he portrays as both magnetic and monstrous. From there, he guides the reader through the labyrinth of trauma recovery, recounting his experiences with therapy, memory, and faith. The story is both personal and universal — an unflinching portrait of how the scars of childhood shape the adults we become and how confronting buried truths can lead to redemption.
Reading Sociomom felt like sitting across from someone who’s finally ready to tell the story they’ve held inside for decades. Hughes writes with an honesty that is as uncomfortable as it is necessary. His prose isn’t flowery; it’s direct, sometimes even harsh, but that’s what gives it power. There’s no pretense, no dressing up of pain. I found myself angry at times, heartbroken at others, but always drawn in. The way he weaves memory, faith, and self-reflection gives the book a rhythm that feels human, messy, and real. You can sense his years of emotional armor cracking as he writes, and that vulnerability pulls you right into his experience.
What hit me hardest wasn’t the horror of the abuse, but the quiet aftermath, the way Hughes describes trying to live as a functioning adult while feeling half-alive inside. His exploration of therapy, especially EMDR, and his struggle to reconnect with emotion felt deeply relatable. There’s pain in every line, but also resilience. The book doesn’t beg for pity; it asks for understanding. At moments, it’s almost too heavy, but then he grounds it again with flashes of humor or self-awareness that make it bearable.
Sociomom is a survival story and a testament to what healing can look like after a lifetime of emotional ruin. It’s not an easy read, but it’s an important one. I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s walked through trauma or works with survivors. It’s also for readers who crave truth told without varnish, who want to see what courage looks like when it’s stripped of polish and performed in real time.
Pages: 183 | ASIN : B0FDLFFLH8
Birth, Death, and Survival
Melanie Whyte’s Birth, Death & Survival is a raw and intimate poetry collection that traces a lifetime of pain, growth, and resilience. It unfolds like a memoir in verse, starting from the innocence of childhood and winding through heartbreak, abuse, motherhood, healing, and eventual renewal. The poems feel deeply lived-in, each chapter marking a phase of her life, from the trembling echoes of a broken home to the quiet triumphs of rediscovered love and strength. There’s a narrative thread that ties every piece together: the human instinct to keep breathing, to keep going, even when the air feels too heavy to bear.
Whyte doesn’t hold back, and I admired that honesty. Her words are simple but sharp, and she lets emotion take the lead. At times, the poems read like confessions whispered in the dark. Others feel like letters written to her past self, forgiving, reflecting, reclaiming. What struck me most was the rhythm of her healing. It’s not neat or linear, and she doesn’t pretend it is. Some verses gutted me with their quiet truth, like “The Room With No Windows,” while others, like “Still I Rise From Shadows,” filled me with soft and steady hope.
As I read, I found myself pausing often, not because the writing was difficult, but because it felt too close. There’s beauty in the way Whyte turns trauma into art without glamorizing it. The collection pulses with empathy, and even in the darkest corners, there’s light breaking through. I liked how she weaves motherhood, love, and survival together; it reminded me that rebuilding isn’t just about leaving the pain behind, it’s about learning to live alongside it.
Birth, Death & Survival is for readers who crave truth, who’ve walked through something hard and come out changed. It’s a book for survivors, for mothers, for anyone who’s ever had to rebuild themselves piece by piece. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to feel seen, or to those who want to understand what resilience looks like when it’s written in poetry and inked with life itself.
Pages: 181 | ASIN : B0FPXNQFMP
Being Broken: Tales and Essays of Survival and Death from Narcissistic Parental Abuse
Being Broken, by Geoffrey R. Jonas, is a brutally honest memoir about trauma, addiction, and survival. It follows Jonas through a childhood steeped in neglect and narcissistic abuse, into years of substance dependence, and finally toward healing and self-understanding. He recounts the deaths of his sister, father, and mother, all in a single year, and how those losses forced him to face the damage that shaped his life. The book mixes memoir with insight–part psychology, part confession, and all heart.
Right from the start, Jonas pulls no punches. In the foreword, he admits, “I am spewing my head out onto these pages,” and that’s exactly how it reads, raw, direct, and strangely freeing. The prologue on narcissistic parental abuse hooked me. He doesn’t just define the concept; he exposes how it poisoned his family dynamic and left scars that followed him into adulthood. The mix of personal detail and clinical explanation makes it both heartbreaking and fascinating.
What I love most about this book is its honesty. Jonas never paints himself as a victim. He admits to his own part in the chaos, lying, manipulating, and self-destructing. There’s something refreshing about how he refuses to hide the ugly parts. When he writes about his sister’s overdose or his parents’ emotional absence, he doesn’t look for pity. He looks for truth. The section “Fault vs. Responsibility and Blame” really stuck with me. His idea that “it’s not their fault, but they are responsible” reframes forgiveness in a way that feels mature and real.
Jonas’ writing hits hard because it’s unfiltered but thoughtful. The poem “Broken,” written for his sister, might be the emotional heart of the book. It’s tender and painful, a mix of love, guilt, and memory. And by the end, when he says, “Here I am. A survivor,” it doesn’t sound like a line from a movie. It feels earned.
Being Broken isn’t a light read, but it’s a powerful one. It’s for people who’ve faced trauma, addiction, or toxic family systems, and for anyone curious about how self-awareness can lead to recovery. Jonas writes like a man who’s been through hell and decided to document the landscape. It’s dark, hopeful, and deeply human.
Pages: 274 | ASIN : B0DZPGY1BZ
LITERARY TITAN 