Blog Archives
Psychic-Spiritual Abuse
In Silent Talking, you explain how you were drawn into a world of psychological manipulation and abuse and how you were ultimately able to free yourself. What inspired you to share your experiences with others?
Well, I actually feel like a literary titan—having the courage to expose my story and bring my unheard of life out of the darkness and into the light. It has been a monumentally traumatic but healing journey, my soul has seemed to deem necessary! Every sentence was painful to bring onto the page. But the urge to do so prevailed. It was so overwhelming to face that in 2024, I published it in 32 pages and couldn’t iterate further. A year or so later, I began to flow more easily and filled in more details that were paining me inside to come out. I felt more healed and more able to emotionally observe from the outside and tell more, and revised and republished it in the 76-page edition it is today. It’s straight to the point and scopes the heart of 30 years. Unbelievable as I have faced—my trauma took my life—my entire adult life to face and overcome and return from. Exhausted now—I feel driven to make up for lost time, but realize that my life has become my story, and the time for both career and family with children has sadly passed me by. I’m finding more peace with that as my memoir takes flight and begins to validate my life—not what I wished to live—but what I did live instead. To further answer your question, the motivation to share came as an urge from my soul—a deep need to convey after bottling it in for 10 years, once I returned to the world.
I appreciate the candid nature with which you tell your story. Were there parts of your story that were especially difficult to put into words?
Yes, when I expanded the length of the book, much more was brought to the surface. Going into more nuanced detail about the brutality I faced in the presence of a single individual and remembering the experiences as if it were the very day, was soul-shaking. Talking more about their personality was especially traumatizing because I was drilled to keep their privacy. Keeping their privacy, I realized, was burying me alive. My first 32 pages quickly skimmed over these details and focused more on the kundalini channeling aspects versus the abuse that led me into that state.
Expressing took an actual additional year and nine months to be calm and strong enough to sit down again and expand on the narrative of my story. Albeit daunting—it was necessary to face for my personal healing, and I believe for the reader to have a whole understanding—especially as a life learning experience.
The memoir involves experiences you describe as supernatural or involving channeling. How do you interpret those experiences today?
Every individual has inherent psychic and extrasensory abilities, as all beings are one with the universe. Some people’s lie dormant their entire lives, some people know them young, and others seek to develop them later on in life. My memoir is about the experience of being forced to awaken your spiritual abilities through the experience of extreme psychological and physical hardship—where a ‘kundalini’ event manifests itself—opening your third eye. This involuntary ‘opening’ subsequently leads to the loss of one’s natural spiritual protection from ‘the other side’—I believe we are all born with.
There are many accounts of people being called to channeling or serving entities, as mentioned in my memoir. It is always presented in biographical and autobiographical nonfiction, where the channeler gives over their body as a vessel for the entities to take over and give health or spiritual messages to a client or to the world. No one discusses how the individual channeler lost their agency to these entities, and if it was truly their will. Everyone automatically accepts that that was a ‘good’ thing. But was that really the case? Because my experience with third eye openings and entity entrance into your body was not positive, it breaks open and sheds light on that that might not really be the case. This I now feel as my duty to convey.
When entities embody you, you feel obligated to serve them. I am working to strengthen and stand up for the rights of people who channeling has befallen, as Asian Shamans that are born into families for generations, that are forced to serve Deities through them and give readings to clients. Even if they are highly regarded and earn plus sums of money to give readings and perform rites—many shaman’s stories include the threat to parents from ‘the other side’ that their children will die young and must serve and become a shaman to live (the new South Korean reality TV series ‘Battle of Fate’ – can be watched on Hulu with English subtitles). Since my experience had no public virtue and I was literally frozen in my own body, I feel compelled to present my story and the awareness of an individual’s rights to agency inside their own body. I very carefully tread now to stay grounded, and it has caused me to isolate myself as much as possible. I am hyper-awakened and aware and gaining more insight daily.
What do you hope readers take away from your story?
I hope to enlighten readers to a new truth—an underlying theme between personal abuse leading to supernatural abuse. And that my emotional step-by-step account can relay a world of hidden undertow that all can benefit from being made aware of. I know no one has ever heard of psychic-spiritual abuse, and I am firsthand the testimony!
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
Honesty and Compassion
In The First Call Was Mine, you share the abuse of your childhood, the hardships of your adolescence, including suicidal despair, and the long road to healing. Why was this an important book for you to write?
For a long time, my story lived quietly inside of me. I carried the memories, the fear, and the resilience without ever fully putting words to them. Writing The First Call Was Mine became a way of reclaiming that story, not just as something that happened to me, but as something that shaped who I became.
Growing up in instability and abuse can make you feel invisible, as if your experiences don’t matter or your voice isn’t worth hearing. Writing this book was my way of pushing back against that silence. It was important for me to tell the truth about what it looks like to survive a chaotic childhood and still build a life defined by purpose.
I also wrote this book for others who have lived through similar experiences. Trauma can convince people that they are alone or broken beyond repair. If someone reads my story and realizes that survival, healing, and even joy are still possible, then sharing my story was worth it.
How did you approach writing about childhood experiences that were both formative and painful?
I approached it with a balance of honesty and compassion for my younger self. When you revisit painful memories, it’s easy to relive them through the lens of pain or anger. Instead, I tried to write those moments with the understanding I have now as an adult.
That meant allowing the experiences to be truthful without letting them become the entire definition of the story. The book isn’t just about trauma; it’s about resilience, growth, and the complicated ways we survive difficult circumstances.
At times, writing those chapters was emotionally heavy, but it was also surprisingly healing. Putting the experiences into words allowed me to process them differently and see the strength that existed in moments where I once only saw survival.
You draw a powerful connection between childhood survival and your work in EMS—when did you first recognize that link?
For a long time, I didn’t consciously recognize the connection. I just knew I was drawn to emergency services, the chaos of it all, and helping people in their most vulnerable moments. It felt natural to step into chaos and try to make things better.
Over time, I began to realize that my childhood had quietly prepared me for that kind of work. Growing up in an unpredictable environment teaches you how to read situations quickly, stay calm under pressure, and protect others even when you’re still trying to protect yourself.
EMS gave me a way to transform those survival instincts into something meaningful. Instead of chaos defining me, I was able to use the skills I learned from surviving it to help people in their most critical moments. In many ways, the career that grew from that path became part of my healing.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your experiences?
I hope readers understand that the circumstances we come from do not have to determine the limits of our lives. They don’t have to define us.
Many people grow up believing that their past defines them, that trauma, hardship, or instability will always control their future. My story is proof that those experiences can become something different. They can shape strength, compassion, and purpose.
Healing doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t erase what happened. But it does allow you to build a life that isn’t ruled by those experiences. If readers walk away believing that change, growth, and healing are possible, even after the hardest beginnings, then the book has done what I hoped it would.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
The First Call Was Mine is a raw and unflinching memoir about growing up in chaos and choosing a different future. With honesty and dark humor, Kayla traces her path from a traumatic upbringing to a career in emergency services, where she found purpose in running toward the very crises she once lived inside.
Becoming a firefighter and paramedic did not erase the past but it gave her the tools to face it. Through demanding calls, hard-earned resilience, and moments of unexpected grace, she begins to understand how survival can transform into strength. The book explores themes of foster care, trauma, identity, and healing, while examining how service, discipline, and community can help rebuild a life once shaped by loss.
This memoir does not offer easy answers or tidy resolutions. Instead, it tells the truth about what it means to carry trauma forward and still choose to show up, again and again. It is a story for anyone who has lived through adversity, questioned where they belong, or wondered whether it’s possible to break cycles that feel inescapable.
The First Call Was Mine is a testament to resilience, chosen family, and the quiet courage it takes to keep going, even when the past is loud.
The First Call Was Mine
The First Call Was Mine is a memoir about growing up inside relentless instability and then, somehow, building a life devoted to helping other people survive their own worst moments. Author Kay Blake traces a childhood marked by abuse, neglect, foster care, abandonment, and the aching responsibility of trying to protect her little brother, then follows that thread into adolescence, EMS work, paramedic school, chronic illness, sexual violence, suicidal despair, and the long, uneven work of healing. What stayed with me most was the book’s central idea that her instinct to respond to emergencies did not begin in uniform but in childhood, barefoot in the snow, wrapping her mother’s bleeding hand, or in the smaller, piercing moments that never quite leave, like a boy handing her his coat at school, or the locket her foster parents gave her when she was sent back into chaos.
I admired that Blake never writes like she’s polishing pain into something noble. She writes like someone who has stared at it for a very long time and decided, finally, not to lie about its texture. There’s a rough honesty to the prose that I found deeply affecting. At its best, it has a plainspoken force that lands harder than ornament would. She has a sharp instinct for the image that says everything. Christmas gifts arriving in black trash bags, Kid Rock becoming the soundtrack of dread, sleeping in a car that is both freedom and shelter, signing a dead friend’s guitar while half-thinking he’d be furious about the marker on the finish, these moments give the memoir its pulse. I also appreciated the dark humor braided through the book. It proves she survived it with her wit intact. That tonal balance is hard to manage, but here it often feels earned.
I also found the book compelling because of the ideas beneath the story, especially its refusal to romanticize resilience. Blake understands that being “strong” is often just what adults call a child who had no safe alternative. That insight runs quietly through the memoir and gives it moral weight. I was especially moved by the later sections, where the book shifts from survival into a harsher, more adult recognition that trauma doesn’t politely stay in the past. It follows her into love, into work, into her own body, into the institutional failures that greet her even after she does everything right. The chapter in which she reports being assaulted and is met with skepticism and procedural coldness is infuriating in exactly the way it should be. And the scene in the garage, when she nearly ends her life and then reaches, however shakily, for one stubborn reason to remain, has the kind of emotional nakedness that made me put the book down for a minute and think. Even when I wanted a little more compression or shaping in places, I never doubted the heart behind the pages.
The First Call Was Mine is painful, brave, and very human. Blake makes room for grief, rage, tenderness, absurdity, loyalty, and the slow dignity of choosing to keep going. I’d recommend it to readers of memoir who can handle heavy material and want something emotionally direct, especially people interested in foster care narratives, trauma and recovery, or the hidden personal histories carried by first responders. It’s a hard book in many places, but it has real warmth in it, and by the last page, I felt I had been spoken to by a person, not a performance.
Pages: 272 | ASIN : B0G5B3Z7J1
Scars and All
Scars and All is a hybrid of memoir, self-help, and conversational reflection, built around one deceptively simple idea: the wounds we carry can either keep us trapped in old pain or become a way of recognizing and easing pain in others. Lara Portelli opens with a stranger dropping milk in a Sydney supermarket, then follows that moment into a chain of encounters, most memorably with Helen at the Hydro Majestic, where a spilled carton becomes the trigger for a buried schoolyard humiliation, and later with Mia, whose mirror-bound self-loathing exposes how easily beauty standards colonize a woman’s inner life. From there, the book widens into chapters on self-harm, invisibility, dress size, cutting remarks, and visible scarring, always circling back to the same invitation: look at your scars honestly, then decide whether they’ll remain reminders or become a map forward.
Portelli writes like someone leaning across the table, saying, listen, this matters. At its best, that makes the book feel intimate in a way many books in this lane never do. Helen’s story, especially the awful convergence of guilt, self-harm, and the old humiliation of chocolate milk in her hair, has genuine force. So does the quieter ache of Mia asking whether she can “compete” with the women she sees in magazines, only to be told, beautifully and bluntly, “You don’t.” I also found the chapter on clothing size unexpectedly effective. The changing-room scene with the ruby-red dress is funny, a little chaotic, and painfully recognizable, which is exactly why it lands. The book is strongest when Portelli lets scenes breathe like that, when the ideas rise out of lived moments instead of arriving as instruction.
The writing has warmth, rhythm, and an unguarded sincerity I appreciated, even when it wanders into reflective detours. There are moments when the narrative shifts from personal storytelling into broader reflections, motivational language, and ideas around NLP, past life regression, and inherited trauma. Those sections didn’t resonate with me quite as strongly as the more intimate, lived scenes, though they still felt consistent with the book’s searching and deeply personal spirit. I trusted Portelli most when she was describing a room, a look, a humiliation, a sudden kindness, the soft light of Holly Difford’s photo shoot, or the raw fact of Turia Pitt refusing to let “5 seconds of pain and agony” define the rest of her life. I never doubted the sincerity underneath everything. The book’s moral imagination is generous. It wants people to be gentler with themselves and more alert to the hurt in others, and that conviction gives it a pulse.
Scars and All is heartfelt and genuinely affecting. I think it succeeds because Portelli is willing to be raw, personal, and earnest in service of a deeply human belief: that pain can enlarge us instead of reducing us. By the time she returns to the image of walking someone “to the safety of that dry space,” the book had earned its tenderness. I’d recommend it most to readers who like personal-development books with memoir blood in them, especially women navigating reinvention, self-worth, body image, or the long afterlife of emotional injury.
Pages: 96 | ASIN : B0FYNQG85V
THE MINDSET OF AN OUTLIER
The Mindset of an Outlier is an intense and personal guide to inner transformation. In it, Karamokoh B. Wurie blends spiritual reflection, personal struggle, and motivational fire to offer a roadmap for reinventing your life. The book moves from philosophical musings about reality and consciousness to brutally honest advice on how to confront addiction, self-doubt, and trauma. Wurie argues that life is an illusion shaped by your thoughts, and that by shifting your mindset, you can shift your entire existence. Part spiritual manual, part no-nonsense coaching, it’s written in a voice that feels both raw and uplifting.
I was drawn to the book’s bold, no-filter tone. Wurie talks about suicidal thoughts, toxic leadership, childhood pain, and the feeling of being spiritually lost, but does so with purpose. His voice is fierce but warm. He challenges you without patronizing. Some parts felt like a sermon, others like a late-night heart-to-heart. What I appreciated most is how he fused spiritual language with everyday pain, making big ideas like “consciousness” or “parallel realities” feel accessible. His core message is about reclaiming your life from the inside out, and that’s something that resonates, regardless of belief system.
At times, some ideas were revisited, and a few concepts could have been clearer with more structure or explanation. I also found myself occasionally wanting a few more real-life examples or outside perspectives to help ground the insights being shared. But then again, this book isn’t about data or citations, it’s a battle cry from someone who’s clearly lived through a lot and wants to help others do the same. Wurie’s emotional honesty makes up for any lack of polish. His rawness is his strength.
The Mindset of an Outlier is for anyone who’s tired of being stuck, who’s questioning the story they’ve been telling themselves, or who simply needs someone to say, “You’re not broken. You’re just not done yet.” This isn’t a book for skeptics or cynics looking for clean formulas, it’s for the searchers, the strugglers, and the spiritually hungry.
Pages: 134 | ASIN : B0FJL6WYCJ
My Authentic Self
Invitation to Co-Creation: A Spiritual Path from Child Abuse and Religious Trauma to Love, Healing, and Oneness is a personal and courageous exploration from the scars of childhood abuse and religious trauma. Why was this an important book for you to write?
There were a number of reasons why it was important for me to write my memoir. The process of healing childhood and religious trauma was empowering and transformational. By sharing my journey I hope readers are inspired to discover their own unique paths to healing and know that it’s always possible to overcome adversity.
I also wanted to tell my story because many of my traditional family and friends were unfamiliar with my traumatic background and current progressive Christian beliefs. They had no frame of reference to understand my spiritual experiences or belief in a loving, inclusive God. Through my writing, I tried to create a bridge to help my loved ones know me better. I had hidden my authentic self most of my life. My intense fear of rejection kept me silent. It took a leap of faith to share so vulnerably and publicly. It was freeing when I finally found the courage to speak my truth.
Though it was my personal goal to create a bridge of understanding from the traditional to the nontraditional for my family and friends, it became clear that, in this era of polarization, we need a way to span the gaps between our differences now more than ever, so that we can engage more respectfully with one another. Thus, my personal goal of bridging divides expanded into a broader purpose for this book.
The actual inspiration for my book occurred in 2015 when I reached out to Blessed Mother Mary for healing and direction for my life, and I received a message to write Invitation to Co-Creation. As I reflected on the traumas I had experienced and where I was stuck in my life, I was encouraged to make changes and then write about them. It was also important for me to showcase another message I received from Mother Mary – a vision of oneness and global harmony that all are invited to co-create. It wasn’t until I was further along on my journey that I realized my personal healing goals intertwined with this collective vision.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
It was important to share my understanding of co-creation as a dynamic, interactive process between a benevolent God and humanity. I initially experienced co-creation thirty-seven years ago when I developed a debilitating medical condition that stymied traditional medicine. After a prayer for healing, I was divinely guided step-by-step (through signs, intuitions, and synchronicities) to complementary healing practitioners and treatments until I was healed. This was the first time I experienced co-creating my life with the Divine, even though I didn’t have a word for it back then. Through the process of co-creation, I was also led on a divinely guided journey to heal from childhood and religious trauma, which freed me to know self-worth, find forgiveness for my parents, experience peace in my progressive Christian beliefs, and live with love, joy, and authenticity.
However, co-creation isn’t just for me. It’s part of everyone’s spiritual heritage as a child of God and the Universe to ask questions and receive answers. In my book, I describe the process of co-creation and how to tune into divine guidance in greater detail, and I offer additional personal examples.
Oneness is another concept I wanted to bring to life. Mother Mary shared her vision of oneness– that we’re one interconnected human family– and her hope that this awareness would lead to a peaceful world. When we remember we’re all in this together, we’re more likely to focus on our commonalities and engage in collaboration and cooperation to find personal and global solutions that work for all.
(Incidentally, oneness doesn’t mean uniformity; rather it’s a unity that also honors diversity, where everyone is included, valued, and respected.)
I deeply resonated with Mother Mary’s vision of oneness. It was easy to imagine standing in a circle holding hands with diverse, unknown people from all corners of the world, coming together as one. However, on a personal level, I also struggled with this vision, because I felt separate from those that hurt me. My traumatic experiences from childhood and religious trauma threatened our bonds. It took an inner journey where I learned to live from my heart, instead of my hurt, to rekindle my connection with them. By healing the rifts within myself and the disconnection in my relationships, oneness became a real-life experience.
I suspect I’m not alone in finding it easier to align with an ideal vision of oneness. It’s far more challenging to come back to the real world and heal the hurts that keep us alienated from one another and engage respectfully across our divides. But this nitty-gritty work is exactly what we need to do.
We’re at a crossroads. Major polarizations and divisions are pulling us apart.
We have an opportunity to reverse this course. We’ve been invited to build bridges to one another, reconcile our relationships, and see the world as an “us”, rather than as an “us versus them.” Invitation to Co-Creation offers inspiration and practical tools to make the dream of oneness in our relationships, communities, and world a possible reality.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
Hands down, the most challenging circumstances to share were the traumatic events from my childhood that reverberated into adulthood, impacting every area of my life. However, writing was also very therapeutic. It was gratifying to see and experience the healing that brought me to the place where I am today.
Without diminishing the negative influence that childhood and religious trauma have had on my life, these core wounds also acted as catalysts for my spiritual growth. These life challenges were the hidden gifts that moved me out of victimhood and into empowerment. As I became the author of my life I found meaning, passion, and a purpose that went beyond my personal healing to collective healing. It has been very rewarding to share my journey and the broader purpose of my book– Mother Mary’s vision of global oneness.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
When you co-create your life with the Divine you’ll be embarking on your most rewarding spiritual journey ever. You’ll realize that the Divine is always available to empower, support, and guide you to become the best version of yourself and to live the beautiful life you’re meant to live. The significance of undertaking your journey can’t be overstated because all personal healing leads to collective healing. When you transform yourself for the better, there’s a ripple effect, and you transform the world for the better.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
This spiritual memoir tells a story of hope and transformation that invites readers to embark on their own journey for personal and collective healing.
Lorrie’s harsh childhood and toxic religious upbringing echoed with punishment and abandonment. Trauma ruled her world. For years fear kept her from sharing her true self, beliefs, and family secrets. But after a prayer for healing, she was invited on a mystical, co-creative journey that changed her life. Divinely guided inner work freed her to know self-worth, find forgiveness, and experience peace, and joy. She found the courage to live her truth. She left the wrathful, excluding God of her childhood behind and was welcomed by a benign, compassionate, inclusive God.
While praying to Mother Mary, Lorrie received a message to write this book, as well as an inspired vision of unity in diversity–a circle of global harmony that all are invited to co-create. This vision mirrored her progressive Christian belief in a loving God, inclusive of all faiths and spiritual paths.
But how do you live in oneness when beliefs and views clash and emotions are triggered?
This timely memoir details one woman’s journey to heal past traumas, honor differences, and expand the circle of inclusion–and reveals how you can too.
Invitation to Co-Creation offers tools for individual and communal healing and is for you if you’d like to:
Find inspiration to overcome life challenges, heal trauma, and make a difference.
Discern divine guidance and experience your own co-creative journey for an amazing soul-purposed life.
Discover how an inclusive spirituality promotes a sense of being one interconnected human family.
Create bridges and foster healing in relationships and communities to bring the dream of global oneness one step closer.
Invitation to Co-Creation: A Spiritual Path from Child Abuse and Religious Trauma to Love, Healing, and Oneness
M. Lorrie Miller’s memoir, Invitation to Co-Creation, is a deeply personal and courageous exploration of healing from the scars of childhood abuse and religious trauma. Lorrie’s early years were fraught with abandonment, harsh discipline, and the weight of a toxic religious environment. These experiences led her to retreat into herself, concealing her beliefs, emotions, and painful family secrets. Everything changed when she embarked on a transformative journey. Through inner work and spiritual growth, Lorrie uncovered forgiveness, self-respect, kindness, and a profound sense of self-love. Most significantly, she found peace and love within herself. This journey allowed her to shed the trauma of her past, step into a healed version of herself, and share her powerful story of redemption and growth.
In her memoir, Lorrie answers universal questions such as how do we survive life’s most devastating challenges? How do we move forward to find hope and meaning? Her narrative is raw and vulnerable, written to inspire readers of all backgrounds—spiritual, religious, or otherwise. She bares even the darkest moments of her life to show that healing and transformation are attainable.
This book is both deep and thought-provoking. I was moved by the depth of her story and its ability to offer hope and inspiration to anyone seeking healing, regardless of their spiritual or religious beliefs. Lorrie’s unflinching honesty makes her journey relatable and impactful. While I enjoyed the book, I felt the book’s writing style occasionally affects its clarity. At times, Lorrie’s intentions were less clear, which could make it challenging for readers who are less familiar with spiritual or religious concepts to fully engage with certain passages. However, once the rhythm of her voice becomes familiar, the narrative flows more smoothly. This memoir deserves recognition for its authenticity and courage.
Lorrie’s journey is one of resilience, transformation, and the pursuit of inner peace. Invitation to Co-Creation stands as a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and I honor her willingness to share her story with such openness. Its message of healing and hope makes it a meaningful read.
Pages: 297 | ASIN : B0DPB773X8
The Sound of an Ordinary Life
In The Sound of an Ordinary Life, Alis Cerrahyan embarks on a profound journey, revisiting her seven-year-old self after six decades to confront and heal from the personal challenges of a painful childhood and dysfunctional family dynamics. Through this introspective narrative, she reassures her younger self that, despite the dark clouds of the past, life evolves into a rewarding journey. Cerrahyan delves into themes of forgiveness, particularly towards her mother, and the healing process from neglect and ridicule. Her candid exploration offers readers valuable lessons on forgiveness, healing, emotional intelligence, confidence, and embracing positive energy.
The memoir intertwines the innocent perspective of a child with the wisdom of age, creating a realistic portrayal of her younger self, complete with the questions and thoughts typical of a child. Cerrahyan poses deep, philosophical inquiries such as, “Why is life so full of sadness?” and “What must a person do to find lasting happiness?” These reflections underscore the importance of self-awareness and addressing unresolved issues. By recalling past experiences, like being reprimanded for laughing in class and feeling disappointed by a favorite teacher, she illustrates the early disappointments that shaped her life. The book explores a diverse array of themes, including motherhood, religion, migration, and entrepreneurship in the salon business. These facets, representing different stages of Cerrahyan’s life, are thoughtfully interwoven and presented engagingly throughout the narrative.
The Sound of an Ordinary Life is a poignant portrayal of a woman committed to the inner work necessary to heal from past pain and embrace life’s potential. Readers who have endured the hardships of an unwelcoming family during childhood will find inspiration to connect with their inner child and seek closure, much like the author achieves in this memoir. Its reflective, metaphorical, and thought-provoking essays are a true treasure.
Pages: 206 | ASIN : B0DKCJF95V
