Blog Archives
I’ve Made Plans
Mia J. Hanks’s I’ve Made Plans chronicles the author’s life after leaving a twenty-nine-year marriage marked by coercive control, emotional abuse, and covert narcissism. Beginning with the finalization of her divorce, Hanks shifts the focus from the dissolution of the marriage to the demanding work of creating a life beyond it. Her account follows a series of practical and emotional turning points, including confronting intimidation, rebuilding self-worth, establishing boundaries, managing isolation, and rediscovering personal freedom. When she leaves the courtroom with the realization that “My future now belonged to me,” the statement becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
The memoir’s greatest strength is its use of specific, everyday experiences to illustrate the lasting effects of abuse. A compromised storage unit, a bag of circus peanuts, a solo road trip, a broken thermometer, and an airplane journey all become meaningful markers of recovery. These episodes show how control can shape seemingly ordinary decisions and how reclaiming those decisions can restore confidence. Hanks writes in a candid, accessible voice that gives the book the intimacy of a personal conversation while maintaining a clear sense of purpose. Her willingness to examine her own people-pleasing, fear, guilt, and complicity in maintaining appearances adds depth to the narrative.
Each chapter is organized around a lesson, such as “Self-care is not selfish,” “Boundaries are necessary,” or “Freedom is priceless,” and many conclude with a journal prompt. This structure makes the book both a memoir and a reflective guide for readers navigating divorce, trauma, or major personal change. The later glossary, diagnostic criteria, list of covert narcissistic traits, and support resources extend its practical value. Some ideas recur across chapters, but the repetition reflects the gradual nature of recovery and reinforces the central themes of self-trust, autonomy, and deliberate healing.
I’ve Made Plans is ultimately a grounded account of reconstruction. Hanks presents healing as a collection of choices rather than a single transformative moment, and the construction of her new home provides an effective final metaphor for rebuilding her identity. Her concluding reflection, “I already love this life not because it is perfect, but because it is mine,” captures the memoir’s emotional center. Honest, encouraging, and thoughtfully structured, the book offers survivors a recognizable portrait of life after abuse while showing how freedom can be strengthened through boundaries, faith, self-care, and purposeful action.
Pages: 92 | ASIN : B0GX31KVYT
Exploring Forgiveness
Praying for a Wounded Child is a devotional prayer guide designed specifically for family members and caregivers of children who have been victims of trauma. Why was this an important book for you to write?
After perusing numerous books on prayer for one’s children as well as books on traumatized children, I noted a clear absence of books on praying specifically for traumatized children. Thus, I felt that foster parents and adoptive parents, as well as families facing battles, could best be strengthened by combining prayers along with information and guidance on traumatized children.
My heart’s desire herein is to spiritually, emotionally, and practically support those brave parents who deeply love and advocate for their wounded children. Briefly, too, I sought to use my education and experience as a mental health therapist and hospital chaplain as well as my trajectory as a parent to kids from hard places.
The book begins with the caregiver’s relationship with God before focusing on the child. Why was that sequence important to you?
This is an excellent question, and this order was intentional. An ocean of wisdom and strength is available in the Lord, as He can truly comfort and guide one. Moreover, checking the motives of one’s heart and offering forgiveness, even mentally, can liberate a caregiver’s mind and soul. Therefore, the critical area of forgiveness is duly explored.
In exploring forgiveness and various other aspects of a caregiver’s relationship with God, my intention was to first seek restoration and renewal for the caregiver spiritually as well as replenishment. Obviously, replenishment, renewal, and restoration are needed for a caregiver to give from a full bucket, as that saying goes.
What do you think caregivers often misunderstand about trauma in children?
Akin to grief, trauma in children is not the same as trauma with adults.
Generally, children lack critical thinking skills until roughly age 12 and sometimes even later, particularly with boys. Children’s verbal and processing skills are not fully established and present as their brains are still developing. Adults may be able to heal somewhat through verbalization, yet a child may need art or play with a healthy adult to begin to openly verbalize (and it may be minimal) or process their pain.
Children’s language, love language, and often their healing mechanism is play. And yes, a gift one can give to a child is to enter his or her world and play with what the child is drawn to, even if the child is not significantly wounded.
Additionally and notably, the child’s emotions may seem frozen or buried after the trauma, unlike some adults.
Thus, support groups for children where they are present with other children who have been traumatized, especially with a similar trauma, may help relieve the pain in a safe environment. These groups also may address and free a wounded child from a sense of loneliness and isolation in their pain. Examples are grief groups for kids (often found through hospices), Alateen, and foster care and adoption groups for kids.
I also wish to discourage parents from unknowingly denying or suppressing a child’s pain when the emotions come forth. Compensation, such as taking them out for ice cream, promising a gift, etc., is so easy to offer to stop the tears, big emotions, etc.
I totally understand that, and honestly, have been guilty of that as well. I truly believe this is a knee-jerk parental reaction, as it hurts us to see our child in pain.
Yet compassionate listening with statements such as, “I am so glad you are sharing this with me,” “Tell me more.” “I am not leaving you. I love you.” and “Please keep talking. I want to just listen to you.” or “I am here for you.” can heal, ensure a child’s safety with emotions, and facilitate a depth of bonding.
If a reader could take away one truth from Praying for a Wounded Child, what would you want it to be?
Raising a wounded child can be a profound vehicle to make us like Christ, meaning drawing one to Him as well as learning to respond to the child in a Christlike manner. Rather than viewing this as a burden (which can be easy to do as a human being), one can have the perspective of seeing this journey as a means to deeper prayer, a more understanding and empathetic walk with the wounded, and an opportunity to seek the heart of God for a wounded child.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Feeling Alone or Overwhelmed in the Journey?
In Praying for a Wounded Child, Wells offers a soul-stirring devotional born from her and her husband’s personal wrestling in prayer through unexpected issues as they parented all their cherished children which includes children from hard places. Her master’s degree in mental health counseling, and considerable experience with traumatized children lends to Virginia Wells’s authentic ability to empathize with parents involved in similar circumstances.
As you journey with Wells, you’ll encounter hope, wisdom, and relentless faith.
This riveting devotional goes beyond a good parenting book, and offers practical and spiritual guidance, cultivating a deeper relationship with Christ. Guidance and comfort are generously provided while still considering the emotional needs of your child.
You will discover prayers and insights about:liberating forgiveness
prejudice
the Luke 2:52 prayer
journaling intercession
attachment issues
extended family and siblings
identity
education
incarceration
abandonment
abuse
self-care
and more
Embrace a profound journey toward hope and healing, rediscovering the transformative power of prayer for both you and your children. This devotional is a beacon of hope for parents seeking understanding, clarity, and solace amid the concerns and challenges of parenting a wounded child.
The author will be donating 50 to 100 per cent of the profits of this book to help human trafficking survivors and other God-honoring, compassionate charities.
Baker Vaughan
Baker Vaughan is a contemporary family saga that follows a man in his fifties who leaves a polished but hollow life in New York, heads to Idaho, and tries to reclaim a calling to the priesthood that he abandoned decades earlier. From there, the novel opens outward into his past and present at once: family history in Virginia, old love, public shame, church politics, private guilt, and the stubborn hope that a person can still change late in life. What stayed with me most is that this is not a story about reinvention in the glossy sense. It is about excavation. Baker is not building a brand-new self. He is digging through the rubble of the one he kept dodging for years.
What I liked most about Hotchkiss’s writing is that it trusts conversation, memory, and moral mess more than plot tricks. The book has a big emotional reach, but it usually moves in a human scale, one uneasy conversation, one humiliating mistake, one remembered kindness at a time. I found that effective. Baker can be self-aware and self-deceiving in the same breath, which made him feel real to me. The prose often lingers on place, class, church ritual, and family texture, and that gives the novel a lived-in quality. I could always feel the author’s investment in these people, and that sincerity carried me through.
This book does not treat religion as wallpaper or as an easy source of wisdom. It treats faith as something tangled up with vanity, longing, performance, grace, and the need to be forgiven without always knowing how to earn it. That made the novel feel sharper to me than a simple redemption story. I also liked the way the family saga side of the book deepens the present-day drama. Baker’s mother’s alcoholism, the pressure of class and expectation, his early sense of calling, and the old relationships that still shape him all give the story weight. You can feel how the younger Baker never really disappears. He just ages into a more complicated man.
Baker Vaughan will resonate with readers who enjoy character-driven fiction, church and family dramas, and novels that care more about conscience than speed. I would recommend it to people who like literary fiction with a strong emotional backbone, especially readers drawn to stories about second chances, spiritual restlessness, and the long shadow of earlier choices. It’s reflective, sometimes raw, and patient in the way it lets a life unfold. The people most likely to appreciate it are readers willing to sit with an imperfect man and watch him try, fail, remember, and keep reaching anyway.
Pages: 337 | ASIN : B0GWRRNGSR
The Call I Almost Missed: 365 Days Without a Cell Phone and What It Taught Me About Love, Presence, and the Lies We Live
Tommy Short’s The Call I Almost Missed is a yearlong spiritual and emotional memoir told as a sequence of short letters to his daughters, and that shape gives the book its heartbeat. The premise is simple enough to hook you fast: a father turns off his cell phone for 365 days after his daughter asks, “Daddy, why are you always on your phone?” But the book quickly grows beyond experiment or stunt. It becomes a running conversation about attention, fatherhood, ambition, fear, faith, and the private ways people drift away from themselves. The letter format keeps the book intimate, and the repeated “What if” chapter titles give it a reflective rhythm that feels less like an argument and more like a man thinking out loud in real time.
What makes the book work is that Short writes with the urgency of someone who knows he’s been sleepwalking and doesn’t want to waste the wake-up call. He’s strongest when he ties his big ideas to ordinary scenes: a bedtime routine, a haircut gone sideways, a walk with his wife, a quiet panic attack, a rainy stop at the park before school. Those moments keep the book grounded. When he writes, “Presence isn’t proximity. It’s attention,” he lands on the book’s central claim in a way that feels real, not packaged. That line keeps echoing because the whole book is an effort to prove it, one family moment at a time.
The book is also a self-portrait of a man shedding identities that once made him feel valuable. Short writes about officiating basketball, speaking work, masculinity, control, and the reflex to stay reachable at all times. That gives the memoir a real arc. It isn’t just about removing a device. It’s about watching performance fall away and seeing what survives. I liked that he understands this process as both tender and disruptive. The book keeps returning to the cost of becoming more honest, especially in marriage, family life, and faith. Even when he gets intense, there’s a real vulnerability underneath it, and that’s what keeps the book from feeling abstract.
Stylistically, this is a devotional memoir with a motivational streak. Some readers will find the repetition calming; others may find it a bit much, but the repetition is part of the design. The book wants to ponder, not rush your thinking. Short’s best image for that approach comes early, when he says, “This book is not a map. Maps promise routes and destinations. But life rarely works that way.” That line explains the whole reading experience. You don’t move through this book to gather a neat system. You move through it to sit with its questions, and to notice how often it asks you to reconsider the life you’re building while you’re busy trying to manage it.
What I liked most is how clearly the book knows what it wants to be: a record of choosing presence on purpose. It’s a father’s testimony, a spiritual inventory, and a collection of letters meant to outlast the season that produced them. By the end, the phone itself almost feels secondary, which is exactly the point. The real subject is a human life becoming more awake. If you like memoirs that lean into reflection, family, and hard-won tenderness, this one has a lot to offer. It feels personal without being sealed off, and sincere without hiding its rough edges.
Pages: 294 | ASIN : B0GNX3WK9Q
One Last Question Before You Go: Why You Should Interview Your Parents
Kyle Thiermann’s One Last Question Before You Go is part memoir, part field guide for emotional courage. It begins as a practical project, recording conversations with his parents before it’s too late, but evolves into a moving exploration of love, misunderstanding, and reconciliation. Thiermann opens his life with remarkable honesty, describing a childhood shaped by idealism, tension, and unconventional choices. His storytelling blurs the line between instruction and confession, reminding readers that asking questions can be both a form of preservation and an act of healing.
Thiermann’s writing balances clarity and lyricism. He recounts moments from his youth in Santa Cruz with humor and unease: surf sessions laced with danger, family debates over truth and science, and a mother whose belief in conspiracy theories fractures their bond. When he writes, “Now when my mom and I look up at the same blue sky, she sees chemtrails, where I see clouds,” the simplicity of the line reveals something profound about distance and love. It’s this honesty, direct, unsentimental, but deeply felt, that gives the book its emotional weight.
His reflections on interviewing parents are both practical and philosophical. Thiermann treats listening as a skill that requires humility and patience. His advice to start with simple questions, to let silence breathe, feels genuine and attainable. He doesn’t posture as an expert but as someone learning in real time. When he describes forcing himself to write “bad questions” until something true appears, it captures the imperfect process of reaching toward another person.
The book’s rhythm is conversational yet purposeful. Thiermann alternates between intimate family vignettes and broader reflections on communication, mortality, and forgiveness. He resists the urge to offer neat resolutions, allowing discomfort and ambiguity to remain. That restraint makes his insights resonate more deeply.
One Last Question Before You Go manages to be both instructive and profoundly human. It’s a reminder that asking hard questions is not about control or closure, it’s about connection. This is a book for readers who value sincerity over polish, who want to bridge emotional gaps with their own parents, or who simply wish to understand their family stories before time takes them. Thoughtful, unguarded, and deeply affecting, Thiermann’s work lingers long after the final page.
Pages: 156 | ASIN : B0FR8JLM98
Journey Back to Ourselves
Don’t Disappoint Daddy shares with readers your story of growing up in a household filled with trauma, abuse, and believing you had to earn God’s love, to discovering a path of healing and the true meaning behind the Gospel and God’s love. Why was this an important book for you to write?
This book was important to write to share out loud that religion often confirms the lie we believe – that God is a bigger version of our unhealed daddy.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
It surprises me that the hardest thing to write about was that God never spoke to me about what I thought must’ve taken tremendous effort for Him to forgive, because I know it will trigger outrage from religious systems. Yet, if I agree with them, we’ll both be wrong.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Each of us is on a journey back to ourselves—an adventure filled with peril and intrigue.
Our original identity doesn’t come from our parents, environment, or upbringing. Our identity originated in the mind of a good, kind, loving Father.
Unlearning lies we believe about God and ourselves is a crucial and liberating path toward healing an identity crisis.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope readers extend grace to themselves and others as we navigate one of life’s most pressing questions: Who am I?
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Religion said she was a dirty, rotten sinner.
THEY WERE BOTH WRONG.
DON’T DISAPPOINT DADDY is an award-winning, raw and redemptive true story of Elisha Janine’s journey from childhood abuse and secrecy to healing and acceptance in the arms of a loving God. Marked by trauma, teen abortions, and the desperate need to earn love, she lived believing she had to serve God to pay Him back for forgiving her. But what she discovered was life-changing: experiencing the gospel isn’t about changing God’s mind about us—it’s about changing our minds about how we view Him and how we view ourselves.
This book is for every woman who’s ever felt disqualified by her past or afraid that God is disappointed in her. If you’ve been wounded by religion or life itself, Don’t Disappoint Daddy will lead you back to the truth: you are beloved, you are accepted.
What Readers Will Gain from Don’t Disappoint Daddy:
Healing for Deep Hurts
Readers will feel seen in their pain and begin to understand that their past does not disqualify them from love, purpose, or belonging.
Freedom from Shame
The book gently uncovers how shame distorts how we see ourselves and God—and shows how to shed that shame in light of God’s true heart.
A New Lens on God
Many will be surprised and comforted to learn that God isn’t angry, distant, or waiting to punish—but near, gentle, and deeply invested in our healing.
Relatable, Hopeful Storytelling
The story offers real-life validation that the journey from trauma to wholeness is possible, especially for those who’ve believed they’re beyond repair.
Permission to Rest, Not Perform
Readers will discover that God isn’t asking them to earn forgiveness—He’s offering restoration freely, inviting them to live from love, not for it.
A Sense of Belonging
The book invites readers to a deeper understanding of their identity as God’s beloved, not by achieving something, but by simply being who they are.
This is not a story of perfection—but of relentless, redeeming love from God who never counts our sins against us.
Don’t Disappoint Daddy: A Story of Abuse, Abortion and Acceptance in the Beloved
This memoir is a raw and unflinching account of childhood trauma, faith, survival, and eventual healing. It follows Elisha through her early years in a military household, where her father’s tyranny casts long shadows over every corner of life. Woven through beatings, verbal degradation, emotional confusion, and heartbreaking loneliness, the story also reveals slivers of hope through her bond with her mother, her growing relationship with God, and the slow, painful process of understanding her own worth.
Elisha’s writing is sharp, honest, and often devastating in its simplicity. She doesn’t try to dress up pain or smooth over the ugly parts. Her memories come to life with vivid emotional detail, pulling you into the child’s perspective. It’s not just a story, it’s an experience. Her use of humor, especially in moments of horror or confusion, is disarming. At times, I caught myself laughing through tears. The book doesn’t try to follow a clean arc or perfect structure, and that’s part of what makes it feel so real. It’s fragmented the way trauma is, and deeply reflective without being preachy.
I found myself angry. A lot. Angry for the child who was never protected. Angry at a society and a church that turned its head from abuse while preaching virtue. But I also felt proud. Watching her grow through those memories, learning to play piano, lead a choir, explore her voice, and find healing, was incredibly moving. Elisha doesn’t write from a place of self-pity. She writes from a place of survival, of transformation. There’s a quiet power in her words. She’s not begging for sympathy. She’s sharing so no one else feels alone.
This book is not for the faint-hearted. But if you’ve ever struggled with a difficult parent, spiritual confusion, or the long road of self-forgiveness, this memoir will speak to you. I’d recommend it for survivors, for adult children of abusive parents, for anyone working through religious trauma, and especially for those who feel like their story might be too ugly to tell. It’s not. Elisha proves that there is strength in telling the truth.
Pages: 143 | ASIN : B0D276HND1
Never Dull!
Never Dull! is a wild and heartfelt tribute to family, grit, and laughter, told through stories that feel more like tall tales around a campfire than your standard biography. At its heart, it’s a daughter’s loving homage to her vibrant parents—Marian and Nolan Sharp—and the larger-than-life characters that made up their world of rodeos, ranching, and rowdy good times. Through transcribed audio, photos, and personal anecdotes, Heather Sharp gives us a front-row seat to a life lived loud, full of joy, and never short on mischief.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to get as hooked as I did. The storytelling is casual and reads like someone pouring you a drink and pulling you into a story with a wink. The chapter “Live in the Moment” had me belly-laughing. A steer wrestler cuts off Marian’s ponytail in a bar as a joke, and her reaction? She rolls with it, gets a new haircut in the bar bathroom, and demands he buy drinks for life. That mix of sass and grace pretty much sums her up. And then there’s the moment where Nolan proposes after saving a cow with milk fever and roping it with a short rope. These stories aren’t just funny. They’re gritty, raw, and full of heart.
But it’s not all laughs. What caught me off guard was how emotionally honest the book is. There’s a recurring theme about living with purpose and keeping your word, especially in the chapter “The Guy in the Glass.” Nolan’s character comes through as humble, kind, and deeply grounded—a man who wasn’t of the cowboy world, but in it. His grandkids’ memories of him are gold. The chapter Come Fly With Me really tugged at my heart. I loved how it celebrated Marian’s late-in-life dream of becoming a flight attendant. At an age when most folks are slowing down, she was chasing the clouds, proving it’s never too late to go after what sets your soul on fire. The way Heather tells it—with humor, pride, and a little awe—made me want to cheer. It’s not just about flying; it’s about freedom, grit, and showing up for your dreams no matter how long they take.
Never Dull! is a rollercoaster of laughs, lessons, and lump-in-the-throat moments. It’s perfect for anyone who loves true stories that don’t shy away from messiness. If you like books with guts, grit, and a ton of charm—and especially if you’ve got a soft spot for cowboys or family tales—this one’s for you.
Pages: 330 | ASIN : B0C92KWNQQ
