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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
I Wasn’t Alone
The Trauma Monster shares your story of looking into the unsolved murder of your childhood friend, and through the investigation and with the knowledge you gained as a trauma therapist, helped your community heal. Why was this an important book for you to write?
The Trauma Monster was never just about writing a book. I was not a writer by profession but I decided to learn to write so I could help others deal with longstanding trauma. It was also about breaking a silence that’s hung over my community, and over my own life, for decades. I grew up with unanswered questions, carrying the weight of childhood loss, violence, and unresolved grief. When someone you cared about is murdered, as my first crush, Scott Leishman, was, and the case goes unsolved, the trauma doesn’t end. It lingers, it shapes one, and it shapes the town around each of us that was affected.
This book was my way of finally giving voice to the pain that was hidden for too long. But it’s also a book about hope. It is about how, even after decades, people can come together to seek truth, to heal, and to demand answers. Writing The Trauma Monster allowed me to honour the victims, amplify the voices of those who were silenced, and show others that healing is possible, even when justice feels out of reach.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
There are three important ideas that I hoped my book described. First, I wanted people to understand that trauma doesn’t just belong to the families of victims, it eventually ripples through entire communities. When a murder goes unsolved, it leaves behind more than grief. It leaves fear, silence, and shame. I saw that in London, Ontario, and I carried it personally with me for decades.
Sometimes, families didn’t want the investigation stirred up again. They were grieving in their own way, or protecting themselves from more pain, which is their right. But that silence didn’t stop the hurt, it just pushed it underground for everyone else. Friends, classmates, shopkeepers, neighbours and others, we all were left with unanswered questions, and nowhere to put their pain.
Second, I wanted to show that unsolved murders aren’t just cold files, but actual human stories. The victims weren’t statistics; they were kids I went to school with, the boy I once had a crush on. They had dreams, fears, favourite songs. Their stories deserved to be told, and with dignity, with truth.
Third, I wanted people to know that healing is possible, but it starts with facing the past. It starts with stories being told, even the uncomfortable ones. Even when justice feels impossible, we can still reclaim our voices. Silence may have protected some, but it also trapped many others. It’s time for the silence to end.
What was the most challenging part of writing your book, and what was the most rewarding?
The most challenging part of writing The Trauma Monster was carrying other people’s pain, and recognizing my own pain, at the same time. I spent years listening to stories that were buried for decades, including stories of violence, fear, and loss. Some of those were my own stories too. There were moments I’d sit at my writing desk and think, I can’t do this because it’s too heavy, too heartbreaking. But I also knew that staying silent wasn’t an option anymore, not for me, and not for the community.
Another challenge was navigating the delicate reality that not everyone wanted these stories reopened. Some families, understandably, wanted the past to stay buried. I had to find a way to respect that, while still standing up for the friends, classmates, neighbours, meaning the rest of us who’d been living with unanswered questions and hidden trauma all this time.
The most rewarding part, without question, was seeing what happens when people finally feel heard. I’ve had survivors, classmates, even complete strangers tell me that reading The Trauma Monster made them feel less alone. For the first time, their fear, their grief, even their anger, was seen, validated and understood. That’s why I wrote it. Not to stir up pain for the sake of it, but to remind people that silence doesn’t heal, but truth, connection, and shared stories can.
How has writing this book impacted or changed your life?
Writing The Trauma Monster changed my life in ways I didn’t expect. It gave me back my voice and not just as an author. It gave me a way to tell my own story as someone who grew up carrying unanswered questions and unspoken grief. For decades, I thought I had to live with the silence. I thought that’s just how it was because people didn’t talk about these murders, and the pain stayed tucked away in the corners of our lives.
But the more I researched, the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I realized how many of us had been carrying the same weight. Writing this book showed me that I wasn’t alone. More importantly, I didn’t have to be quiet anymore.
It also connected me with people I never would have met otherwise, including other survivors, families, citizen sleuths, even people from my own past I lost touch with. Some of them shared their memories for the first time in 50 years. That’s powerful.
Most of all, it reminded me that healing doesn’t come from pretending nothing happened. It comes from telling the truth, even when it’s messy, even when it’s hard. Writing this book helped me face my own trauma, honour the people we lost, and finally believe that it’s not too late for change or for answers, or for a community to begin healing together.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
The Trauma Monster: A Healing Journey through the Untold Cold Case Stories Of One Ontario Community
The Trauma Monster is a gut-wrenching yet hopeful book that weaves together personal memoir, true crime investigation, and trauma therapy insights. Set in Ontario during the 1960s and ’70s, the book begins with the unsolved murder of the author’s childhood crush, Scott Leishman. That loss becomes the starting point for a wider exploration into a series of cold cases that haunted the community and left lingering emotional scars. Through firsthand accounts, interviews, and years of therapeutic work, Dorrington tells the stories of survivors, people who were children during those years and never had a chance to speak. At its heart, the book is about the long reach of trauma, the silence it breeds, and the healing that comes when people feel safe enough to speak.
There’s a raw honesty to Dorrington’s voice that pulled me right in. She doesn’t write from a distance. She’s not an outsider poking around in someone else’s pain. This was her town. These were her friends. She opens herself up on every page, and that openness gives the book its power. The writing is simple, which works here. No need for flowery prose or academic terms. At times, the book left me breathless. She paints the ’60s in vivid detail. The crime scenes aren’t sensationalized, but they do haunt. I kept thinking about the kids who didn’t come home. The way Dorrington connects personal grief with collective trauma is what makes this more than a true crime book.
What surprised me most was how tender it is. For a book about murder and silence and shame, there’s so much care here. Dorrington is a trained trauma therapist, and it shows, not in technical talk, but in how she handles each story with compassion. She gives voice to people who were never asked to speak. Her inclusion of art, storytelling, and even a workbook makes the book not just a record but a tool for healing. I found myself thinking about my own losses, my own unspoken stories. That’s the kind of impact this book has. And still, she doesn’t tie anything up neatly. She’s not pretending these wounds close easily. The monster, as she calls it, never disappears. But it can shrink. It can be drawn, faced, and named.
This book is not just about old murders or sad memories. It’s about witnessing. About telling stories that were hidden too long. I’d recommend The Trauma Monster to anyone who’s been through something hard and is still trying to name it. It’s not an easy read, but it’s a comforting one. If you like true crime with heart, if you’ve felt unseen or unheard, or if you’re trying to heal, then this book is for you.
Pages: 297 | ASIN : B0F7D6SCL8
Belonging
Un-Adoptically Me – My voice: Winning Beyond the Primal Trauma of Adoption is a raw memoir told through 88 “snapshots” tracing your journey navigating the complex and lifelong ripples of trauma surrounding adoption, love wrapped in loss, gratitude clouded by grief, and identity tangled in silence. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing Un-Adoptically Me wasn’t just important. It was inevitable.
It came from a place deeper than memory—where silence had calcified into shame, and my voice had gone missing inside the myth of being “lucky”.
It was terrifying, sacred, and necessary. Every page demanded I unearth the unspeakable, stand inside it, and speak anyway. This wasn’t about blame or bitterness—it was about belonging. About breaking open. About burning down the false self to finally meet the real one.
I didn’t write this to tell my story.
I wrote it to free it.
And in doing that—I freed me.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
I wanted to say the things we’re not supposed to say.
That adoption can feel like a blessing and a betrayal. That “gratitude” can be a cage. That finding your voice often begins with breaking your own heart.
I wanted to make room for the full truth: the mess, the miracles, the paradoxes that don’t fit neatly on a Hallmark card.
Most of all, I wanted to hold space—for the reader who’s never felt seen. For the silence that lives inside so many of us. To say: your pain is valid, your story matters, and you’re not broken—you’re becoming.
This book is a love letter to the truth.
And an invitation to come home to yourself.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
The hardest part?
Telling the truth in a world that prefers the fairytale.
Writing this book was like opening a locked room in my soul and walking barefoot through the wreckage. Every sentence cost me something. Every memory asked, Are you ready to feel this now?
But the reward?
Everything.
The release. The reclamation. The raw, holy exhale of saying, Here I am. All of me.
I didn’t just write a book.
I shed a skin.
And what remained was something I never thought I’d find—peace, on my own terms.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
That you’re not crazy. Or too much. Or alone.
That your feelings are real, your story is sacred, and your truth is worth telling—even if your voice shakes.
If one person closes my book and finally feels understood—not fixed, not explained, just seen—then I’ve done what I came here to do.
We heal in the presence of truth.
And if my truth helps you hear your own, then every shadow I faced was worth it.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
In the first moments of life, a baby’s cry echoes through the universe. Her tiny hands grasp for the welcoming warmth of her mother’s touch, but what happens when that touch never comes?
Torn from the sacred womb – the only home she’s ever known – she’s helplessly thrust into a world of well-meaning strangers. Her heart branded with the haunting refrain that refuses to die: Mommy, I’m scared. Why did you leave me behind?
The unspoken contract of closed adoption shackles her with a cruel bargain: We will gift you a loving home, but you must relinquish your legacy, your birthright, and your true identity.
To survive her trauma, she silences her understanding of love, loss, and belonging. She builds her identity on a fractured foundation of fear, shame, and disconnection. She shrouds her life in secrecy, and seals her fate by compliance and surrender.
She spends a lifetime struggling to understand her place in the world. Don’t speak, don’t feel, don’t remember – just be grateful that you were chosen. But what happens when the façade cracks and the truth comes spilling out? Sometimes, the greatest truth is the one that’s been buried within.
Through 88 intimate snapshots, this moving memoir chronicles the author’s transformative journey, mystically fueled by inner wisdom and guidance. With raw honesty, she unshackles the chains of family betrayals and abusive relationships, and emerges into a life of authenticity, freedom, and empowerment. Her soul-baring story will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever felt trapped, silenced, or dismissed.
As you step into her world, she invites you to walk alongside her in finding your own voice and speaking your own truth. She offers a powerful reminder that you, too, can reclaim your life and live with purpose and passion.
Join her quest and get your copy now.
The Author’s Promise
Un-Apologetic. Un-Afraid. Un-Silenced.
Un-Adoptically Me — My story. My truth. My voice.
Elmarie Arnold’s Un-Adoptically Me is a raw and personal memoir told through 88 vivid “snapshots” that trace her journey as an adoptee navigating the complex and lifelong ripples of primal trauma. It dives into the bittersweet paradoxes of adoption, love wrapped in loss, gratitude clouded by grief, and identity tangled in silence. Through poetic, bold, and often gut-wrenching storytelling, Elmarie lays bare her emotional landscape, from her childhood innocence to adult reckoning, through motherhood, heartbreak, and healing. It’s not a straight line. It’s layered, messy, and brave.
There’s a section in “A Life Reborn” that just clung to my heart—Elmarie writes about holding her newborn son for the first time in the same hospital where she was born and later adopted. That moment wrecked me. She’s breastfeeding him, watching this new little life cling to her, and all she can think about is how she’ll never abandon him like she feels she was abandoned. I’ve had my arms around my own kids and thought those same fierce, protective things. Her writing is like that, so personal it feels like it echoes something unspoken in you. It’s poetic without trying too hard. Honest without being self-indulgent.
What stood out most to me, though, was her unfiltered rage and heartbreak when she finally receives that cold, clinical letter from the adoption agency. Just nine sentences about her birth mother. Not even a name. No warmth, no story. As a mother, that shattered me. The way she talks about the absence—not just of facts, but of acknowledgment—makes you see how trauma isn’t always what’s done to you but what’s never given. It made me want to hold my own daughter tighter. Elmarie doesn’t ask you to agree with her or pity her. She just wants you to witness her truth.
Her writing about motherhood is probably what resonated with me the most. “The Shadows We Keep” is a letter she wrote to her son after learning he had been molested for years under her roof while she was lost in trying to “find herself.” The pain in her words is unbearable. Grief, guilt, shame. She admits everything. Doesn’t hide behind excuses. I found that passage almost too painful to read, but also too important to skip. It’s a brutal, beautiful reckoning. And what’s wild is, despite all this trauma, Elmarie keeps showing up. For her kids, for herself. She breaks apart and pieces herself back together again, and then somehow, she writes it all down for the rest of us to read.
This book is for anyone who’s lived through loss or felt alone in a room full of people. It’s for mothers, daughters, and anyone who’s struggled to feel like they belonged. If you’ve ever tried to heal something that didn’t leave visible scars, you’ll see yourself in these pages. I cried, I got angry, and I paused more than once to just breathe. And in the end, I closed the book and felt like I’d made a friend.
Pages: 386 | ASIN : B0DV11GJ2N
A More Fruitful Future
The Sound of an Ordinary Life shares with readers your journey to revisit your seven-year-old self after six decades to confront and heal from the personal challenges of a painful childhood and dysfunctional family dynamics. Why was this an important book for you to write?
The reason I wanted to write this book was mainly to confirm that I had survived my sad beginnings while letting the world know that, no matter how discouraging life is for many unsuspecting journeyers, resilience, hope, and faith are the most necessary elements in overcoming difficulties. A life is not meaningful enough unless we turn every experience into a learning platform for everyone to benefit from.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Writing The Sound of an Ordinary Life helped me find self-love, self-respect, and self-compassion, none of which I received due to my dysfunctional formative years. Though I realize many others might be going through far more challenging experiences than mine, I also know healing and giving the past pains a decent burial are crucial steps to moving forward into a more fruitful future.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
The one thing I’d like for my readers to take away from reading my story, though the challenges they endure at any given point are anything but ordinary, the fact that there is no growth and maturity without those hardships is the most ordinary theme of life. Therefore, embracing them as a valuable lesson is way better than trying to fight against them, which would only stall our much-needed mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Amazon
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
Angry Daughter: A Journey from Hatred to Love
Nanci Lamborn’s memoir, Angry Daughter: A Journey from Hatred to Love, offers an introspective look into her transformative journey from enduring a troubled childhood to finding inner peace. In this candid account, Lamborn confronts the daunting legacy of familial neglect, particularly from her mother, and the harrowing experience of sexual abuse she and her twin sister suffered at the hands of a grand uncle. Lamborn’s narrative is a testament to her resilience, detailing her path to healing and forgiveness.
The memoir is striking in its honesty, especially when Lamborn shares her mother’s dismissive response upon revealing her traumatic past. This moment epitomizes the complex emotions and challenges Lamborn faces throughout her journey. Her narrative skillfully captures the emotional landscape of someone grappling with deep-seated pain, betrayal by loved ones, and the arduous journey towards forgiveness. Her eventual role as a caregiver for her mother adds a profound layer to her story, highlighting the power of forgiveness and empathy.
A central theme in Angry Daughter is the role of faith in Lamborn’s healing process. Her reflections are rooted in Christian teachings, offering a perspective that intertwines spiritual beliefs with practical steps towards emotional recovery. Lamborn shares how her faith, complemented by the support of mentors, aided her in navigating the complexities of forgiveness and personal growth. Additionally, the book is enriched by Lamborn’s inclusion of short prayers focused on forgiveness. These prayers underscore the book’s emotional depth and its practical applicability to readers who might be on similar paths of seeking understanding and reconciliation. The incorporation of these prayers transforms the book from a mere recounting of personal experiences to a valuable resource for others in pursuit of healing and peace.
Angry Daughter: A Journey from Hatred to Love is not only Lamborn’s personal story of overcoming adversity and finding solace but also serves as an inspiring guide for others on similar paths, making it a compelling and insightful read.
Pages: 216 | ASIN : B0CY7KVGDB
LITERARY TITAN 