Blog Archives
Unprocessed Grief
Severed Sacredness is your memoir sharing the story of your daughter’s long, grueling journey of survival and recovery and the power that hope and faith played during this challenging time. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Because of a promise. The depth of pain and the massive amounts of story and miracle were being held inside of me. A wide sweep of online research left me unable to find anyone with a story like hers with the depth of injury that she had suffered in hopes to show recovery was possible with quality of life. I had promised God if our daughter recovered with any kind of quality of life I would write the story for the ONE person who was searching for HOPE and couldn’t find it. I kept my promise and wrote her story. What I discovered while I was writing was also important. I had a great amount of unprocessed grief due to being in the throes of full-time caring and intensive rehabilitation I never had the time to grieve all the loss that comes with a devastating trauma. As I wrote the book I grieved as if it was happening all over again. After writing the full manuscript I came to the realization that I had emptied all of my story and grief onto the pages of the book which was so freeing. The spaces that once held the grief and stories were now empty and the story was now safe and preserved. It was such a gift to find friendship with my grief and to no longer hide it or ignore it. I have found a beautiful balance of all that we have endured and survived which has now prepared me to step into another unexpected role of public speaking to share hope and faith with many of the stories and tools I have gained through this life journey.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Placing myself back into the moments of such devastation and having to feel the horrific pain of seeing Jessie injured so critically with such gross disfigurement of her beautiful head and the remembering of all that she lost in that one moment of impact. Reliving all those moments of when her life hung in the balance and having to navigate her care with such intentional focus over and over again. Seeing the normalcy of lives go on when hers was literally cut off at the root but she still lived with such agonizing injuries with no easy answers or quick fixes. LONG JOURNEY OF RECOVERY.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
To never never give up hope. To stay in the moment when in crisis. To take the next right step. To know that God will send help. That you are never alone. With God ALL THINGS are possible. To show how to navigate healthcare in ways that can advocate for your beloved one.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
That no matter how devastating and hopeless life looks and feels, there is hope. There is always hope.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | YouTube | Amazon
When fifteen-year-old Jessie Boone collided with an aspen tree 700 hundred miles away from home, no one was sure she would survive or what quality of life she would have if she did. A massive traumatic brain injury devastated her brain and body, and brought her parents to their knees in shock and grief. The only certainty was their faith in their Creator who, unbeknownst to them, had already placed the right people on the ski slopes, in the hospitals, and in the community that wrapped their arms and resources around this wounded child and family.
Severed Sacredness is the raw account of a mother’s journey through forty days of terror and anguish in acute crisis, eighteen months of grueling rehabilitation from a mute spastic quadriplegic state, and thirteen years of slow reclamations of capacities, life-threatening regressions, and cycles of grief and grace.
Even in the darkest forests, we are not alone.
If your beloved’s life hangs in the balance, or you are a friend looking for ways to support someone facing the unimaginable, this book is a medicine of hope for anguished souls, a map for chaotic minds navigating the healthcare system, and a field guide for finding or creating sacred moments of provision and presence in the midst of the severed and suffering.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots, a Branch will bear fruit. Isaiah 11:1
Severed Sacredness: The Miraculous Journey of Jessie Boone
Some books touch your heart. Others grip it so tightly you feel like you’re living inside their pages. Severed Sacredness is the second kind. This is Lisa Boone’s raw, heart-wrenching, and faith-driven account of her daughter Jessie’s near-fatal skiing accident and the long, grueling journey through survival and recovery. Told through the lens of a mother’s unshakable love and relentless determination, the book walks us through Jessie’s trauma, the desperate prayers, the countless medical interventions, and the hope that stubbornly refused to die. Lisa lays bare the terror, the grief, the anger, and the tiny glimmers of grace that kept her moving forward. It’s not just a medical journey; it’s a spiritual one, an emotional one, and a testament to the power of faith and community.
Lisa’s writing is something special. It’s not polished in a way that feels distant—it’s raw, honest, and deeply personal. As a mom myself, I felt her pain in my bones. The moment she gets that phone call—“Mom, there’s been an accident. It’s Jessie. She’s hurt. She’s hurt real bad.”—it’s every mother’s nightmare coming to life. The way she describes the chaotic rush to get to her daughter, the helplessness of watching Jessie’s broken body in the ICU, and the sheer will it took to keep breathing through it all—it’s gut-wrenching. Lisa lets us sit in the darkest moments with her, but she also leads us toward the light, reminding us that even in the worst pain, there is hope.
One of the most powerful themes in the book is Lisa’s unwavering advocacy for Jessie. There’s a moment when a young neurosurgeon insists on an emergency craniectomy, and Lisa and her husband are forced to make a life-or-death decision within minutes. The older doctor had dismissed the nurse’s concerns, but this new doctor listened, pushed forward, and ultimately saved Jessie’s life. Lisa shows what it means to be a mother in the trenches, fighting for her child when no one else seems to see the full picture. It made me think about how important it is to trust our instincts when it comes to our kids.
Another part of the book that really stayed with me was the recurring imagery of trees. Lisa ties Jessie’s accident to the tree she hit, then expands on that symbolism throughout the book. Each tree marking a stage in Jessie’s recovery and Lisa’s own transformation. I loved this thread of nature woven into the story, the idea that life, even when it’s cut down to a stump, can grow back in unexpected ways. It reminded me that healing isn’t always linear. Sometimes it looks like a broken branch growing in a new direction, and that’s okay.
Severed Sacredness is a book about hope, faith, and resilience. It’s for any parent who has ever prayed over their child’s hospital bed, for anyone who has walked through trauma and wondered if they’d ever come out on the other side. It’s a heavy read, no doubt. There were parts that made me cry, parts that made me angry, and parts that filled me with gratitude for the strength of a mother’s love. If you’ve ever faced an impossible situation and needed a reminder that miracles do happen, this book is for you.
Pages:492 | ASIN : B0D41LWLGG
LITERARY TITAN 