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Identity Crisis: Who Am I, Really?
Identity Crisis blends memoir and spiritual teaching to explore what it means to find your true identity in God. Kelley opens with the raw story of his childhood in foster care, marked by neglect, abandonment, and the hurtful names that shaped how he saw himself. He then walks through his journey as a police officer, a husband, a new believer, and eventually a student of theology, all while learning to trade the labels of his past for the identity Scripture offers. From the early chapters on cultural confusion about identity to later ones on adoption, community, and endurance, the book reads like both a testimony and a guide for anyone asking who they really are.
Kelley’s reflections on trauma, performance, and the old names he carried hit with an honesty that doesn’t try to dress anything up. When he describes sitting in church week after week, slowly realizing God was dismantling the identity he had built on strength and achievement, it feels both vulnerable and relatable. The mix of personal story and teaching creates a rhythm that kept me leaning in rather than feeling preached at. Even when he steps into theological territory, the tone stays grounded in real experience, which helps the ideas land with more weight.
What stood out most to me was the way he keeps circling back to the tension between the world’s noise and God’s steady voice. His chapters on misplaced significance, false labels, and the limitations of self-discovery felt especially timely. The way he writes about social media, comparison, and the cultural pressure to self-construct shows he’s paying attention to the world we actually live in, not just the one inside church walls. His explanation of spiritual adoption later in the book adds depth, giving the reader something solid to hold on to. I appreciated how he acknowledged the slow, sometimes clumsy process of renewing the mind rather than offering a quick fix.
By the end, I felt the book had given me both a mirror and a map. A mirror, because so many of the fears and questions he names are ones most of us carry quietly. And a map because he lays out what it looks like to move from old identities into a new one shaped by faith, community, and Scripture. If you’re drawn to Christian nonfiction that blends story with teaching, or if you’ve ever felt weighed down by the labels life has handed you, this book will likely speak to you.
Pages: 241 | ASIN : B0G1NK5V76
Recovery is Possible
Where Did My Brain Go? tells your story about being involved in a car accident that left you in a coma, how you went nine years with an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury, and the long road to rebuilding your life. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I started writing this memoir in 2007 because I was angry. For nine years, I wandered around confused, asking friends if they thought I’d changed. They laughed. I got drunk to stop wondering what was wrong with me. When a specialist finally diagnosed my traumatic brain injury in 1995, I learned that a note in my ICU chart had said “Patient is confused. Someone should check his head.” My physician wife read that chart. She checked me out of two hospitals before anyone examined me.
I needed to write this book because every brain injury memoir I found featured helicopter evacuations, loving families, and treatment teams fighting for the patient’s recovery. Mine featured an angry wife who didn’t want a brain injured husband, a charlatan psychiatrist who prescribed legal speed, and years of stupefying drugs that kept me profitable and dependent.
The book took 18 years to finish. Confronting these memories was harder than learning to walk again. But I kept writing because professionals wanted me drugged and living in supervised housing. A charming employment counselor encouraged me to work on a factory assembly line for $3.50 an hour with her other disabled clients. Slick salespeople described the joys of “clubhouse” parties.
One exceptional surgeon gave me back my ability to walk. One dedicated social worker helped me escape the system. But most professionals wanted to keep me dependent. I said no. I found a job and relinquished my disability benefits.
This book is proof that recovery is possible even when nobody’s helping. Even when the person who should protect you is the one who betrays you. I wrote it for people in pain who need to know they can reclaim their lives outside the system designed to keep them trapped.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about Traumatic Brain Injuries?
One day, while overmedicated and feeling hopeless, I remembered reading that people only use half of their brain. At that moment I realized I had to ignore medical advice, stop taking stupefying pills, and rejoin the world.
Most professionals don’t know how to help brain injury patients. Others don’t care. They support themselves by keeping people dependent on pills and living in supervised housing. There’s more profit in dependency than recovery.
The common misconception is that the medical system wants you to recover. It doesn’t. Professional athletes get unlimited physical therapy until they’re healed. Regular people get cut off after a few sessions and sent to pain clinics for legal narcotics.
Two professionals helped me recover. One surgeon restored my ability to walk without requiring health insurance. He provided unlimited physical therapy for over a year. One social worker helped me escape the disability trap when others wanted me working on a factory assembly line for $3.50 an hour.
Recovery isn’t about finding the right pill. It’s about finding the right people, learning acceptance, and refusing to accept dependency as your only option.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
The most challenging part was confronting my wife’s betrayal. She saved my life after the accident. She found the surgeon who fixed my ruptured diaphragm and kept me breathing in the ambulance. But she also checked me out of two hospitals before anyone examined my head. She watched me struggle with memory and confusion every day. Instead of seeking treatment, she helped me stay drunk. She brought me extra long hospital straws to suck vodka through my wired jaws while I played computer games in the basement.
Writing about that took 18 years. I had to accept that the same person who saved my life also sabotaged my recovery. She didn’t want to be married to a brain-injured husband. She wanted a software developer to help her retire early. I was demoted to babysitter.
Every chapter forced me to relive moments I’d rather forget. The confusion. The screaming in my sleep. The nine years of wondering what was wrong with me while friends laughed when I asked if I seemed different. Getting drunk to stop caring. It was harder than learning to walk again.
The most rewarding part is hearing from people who recognize the system I’m exposing. Several readers have praised me for writing a book that shows how the medical system wants to keep people with brain injuries overmedicated and useless. They see what I saw: there’s more profit in dependency than recovery.
Medical professionals are especially delighted to hear that one person actually relinquished disability benefits. They rarely see anyone escape the system. Most of their patients stay trapped, overmedicated in supervised housing, shuffling through medication lines twice a day.
I wrote this book to describe the awful medical treatment I received, my wife’s awful behavior, and to show that I escaped the disability trap. That’s the story I needed to tell.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
Trust your abilities. Measure your progress. Don’t trust people who ruin your judgment with stupefying drugs or want to limit your freedom.
The system profits from keeping you dependent. Psychiatrists promise to “fix” you with pills that make you too calm to get dressed. Once you’re overmedicated, employment counselors cheerfully suggest factory assembly lines for $3.50 an hour. Once you’re working, salespeople describe the joys of supervised housing and “clubhouse” parties where your salary goes directly to the facility. You lose your salary, your freedom and your ability to make rational decisions.
Recovery means refusing to accept dependency as your only option. You might not recover completely. I lost 32 IQ points and most of my impulse control. But I escaped the disability trap. You can too.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
For nine years, Miller struggled with memory problems and confusion without understanding why. When a specialist finally diagnosed traumatic brain injury, Miller faced a choice: accept lifelong disability and medication, or find his own path to recovery.
This memoir chronicles Miller’s 39-year journey from accident to independence. Unlike conventional recovery narratives, his story includes minimal family support, inappropriate medical treatments, and pressures toward dependency rather than rehabilitation. His recovery came through friendship, personal achievement, and ultimately rejecting the disability system that kept him medicated and isolated.
Miller recounts his experiences with psychiatric medications that left him unable to work, employment counselors who suggested factory assembly lines at below minimum wage, and social service systems designed to maintain dependency. He also describes the healthcare professionals who made a difference: the surgeon who provided unlimited physical therapy without requiring insurance, and the social worker who helped him escape supervised housing and reclaim his independence.
Where Did My Brain Go? examines the intersection of traumatic brain injury, medical system failures, and the disability industry. It raises questions about treatment approaches that keep patients overmedicated in chemical fogs and supervised housing. The system prioritizes profit over patient recovery and independence.
Where Did My Brain Go? is for readers interested in brain injury memoirs, healthcare system failures, and recovery against the odds. Mitchell Miller found a job and rejoined the world. He relinquished disability benefits and chose independence over dependency.
Finally Make Time For Fitness
Racing Against Time follows your journey from a defeated teenage runner to a 56-year-old endurance athlete, revealing how relentless effort, humility, and heart can reshape the aging curve and one’s sense of purpose. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In the first years after I got started in endurance sports, I read everything I could about running and triathlon. I especially enjoyed fitness memoirs. I found these to be a source of inspiration – convincing me that I could take on challenges that had always seemed out of reach. They were also filled with good practical advice, which was important to me during those early years when I was still so inexperienced.
Now, 15 years after I started on this fitness journey with a first 10K at age 48, I look back with amazement at how endurance sports have enhanced my life. They turned the decade of my 50s into one of discovery and adventure. And I credit my exposure to the world of ultramarathons and Ironman for much of my success in the challenging world of start-ups.
Writing Racing Against Time was my way of trying to do the same for others who are just getting started. Especially because I started so late (I ran my first 10K at age 48) and because I am not an especially fast runner, I hope my story can persuade others who are approaching mid-life and are concerned about their fitness to give endurance sports a try. I would love to see others experience the things I have in recent years – to surprise themselves, to gain confidence, and to find the joy in climbing new mountains in all spheres of life.
What finally pushed you to confront the sting of that first failed 10K after letting it simmer for thirty years?
It was a combination of things. My father had passed away the year before and that caused me to think about my own health and well-being. Before that, I had, like a lot of us, always pushed off to the future thoughts about getting serious about fitness – telling myself that I would start once I had more time. At age 48 and with my father’s passing still fresh in my mind, I decided that this was not something that I should put off any longer.
Around that same time, I met Jason Schwartz, who was only a few years younger than me and had recently started running. He had already progressed to the marathon and had really been transformed by the experience. That planted the idea that I should specifically consider making running a centerpiece of my effort to finally make time for fitness.
You write openly about fear, ego, and self-doubt. Was there a particular race or training cycle where those emotions almost stopped you?
I found the prospect of taking on a full Ironman race (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run) to be extraordinarily intimidating. For years I had entirely ruled it out as impossible for someone like me. When I did finally decide to take one on, it was only after years of training (including multiple marathons, my first two ultras, and a number of shorter distance triathlons) – and even then, I set the goal for some two years later so that I would have ample time to build up to it. For the entire period of training I was anxious about my ability to finish the race – yet at the same time excited and energized that I was chasing something that was challenging and that would have the potential to redefine me as an athlete and change me as a person.
If someone in mid-life feels stuck and overwhelmed, what is the smallest, most doable first step you hope they take after reading your book?
I would recommend taking the crucial mental step of deciding that the time to begin is now, and to make the firm commitment to yourself that you will train a specified number of days per week virtually no matter what – and to start today. The ideal number of days per week to train is 6. You can start with fewer if absolutely necessary (for example 3 or 4 days) – you should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good – but you need to start now and to be consistent. Over time you should try different fitness activities to find the one(s) that work best for you. It will take some amount of experimentation and you don’t need to have all the answers at the beginning.
Author Links: Facebook | Website
“Weiss’ work is a raw and honest commentary on the human condition and the need to squeeze everything out of life while pushing past perceived limits to live life as it’s meant to be lived—an adventure.”-US Review of Books
“A motivational sports memoir, Racing Against Time chronicles grueling endurance running accomplishments achieved in midlife.”-Clarion/Foreword Reviews
Winner, Gold Book Award – Literary Titan
The Way I Saw Myself And The World
Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines is your memoir, about surviving a childhood shaped by violence, poverty, mental illness, and constant upheaval, and how you continue to work each day to live and love despite it. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I wanted the setup to feel like inviting the reader to sit beside me at the kitchen table while I finally say the things I was never allowed to say out loud.
The inspiration really came from two places: my younger self and my present-day self. As a child, I lived inside the chaos—violence, poverty, mental illness, constant moving—and I didn’t have language for any of it. As an adult, I finally do. The setup of the story grew out of my desire to honor that little girl’s confusion and fear, while also letting the woman I am now gently guide the reader through it. I didn’t want the book to be just a list of painful events; I wanted it to show how those early rooms, those sounds, those secrets shaped the way I saw myself and the world.
I also structured the opening around a simple but honest truth: the past doesn’t stay in the past. I wanted readers to meet me not only as a child in survival mode but as a grown woman still learning how to live and love with everything I’ve carried. So the setup moves between then and now—between the immediacy of what happened and the quiet work of healing that continues. My hope was that, from the very beginning, readers could feel both the weight of what I survived and the possibility that a different life is still being built, day by day.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
There were three kinds of pages that nearly broke me:
- Writing about the people I loved who also hurt me.
Putting certain family members on the page was excruciating. I grew up in an environment where we didn’t “tell family business,” and breaking that unspoken rule felt like a betrayal, even as an adult. I had to constantly walk the line between telling the truth and not turning anyone into a monster. Most of the harm in my story came from people who were wounded themselves, and holding both of those realities at once—“this hurt me deeply” and “you were not only your worst moments”—was incredibly hard. - Admitting the ways the trauma shaped my own behavior.
It was one thing to write about what was done to me; it was another to be honest about how I carried those wounds forward. The moments where I shut down, pushed people away, ignored red flags, or repeated unhealthy patterns in my own relationships were very painful to face. Those chapters forced me to look at myself with the same unflinching honesty I used on my past, and that was humbling and raw. - Going back into the child-mind.
Some scenes required me to re-inhabit my childhood body—the sounds, the smells, the confusion, the terror. I didn’t write them as an observer; I wrote them as if I were back there. After those writing sessions, I was often wrung out. I’d have to walk, cry, or sit in silence before I could rejoin “normal life.” It took a lot of emotional and physical grounding to go back, and then come back.
In a way, the hardest thing to write about was not one single event, but the ongoing impact—the way those early experiences still echo in my marriage, my parenting, my self-talk. Putting that on the page meant admitting that healing isn’t a neat before-and-after story. It’s daily work. Letting readers see that unfinished, imperfect process was terrifying… and also, I hope, the most honest gift I could offer.
How did you balance the need to be honest and authentic with the need to protect your privacy and that of others in your memoir?
I thought about this constantly while writing. For me, “tell the truth” and “do no unnecessary harm” had to sit side by side.
A few things guided me:
- I kept the focus on my experience, not other people’s secrets.
I tried to stay in the lane of what I saw, what I felt, what I carried, rather than exposing every detail of someone else’s life. If a piece of information belonged more to another person than to me, I either left it out, softened it, or hinted at it without giving identifying specifics. - I changed or obscured details where it didn’t weaken the truth.
Names, locations, certain timelines, and identifying characteristics were altered to protect privacy. The emotional truth and the impact stayed the same, but the “tracing paper” over the real people got thicker. If a reader can feel what happened without being able to easily recognize who it happened with, that’s a good balance for me. - I gave myself permission to have boundaries.
There are things that happened that are not in this book. Not because I’m hiding, but because some stories are still tender, or they belong to a future version of me who’s more ready—or they simply don’t need to be on public display to validate my pain. I reminded myself often: You owe the reader honesty. You do not owe the reader your entire self. - I wrote the raw version first, then edited with care.
In early drafts, I didn’t censor myself. I needed to know the real story on the page. Later, I went back and asked:- “Is this necessary for the reader to understand my journey?”
- “Does this cross a line into someone else’s private life?”
- “Am I telling this from a place of healing, or from a fresh wound?”
If something felt like a wound still bleeding, I either reframed it or removed it.
- I tried not to punish or vindicate anyone on the page.
Even when I wrote about harm, my goal wasn’t to get even. It was to bear witness. That helped me keep the tone grounded in my humanity and theirs, instead of in revenge. I can say, “This hurt me deeply,” without turning the book into a public trial.
In the end, the balance looked like this: the reader gets the truth of my interior world—the confusion, the terror, the resilience, the ongoing healing—but not a roadmap to track down every person who ever hurt me. The story is mine. The people inside it are real, but they are not mine to expose.
How has writing your memoir impacted or changed your life?
Writing Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines has changed me in ways I felt in my body first—before I could even explain them.
A few of the biggest shifts:
1. I stopped arguing with my own story.
For a long time, I minimized what I went through:
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Other people had it worse.”
Writing the memoir forced me to sit with the facts. Seeing them on the page—clear, ordered, undeniable—made it much harder to gaslight myself. I don’t have to keep re-litigating whether it “counts” as trauma. It happened. It shaped me. That simple acceptance has been huge.
2. It changed how I talk to myself.
When I wrote scenes from my childhood, I had to look at that little girl closely—how hard she tried, how alone she felt, how much she carried. It softened something in me.
Now, when I’m harsh with myself, I picture her. It’s harder to call myself “too sensitive” or “weak” when I’ve just spent months honoring her survival on the page. Writing the book made self-compassion less like a buzzword and more like a daily practice.
3. It rearranged my relationships.
Telling the truth has a way of shaking the tree.
- Some relationships have gotten closer. People in my life understand me better now. They see why I react the way I do, why certain things are hard for me, why I need boundaries. There’s more context and, sometimes, more grace.
- Other relationships have become more distant or more defined. Putting things on paper meant I had to stop protecting certain illusions. That’s painful, but it’s also cleaner. I’m not working as hard to pretend.
Overall, it gave me permission to let my inner reality and my outer life match more closely.
4. It turned my pain into something useful.
Before the book, a lot of my story felt like random debris—memories hitting me out of nowhere. Writing gave it shape. Now, when I talk to someone who’s navigating their own trauma, I’m not just speaking from the middle of the fog. I’ve walked through it intentionally, sentence by sentence.
It’s changed how I show up:
- I’m more open about my history without feeling like I’m oversharing.
- I feel less ashamed and more… equipped—like, “Yes, this happened, and here’s one way I’ve learned to live with it.”
There’s a strange relief in knowing the worst things you survived can now sit in a book and maybe help someone else feel less alone.
5. It taught me the power of boundaries and pacing.
Writing this memoir forced me to learn:
- when to stop for the day,
- when to ground myself,
- when to say, “I can’t talk about that right now.”
Those skills didn’t stay on the page. They bled into my daily life. I’m more aware of my limits, more protective of my energy, and more willing to say no—even to “good” things—if my nervous system is tapped out.
6. It gave me a different kind of courage.
Surviving my childhood was one kind of courage.
Choosing to lay it out for others to read is another.
Now, other risks feel a little less terrifying:
- Sharing my work.
- Speaking honestly in conversations.
- Naming what I need in relationships.
- Letting myself be seen as I actually am, not as the “together” version I used to present.
Once you’ve told the hardest truths in print, small everyday truths get easier to say out loud.
In short: writing Unbroken didn’t “fix” my life. I still have triggers, hard days, old patterns that flare up. But it reorganized my inner world. It gave me language, loosened shame’s grip, clarified my relationships, and reminded me that my story is not just what happened to me—it’s also what I choose to make of it now.
Author Links: Instagram | Facebook | Website
As her mother’s delusions intensify, Adriene and her younger brother are swept into a cycle of instability: temporary relatives’ homes, decrepit apartments, shelters, and the bureaucratic indifference of Child Protective Services. Her life becomes a study in adaptation. Teachers, social workers, and therapists appear as both saviors and spectators, their well-meaning interventions undercut by a system that cannot see the full truth.
Amid this chaos, Adriene discovers a sanctuary in learning. Books become her escape and her mirror, a means of constructing identity from fragments. Her intelligence and resilience earn her entry into gifted programs and, later, a transformative scholarship through the Duke University Talent Identification Program’s ADVANCE Camp – a rare space of belonging and recognition. Yet even moments of promise are shadowed by trauma’s lingering grasp; her mind remains both brilliant and haunted.
Foster care, meant to save her, instead subjects Adriene to new forms of cruelty. The “Bitch from Hell,” her abusive foster mother, wields authority with sadism cloaked in righteousness. Still, Adriene’s intellect and adaptability allow her to navigate this world – and, in small acts of defiance, reclaim pieces of her agency.
College becomes both a milestone and a reckoning. Having survived the unimaginable, Adriene graduates with honors in International Business, only to find herself unprepared for the invisible toll of trauma in adulthood. Depression, self-sabotage, and a string of hollow relationships bring her to the brink of despair once more. The memoir crescendos with a raw confrontation of suicidality – and the awakening that follows.
In one of the book’s most powerful sections, Adriene revisits her own CPS case files, psychiatric evaluations, and therapy notes. Reading herself through the cold lens of institutional language, she confronts the staggering disconnect between documented “stability” and lived abuse. This duality – the official record versus the inner truth – forms the heart of Unbroken. The narrative closes with a reclamation: survival not as triumph over pain, but as the deliberate act of continuing to live and love despite it.
Creciendo Juntas: Narrativas de Empoderamiento de las Mujeres
Leí Creciendo Juntas y me encontré con una antología que une las voces de quince mujeres que exploran sus luchas, sus pérdidas, sus revelaciones y la forma en que reconstruyen sus mundos. Desde duelos profundos hasta despertares personales, cada autora narra su vida con una honestidad que no se esconde y con una fuerza que se siente desde el prólogo, donde se plantea que estas historias son pequeñas revoluciones que parten de lo cotidiano y avanzan hasta el alma misma.
Mientras avanzaba, sentí que el libro me hablaba desde muchos lugares a la vez. Hay textos que duelen y otros que despiertan una chispa de esperanza que llega cuando menos lo esperas. Me sorprendió la forma tan sencilla en la que varias autoras expresan emociones complejas. Nada se siente disfrazado. Todo es directo y sin ruido. A veces la vulnerabilidad me golpeó de lleno y tuve que detenerme porque una idea se quedaba dando vueltas en mi mente. Otras veces solté una sonrisa porque reconocí en sus palabras la terquedad de seguir adelante a pesar de todo.
También me gustó cómo cambia el ritmo entre historias. Unas hablan con suavidad. Otras cortan como si todavía ardiera la herida que cuentan. Esa mezcla crea una lectura que no se puede vivir de forma plana. Me llevó de la mano por caminos inesperados y me hizo pensar en las veces que yo también he tenido que romper algo en mí para poder construir algo nuevo. No todo me identificó, claro, pero sí sentí respeto por cada historia que se compartió con tanta apertura. El libro no pretende complacer ni adornar. Más bien se siente como un espacio donde la verdad tiene permiso de ocupar todo el cuarto.
Al terminarlo pensé en quién podría disfrutarlo más. Creo que sería ideal para mujeres que atraviesan cambios grandes y buscan un espejo donde verse sin filtros. También para quienes disfrutan de historias reales que no siguen un molde y que nacen desde el deseo de entender la propia vida. Yo lo recomendaría sin dudarlo. Es un libro que acompaña, que sacude y que, de alguna forma, invita a crecer con calma y con valentía.
Pages: 211 | ASIN : B0DHV7MT4L
Our Soul’s Lens
Unveiled: A Journey to Soul Realization is part memoir, part spiritual roadmap, and part therapeutic manual that weaves together personal stories, neuroscience, energy work, and metaphysical exploration into one cohesive, soul-centered narrative. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In my trauma practice, I work to help people realize what happened to them was not arbitrary but happened for a reason and has meaning. This was the reason for writing this book as well. We can learn from meaning and create new meaning. This is a powerful function of Unveiled.
I appreciated the neuroscience you incorporated into this book rather than just presenting spiritual information; the combination makes it easier to trust the process. Did you find anything in your research for this book that surprised you?
No, I this is basic to trauma therapists. Trauma therapy evolved with the simultaneous evolution of neuroimaging; thus, the practices being developed could be visually measured and understood, accounting for rapid brain changing therapies we do not see in mental health nor addiction.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Placebo as both miraculous and as what we can do with deliberate meaning change. I discuss our need for evidence and Placebo studies provide that in dramatic and stunning ways. The Self-Healing approaches take that idea of what is possible and plug in applications that are amazing. Of course, this book’s goal is to see through our Soul’s lens and Soul connection is perhaps the pinnacle moment in this text.
How has your experience in the mental health field helped you develop this process for healing and awakening?
Yes, my practice and my ascension evolved as one, energetically and that was amazing. My clients presented things I need to learn, not only as a trauma practitioner but as a spiritual practitioner as well. It was and still is an amazing synergy.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | Threads
Have you struggled with letting go of past trauma or understanding why certain things have happened in your life? Have you ever considered a spiritual approach to healing? Or have you never even considered the existence of a soul? In Unveiled, licensed Creative Arts Therapist Herb Cohen challenges and guides our discernment about connecting to our soul and using that connection to better grasp the events of our lives.
With almost forty years of experience working with mental health, addiction, and trauma, Herb pondered the questions he repeatedly asked his clients and condensed years of informed practice into a concise approach to his process.
In this book, you will contemplate:
How separateness impacts our world
What role “awareness” plays in our lives
Why we see the world through certain lenses
How to connect to your soul and be guided by the essence of who you are
How to surrender to self-heal
The goal of this book is to take you on a spiritual journey from trauma or atrocity to one of love and bliss.
East to West Across Russia: The Long Journey Home
East to West Across Russia follows a man who chases a childhood dream across the entire span of Russia. He flies to Vladivostok and then rides the Trans Siberian Railway all the way to Moscow. Along the way, he wanders through fog-soaked hills, quiet cities, lonely platforms, and the deep interior of his own memory. The story blends real travel with imagined scenes that reveal his heartbreak, his longing, and his hunger for meaning. Russia’s forests, rivers, and rail stations move past his window like an old film reel, and he uses every mile to reach inward as much as he reaches westward.
The writing swings between poetic and raw, sometimes in the space of a single page. I liked that about it. The style is big on feeling and big on atmosphere. I caught myself smiling at the simple little moments, like the chaos of breakfast or the clinking of tea glasses on the train. Other times I felt a tug in my chest when he drifted into memories of lost love or those spiraling thoughts that come when the world is quiet and a person finally has to face himself. The prose has a kind of earnest honesty that feels almost old-fashioned, and it hit me harder than I expected.
There were moments, though, when the intensity of the reflection felt a bit heavy. Every small detail seems to carry emotional weight, and every encounter becomes a doorway into deeper meaning. Part of me admired that dedication. Still, the narrator’s sincerity kept me grounded. I found myself rooting for him even when he veered into melancholy. His curiosity about Russia, about its people and history and vastness, felt real. His tenderness toward strangers, even brief ones like Alexei on the plane, made the journey feel warm and human.
By the time I reached the final pages, I felt the quiet satisfaction that comes after finishing a long trip and finally setting your bags down. I walked away thinking this book fits readers who love travel stories that linger in the soul rather than just list places on a map. It will speak to anyone who enjoys reflective writing, who has ever chased a dream across a border, or who has ever tried to heal by moving forward one small step at a time. If you want a journey that is both physical and emotional and are willing to sit with someone else’s heart for a while, this book is a good companion.
Pages: 200 | ASIN : B0DDMVJ55B
The Athlete Whisperer: An Improbable Voice in Sports
Andrea Kirby’s The Athlete Whisperer is a vivid and unfiltered memoir that pulls back the curtain on what it means to be a woman breaking barriers in sports broadcasting. From her early days as one of the first female sportscasters in the 1970s to her later years coaching athletes and media talent, Kirby tells her story with grit, humor, and honesty. The book weaves through decades of change in television and sports, balancing personal struggle with professional triumph. It’s not just about a career, it’s about identity, perseverance, and the raw nerve it takes to keep moving when no one wants you there.
What I liked most about Kirby’s writing is how straightforward it feels. She doesn’t write like someone trying to impress you. She writes like someone who’s lived through hell, laughed about it, and decided to share the punchlines. Her voice is confident, yet not polished to perfection, which makes it genuine. The stories are fast-moving, full of sharp details, and often tinged with pain that sneaks up on you between the victories. I felt her frustration when men dismissed her, her thrill when she nailed a broadcast, and her heartache when life hit harder than any newsroom drama.
At times, I found myself pausing not because the writing was heavy, but because it was relatable. Kirby doesn’t whitewash the sexism, the exhaustion, or the loneliness. She’s not asking for pity, though. She’s showing how resilience can look messy and stubborn and still be beautiful. The people she met, famous names from ESPN, ABC Sports, and the field, come alive through her lens, but it’s her own story that lingers. There’s a rough-edged warmth in the way she talks about the athletes she coached and the young broadcasters she helped find their footing. I could almost hear her voice, no-nonsense, but kind.
By the end, I felt like I’d sat across from someone who’d lived several lives in one. The Athlete Whisperer isn’t just for sports fans. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt underestimated or out of place but went ahead and did the thing anyway. If you like memoirs that feel like conversation, that mix heart with humor and truth with tenderness, this one’s worth your time.
Pages: 256 | ASIN : B0F3BK5ZX9
LITERARY TITAN 