Blog Archives
Grandfather and Grandson
The Corridor follows a grandfather with vast knowledge of the Blue Ridge Mountains who sets out on a mission alongside his teenage grandson to document a wildlife corridor threatened by a resort development. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I really wanted to do a reverse mentorship piece. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I see all the time grandfathers showing grandchildren the nature that surrounds us here. I thought it would be fun to explore a different type of relationship. One where Ellias, the grandson, takes exception to Richard, the grandfather’s, lack of motivation on saving the wildlife corridor, even when he has economic reasons, property values, and the knowledge to save it. This shift happens not only in Ellias’ familiarity with social media and technology but also in motivating Richard to do something. This is a wonderful dynamic between grandfather and grandson.
Richard’s emotional arc is so understated but powerful. How did you approach writing a character whose growth happens through small shifts rather than dramatic revelations?
That is something I like to present while writing. I think it’s important for writers to engage their readers by not presenting the obvious but to deliver it in such a way that it’s believable, and hopefully they understand this the way you did.
Nature writing can sometimes overpower character, but here, landscape and psychology feel inseparable. How did you balance the two?
That’s a great question. And the answer is that I see daily the subtle balance between people and nature. I see a family of black bears crossing the street, and people stop their cars, being very respectful to let them pass. Pulling their phones out recording the encounter. It truly is magical, and while writing, I can’t help but bring that perspective. And I’m happy that you noticed.
If Richard and Eli met again ten years later, what do you think each would have taught the other by then?
Ah, you are skipping ahead. The Corridor is the first book in a 6-book (novelette) series…stay tuned.
Ego Degradation: Pulling Back the Veil of Illusion to See Your Mind’s Programming
Ego Degradation: Pulling Back the Veil of Illusion to See Your Mind’s Programming by Alexx Shaw is a spiritual self-help book that blends psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, trauma language, and metaphysical ideas to explain what Shaw calls “ego degradation,” a painful but potentially clarifying breakdown of the mind’s old programming. The book argues that the ego creates our perceived reality through duality, judgment, expectation, and control, and that awakening begins when we learn to see those patterns instead of blindly living through them.
The writing has a direct, almost coaching-like energy, and at times it feels less like reading a quiet guide and more like sitting across from someone who is trying to shake you awake. I appreciated that intensity, especially when the book talks about trauma, attachment, and the way people mistake old coping habits for identity. Some claims stretch into spiritual territory. The book wants to give language to experiences that can feel frightening, private, and impossible to explain.
Shaw moves between Freud, Eastern religion, brain regions, karmic lessons, mindfulness, and non-attachment, which makes the book feel wide-reaching and ambitious. Sometimes that range is energizing. The central idea kept pulling me back: what if the stories I tell myself are not facts, but programs I keep running because they once helped me survive? That is the strongest part of the book for me. Under the spiritual vocabulary, there is a very human question: how much of my suffering comes from reality, and how much comes from my grip on reality?
I would recommend this book to readers who already enjoy spiritual self-help, consciousness writing, shadow work, trauma reflection, or books that mix personal growth with metaphysical thinking. For readers who are open to inner excavation and a genre that treats healing as both emotional and spiritual work, Ego Degradation offers a challenging, candid, and sometimes bracing invitation to look more closely at the mind behind the curtain.
Pages: 264 | ISBN : 1917704607
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature blends social criticism, philosophy, and spiritual reflection. Author Chet Shupe argues that human beings were shaped for intimate, interdependent life, but civilization pulled us away from that design by teaching us to live for rules, institutions, and imagined futures instead of felt reality. Across chapters on emotional pain, language, law, marriage, war, and “spiritual home,” he keeps returning to one core claim: modern life has cut us off from our emotional intelligence and from one another, and that loss sits underneath much of our loneliness and distress.
Shupe does not tiptoe around his thesis. He states it, circles it, pushes it harder, then looks at it from another angle. At times, that gives the book a sermon-like intensity. I could not deny the force of his voice. He writes like someone who has been sitting with these ideas for a very long time and has reached the point where he needs to say them plainly. When he describes modern life as a place of compliance, emotional repression, and spiritual homelessness, the book can feel stark, even severe, but it doesn’t feel half-hearted.
I found myself both pulled in and pushing back. That was part of the value of reading it. Shupe’s contrast between “spiritual obligations” and legal ones, and his argument that language helped turn humans away from the present and toward anxious future-control, are bold ideas. They are also sweeping ones. I didn’t agree with every leap, but even then, I kept thinking. The book has that effect. It presses on sore spots most people already know are there: loneliness, numbness, strained relationships, the strange emptiness that can sit underneath a well-organized life. In that sense, this book works less like a tidy argument and more like a long, insistent conversation that wants to shake you awake.
I would recommend this book most to readers who enjoy reflective nonfiction that is willing to be provocative, speculative, and deeply personal in its philosophy. If you like books of social critique that overlap with psychology and spirituality, and you do not need every argument to arrive in a strictly academic package, there is a lot here to wrestle with. Readers who are open to a candid, searching, sometimes repetitive, often arresting meditation on what modern life has cost us will probably find it worth their time.
Pages: 275 | ASIN : B0FVPQJZCX
What’s Normal Is When the Emotion Matches the Circumstance
William W. Hedrick, MD, author of What’s Normal Is When the Emotion Matches the Circumstance, has spent his medical career wrestling with one stubborn question. What is a normal emotion, and when does it become an illness? He walks through his early training, his unease with the DSM checklist style of diagnosis, and his doubts about simple “chemical imbalance” stories. He then builds his own model of six primary emotions, tied to brain centers and neurotransmitters, and he defines “normal” as when the type and level of emotion match the actual situation on a simple one-to-ten scale. Along the way, he folds in cognitive therapy ideas, brain chemistry, addiction to our own internal chemicals, and many case examples to show how his framework might work in real clinics.
I was genuinely pulled in by his main idea that context and proportion matter more than labels. The notion that anxiety in a grocery store and anxiety on the edge of a cliff are not the same thing, even if the body feels similar, clicked for me right away. His definition of normal emotion as “the emotion that fits the circumstance” feels both humane and practical, and I could picture real patients using that one-to-ten scale to check their own reactions. I appreciated the boldness of some of his stronger claims. For example, he treats major depression as almost entirely a rogue “depression center” that drugs must calm, and he is clear about his doubts that talk therapy alone can fully reach it. I understood the logic, and I saw real compassion in his effort to remove blame from people who are suffering, and his stance pushed me to think harder about biology, medication, and responsibility.
Hedrick’s tone stays calm and professional, and he explains brain chemistry and therapy ideas in plain language, with stories, history notes, and even word origins that give the book an old-school charm. Some chapters slow down to take longer side trips into the DSM or historical theories, which helped me see how deeply his ideas are rooted in the broader story of psychiatry. I appreciated how often he brought things back to real people in real rooms.
I came away feeling this book would suit thoughtful readers who like to sit with ideas and do not mind a slower, reflective pace. Primary care clinicians, therapists in training, and medically curious readers who have lived with anxiety or depression themselves would probably get the most from it. If you want to see how one experienced doctor tries to rebuild our understanding of emotion from the ground up, this is a smart and often moving read.
Pages: 128 | ASIN : B0B193TDVK
Truth Is a Harmony
Authenticity: The Art & Science of Being Your True Self is a guide to personal transformation that blends psychology and spirituality, showing how to identify hidden patterns, realign with truth, and cultivate authenticity as a daily practice rather than an abstract ideal. How much of this book grew out of your own turning points?
I’ve always been driven by curiosity and wanting to know how things worked. If I ever came across a problem in life, I’d face the problem head-on and continue working until I had found a solution. This book was born out of one of the biggest problems I’d ever faced, the quest to figure out who I was as well as what the purpose of life was. Those two questions, Who am I? And what is the purpose of life?, rocked my world right down into the core. I didn’t want to simply read someone else’s answers; I wanted to research all perspectives, but then also test them out to see which ones held validity. That caused an existential identity crisis within me — which completely tore down the life I had built; however, it opened my mind to a whole new level of understanding, which I wanted to document for myself and others. What I documented and systemised became the foundation of the book.
You argue that authenticity is alignment with truth. How do you define “truth” in this context?
I define authenticity as: “to live in alignment with the truth,” and then I go on to say that authenticity is an experience, it can’t really be defined, and nobody can tell you what the truth is, and that you must discover the truth within yourself, for yourself. However, with that said, the truth is a harmony between opposing forces, call it Yin and Yang if you will. When we find our own personal centre point, by creating a balance of opposing forces within our psychology (mind and emotions), then we will know the truth within ourselves. We will no longer be chasing gratification through excitement, or avoiding discomfort through fear, and we’ll no longer be acting in order to get approval or feel worthy. We will act based on what is intrinsically inspiring to ourselves, and that pathway — sometimes referred to as the dharmic path or our “purpose” — is the path of truth, the path of meaning, the path of destiny.
Can you walk us through the Pattern Model in simple terms?
Absolutely. The Pattern Model consists of four aspects: Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Outcomes, and these four aspects operate like a chain of dominoes where our thoughts — through a sequence of cause and effect — become the ultimate creators of our reality. Said differently, the outcomes we experience within our lives can be traced back to a thought within our mind, and that is why Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Our thoughts affect our feelings, our feelings affect our actions, and our actions drive us towards the actions we experience. The Pattern Model is an overview of all human behaviour, and when we understand the mechanics of our behaviour — our patterns — we enable ourselves to begin mastering the way we think, feel, and ultimately what we get to experience.
How do relationships shift when someone becomes more authentic, and what advice do you have for readers when this happens?
When someone is being authentic, everything, including relationships, begins to come into alignment. That means certain people will be repelled, and others will be attracted. It means that if a relationship is due to end, it will end. It means that if a new relationship is ready to begin, it will begin. Authenticity removes dogma and rules, including moral and ethical judgements, to make way for something greater — the truth. The truth cannot be boxed into a belief system, grace cannot occur through a rule book, and authenticity is the state that enables the wisest decisions and the truth to be revealed.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Blending practical psychology, timeless philosophy, and spiritual wisdom, Templeton shares a fresh perspective for anyone looking to transcend their limitations and create a life of meaning.
The book offers innovative frameworks like the Vectors of Perception and the Map of Emotion which reveal unique insights into how our thoughts and feelings are the ultimate creators of our reality, and how we can, by mastering our psychology, transform the outcomes we’re experiencing within any area of our life.
John also presents powerful tools including various meditation and contemplation techniques that allow us to overcome our past, dissolve disempowering habits, and align our mind with a higher purpose — empowering us to eloquently build the life we envision.
The Turning Point
Too Strong For Your Own Good is an intimate blend of memoir and guidance that invites readers to explore the hidden cost of chronic strength and to show exhausted high achievers how to reclaim health, joy, and self-leadership by listening to their bodies. Why was this an important book for you to write?
This book wasn’t something I decided to write—it was something that asked to be written through me.
For decades, I lived the life of the “strong one.” The high achiever. The helper. The woman who could handle anything—until my body finally said no. After surviving multiple cancer diagnoses, chronic illness, and profound burnout, I realized that the very strength I had been praised for was slowly costing me my health, my joy, and my sense of self.
As I healed, I began to recognize this same pattern everywhere. In my years of coaching leaders and high performers, I watched capable, compassionate people quietly disconnect from themselves in the name of responsibility, success, and survival. The strongest people were often the most exhausted and the least supported.
I wrote Too Strong For Your Own Good so others don’t have to spend decades learning what nearly cost me my life—that real strength includes the wisdom to rest, the courage to feel, and the trust to finally come home to yourself. This book is both a truth-telling and an invitation to evolve from survival-based strength into a more soul-aligned way of living and leading. It’s the book I wish someone had handed me years earlier.
When did you first realize that being “strong” had become harmful rather than helpful?
I realized it when my body stopped responding to willpower. I could no longer push through symptoms, override exhaustion, or “mindset” my way forward. What once felt empowering began to feel like self-erasure.
As I slowed down enough to listen, I saw something more clearly: the strength I had relied on wasn’t a conscious choice-it was a survival strategy I had developed very early in life. Proving my worth through constant doing had once helped me feel safe, capable, and in control. But over time, it came at a cost.
Being strong became harmful the moment it required me to abandon myself. When saying yes to everyone else meant saying no to my own body, my own needs, and my own truth, I knew something had to change.
That realization was humbling and clarifying. I understood that my body wasn’t betraying me-it was protecting me. It was asking me to stop living from adrenaline and proving, and to begin listening. That moment became the turning point not only in my healing but in how I now guide others.
How does burnout in leaders quietly ripple into families, teams, and organizations?
Burnout doesn’t stay contained. Even when leaders are highly competent, their nervous systems set the tone. Chronic stress shows up as urgency, control, emotional distance, and reactivity- often without anyone naming it.
Families feel it as an absence. Teams feel it as pressure. Organizations feel it as disengagement and quiet erosion of trust. When leaders are operating from survival, they unintentionally teach others to do the same, moving faster, bracing tighter, and normalizing constant pressure.
Sustainable leadership isn’t just about resilience or performance. It requires regulation, presence, and self-trust. When leaders feel safe in their own bodies, they create environments where others can do their best work without burning out.
What does sustainable healing actually look like day to day?
Sustainable healing is quiet and relational. It looks like pausing instead of pushing. Listening instead of overriding. Setting boundaries that honor the body. Making decisions that feel congruent rather than impressive.
Day to day, it’s less about adding more practices and more about removing what no longer fits. It’s learning to notice when we’re slipping back into survival and choosing to respond with honesty and care instead.
Healing becomes lasting when strength is redefined – not by how much we can carry, but by how well we stay connected to ourselves.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Anette Demattio | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Website | Amazon
Too Strong For Your Own Good reveals the hidden cost of pushing through, pleasing, and holding it all together—while your body quietly pays the price.
After surviving six cancer diagnoses, Anette DeMattio realized her body wasn’t broken—it was speaking. Now, with over 25 years of experience in transformational coaching, she helps high achievers and caregivers turn survival patterns into embodied self-leadership.
In this book, you’ll learn how to:
• Understand your symptoms as signals—not setbacks
• Break patterns that silently drain your energy
• Rest in a way that feels safe—not scary
• Lead and live from calm, clarity, and soul
This isn’t just a book about healing. It’s a powerful invitation to return to your truest self—strong, soft, and fully alive.
If your body is whispering for relief…
If you’re tired of pretending you’re fine…
If you want peace without burnout and strength without suffering…
Let this book show you how to stop surviving—and start living, vibrantly and freely as the real you.
The ADHD Awakening: A Woman’s Guide to Thriving After Diagnosis
The ADHD Awakening tells the story of a woman piecing together a lifetime of confusion, emotional intensity, and masked struggle into a clearer picture shaped by a late ADHD diagnosis. The book moves from her childhood experiences of impulsivity, shame, and missed signs into the chaos of undiagnosed adulthood, where relationships, parenting, and self-worth tangled together. It blends research with lived stories from many women, creating a guide that feels both personal and universal. The arc of the book shifts from raw memoir to a practical roadmap for self-understanding. It shows how ADHD weaves itself into every corner of life and how clarity can open the door to self-compassion.
The writing lands with this honest, almost disarming warmth, and I kept feeling like I was eavesdropping on someone telling the truth they never had the chance to say aloud. I liked that the author didn’t try to polish her past into something neat. The stories of hiding in plain sight, of dealing with rejection, of feeling intense emotions that others shrugged off hit with real weight. Some chapters made me stop and think for a moment. The moments about growing up in instability and learning to mask emotions resonated with me. They showed how misunderstood ADHD in girls can be and how easily the real story gets buried under labels like “dramatic” or “too sensitive.”
I also appreciated how the book layered science into the narrative without slipping into cold textbook talk. The explanations of executive dysfunction, emotional flooding, time blindness, and dopamine seeking were human and straightforward and strangely comforting. Sometimes I wished the pacing slowed down so that specific ideas could be explored more deeply, but the emotional honesty kept me hooked. There’s a tenderness in the way the author speaks to her younger self and to the reader. It made the book feel less like advice and more like an invitation to stop fighting your own brain.
I’d recommend this book to women who suspect they might have ADHD or who were diagnosed later in life and are now trying to make sense of the past. It’s also a great read for partners, friends, or anyone who wants to understand the emotional world behind the symptoms. If you like books that explain things with real stories instead of stiff jargon, this one will feel like a warm hand on your shoulder. It’s heartfelt, accessible, and practical, and it gives anyone navigating ADHD a sense that they’re not alone.
Pages: 319 | ASIN : B0G4SP8L38
Confidence Transformation
Girl Game: Balls Out is a blend of memoir, psychology, and empowerment, and is a call for women to reclaim their power, stop people-pleasing, and rise unapologetically into their full selves. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In love, I was always had an anxious attachment style, and I genuinely felt like something was medically wrong with me. My insecurities always got the best of me, and I grew up without any confidence or self-esteem. Rejection was my middle name. I was unlucky in love. I had to get to the bottom of this, so I spent 5 years intensively studying attachment theory and childhood emotional neglect, and boy, did my findings revolutionize my life as I know it. That research and my own confidence transformation were the catalyst and backbone of this work.
In Chapter Six, “The Fight of Your Life,” you write about internal battles. How do you personally recognize when you’re in one?
By how I am feeling. All internal states are attached to a feeling, and all feelings are trying to tell us something vital about ourselves.
What do you hope women take away from your message when they’re standing at their own
breaking point?
That they heal “balls out” style. Many people sit in a therapist’s office for years and take medication for decades hoping to numb the pain, but they never really heal HEAD ON. I encourage radical healing through awareness and consciousness, and that requires a full-blown, balls-out exploration of the shadow, or what I call an emotional exorcism, in this book.
You mix faith, psychology, and empowerment in a unique way. How do those three forces coexist in your own healing process?
I am a spiritual person. I do blend faith, spirituality, psychology, and empowerment because of my background in all 3. I refuse to take pills. I don’t go to therapy (but I am a huge fan of it) – I champion healing by facing problems head-on and feeling them fully until healed.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
With over 100 years of research behind it in human psychology, emotion, healing, attachment and relationships, self-worth and identity, this book provides profound insights concerning the realities that shape our existence when we struggle with low self-esteem. Since our subconscious accepts all suggestions as facts, we are met with demons we didn’t create who plague us as mirrors impacting our closest relationships while making rejection become the norm. This happens because of generational trauma passed down from ancestors and the general negativity felt and experienced in the external world. By embracing self-worth from within, the book emphasizes the transformative power it holds in reshaping personal connections and attracting genuine affection. The text prompts introspection on questions of rejection, societal constraints, and the impact of insecurity on personal growth and fulfillment. Encouraging a shift from seeking external validation to embracing inner worth, GIRL GAME: BALLS OUT advocates for empowerment and taking control of one’s narrative. By fostering self-belief and authenticity, individuals can transcend self-doubt, radiate confidence, and magnetize positive interactions.
You can either overcome or come undone… the POWER is yours.
Are you hiding behind that pretty face…
