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My Quest For Freedom
This or Something Better: A Memoir of Resilience shares how your life has been impacted by your connection with nature and helped you heal. Why was this an important book for you to write?
My quest for freedom and safety seemed no different than many others efforts to reconcile the belief systems they crafted from what was close at hand in early childhood. By sharing how I reacted, and sometimes overreacted, to long ago incidents, I hoped to reassure, warn and enlighten others who also carried invisible hand made armor that made connecting on a human level more difficult. The counsel and companionship of nature was my saving grace, but relying on it solely had unintended consequences.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Business failure and drug use were very hard for me to write about. The first few drafts I left out those difficult years completely. And the arc of 70 years was not what I planned originally, I wanted to write about my career as a colorist and pattern designer, and how by being curious and courageous I made my way as a young single mother, a high school drop out, and ended up working all over the world. But the story of learning, inch by inch, to trust, and to forgive, had to be written first.
What was one of the happiest times you remember about being in nature?
My first memory, when I greeted the trees and the sky, before i was old enough to speak. And every time I hike or look out my window to see what i call “feral” oaks on the hillside, leading to more than thirty miles of hiking and running trails on the mountain where I live. I am renewed through and through by the essence of the natural world.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
Forgiveness, of others and of ourselves, will connect us to the deep well of joy within us. Fear not!
Author Links: Facebook | Website | StancilStudios.com
In This or Something Better, Elisa revisits her past and the one force in which she has always found true kinship: the wild river. Nature, her lifelong ally, gave solace when she faced secret abuse as a toddler. Through teen pregnancy, her baby’s stillbirth, and a mystical near-death experience at eighteen, nature shaped her character, and it later informed her wildly successful career. But was there an unintended consequence?
The fresh trauma of the firestorm sparked a quest: what treasure awaited if Elisa learned to trust human nature? Vivid, poetic, and intimate, This or Something Better reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time—and invites us each to consider and embrace our own path toward wholeness and authenticity.
This or Something Better
While tracking the rural environment of Placerville, Sacramento, Glenn Ellen, and California’s rural foothills, This or Something Better by Elisa Stancil Levine presents an alternate shift from childhood reminiscence to dark, intense memories laced with perseverance and adaptability. The memoir begins in 2017, with a fire scorching acres of land in Sonoma Country, including the residential area of the author. It then shifts back and forth between adolescence and maturity, following the author’s frantic journey from self-containment to the never-ending pursuit of truth.
When the decorative artist leaves the fire land without informing any of her neighbors, the firestorm not only causes havoc with the natural animals and property but also prompts a series of introspective questions in her mind. Her story of estrangement and persistence takes readers on a journey through her eventful and incredible life. Having grown up in a reproachable neighborhood, lost her first child as a teenage mother, and having been labeled a murderer by her grandmother, the author takes readers on a roller-coaster journey through her past and present. It is at the end of the story that she discovers how to forgive herself for many of her self-proclaimed acts of accusation and discover the ultimate question that nudges her curiously from childhood- ‘what it means to be a human?’
The narrative is full of genuine viewpoints and a critical analysis of the numerous issues that plague a child’s head after experiencing sexual abuse, as well as their parents’ disapproval of their dreams and viewpoints. In addition to the spiritual inquiry, the fact that nature has a vital hold on the human psyche manifests itself in the reflections of the author, a nature girl. This or Something Better takes readers on a spiritual quest that comes with the inevitable questioning of who we are as human beings.
Beginning in 1953 in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, every memory and experience from childhood is dusted off the memory attic in the memoir, complete with nostalgia, anguish, and ambition. It’s a terrific prescription for women of the times, as it aids in the healing of wounds created by uncertain relationships, child loss, adolescent parenthood, and the relentless efforts to silence the passionate and compelling voice of an assertive and insistent woman. It’s also a motivational read, with the uplifting message at the end of each chapter: “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
This or Something Better: A Memoir of Resilience takes readers on an introspective journey as they listen to the author’s stories. Sometimes, a biography is just the history of one person’s life; this is more, it is a book of hope, perseverance, and healing.
Pages: 253 | ASIN : B09CYPNNP2
LITERARY TITAN 