A Heart Stitched with Scars

A personal story of resilience, hope, and new beginnings. Witness how my life challenges were transformed into opportunities and how I was raised above the ashes and soared higher than ever before. Join me on this journey and be inspired to embrace change and overcome adversity.

And So, We Dance

In And So, We Dance, Leigh loses herself in memories of her life and her wife’s cancer journey. The novel started out as a memoir, and then I began to hear Leigh (LL) and Lizzie’s (LiLiz) inner children talk to me. The magical elements that emerged soften the tragedy of losing a loved one. Blending emotional intimacy with quiet surrealism, the story explores lesbian love, grief, and the inner selves we call forth to help us navigate when everything else is lost.

Leigh finally comes out of the closet where she had lived since she was 15. She meets and marries the love of her life, Lizzie, only to face a battle much worse than closet dwelling. Lizzie’s cancer diagnosis turns their lives upside down. As Leigh loses herself in her memories, she finds her inner child in the body of a six-year-old hitchhiking on the highway, waiting for her. Little Leigh (LL) tries to help her through the battle she and Lizzie fight. Lizzie’s inner child, LiLiz, also joins, and the four struggle against the Stranger, cancer, who threatens their lives.

The author holds a PhD from Emory University, has studied under Anya Auchtenberg, and is a member of a weekly writing group and Pitch to Published. She is a published poet, and her book is entitled Journeys.

No Regrets

Sheila is a determined woman, strong in spirit, who reached her dreams despite all obstacles. Her derailed life, her cobbler, and her struggle with her family will churn the reader’s stomach and make you think, what would you do if you were in her shoes?

It's All About Me

Dr. Nasser, a board-certified internal medicine physician, has spent over a decade witnessing the profound intersections between life, illness, and the human spirit. Through countless interactions with patients and their families, he has come to understand that while much of the world remains beyond our control, one thing always remains within reach: ourselves.

In this deeply personal reflection, Dr. Nasser shares the lessons learned from the bedside and beyond, exploring how responsibility, resilience, and compassion shape our response to life’s greatest challenges. From moments of loss and despair to hope and renewal, he invites readers to see how healing the body often begins with understanding the mind and heart.

A memoir grounded in medicine yet reaching far beyond it, this book offers an honest and human look at what it truly means to live well even when faced with life’s most difficult truths.

Fire Within

Ava Celeste Hennessey's Fire Within is a poignant and stirring memoir that delves into the tumultuous life of a family striving to keep afloat amid the challenging times of the 70s and 80s. Set against the contrasting backdrops of New England’s biting cold and Maui’s embracing warmth, this narrative unfolds through the innocent yet perceptive eyes of a child, Ava.

Ava’s childhood is marked by a series of escapes from literal and metaphorical fires, painting a vivid picture of a family often ensnared in chaos and struggle. Despite the hardships, her story is not just about the trials but also about the unyielding spirit of a young girl. Ava’s perspective, tinged with a child’s tendency to romanticize, provides a unique lens to view the odd and sometimes disturbing behaviors of her family members.

My Time with Astronauts

In this candid, courageous, and often unexpectedly funny memoir, Faby Kushner invites readers into a world of rocket launches, astronaut encounters, and the delicate art of rationing shrimp at cocktail parties.

But behind the glamour of shuttle missions, personal ties to space icons, and visits to NASA lies a deeper story, one shaped by challenge, reinvention, and quiet resilience. Faby faced unrelenting workplace gossip, the pain of divorce, and moments when life knocked her flat. And yet, through each setback, she rose, rebuilding her life piece by piece, discovering not just how to survive, but how to thrive.

This isn’t a story of perfection. It’s a story of perseverance. Of daring to believe that the best chapters might still lie ahead.

If you’ve ever found yourself staring down a version of life you didn’t ask for, this book offers more than just a glimpse of hope; it’s a witty, heartfelt reminder that reinvention is always possible, and joy can reappear when you least expect it.

The Timkens of San Diego

Rising from a blacksmith’s apprentice to become king of the roller bearing, Henry Timken was one of the 19^th century’s greatest inventors.

His early engineering of axles, springs, and ball bearings for horse-drawn carriages made him rich. But his 1898 patent of a tapered roller bearing revolutionized transportation and made the German immigrant and his family uber rich.

In 1887, with his greatest invention still ahead of him, Timken retired to San Diego with his wife, Fredericka, and four of their five children. All would become wealthy from his patents and lead lives that often cast them in the nation’s headlines.

The three daughters made their niche in the art world.

Amelia founded the San Diego Museum of Art and resuscitated the symphony. Georgia studied art in Paris and St. Louis and married her art teacher. Eight of her paintings hang in the National Gallery of Art.

Cora became an ardent painter and a major collector of art from Persia, China, and India. The Metropolitan Museum of Art lists 133 objects from her. At age 47 she married an osteopathic doctor-scientist 15 years younger who was obsessed with the idea of curing illnesses through electromagnetism.

The sons, H.H. and W.R., took turns running the Timken empire and expanding it globally. H.H. became one of the wealthiest men in America.

Suitcase of Memories

I was destined to be a peacemaker. Doesn’t every family have one?

My family, with its traditional values, loving grandparents, and family heirlooms, has always provided a comfortable base and a home. My expectations were that my home and family would be safe, cozy, and unwavering.

What of words translated by a peacemaker, certain it was for me too? No protests, make a loving family, keep the peace. I was convinced it would be mine.

What of words from love, prideful of my values, celebrating my accomplishments, joyful for my happiness, and hopeful for my future?

Seasons change, years pass. I remember joyous moments of splendid solace with so much hopeful anticipation. I’ve learned one can search for serendipity, but it cannot be contrived. I remain hopeful beyond possibility.

What of words of hurtful intention—stinging, humiliating, torturous, and demeaning, as intended?

I am the peacemaker.

I must not be defeated.

Life Threads – A Memoir

The core of this illuminating memoir consists of threads of consistency and learning that have emerged through Carol’s life experiences. We learn, as she and her sister Linda did, of the constructive optimism of their parents and how that mindset underlies successfully facing life’s struggles. Mistakes can be overcome. The burdens lift. Life is meant for living.With well-balanced sensitivity and striking honesty, she frankly reveals the false starts in her career and her love life and how things worked out in the end. We gain perspective, as she did, through spirited tales of her life experiences.Heart-wrenching events mix with moments of light, hope, and relief. Even the death of loved ones, people, and dogs doesn’t have to be a downward pull, as Carol learned from her dad.Carol has found that angels have an impact on our experiences, too. Although she has never seen an angel, her dogs saw several one evening.Her experiences in finally finding and settling into her career, her love life, and several events that didn’t seem significant, and some that did, all seem to fit together to form those surfacing life threads.

Finding May

And there she sat. Legs crossed with eyes straight as an arrow.

The sun slipped inches at a mile behind Snow Recreation Center on the eleventh of October, two thousand and two. John met May in the hustle of his happy, full life. Pausing the daily exercising. Exchanging numbers and smiles, the two briefly tucked away from time. Centrum to Eastern Michigan’s heart, ideation began blooming. Tracing began—Finding May and John adoring each other’s warmth inside—if only for two minutes.

Two minutes that day, seconds later next month as John reached a suicidal breaking point, and months forward into 2004.

The girl he was destined to barely know. A Monet-traced beauty. Kind. Sweetly adorable. A thousand budding, poetic lines incapable of capturing May’s immediate place in John’s mind. She’d try to save his life with these two minutes, and later eleven seconds, of her time. A northern star streaking across the Vanilla Sky.

The Last Sunset

On a beach in Florida is a mysterious manuscript written and left there by an unnamed narrator who’s eager for somebody to know his life story. Starting with his first day of kindergarten, the narrator holds nothing back in sharing the important moments, as well as the moments he only now realizes have had a big impact on his life. The narrator tells of his mishaps as a child, his troubled teen years, a devastating heartbreak, a frustrating illness, and his struggles to find his place in the world as an adult. Taking place in an era before smartphones and before mental illness was discussed openly, the narrator looks back on everything that has gone wrong in his life, the things he could have done differently, and how it has all led to the most difficult decision of his life.

Therapized

Therapists are human too.

They cry in the shower, spiral at 2 a.m., and occasionally eat an entire bag of chips while rewatching the same comfort show—just like everyone else.

In Therapized, Anne Petraro—a licensed therapist, educator, and unapologetic dog mom—opens up not just as a professional, but as a person who’s lived through trauma, healing, and everything in between (with snacks in her pocket and dog hair on her clothes).

Part memoir, part guided journal, this book invites you into the real, raw, and sometimes ridiculous process of being human. Through deeply personal stories and powerful journaling prompts, Anne helps you stop striving to be “fixed” and start accepting what it means to be fully, beautifully, imperfectly real.

You’ll laugh, cry, maybe throw the book across the room—but most importantly, you’ll feel seen. Not as a diagnosis or a label, but as someone deeply worthy of healing and joy.

Written with heart, grit, and enough dog hair to knit a sweater, Therapized is for the over-thinkers, the people-pleasers, the trauma survivors, and the ones still trying to make sense of it all. You don’t need to have it all together to begin. You just need to show up.

Let Therapized be the place you finally do.