Stand Up to Shame: Free Yourself and Climb Your Mountain

What would you do and who could you be if you weren’t terrified of being shamed? That’s the question that Marren Halleck must answer in my debut novel, Somewhere Above It All.  Let’s face it. Shame is everywhere. It’s in our everyday lives, lurking behind the scenes, waiting to chain up our hearts and shackle our […]

Living Outside the Picture Frame: Three Things I Learned From My Broken Life

In today’s social-media-infused world, there seems to be a uniform prescription for happiness: capture (or create) a flawless picture and post it online to show everyone your picture-frame perfect life, then watch as a soaring number of “likes” appear on your screen. For some of us, this isn’t easy.  Because our realities aren’t frame-worthy.  Life […]

Three Things I Discovered From Writing About Shame and Grief

Last week, my debut novel was released. It’s called Somewhere Above It All, and it is the story of a grieving young widow who dares to conquer her troubled past by attempting to summit Mount Kilimanjaro after her husband dies from opioid abuse. In essence, it’s a story of facing really hard things and learning to live again. Anyone who has […]