April 1-30, 2021 Tour

~~~

The struggle to be an independent woman, to cut ties with dependence on that perfect partner to make us complete, whole; happy…is an ongoing battle.

Often it takes a disaster or two to help us open our blind eyes, our deaf ears. We learn, either willingly or unwillingly (through traumatic consequences), that we have to be a 100% whole woman before we can attract a 100% whole mate. This 50/50 stuff, just doesn’t work. All we have in this scenario are two broken people trying to mend each other, and that doesn’t benefit anyone.

Such is the case with my protagonist, Olivia Callahan. She is broken, but doesn’t know it. And this is a big problem. She is a sitting duck—vulnerable, naïve, clueless.

It takes twenty years, two beautiful daughters, and a divorce before she realizes something is dangerously wrong. In her haste to depart her parents’ home at the tender age of 18 she had leapt into her husband Monty’s arms, unaware that she was trading one fire for another. Monty felt comfortable. Familiar. They rock along for twenty years, and all is well as long as she lets Monty take the lead.

In everything.

Bad move.

When he leaves for a younger, perkier version, Olivia is shell-shocked. Devastated. What happened? She’d given him everything she had to give. Had she needed to try harder? Be more available? Claw into his mind to find out what she’d done wrong?

In a desperate attempt to pursue normalcy, even though her life would never be ‘normal’ again; after the divorce she takes her daughters to the beach, the family’s yearly vacation spot. In retrospect, she realizes this was not the best decision, since she sees the ghost of their marriage around every palm tree, in every beach chair. She is desperate to move on, to stop dwelling on what was and embrace the possibilities ahead. But she is still broken.

And so the cycle continues. One poor—but well-intentioned—decision after the other. One of which lands her in the bushes, bleeding and unconscious; the victim of an apparent assault. Fortunately, she is in the bushes outside an ER, and is carted in after someone finds her.

The ER team finds a massive brain injury, and struggles to save her. She lapses into a coma, and all the medical team can do is wait. She has no ID, and is admitted as a Jane Doe.

Olivia is based on an expanded and darker version of myself, decades ago, before I found strength and support in a recovery group. The information was life-changing, and boy, did my life ever change!

It got worse immediately.

They don’t tell you that this happens. I guess they like to keep it a secret, or the recoveree will run screaming from the meeting. I’m joking, but many times life does get worse when we begin facing facets of ourselves that are unpleasant and non-productive, but the resultant healing is phenomenal. Worth every cringy, hard-fought moment. These moments are temporary and healing.

Oliva is in for a tough battle. It’s one I believe most women experience in one way or another, and its severity depends on what the woman is willing to endure. Whether she will move forward, or stay stuck because it has become familiar. In Book One, Olivia stumbles through trying to find her way back to her life, but since the coma has stolen her memory, she is exhausted trying to reclaim the memories from her marriage, and memories of her children’s most precious years. And angry. She finds the anger energizing, and it propels her to carve out a better future than what family and friends share about her past. Pre-coma. Unfortunately, in order to be completely free of the past, she must revisit it.

What she discovers makes her more determined than ever to run from it as fast as she can.

~~~