As young children, Opal and Ruby Stenberg were in a life-altering car accident with their father. It was up to the sisters to survive on their own. Now, Opal is seventeen and struggles with her mental health but receives support from her loving mother, Desi. Ruby refuses to live at home, but Opal desperately wants her fractured family to be whole. After a harrowing camping trip with her best friend, Casey, Opal falls into despair. Casey has become cruel and someone Opal no longer recognizes. With a series of violent behavior surrounding her, Opal becomes paralyzed with anxiety and grief. Suddenly, the walls are closing in. As Ruby stays away, Casey acts irrationally, and her well-intentioned mother continues to infuriate her, Opal plunges into a pit of darkness. Who can she trust? Can she even trust herself? Opal needs to face the truth about Casey and her family’s past, and that hiding from darkness may not be the only option to survive.
Cleo is a spirit suffering from her own destructive thoughts. Yearning for something to feed her hunger, she stumbles across those who are detrimental to her. The Great Peet’s influence is no different. When he asks, ”Why is it you feel you have no choice?” she is quick to reply: ”I hear your touch and feel your voice.” When the story continues in the eyes of Peet, we meet the alluring Violet, for whom his love flourishes. Drawn to Violet’s grace, yet pulled by Cleo’s heartache, Peet grapples between purity and substance. Presented entirely in verse, each character in Wounded Wisteria embodies a different earthly element, while the story becomes a study of the power of perspective, and a testament to the youthful essence of craving and vulnerability inside the heart of us all.
Meet Maithy Vu
Vietnamese American writer of surrealism and poetry
Come aboard the ship of early adulthood in this offbeat, magical tale.
Meet Maithy Vu
Hi there! I am thrilled to tell you about my debut novel, Squid Season. This story is dedicated to the dreamers and doers—the ones who dare to venture outside of what they’ve known. It’s the quarter-life crisis expressed in rhyme, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. If Squid Season makes an impact on you, please take a moment to review it on Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, or any other platforms. Thank you for taking an interest in my work. May this book fill your mind with wonder and your heart with hope.
Twin girls, Garvina and Beatrice, love hearing tales their great aunt spins for them. But one such tale is fascinating, and they believe it to be true. Sworn to secrecy, the girls set out on an adventurous pursuit to unearth what Great Aunt Matilda promises to be at the end of the proverbial rainbow. Stumbling blocks hinder them as they struggle to reach the “pot of gold” they are certain awaits them. But will discoveries along the way expose a long-buried secret that threatens to destroy the ones they love?
Meet Dianne Selchert
The hardest day of my life was retiring from my passion, which was teaching. I couldn’t have chosen a more rewarding career. I enjoy sharing with others, and in my retirement I have found another way to do that. My mind is full of ideas, and I have begun to create stories from those ideas. I love to write, spinning in tidbits of my own life on the South Dakota prairie into my books. Of course, I’ll never reveal which parts are purely fictitious and which parts are not!
A heartbreaking doctor’s visit. A fate she never saw coming. She’d dig deep for the strength she so desperately needed…
Seattle, 2015. Jenny Lisk was happy with a perfectly normal, busy life. But after the usual bustling week, Friday night turned from downtime into mild alarm when her forty-three-year-old spouse shared that he’d been feeling dizzy. And after ten days of his condition steadily worsening, she still wasn’t prepared for the stunning news: He was terminally ill.
Reeling from his diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumor, Jenny suddenly became not only a wife, mother, and career woman, but also a cancer-patient caregiver and parent of grieving children. And her many fears and uncertainties swirled around one relentless question:
Did she have what it takes to help her young family survive?
Through a vulnerable, honest account of preparing for the death of a loved one, Jenny shares tips and information about childhood grief, how to be there for mourning friends, and ways online communities provide essential support. And for those who feel lost and alone, or are grappling with any kind of loss, her deeply personal journey provides a universal beacon of hope.
Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice is a brave and raw narrative that doesn’t pull any punches on the realities of caregiving and bereavement. If you like captivating stories, authentic inspiration, and understanding the grieving process, then you’ll find encouragement in Jenny Lisk’s touching memoir.
Buy Future Widow to rebuild a life today!
Meet Jenny Lisk
Jenny Lisk is an award-winning author and widowed mom who is dedicated to helping widowed parents increase their family’s well-being.
In her book, Future Widow, Jenny draws on her personal and professional experience to provide a real-life guide for surviving and thriving while raising grieving children.
As host of The Widowed Parent Podcast, Jenny has done more than 100 interviews with experts, seasoned widowed parents, and people who lost a parent at a young age. Her podcast brings much-needed resources to parents, helping them feel less lost and alone.
Life is quite unpredictable. One minute you’re blessed with health, love, and success, then the next minute, one thing has been painfully stripped away from you. The amount of pain you feel and the emotional turmoil you experience with loss is known as grief. When you grieve the loss of someone in your life, you’re suffering emotionally because you can’t seem to cope without them. It’s often hard comprehending how this loved one was taken away, and you’re left with a gaping hole in your life that you’re unable to fill.
Grief doesn’t necessarily mean losing a loved one. Many people grieve the loss of a pet or a job. They can also grieve if they’re going through a failed marriage that led to divorce or if they’re going through a health or financial crisis. Grieving means coping with a sudden loss, any loss. Grief is quite complicated, and whether it’s as severe as the death of a loved one or losing a job, both are quite personal to you. The way you grieve means you’re trying to deal with one of life’s biggest challenges, and it can often prove to be quite overwhelming. Bereavement, or complicated grief, affects many adult grievers, and they find themselves emotionally and physically overwhelmed.
In this book, we will show you that grieving is a natural thing, and you don’t need to be alone. We delve deeper into what grief looks like so you can recognize the signs and see what to expect. We also offer some steps toward healing and finding peace.
Disclaimer: This book is a guide for anyone who has faced a loss and is grieving. However, it is not an alternative to therapeutic professional help. Seeking professional and psychiatric help is also recommended to help you through your own grieving process.
Everyone has a life singular. One…Unique…Extraordinary.
One true Love for Life…One act of fate changes a Life forever…
Jeff Diamond built a life of influence and wealth by making choices for all the right reasons. He lived by the law of reciprocity; a lesson learned on the streets as a teenager with nothing but an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Plagued by the scars of a violent childhood, he created his vision and fought for it.
And once he no longer needed to fight for himself, he fought for others. Yet when Jeff’s dream girl, Lynn, is taken from him by an act of a jealous misfit from his home town; the millionaire realises how he had succeeded in many ways and many like him were destined to fail? The secret, he discovers, lay in the pursuit of love and wisdom; life’s two magic ingredients.
Lynn was gone; his remaining days now only to account for their life together to inspire young people to make his type of choices, and not that of the desperate misfit named García.
Part One of Volume One – an amazing journey of discovery for life’s experiences through this fourteen-part series of love, passion and hope…
