What Is Therapeutic Fiction, You Ask?
It’s fiction written with a therapeutic purpose, designed to support a group of people going through a specific experience. It’s a new book genre I created while writing Brave Love: Alexia’s Journey, that I hope will become a mainstream genre in the future.
As we heal from narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships, one of the most supportive things that can happen is finding out we’re not alone. Discovering that other people went through the same mind-bending, self-crushing experiences we did. And it’s incredibly empowering to realize that there are words to explain what we lived through, and that it wasn’t all our fault. We didn’t deserve the things that happened to us.
Written by a licensed professional counselor and survivor of narcissistic abuse, Brave Love: Alexia’s Journey is that book. It takes the reader through Alexia’s journey into an insane, narcissistic relationship (well, two of them, actually), and it touches on some things we survivors don’t freely talk about because of the shame that can surround them.
Where It All Started
When I first started writing the manuscript for this book, it was purely a romance novel. A way for me to write the feelings out of my body from an unhealthy relationship I’d had to let go of, but I never finished it.
Fast forward thirty years. Something inside prompted me to resurrect the story I’d started so long ago. I hadn’t even kept the manuscript, but the characters were still alive and vivid in my mind.
Now, as a counselor who had done years of healing work from the effects of abusive, toxic relationships, I had a very different set of skills, knowledge, and information to draw from. As I wrote, I experienced an unshakable knowing within me that this novel was to be a tool, a guide of sorts, for other survivors of abuse, not just a romance novel.
As I wrote, I considered my own experiences and those of the many other survivors I’d talked to, blending them together to represent the reality of narcissistic abuse, which then became Alexia’s journey.
The knowledge, strength, and wisdom that come with walking through the fire of our own pain and surviving the complete devastation of our being are woven through Alexia’s story.
In addition, I have incorporated nuggets of wisdom and even a few therapy sessions within the twists and turns of Alexia’s healing and empowerment.
A Peek Into Brave Love: Alexia’s Journey
Besides this therapeutic purpose for the novel, it promises to take you on a great ride! I’ve been told by several people that I write a bit like Colleen Hoover, so expect some drama.
Brave Love: Alexia’s Journey will also take you to the forests, beaches, restaurants, and coffee shops of beautiful, romantic Door County, Wisconsin. You’ll read about food that will make your mouth water, the great gift of genuine, lifelong friendship, and the sensuality of self-care and a soul-led life that will inspire your heart. There will be scenes that make you cringe, guaranteed, and scenes you’d like to get lost in for just a moment longer.
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