My first book opens with a woman standing at the edge of a life she no longer recognizes. Pregnant. Exhausted. Heartbroken. And carrying the weight of a future she never imagined she’d have to face alone.

She leaves the life she thought she would build with her husband — the life she planned, prayed for, and trusted. And she steps into a reality she didn’t choose: rebuilding from the ground up while battling wounds that haven’t healed, scars that still ache, depression that creeps in quietly, finances that never stretch far enough, and the heavy, holy responsibility of single motherhood.

She wants to be strong for her child.
She wants to be whole.
She wants to be steady.
But she’s not sure she can be any of those things.
Not yet.

She’s terrified of becoming a shell of herself — the kind of woman who disappears inside her own grief. The kind of woman who survives but forgets how to live. The kind of woman who gives everything to her child and leaves nothing for herself.

And yet, even in her fear, she keeps moving.

She doesn’t know how to rebuild, but she tries.
She doesn’t know how to heal, but she reaches.
She doesn’t know how to hold all the pieces of her life, but she gathers them anyway.

This character — this woman — is the heartbeat of my story. She represents so many women I know, so many women I’ve been, so many women who have had to start over when life broke in ways they didn’t see coming.

She is the woman who leaves before she loses herself completely.
The woman who chooses her child even when she feels unchosen.
The woman who carries grief in one hand and hope in the other.
The woman who is terrified of failing but refuses to stop trying.

Her journey is not clean or easy. It’s messy, raw, and painfully honest. She battles the kind of loneliness that sits in your bones. She wrestles with the shame of starting over. She questions her worth, her strength, her ability to mother, her ability to survive.

But she also discovers something else — something quiet and steady and unexpected.

She learns that rebuilding is not a punishment.
It’s a rebirth.

She learns that strength doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes it whispers.
Sometimes it trembles.
Sometimes it simply shows up again tomorrow.

She learns that grief doesn’t have to swallow her whole.
That she can feel it without becoming it.
That she can break without staying broken.

And she learns that motherhood, even in its hardest moments, can be a place of becoming — not erasure.

This is where her story begins.
And in many ways, it’s where mine begins too.

— Leigh C. Mitchell