15 lines to hold near for the brave and broken.

A journal entry about family betrayal.

My mixed feelings on a day that should only be celebration.

Missing the stage after stroke. How it was taken from me.

How I changed my writing style after experiencing hardships.

Lines that capture the essence of depression.

CHAPTER ONE: THE FIRST BREATH Pain. Not the clean, sharp pain of a cut or the dull ache of a bruise, but pain that existed in every dimension simultaneously. Pain that was color, sound, and taste. Pain that was the entire universe contracting to a single point of white-hot agony and then exploding outward into a thousand screaming nerve endings. She tried to scream, but her throat would not obey. She tried to move, but her limbs were distant countries, unreachable and foreign