Ever Faithful To His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse is a memoir, a true life tears-to-triumph story of self-defeating detours and dreams lost and found.
A young woman who loses sight of the faith she has been brought up with attempts to find her way in the world, rejecting her stable roots in lieu of finding adventure and romance. Despite periods of spiritual renewal in which she receives a prophecy, she slides back, taking several self-defeating detours that take her through a series of heartbreaking events. When Kathy's second husband, Dan's verbal abuse escalates, Kathy finally realizes she must move on before she and her children become a statistic.
How does a young woman who came from a stable, loving family make so many wise choices when it came to career, but so many wrong choices when it came to love, so that she ended up sacrificing career and having to flee in broad daylight with her children from an abusive marriage? What is getting in her way and why does she keep taking so many self-defeating detours?
The story opens up the day Kathy feels physically threatened for the first time in her three-year marriage to her second husband. This sends her on a journey to make sense of her life and discern what part she has played in the vulnerable circumstance she finds herself in.
She must make a decision--face her self-defeating patterns that have led to this situation and move on or repeat her mistakes. Her life and the lives of her two children are dependent upon the choices she makes and the chances she takes from this point forward.
Paperback: 242 pages
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Open Books Press (July 28, 2014)
ISBN-10: 0985936797
ISBN-13: 978-0985936792
ASIN: B00M17OXYO
Twitter hashtag: #EFaithPooler
Ever Faithful To His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse is available as an e-book and paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, andIndieBound.
Book Giveaway Contest:
To win a copy of Ever Faithful To His Lead: My Journey to Memoir, please enter using the Rafflecopter form at the bottom of this post. The giveaway contest closes October 28th at 12:00 AM EST. We will announce the winner the same day in the Rafflecopter widget. Good luck!
About the Author: Kathleen Pooler is an author and a retired Family Nurse Practitioner whose memoir,Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse, published on July 28, 2014, and work-in-progress sequel, Hope Matters: A Memoir of Faithare about how the power of hope through her faith in God helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments: domestic abuse, divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment. She believes that hope matters and that we are all strengthened and enlightened when we share our stories.
She lives with her husband Wayne in eastern New York.
She blogs weekly at her Memoir Writer’s Journey blog:http://krpooler.com
Twitter @kathypooler
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kathleen-pooler/16/a95/20a
Google+:http://plus.google.com/109860737182349547026/posts
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4812560-kathleen-pooler
Facebook (personal page):http://www.facebook.com/kathleen.pooler
Facebook author page:http://www.facebook.com/AuthorKathleenPooler
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/krpooler/
One of her stories “The Stone on the Shore” is published in the anthology: The Woman I’ve Become: 37 Women Share Their Journeys From Toxic Relationships to Self-Empowerment by Pat LaPointe, 2012.
Another story, “Choices and Chances,” is published in the My Gutsy Story Anthology by Sonia Marsh, September, 2013.
Review by Crystal J. Casavant-Otto:
Wow did this memoir hit home! Kathleen Pooler's memoir about emotional abuse in her marriage is certainly an important theme, but for me the question about her choices in life is what really struck a chord. How does someone with such a "normal"upbringing make so many mistakes? Why do any of us make poor choices? This is what really drew me to Ever Faithful to His Lead. I felt immediately kindred to Kathleen because of mistakes I made in my life, and her gorgeous writing style made this book impossible to put down.
After my first divorce, I remember referring to my marriage as a "practice marriage" because somehow that made me feel better about how we had failed. Neither my husband or myself had come from families where divorce was a suitable solution to marital problems. When Kathleen describes feeling like a failure wanting nothing more than a loving and stable family like the one she grew up in I found myself nodding my head. Those of us who came from happy little loving families want to find a spouse like our parents had. Somehow we hadn't hit the mark the first time and even feeling like a failure, we still held out hope that next time we would get things right.
Kathleen is someone you would consider successful and independent. Yet she is waiting for her price (and hey...aren't we all?). Unfortunately Kathleen kept finding the idiot in tinfoil instead of the price charming she deserved. Was it because she secretly desired to live on the wild side? I remember someone telling me "you like to have a little chaos in your life, don't you?" and I didn't know what they meant at the time, but looking back I had chosen the bad boy (once again) instead of seeing that price charming was right in front of me. Kathleen rebelled and made poor decisions but they seem to be limited to certain areas of her life. She wasn't a disaster spinning out of control, for the most part she was the obedient daughter her parents expected. Somehow she settled and her second marriage failed as well.
I'm so glad to say the story doesn't end there. Kathleen finds her voice and finds the confidence she needs to make better choices...but I won't spoil the ending for you. Needless to say, Ever Faithful to His Lead speaks to me as a woman, mother, wife, and christian. This is a fabulously written memoir that is inspirational. It's a fabulous book to read and share with friends.
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