STEMMING FROM THE MUD

STEMMING FROM THE MUD is an 86,000-word family memoir that journeys the seven continents and turns loneliness into love by finding the meaning of ‘home’.

Dressed in white in order to please her dead mother, Lani stands amongst her older brothers at their mom’s funeral in Canada, marking the beginning of Lani’s journey into womanhood. Alone.

Unable to face the remaining weeks of high school, and with her father and brothers all dispersed in their separate lives, Lani is left with no place left to belong.

She packs up the home she shared with her mom, storing away the splintered memories of her youth, and embarks on a backpacking trip to her father’s native land of Australia. Pushing an ocean between herself and her grief temporarily soothes her frayed roots. But when a failed love sealed an end to Lani’s life Down Under, her quest for belonging propelled her further around the globe.

Lani took refuge in London with her childhood best friend, Kate, but within a few short years Lani was coming undone, again, and the two women decided to leave their careers behind and take an around the world trip. But when Kate found love in Quito, their paths parted and the exuberance of getting away fell flat as Lani’s love of solitude shrivelled her into a self-made prison.

With still no home to return to, she made the brazen move to give away her worldly freedoms for a full-time life of service at the ashram that was her former yoga school in New York. Believing she had found the family she always craved, Lani unwittingly lost herself under her own ideals and her desire to belong. After a year of blind devotion, a major betrayal at the ashram rendered her homeless once again.

The strength of female friendship held her through an agonising return to the ‘real world’ in London. In desperate need to understand where her own faith and trust got lost along the way, Lani embarked on a pilgrimage to India where she regained her sense of self and began to visualise a promising life waiting for her in Australia.

Returning to Sydney, love begins to blossom. Fulfilling a childhood dream, she reaches the edge of the world in Antarctica where the open silence revealed the depths of her sorrows that had been lurking below the surface all along. She began to embrace life instead of her losses and finally finds home ­­– by landing in the warmth of her own heart.

A story of resilience that navigates the unmapped territory of grief, and heals from the broken embrace of family, STEMMING FROM THE MUD speaks to readers of both WILD, by Cheryl Strayed and EDUCATED, by Tara Westover.

I am currently seeking representation.