Book Description:
Are you tired of living your life according to the labels that have been slapped onto you? Do you feel you are always pressured to conform to other people’s ideas of who they believe you are? Do you feel destined to live a life of mediocrity and unhappiness, despite the fact that you know you are meant for something bigger?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you will easily identify with journey.Journey is a lost and tortured soul on a personal quest to escape the physical, mental and emotional servitude of the unfair labels, invisible barriers, and dire consequences of a lifetime of decisions made out of fear and feelings of inferiority. Journey’s Path to freedom is a dramatic, tear-jerking, yet funny roller-coaster ride that beautifully demonstrates how to:- Change the directions of your thoughts and life.
- Use the power of your pain to discover and serve your life purpose.
- Eliminate toxic relationships and self-sabotaging behavioral patterns.
You have the power to remove whatever labels have been placed on you. If you know there’s more to you than meets the eye, and you’re determined to break free of a lifetime of painful stereotypes and a mediocre, dissatisfied existence, then this book is our key to opening the door to the exceptional life that you always imagined.
Author's Bio:
Cherie Esteves was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the city she so affectionately calls her first love. There she was deeply rooted and heavily influenced by the rich, diverse crosspollination of the European American culture that makes New Orleans one of the most unique and intriguing cities in the world. Cherie moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1989, where she raised her two beautiful children and has continued to live for over twenty years. Her production company’s name, Creole Peach Productions, was born out of her alliance to both cities. 
Blurb
"I revel in the genius of simplicity" Laura Foley writes as she gives us in plain-spoken but deeply lyrical moments, poems that explore a life filled with twists and turns and with many transformations. Through it all is a search for a fulfilling personal and sexual identity, a way to be most fully alive in the world. From multicultural love affairs through marriage with a much older man, through raising a family, through grief, to lesbian love affairs, "Night Ringing" is the portrait of a woman willing to take risks to find her own best way. And she does this with grace and wisdom. As she says: "All my life I've been swimming, not drowning."
-Patricia Fargnoli, author of "Winter, Duties of the Spirit, " and "Then, Something
"I love the words and white space of poetry. I love stories even more. In this collection, Laura Foley evokes stories of crystallized moments, of quiet and overpowering emotion, of bathtubs and lemon chicken. The author grows up on the pages, comes of age, and reconciles past with present. Almost. Try to put the book down between poems to savor each experience. Try, but it won't be easy. -Joni B. Cole, author of "Toxic Feedback, Helping Writers Survive and Thrive"
Plain-spoken and spare, Laura Foley's poems in "Night Ringing" trace a life story through a series of brief scenes: separate, intense moments of perception, in which the speaker's focus is arrested, when a moment opens to reveal a glimpse of the larger whole. Memories of a powerful, enigmatic father, a loving but elusive mother, a much older husband, thread Foley's stories of childhood, marriage and motherhood, finally yielding to the pressure of her attention, as she constructs a series of escapes from family expectations, and moves toward a new life. In these lucid, intense poems, Foley's quiet gaze, her concentration, and emotional accuracy of detail, render this collection real as rain. -Cynthia Huntington, author of "Heavenly Bodies"
Foley's voice rings with quiet authority undercut by calamity, examining a life so extraordinary, she seems to have lived several people's lives, setting a high bar for poetic craft she meets, in great mystery perfectly expressed in the tiny, quotidian, "spent matches pressed on wet pavement," to soulful beauty, "as wind lifts/every shining wave"; in wisdom rooted in humor, from the deliciously funny "Flunking Jung," to self-deprecating wit, misreading "poetic" as "pathetic," reminding us wisdom is love, grown from self-compassion. -April Ossmann, author of "Anxious Music"
Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Joy Street won the Bi-Writer’s Award. Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, The Mom Egg Review and in the British Aesthetica Magazine. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.
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