"Ghost No More: A Memoir" by CeeCee James

Ghost No More:

A Memoir

by CeeCee James

Ghost No More is a memoir about the journey of joyful living after child abuse. 

Description

All CeeCee wanted was just a touch of approval and love from her mother. That's all.

What she got was neglect, homelessness, dirty secrets, and abuse. Yet, there must be a way out of the mind-numbing self-condemnation that would surely lead to her ultimate destruction - there had to be.

All she had to do was find the key that would open the door to feeling loved for the first time, learning to trust, and healing the broken places.

Excerpt

Please use the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon.

Featured Review

By sarah

I started reading this at night in bed and finally put it down at 4:30 am. Not because I was done reading, but because I needed to sleep! And finished the book later in the day. It's not often I stay up all night reading a book, but when I do, it's because it's really good and well written! This is a book about a girl who survives a horribly abusive childhood. But she doesn't just survive, she ends up finding healing, love, and redemption. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story, CeeCee. I am in awe that such beauty can come out of incredible pain.

Guest Post from CeeCee James (originally posted on her blog)

What's Next as Adult Survivors of Child Abuse?

So I made this blog for several reasons. I have been doing some healing from past child abuse, and thinking about how we go on to try and live normal healthy lives, hoping to never be like our abusers.

Sometimes I still feel the rejection from my parents, especially since, even as an adult I tried to have relationship with them. I didn't realize the abuse was still going on, through their manipulation and insults. I was still trying to be the "good child". What I thought was healthiness was really my old coping skills kicking in to protect me from their outbursts.

My parents eventually didn't want to speak to me anymore. Even though their rejection hurt, that's when I experienced some real freedom.

So I wondered if there were more of us out there, who struggle between the hurt, and health of a relationship with parents that once abused us (and maybe still do). BTW - Facebook has been a doozy, every time someone posts a picture about "appreciate your mom or dad", I feel pain. Every time someone writes, your parents won't be with you for long, I feel pain. I can't fix the relationship. The separation has to be there for now for my own health.

Sometimes we chose the separation, sometimes we don't. But however it comes I think it helps us to see more clearly. We want to please our family, so it's only when that option isn't available that we can really see things for the way they are.

It's hard to see the estrangement as a consequence of their choices, but it really is. Without even a small change of heart on their part, it's hard to get healthy while still in a relationship with them.

Here is a hug for each and every person who needs one:

**********BIG HUG**********

We might have been bruised, scared, and broken as kids, but there is a life, and light out of that pain. There is healing for the part of us that we'd rather shut away because we think no one can relate. Here's to living a life of beauty pulled from all those ashes.

From the Author

Hi there! Just want to send out a big thank you to all of my readers!

I love to write, paint with watercolors, and eat chocolate. Not necessarily all at the same time. I love to do pranks too, usually just on my poor husband who luckily puts up with me and lets me think I'm clever. One of my favorite pranks was sewing his work t-shirt neck-hole shut on April Fool's (I made him lasagna that night to make up for it.)

He does a few on me - his last one was hiding an old helium birthday balloon under the covers at night. I had just finished a spooky story, and as the last one awake, I checked the doors and turned off the lights. As I climbed into bed this apparition rose out of the covers, and I screamed ... until I heard him laugh.

I still owe him for that one ... ;)

Again, thank you, and have a great day!

Please visit me at my blog.

Links

Add to Goodreads

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon US author page

Amazon UK author page

Blog

Facebook

Goodreads

Twitter @SunshineonMe3

"He Will Restore" by Helen Chapman

He Will Restore

by Helen Chapman

If you are interested in the history behind this story, check out the following historical documents: The Brassell Hangings by Donald E. Spurlock, The Brassell Hangings, The Rockport Journal 4 April 1878, and The Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel 27 April 1878.

Description

Government corruption. Police brutality. Child abuse.

Ripped from the headlines of Tennessee newspapers from 1875 to 1878.

He Will Restore is a fictionalized retelling of the real adventures of Joe and Teek Brassell, two brothers who gave everything to save their sisters by any means, fair or foul.

Like most people in the area, the family were subsistence farmers, making what little cash money they could from the manufacture of illicit spirits. They were fairly typical, hard working people, with the exception of Egbert, their patriarch, who drank much, worked little, and had a predilection for his young daughters.

Excerpt

Amanda busied herself putting a quick supper on the table for her brothers. Anything to keep from going to bed. She took some sausage from the warming oven, along with some corn bread wrapped in a damp towel. It wasn't much of a supper, but this year's harvest had been on the lean side. It was too early for hog killing, and her mother had put by everything they could manage for winter. Normally, there would still be roasting ears clean up until Christmas. This year, they were lucky to have enough for their stock and for grinding to make meal.

Joe retrieved a pitcher of buttermilk from the cold box by the back door. A sausage from last year that had been preserved in a crock of lard and some corn bread didn't seem all that appetizing to him. He figured the icy buttermilk, clabbered on the back of the stove after his sister Tennessee had churned, would be a nice addition.

Both Joe and Teek avoided thoughts of their oldest sister. She was the one people said "wasn't right", or was "teched in the head". Tennessee was three years older than their brother Jim. Joe didn’t remember her any other way, but Jim told him once that Tennessee used to be a happy little girl, who liked nothing better than playing in the creek that ran beside their house. It wasn’t until after the family had to leave Kingston Springs that she became strange. A year or so before Amanda was born, Tennessee quit talking.  She withdrew into herself, into her own little world. The only sound she made was when she would scream during the night.

Joe remembered the screams most of all. They were horrible, gut wrenching cries of an animal in pain. To hear that sound coming from his eight year old sister, who otherwise was perfectly mute, was terrifying to the young boy. Later, after the family had moved from Kingston Springs, and Joe was about ten years old, he put two and two together, and realized the screams stopped when Egbert left his daughter’s room.

He looked at his sister Amanda as she busied herself getting their supper together. She was a pretty girl: blond hair with some red in it, green eyes, very petite and lady-like for a farm girl. She didn’t look anything like their older sister. Maybe that was what saved her from their father.

Recently, though, Egbert had been looking at Amanda the way he used to look at Tennessee. Their father was never an easy man to live with. He was quick to temper, quicker to strike out. He wanted supreme control over those in his household, and it scared him when he saw his children reaching adulthood. Egbert had even been happy when Joe's wife had died of pneumonia last year, and Joe had to come back home with his little boy.

It was about that time that Egbert starting avoiding his eldest, too. No one mentioned it. But Tennessee had started making a mad dash to the outhouse every morning, holding her hand over her mouth. Her waistline started to thicken a little. But just as quickly as it started, it stopped. Joe had tried to deny what he knew by then had to be true. Tennessee, the girl who never left the house, who was always with family, the girl whose only sound screams in the night, was in a family way.

Egbert had brought that old granny woman up from Cookeville then. She had spent hours gathering things around the farm, and returned at least three times with a basket filled with peculiar flowers and plants. Then she had begun to pound and boil and mix. Finally, the old witch had produced some noxious smelling poultice. She had told Joe to take the baby outside then, because just smelling the stuff could harm him. He had been glad to go.

Joe didn't want to think about what the old woman had done. But as he sat outside with Teek and his baby boy, James, he remembered wiping way his own tears every time he heard his sister scream from inside that room.

It was the next day when Egbert started looking at Amanda.

Review

By KittyM 

This work is deeply engrossing. It is one of those books you just can't put down because the action keeps rolling like a dramatic thriller movie. The author presents the characters such that you get to know and care about them, and even though you ultimately know their fate as it is based on a true story, you keep hoping that there will be a surprise twist that saves the day. If you need something to read that will entertain you, then this is your book. If you've ever been fascinated by true history not mentioned in traditional history books, this is your book. You will feel like you were right there, a fly on the wall, during the entire thing. You can almost smell the moonshine, hear the cries, and taste the good cooking of Miss Lizzie. Ms. Chapman, you have truly captivated me.

About the Author

Helen Chapman is a regular contributor to periodicals, including I Love Cats magazine, Urban Arts and Antiques, and Catnip Chronicles. Her books include Adventures of a Crazy Cat Lady, Neutral Zone, and The House that Jack Built (written under the pen name of Anne Arrandale). Her latest book, He Will Restore, was published on 1 January 2013.

Helen's work is also appearing in a compendium of short stories in An Honest Lie Volume 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy.

When she is not writing, Helen rescues cats, and works for a busy divorce attorney.

Links

Amazon US Paperback

Amazon US Kindle

Amazon UK Paperback

Amazon UK Kindle

Smashwords

Amazon US author page

Amazon UK author page

Smashwords author page
Goodreads

Blog

Wattpad