Choosing to Breathe

<p>What if living a life true to yourself meant unraveling everything you were taught to believe?</p><p></p><p>In <em>Choosing to Breathe</em> Emma Stevens returns to The Gathering Place to continue her powerful exploration of loss identity and healing. As an adult adoptee raised to feel grateful rather than allowed to grieve Emma was shaped by silence expectation and deeply rooted trauma. Yet beneath the layers of survival resilient parts of her self waited to be seen.</p><p>Through raw reflective storytelling and guided by Internal Family Systems (IFS) work Emma confronts the costs of emotional suppression and the courage required to live with integrity. She explores how trauma fragments identity-and how compassion curiosity and breath can help reclaim what was lost. Moving beyond survival she asks what it truly means to live intentionally with honesty and self-trust.</p><p></p><p>This memoir speaks to anyone who has ever felt compelled to perform a version of themselves to belong to stay safe or to be loved. With insight vulnerability and grace <em>Choosing to Breathe</em> invites readers to question inherited narratives honor buried grief and make space for their whole selves.</p><p></p><p>This is not just a story of healing-it is an invitation to pause to breathe and to reclaim the life that is truly yours.</p><p></p>