I’ve written two books myself. I have learned so much in the process of writing each. I have learned my process, the importance of an editor, the publishing options, and how to reach my audience.
He Never Liked Cake
a memoir of growing up with my father’s traumatic brain injury
On a balmy Tuesday during the summer before ninth grade, a car accident on a rain-slicked highway flipped Janna’s safe and happy world upside down, and her adolescence dissolved into a summer of restraining belts, feeding tubes, therapy schedules, and chicken salad sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria. Since that day, Janna’s life has been a navigation through the inescapable struggles of her father’s brain injury, a study of her mother’s resilience and unconditional love, an a challenge to find her own identity and acceptance as an adult. Brain injury is insidious. It’s tricky and tiresome. For those asked to love and support a TBI survivor, the struggles are deeply personal and often unresolved, and the victim’s recovery is repeatedly thwarted by insurmountable obstacles, along with the battles fought with insurance companies for proper patient care and effective treatment. Janna Leyde’s coming-of-age memoir encompasses the acute and lasting effects of brain injury on both survivors and their loved ones. He Never Liked Cake is for children who feel the weight of life crashing down, for families who fight for the new normal, for survivors who fail to see how life has changed—and, for everyone, this is a story about how to embrace life when it doesn’t work out the way we had it planned.
Move Feel Think
Yoga for Brain Injury, PTSD & Other Forms of Trauma
All traumas are individual. Every yoga practice is personal. In this illustrated guidebook you will find 20 yoga poses designed specifically to enhance the lives of those who live with brain injury, PTSD, and other forms of trauma. Additionally, Move Feel Think is an excellent book for anyone looking to begin a yoga practice. Undergoing any type of trauma, big or small, weakens the connection between mind and body. Individuals oftentimes experience a sense of displacement, loss of awareness, lack of purpose—along with various other intellectual deficits. A routine yoga practice can help strengthen or regain that individual's sense of identity, purpose and awareness, and, perhaps, encourage an acceptance of the lifelong changes due to a traumatic incident. Move Feel Think is novel and unique approach to healing, as it introduces the trifecta of benefits of a yoga practice: the physical benefits (Move), the emotional benefits (Feel), and the cognitive benefits (Think). Accompanying each pose is a breakdown of the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits—along with tips and suggestions to help deepen anyone’s practice throughout. This guidebook can serve as a long-term complement to any treatment plan or lifestyle and can be practiced as little as or as often as desired.