Behind The Pretty Doors

"Behind The Pretty Doors" is a piercing memoir that balances prose and poetry in an expulsion of a lifetime of events and emotions. The lessons shared could be the validation you need to unshackle yourself and discover the stillness of peace. This memoir displays the stifled childhood of a family subjected to a substance abusive parent. The ripples roll throughout the life of Michelle Hancock, whose words jolt the reader into examining their own thoughts.

This memoir of a family, mixed with emotionally moving poetry, depicts the repressed emotion that leaks from childhood and stains adult life until it is realized and addressed. This book teaches you to cross swords with those bottled up toxic feelings and release what was not yours to carry in the first place.

Michelle Hancock is a wife and mom of two children who lives in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Her passion in life is hiking. Her best friend's name is Lucy, who is slightly overweight, sheds, and is a professional beggar. Lucy came into Michelle's life at a significant time, a period of darkness where she was left pondering her seconds and whether they were of significance to this world. She found herself in a dark room, sleeping her seconds away. Michelle had been suffering from untreated, deep depression, and crippling anxiety for years. Lucy quickly gave Michelle a reason to get moving. Walk her or she would eat the furniture. And even if Michelle didn't believe she belonged in this world anymore, in her absence, her family would still need furniture to sit on. Reason enough to indulge in a little nature's vitamin D.

At the age of fifteen, Michelle began working in the pharmaceutical business. It was a career with endless opportunities and led her down many paths of success. Her passion for caring for others and a strong work ethic permitted her to climb many ladders of success that she never dreamed were possible. It was those same ladders that resulted in her very ungraceful fall from a place she had poured her heart into for over twenty-seven years. Life is not fair, and being a great employee does not guarantee you always win unfair battles. It was not until her late thirties that she discovered she could write. Writing became her ticket to freedom.

Dark secrets which lay in silence since she was a little girl began to surface, lined up in summation, in poetry. The place where her details hid in poetic stances and dancing words. What started off as a game of hide and seek became a strong desire to finally free herself from the details that had stayed hidden behind her houses pretty exterior doors, disguising the entryway of her hell. Her raw description of what happened is something hard to read, but the lessons she shares from her experience could very well be the lessons that save you or the validation that will set you free. Through her words, Michelle will take you on a journey that is sure to make you think about how you spend your precious seconds, and what ugliness can hide behind doors. Michelle will also show you that you can rise from the fire pits of hell and spread your wings and fly free.