Two time divorcee, Laura Bailey, has had it with failed relationships, love, and deception. So she runs to the only person in the world who makes her feel safe, her mother, Flo, a tiny Sicilian woman deeply rooted in family and fellowship. But Flo has been hiding a nearly forty year secret that threatens to tear their bond utterly apart, and it’s all hiding right inside of a tin box underneath Laura’s childhood bed. Once inside, life as Laura knew it, will forever be altered. Will their relationship survive the test?
PREFACE
Have you ever woke up one morning and asked yourself, “How did I get here?” If you have, then you’re one of the millions of people across the globe who share the sentiment. If you’re a woman, you may have asked this of yourself multiple times, daily.
If you’ll read between the lines, The Day I Divorced the Old Me is a captivating tale about a woman who goes to bed one night and wakes up married to a man she thought she knew, living the life she thought she wanted, only to realize it was all a sham. Taking vows was only a formality to satisfy the carnivorous void of the one true thing he really valued–power.
Control is a debilitating drug, ever so subtle and suggestive, constantly masked by wit and sarcasm she slowly accepts, like a baby being spoon fed a slow death. She is, indeed, his prey. A murder of emotions, dreams, desires, he feeds off a light that once shined brighter than a thousand stars, a beacon of hope for many, and a voice for the people, now internally dim. She faces a mirror and contemplates the stranger within. Imagine the misery. Envision the pain. Empathize. Now imagine that same woman repeating the cycle. And that’s where the story begins.
Where does she go, who does she turn to? A mother. Her mother. She runs to the arms of support, love, laughter, joy, and understanding. La Famiglia. Safety.
But imagine, while relishing in all that safekeeping, finding out a secret so deep and dark that it makes her question her very existence? It forces her to reexamine every moment in her life, every relationship, every conversation, every encounter, every decision, and every detail. It crushes her and she finds herself asking, “Who am I?”
This story is not just told through the eyes of the woman Laura is today, but through the eyes of the young girl she was yesterday, one who relied on the guidance of a mother to help mold her identity and shape her views of the world and men. It is just one woman’s plight to seek the truth about believed falsehoods she once hung her hat on, a story of acceptance, pain, tears, and a lot of rain.
Immerse yourself in the life of Laura Bailey, a woman as layered as tiered cake, filled with saccharine richness, protected by an ample layer of flawless beauty, crowned with modesty, while awaiting the picture-perfect partner with an ideal message ready to be devoured by life’s many offerings.
Won’t you take this journey with her?
Kandace Campbell 