TOXIC A mother by another name

For so many parents who believe they are alone in this. I thought my family was, too, until I came across support groups by the hundreds, full of the same painful stories. This book began as healing journaling. Somewhere along the way, it became a memoir. My decision to publish it comes from a simple place: I have been no contact with my daughter for years, and there are thousands of parents living the same silence and believing they are the only ones. Adult children going no-contact from their families is a growing pattern, and this is a story written, finally, from a place of peace and acceptance. I found my voice.

The book is titled TOXIC, with the subtitle A mother by another name. It is approximately 30,000 words, written under the pen name Serena Amari to protect the privacy of my family. My background is twenty years of clinical nursing and graduate study in forensic psychology and victimology, which informs how I approach the research woven through the personal narrative. The voice throughout is gentle and observational, never accusatory. The book draws on family estrangement scholarship from Pillemer, Coleman, Agllias, and Blake, and on Pauline Boss’s clinical framework of ambiguous loss.

I am seeking a sensitivity editor with overall feedback on structure and voice, a copy edit at the line level (with attention to APA 7 formatting for the references), and a proofread once the manuscript is typeset. I would love to work with one editor across all three passes if your schedule allows. I am open to your quote rather than working from a fixed budget, and I can be flexible on timeline.

The manuscript was drafted with the help of an AI writing assistant, used for organization, research synthesis, and editorial feedback. All final language and decisions are my own. I am happy to share a sample chapter on request, and an NDA can be provided to protect the project’s anonymity before any further material is exchanged. I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you.