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BLISSFUL THINKING:
A Memoir of Overcoming the Wellness Revolution
Available in September
Never give up, especially on yourself
Before my marriage ended over the telephone — from another country — I thought I knew from wellness. My parents owned a gym, and I’d already spent more than a decade in substance abuse recovery.
After that soul-crushing phone call, I feared a return to my substance addiction if I didn’t make a radical departure from life as I knew it. It wouldn’t have been the first time heartbreak sent me down that shame spiral. I turned toward the only answer I knew, one her sobriety mentor had shared — “the answer is always more spirituality.”
But when is more enough?
Desperate for answers, I tested out every spiritual journey imaginable—yoga, silent meditation retreats, gurus — but I kept returning to toxic relationships.
Driven to a sex cult where I was finally forced to confront unresolved family dynamics, I discovered I’d been asking the wrong question. Ultimately, I recognized my mother’s lasting gift—hope.
In a memoir that’s both rapturous and page-turning, Kirchner captures the terrors and joys of searching for radical honesty — and a second date.
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YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN & HISTORY
My newsletter looks at how we live as women today.
OTHER BOOKS:
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FLORIDA GIRLS, A NOVEL
Broke and orphaned near the close of WWII, Thelma Miles joins a troupe of touring swimsuit models in an attempt to flee her dark past, only to find she's stepped into the mafia’s lair. When the head of the Florida underworld offers her everything she never knew she wanted, she must decide if she will run again or return to the life she knows. Can she reclaim parts of her former self to forge a new future?
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AMERICAN LADY CREATURE
Between a healthcare crisis, a devastating divorce and her 40th birthday, LL Kirchner was left to re-define herself as a woman while living in one of the world’s most patriarchal cultures. As she wrote, “I hoped moving to Qatar would change everything. Until it did.”
NPR says the memoir is “like Eat, Pray, Love, but funny.”
OTHER BOOKS AVAILABLE NOW.
My essay, “Would My Heart Survive Donald Trump?” is part of the 2020 collection from Regal House, edited by Amy Roost and Alissa Hirshfield, Fury: Women’s Live Experiences in the Trump Era.
My essay “But Would You Fight With Me Forever” appears in the LOVE, DAMMIT collection (Brandt Street Press, 2016).
In 2015, after Donald Trump announced his run for president, a group of Tampa Bay-area writers gathered for a Halloween event and tackled the writing prompt of “What would the world look like if Trump becomes president?” The answers were horrifying, hilarious, and surprisingly accurate. With stories by C.A. Bellamy, Troy Cunio, Elena Firschein, Warren Firschein, D. Michael Hardy, L.L. Kirchner, Erika Lance, Rob McCabe, Wayne Totin, and Lynn Waddell.
My flash essay, “My Husband: My Moto,” appears in this Miranda July compilation, Learning to Love You More (Prestel Publishing, 2007).