What happens if you stop trying to fix yourself?
That is the topic of Guyra author Railene Turner-Rose, who has written a memoir about the moment “the mask drops” on a life spent performing rather than living.
Published by Healing House Publishing, Day One Again is described as a raw, honest and unexpectedly funny memoir about grief, what the author calls the “socially acceptable addictions”, and what it takes to stop performing your life and start living it.
“This book is about addiction that hides in plain sight. Perfectionism that slowly eats your life. The cost of performing competence while quietly falling apart inside,” Ms Turner-Rose said.
“I speak about the moment when the mask drops, and what comes next.”
Ms Turner-Rose did not wake up one day and decide to change her life. She woke up one day and realised she already had.
Day One Again is described as a raw, relentless and unexpectedly funny memoir of a woman who got tired of pretending, tired of chasing achievement, burying emotion, and feeding every unmet need with food, control or busyness. It isn’t about finding the perfect diet or sticking to a spreadsheet. It’s about what happens when you stop trying to fix yourself and finally start listening.
The book won’t hand readers a blueprint, and it won’t promise a transformation. But it might give them the courage to sit with their own chaos, to let the music wreck them, to cry in the car, to take the scenic route back to themselves.
This isn’t framed as the end of a journey. It is what it looks like to start again, and again, and again.
The book covers grief, loss, emotional eating, perfectionism, parentification and faith, alongside the coping mechanisms Ms Turner-Rose calls the socially acceptable addictions, habits that fly under the radar because they look like discipline or dedication rather than what they are. It is not a self-help book or a weight loss story, but what the release describes as a reckoning, told one imperfect day at a time.
Ms Turner-Rose lives in Guyra, where she is an active member of the community through Rotary and local creative pursuits. Day One Again is her debut book, with a second non-fiction title already in development.
She will launch the book at a free community event at The Makers Shed, Deepwater, on Saturday 5 September from 2pm to 4pm. Admission is free and all are welcome, with books available for purchase on the day.
The Makers Shed is the open studio of Richard Moon Wearable Silver and Silverware and home to High Country Books, a bookshop and small-press publisher managed by author and journalist Michael Burge. Housed in a century-old high-street property at 80 Tenterfield Street, Deepwater, The Makers Shed stocks work by creatives from across the greater New England and Granite Belt region.
The book is available for presale through Amazon and Healing House Publishing.
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