“Reading Lauren Kimberly Rose’s chapter felt like entering the deepest sanctuary of my soul. This is not merely a chapter—it is the depths of God moving through her words, carrying the reader into the heart of Christ with breathtaking tenderness and grace. I closed these pages in tears, filled with awe, gratitude, and the certainty that I had encountered something truly sacred.”

—Kaila Rose Brechtel, Christ Mystic, Midwife of the Sacred, Women’s Mentor & Retreat Facilitator 

Lauren Kimberly Rose’s chapter, The Altar at the Threshold: Consecrating the Body as a Living Temple of Light, is a deeply embodied and reverent reflection on faith, transformation, forgiveness, and the sacred thresholds that shape a life.

I saw myself in Lauren’s words. Her writing reached into the tender places that know what it feels like to stand in the in-between — where the old life no longer fits, the new one has not fully arrived, and the body is carrying grief, longing, fear, hope, and some quiet knowing that God is still moving underneath it all.

What I appreciated most is that this chapter does not speak about spirituality as something separate from real life. Lauren brings Christ, the body, pain, love, devotion, and resurrection into one living conversation. She reminds the reader that the body is not something to overcome or rise above, but a holy place where healing, wisdom, and divine presence are revealed.

Her stories are honest and intimate without feeling performative. You can feel the lived experience beneath her words — the abandonment, the searching, the spiritual hunger, the breaking open, the forgiveness work, the reclamation of self-love, and the courage it takes to keep walking through life’s thresholds with faith.

This chapter feels especially powerful for women who are navigating transition, grief, identity shifts, spiritual awakening, or the quiet unraveling of a life they thought they were supposed to preserve. Lauren offers a beautiful reminder that resurrection is not only something waiting on the other side of pain. It is something we are invited to participate in as we cross the threshold, breath by breath.

Her work reads like a prayer, a remembrance, and an invitation to return to the body, trust the sacred process, and recognize the light already living within us.

A beautiful and deeply meaningful chapter.

Della Drews

Spiritual Psychology Practitioner | Intuitive Coach | Somatic Guide

“With courage and remarkable honesty, Sally J. Wright shares a journey that is both singular and deeply resonant. Her words touched something ancient in me, the deep feminine place in the bones and soul that longs to be remembered. Reading this chapter felt like an exhale, a reminder that we are not alone and that the path back to ourselves is shared. Sally’s message is a courageous and deeply personal offering, born from a path few would dare to walk. Her words carry the weight of lived experience and speak directly to the deep feminine within the reader. I felt profoundly moved and honoured to witness such honesty, and deeply grateful for the sense of recognition and companionship her story brings.”

—Shukrananda Gant, Psycho-Spiritual Counselor & Creative Voice Practitioner

“What a luminous and courageous piece of writing. In ‘Held All Along,’ Jane Scott Ashley traces a forty-year arc from a cracked-open teenage heart to a woman who has finally learned to receive love without fear—and she does so with remarkable honesty and grace. The writing moves fluidly between the sensory and the spiritual: you can smell the pine cleaner and old hymnals of that youth retreat, feel the gravel underfoot at the Stations of the Cross, and yet Jane never loses sight of the interior landscape she is really mapping. What makes this story particularly powerful is its refusal of easy redemption—the crash back into depression after the retreat, the years of righteous atheism, the smoldering anger at a God she couldn’t stop being furious at, all feel true and hard-won rather than merely dramatic. The appearance of the Marys as threshold figures is theologically imaginative and personally earned, and the dream sequence where Christ finally meets her gaze is genuinely moving without tipping into sentimentality. Jane writes as someone who has done deep nervous system and somatic work, and it shows—she understands that spiritual closing is also a form of self-protection, not moral failure. By the end, the title’s quiet claim—held all along—lands with the full weight of everything she carried to get there.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

—Hallie Lifson, Bestselling Co-Author ofMagdalene Unveiled