the Cost to Hold Mind

Beloved mother, daughter, sister, friend, lost to depression.All pretty words that would have appeared on Liberty's obituary.Words she never let get printed, because she chose to stay alive when her mind kept reaching for death again, and again, and again-and she had never told a soul.Then, everything changed.Institutions that wouldn't respond. Tools that may or may not work. Seven kids she couldn't provide for. This was Liberty's reality when her world shattered and she slammed into a South Dakota homeless shelter during the Christmastime of 2025.When the dark thoughts came, Liberty did what she had always done: made the responsible choice to stay alive. Because obviously......she was so loved....her kids needed her....she mattered, so, so much.All of those started sounding like empty platitudes other people told themselves to feel better, while forcing her to stay alone in pain in the dark. But if the social contract required her staying alive, she was going to do it on her own terms. She enacted an audacious plan.Then her brain tried to kill her without her express permission, and the world changed.She survived. She knew how to survive on purpose, and overnight, she had reverse-engineered the exact structure of why the brain reaches for death.All she had to do next was pack up her car, drive a thousand miles to San Antonio, Texas, and lower the veteran and first-responder suicide rate by getting this missing piece of information in front of people. All while her brain was still actively trying to take her out because her life was still entirely on fire.How the frick was she gonna pull this off?In The Cost to Hold the Mind Liberty addresses suicidal ideation unapologetically with dark humor, bite, and absolutely zero fluffs given. She answers the exact questions she knows never would have been asked until she was either under a psychiatric hold or a tombstone: "Didn't she know she was loved?""Didn't she care about her kids?""It's so sad she was never brave enough to ask for help.""How could she be so selfish?"She answers them all without the one thing society expects her to have: shame.Because she's not telling the world she was sad. She's delivering a second field manual on what it looks like when the human brain is starving for connection, for the world to make sense, and for the ability to carry its own weight in the tribe.

Pages: 162, Paperback, Independently published