Jeannie and The Power of Resilience!!

At age twenty-two after the suicide of her older brother Jeannie allows LAYLA, a counter personality to take over. LAYLA is tough and street smart who turns to the dark side of stripping and prostitution.  LAYLA was a nickname given to her after a man sang the song Layla by Eric Clapton to her in a bar trying to win her affection. The twist is that through it all she finds her healing. At each juncture she is forced to look at the duality of life, in the end LAYLA the personality never completely consumes Jeanie, actually LAYLA helps her. It seems that at the darkest moments when she should just die, Jeannie the light and LAYLA the dark work in tandem to survive hell on earth. At the age of twenty- six when she is performing what turns out to be her final trick and she faces possible death once again, she sees her father clearly in the face of the man forcing himself on her. This realization coupled with the love of and for her son frees her from the demon of her inner rage.

Her quest for understanding of her life, her crushingly painful initiation as a shaman/healer, takes a positive turn. Through a series of synchronistic events she is drawn to and ultimately embraced, adopted and mentored by Basil Braveheart, a Lakota Sioux medicine man and elder. Her life begins to find purpose and hope. Suddenly her twenty-year-old son is killed and Jeannie is taken to the deepest grief and ultimately the highest spiritual connection. She travels to the mountains of Peru, the deserts of Mexico and turns to the indigenous culture of North America to find answers to her life. She is shown that the universe is good - that life is sacred energy in motion. And we see again the book’s main theme – redemption begins with every step forward.