Behind the Book
The stories behind The Cycle Ends Here, the writing process, and everything that happened along the way.
The story behind the story...
Every book has the story you read.
And then there is everything that lived around it.
The Cycle Ends Here was written from memory, reflection, old wounds, hard truths, ordinary moments, and the kind of hindsight that only comes when you finally have enough distance to look back and understand what you survived.
But not everything fits between the covers of a book.
There were memories behind the chapters. Decisions behind the words. Pages that changed completely before they ever reached you. Moments when I stopped writing because something hurt more than I expected—and others when I sat back and realized just how far I had come.
There were also pieces I understood differently once the book was finished.
Behind the Book is where those pieces get to live.
This is where I'll share the stories behind the stories—the memories, choices, reflections, creative decisions, and quiet moments that shaped The Cycle Ends Here and everything growing from it.
Some will be heavy. Some will be funny. Some may simply be a look at what was happening on this side of the page.
None of it is required reading.
Think of it as pulling up a chair after you've finished the book and asking:
“Okay, Phoenix. Now tell me what was happening behind all of that.”
So I will.
Come sit with me.
Every story has a story.
From My Desk
Some parts of a book never make it onto the page.
These are the thoughts scribbled in the margins, the decisions made somewhere between the first draft and the final one, and the moments when writing the story changed the way I understood it.
This is where I share those pieces—not as polished chapters, but as the conversations I might have with you if you were sitting across from me on the Porch while I worked.
A little messier. A little more personal.
Straight from my desk to your chair.
Why I Wrote It
It was never about sympathy.
I never wrote The Cycle Ends Here because I wanted anyone to feel sorry for me.
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I wrote it because I know what it feels like to sit inside your own story and wonder whether anyone else would understand it.
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There were years when I questioned my own memories, minimized what hurt, and convinced myself that surviving something meant I should stop talking about it.
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Writing the book wasn't about reopening those wounds for an audience.
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It was about finally looking at them without looking away.
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And if someone reaches the end of my story feeling a little less alone in their own, then every difficult page was worth writing.
Behind the Name
Why Phoenix A. Solace
At first, the name gave me distance.
I could tell the truth without feeling as though I had placed every piece of myself beneath a spotlight.
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But Phoenix quickly became more than a pseudonym.
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A phoenix rises from what should have destroyed it. Solace is the peace we search for afterward.
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Together, they became the simplest description I could find for the journey I was writing about:
surviving the fire without spending the rest of your life living inside it.
Phoenix gave me enough distance to tell the story.
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Somewhere along the way, she also gave me a place to come home to.
Building The Porch
When the Book Became a Porch
I thought I was writing a memoir.
That was supposed to be the whole plan.
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Then the book was finished, and I realized I wasn't finished with what it had created.
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There were conversations I still wanted to have. Quiet things I wanted to share. Places I wished had existed when I was the person living through those chapters.
So somewhere between writing the story and sending it into the world, the Phoenix Porch began to take shape.
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Not as another book.
As a place.
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A place to sit for a while, put something down, laugh sometimes, heal slowly, and remember that life after survival gets to contain ordinary beautiful things, too.
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The book told the story.
The Porch became what came next.
The Stories Inside the Story
A memoir tells you what happened.
But sometimes the meaning of a moment doesn't become clear until years later.
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These are the pieces I can see differently from where I sit now—the things I understand about the girl I was, the woman I became, and the choices that eventually changed everything.
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The story was written then.
Some of the understanding came later.
Looking Back
What I Know About Her Now
There are parts of my story I once remembered with frustration, shame, or questions about why I didn't do something differently.
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I don't look at that girl the same way anymore.
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She wasn't weak. She wasn't failing.
She was surviving with the tools she had and trying to make sense of things she never should have been asked to carry.
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I spent years wishing she had been different.
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Now I'm mostly proud that she kept going.
What Survival Taught Me
When Chaos Feels Like Home
One of the strangest things about surviving chaos is discovering that peace can feel uncomfortable at first.
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When you've spent years anticipating the next problem, calm doesn't always register as safety. Sometimes it feels like the quiet before something goes wrong.
Learning to stay in peaceful moments—to trust them instead of preparing to lose them—became its own kind of healing.
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Survival taught me how to endure chaos.
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Healing taught me I didn't have to live there.
The Turning Point
When My Worth Became Mine Again
For a long time, I treated other people's choices like evidence about me.
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If someone left, I searched myself for the reason. If someone hurt me, I wondered what I had done to deserve it. If someone couldn't love me well, I assumed there must be something about me that was difficult to love.
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Eventually I understood something that changed the way I saw everything:
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Other people are allowed to make their choices.
But my worth does not belong to them.
From Page to Voice
The Cycle Ends Here is becoming an audiobook.
There is something surreal about hearing words I once wrote quietly become someone else's voice.
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Right now, I'm searching for the narrator who will carry Phoenix through every part of this story—from the pages that still hurt to the ordinary moments that finally feel like home.
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I'm not looking for someone to perform the story.
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I'm looking for someone who can sit across the Porch and tell it.
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Someone who understands that emotion doesn't always need to be dramatic to be felt. A voice can catch. A breath can linger. A smile can find its way into a sentence.
Hurt can sound like hurt, pride can sound like pride, and sometimes the quietest line can carry the most weight.
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The right voice needs to hold all of it.
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The survival.
The heartbreak.
The healing.
The laughter.
And eventually, the peace.
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The right voice is out there.
And soon, The Cycle Ends Here will have one.
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Audiobook in Production · More From the Porch Soon