DULUTH — A local educator and life coach is sharing her personal story in a new memoir that was published Feb. 11.
Heather Wilde said she wrote “Tumbled: A Memoir of Perseverance, Personal Growth & Magical Transformation,” as a way to process the trauma she experienced in her life, find healing and offer hope to others.
“I can move forward and I feel empowered, but I also understand it’s a light for others,” said Wilde, who lives in Duluth.
The story is a collection of memories about codependency, budding sexuality, abuse, abandonment, introspection and the need for a new identity. It touches on family trauma, homelessness, body image, self-esteem and much more.
Wilde said the book was written with her own young daughter in mind, but it can offer encouragement to any reader, especially young women.
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“I’m just going from a tough, tough experiences lens — not everybody has that,” the author said. “But if you have persevered and you have come out the other side, you are a light, you are an underdog that didn’t give up and that can inspire someone else … how desperately I needed this information before I went through it.”
An English major and former teacher for high-risk students at Superior High School, Wilde wrote the book in a year. The title came from her walks along Wisconsin Point during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was living in Superior and started collecting beach glass for the first time in her life. It became a passion as she filled jar after jar with the glass pieces.
“A shard of glass, garbage that someone discarded, is getting tumbled and tumbled until it’s something beautiful to treasure. I saw them as treasures. So just like my journey of being tumbled and tumbled and tumbled, until it could soften and beautify the edges,” Wilde said. “It wasn’t until later this last fall that I realized I was kind of picking up pieces of myself.”
Feedback for the memoir has been positive, she said. There are half-a-dozen five-star reviews on Amazon for “Tumbled.” Reviewers called it real, relatable, vulnerable and challenging.
“A story to help anyone in need of making their own path,” one wrote.
Asked if there’s a message she’d like people to walk away from the book with, Wilde said circumstances don’t make us special; what we do with them is what’s important.
“You have to look in the mirror and make decisions for yourself if you want anything better,” she said.
Despite the jagged shards of her own trauma, Wilde kept getting up.
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“I think it’s about start owning your life — start mapping out and choosing the events that happen to you,” she said.
The book has an open ending.
“I kind of end it close after that when I finally get my house and how the pieces again are shifting into place, and I’m gonna try again,” Wilde said. “I think we kind of like to put the bow on things, and I didn’t want to do that because isn’t the journey always going?”
Already a speaker, teacher, coach, mother and healer, the Duluth woman said the process of writing down her memoir has inspired her to coach others do the same.
A book launch event for “Tumbled: A Memoir of Perseverance, Personal Growth & Magical Transformation” takes place from 5-8 p.m. March 4 at Clyde Iron Works, 2920 W. Michigan St. in Duluth. The book is currently available through Amazon, and Wilde expects it to be carried in local bookstores following the book launch. Visit her website, Wilde House Of , for more information on the author’s book, classes and events.
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