Sign-In
Cart
I Never Mattered
Paperback
Series: Recovery Mama, Book 1
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Feb 14 2026
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Because survival is only the beginning.
The Recovery Mama Series follows one woman's journey from childhood trauma through addiction, custody loss, and the messy, nonlinear path to healing. These are stories about what happens after you survive-when you're left with the wreckage and have to figure out how to build a life anyway.
Book One: A Letter to Survivors
Kim survived childhood sexual abuse, two abusive marriages, and years of running from trauma she couldn't name. She thought distance would save her. It didn't. What followed was a spiral into methamphetamine addiction, the loss of custody of her children, and a reckoning with the systems that failed to protect her-and the choices she made that hurt the people she loved most.
This is not a redemption story with a neat ending. It's a raw, unflinching account of what it takes to stop running, face the truth, and show up-even when you've lost everything. It's about the impossible grief of losing your children to the foster system. The shame of addiction. The slow, painful work of rebuilding trust. And the radical act of believing you deserve healing.
Content Warning: This series contains detailed accounts of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, addiction, and custody loss. It's written for survivors-those still in it, those newly out, those years into recovery.
This series is for you if:
You're healing from trauma and need to know you're not alone
You've struggled with addiction or loved someone who has
You've been failed by systems meant to protect you
You're rebuilding after losing custody or contact with your children
You believe that messy, imperfect healing still counts
The Recovery Mama Series doesn't promise easy answers. But it does promise the truth: that healing is possible, even when it's hard. That you can survive the unsurvivable and still build something beautiful. That showing up, again and again, is enough.
Because you're still here. And that matters.
Book Two and beyond will continue Kim's journey through recovery, co-parenting, breaking generational cycles, and learning what it means to be still making it.
---
Book One: I Never MatteredA Memoir of Survival, Addiction, and the Impossible Choices That Follow Trauma
What do you do when survival costs you everything you love?
Kim spent her childhood learning she didn't matter-not to the cousin who groomed her, not to the parents who looked away, not to the systems that failed to protect her. She carried that lesson into two abusive marriages, believing distance would finally set her free. It didn't.
In Missouri, she met Kyle on Yearbook.com. He seemed different. Safe. They fell fast and hard-until methamphetamine entered the picture, and everything unraveled. Kyle's arrest. Their dealer Lyle moving in. Escalating sexual exploitation Kim couldn't name or escape. A pregnancy during the worst of it. And then DFS, offering an impossible choice: let Kyle's parents adopt three of her children, or risk losing them all to the system.
I Never Mattered is the raw, unflinching account of how childhood trauma becomes adult addiction, how love gets twisted into survival, and how the systems meant to protect us often demand we sacrifice ourselves to prove we're worthy of saving.
This is Book One of the Recovery Mama Series-because survival is only the beginning, and the hardest work comes after.
Content Warning: Childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, methamphetamine addiction, custody loss. Written for survivors.
---
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Trump, Mary L.
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover