Hope, Love, and Me: My Journey of Choices and Second Chances

by Melissa Anastasia

Overview

On a rainy August night, two female bodies are found on the side of the road. An unplanned night of underage drinking leads to a single car crash that has life-changing consequences. The driver, Melissa Anastasia, is left paralyzed from the neck down, forced to face life at 18 in a new body she wasn't prepared for.

After a series of destructive decisions as a teenager, Hope, Love, and Me, walks through the next decade of a young woman's struggle for a new life, highlighting her humor and tenacity.

Hope, Love, and Me is the story of a fight for redemption as Melissa Anastasia struggles to maintain her worth and identity in a physically driven world. Left in a culture focused on comparison, she is left to fight the hopelessness the world offers her. 

Behind every face is a powerful story, and nothing is ever quite as it seems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732961807
Publisher:	Hope, Love, and Me
Publication date:	01/18/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Melissa Anastasia is Irish by blood, and paralyzed by grace. She aims to be an undercover agent oneday, but figures the wheelchair stuck under her butt will blow her cover every time. So for now, she is taking every opportunity to make a positive difference. By day she's a motivational speaker, and, by night, well, her parents are certain she's sneaking out of her bed. Melissa is partnered with the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Hope Love and Me Foundation, and as many safety councils as she can muster. Her passion is lowering the amount of annualspinal-cord injuries that are caused by destructive choice making. She also gets out of bed on a daily basis to help people find hope in their own journey. She knows she can't save the world, but her goal is to help the people in it. Her assertive pup, TobyMac, will attack on demand if you try to get in the way of that. Now that, well, that's a service dog.Godspeed.www.HopeLoveAndMe.orgInstagram: @hopeloveandme

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Break of Dawn ix

1 Stuck Somewhere Between Young and Adult 1

2 Summer Nights and Liberties 19

3 Where the Pavement Ends 25

4 One More Chance 31

5 Barely Legal 41

6 A Path to Nowhere 49

7 One Choice: Everything Changed 65

8 Is This a Grown Up Hospital? 77

9 A Broken Heart but a Fresh Start 105

10 A Whole New Kind of Trying to Be Strong 117

11 I Can’t Do Miserable Forever 139

12 Trying to Punch the Wind 153

13 There’s One Direction I Haven’t Gone Yet 163

14 Positive Distractions 173

15 A Bachelor’s Degree in Hope 181

 16 Creating Rhythm 185

17 A Wild Ride 201

18 My Mess Becomes a Message 213

19 A Soft Heart 223

20 The Hurt Before the Healing 233

21 Lattes and Love 245

Where to Get Help 253

Acknowledgments 257

About the Author 259