The Heart Open Publishing Enterprise now proudly announces our next bestseller!
Wild Belonging:
Women Leaving What No Longer Holds Them and Coming Home to Their Sovereignty
We are often told that women who leave will unravel, lose their way, or regret it. These stories tell the truth instead: leaving was not the breaking point; it was the beginning.
Wild Belonging is a collection of women’s stories about emancipating themselves from what no longer held them and discovering what became possible on the other side. These narratives trace the moment when obedience, performance, or survival ceased to be sustainable, and a deeper truth began to surface. The women in these pages speak honestly about the unraveling of inherited systems, roles, beliefs, and relationships, and the quiet courage it took to choose themselves even when doing so meant uncertainty, grief, or the loss of familiar belonging.
Yet this book is not centered on departure alone; it is about what comes after. It explores the slow and often nonlinear work of healing, reorientation, and reclamation. The authors share how they rebuilt trust in their own bodies and instincts, found meaning beyond fear, and learned to thrive outside the structures that once defined them. Through creativity, community, nature, spirituality, leadership, and service, they describe the emergence of a belonging rooted not in conformity, but in self-honoring and inner authority.
Wild Belonging offers hope without minimizing the cost of transition. It affirms that life can expand after leaving, that joy and vitality are not only possible but sustainable, and that women who choose themselves do not disappear into isolation. They become luminous, resourced, and deeply connected to a wider web of life. This book is an invitation to imagine what thriving might look like when belonging is reclaimed as something wild, embodied, and entirely one’s own.
Join the Waiting List for Wild Belonging
Meet the authors of Wild Belonging
Melisa Keenan
Melisa Keenan is a nine-time international and USA Today bestselling author, publisher, and thought leader exploring the intersections of spirituality, liberation, and leadership. She founded HOPE, the Heart Open Publishing Enterprise, helping visionary leaders turn lived experience into books that move culture and open doors.
Melisa also created The Meeting Place, a community for women of color and their allies exploring how pre-patriarchal spirituality can inform a more embodied, liberated way of leading. Through her show, transformational gatherings, and pilgrimages, her work with the Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene invites women to examine what they have inherited and embody integrated leadership.
A longtime intimacy mentor and community builder, Melisa believes our personal liberation and the liberation of others are deeply interconnected. She lives on her family’s hobby ranch in Northern Nevada with her husband, four children, and beloved bees.
Gabriela Peralta
Gabriela Peralta is a heart-centered Project Manager with over six years of experience transforming inspired ideas into meaningful, well-orchestrated realities. For the past four years, she has worked alongside Melisa, guiding the publishing journey of transformational books from vision to launch while creating systems that allow creativity to flourish with clarity and ease.
Having collaborated with both global brands and purpose-driven entrepreneurs, Gabriela blends strategy, organization, and intuitive leadership to help projects flow with intention. She believes that structure creates freedom, collaboration fuels success, and a touch of magic can turn meaningful work into a deeply fulfilling experience.
Aliyah Hamilton
Aliyah Hamilton is an early childhood specialist, parent mentor, Womb Surround Process Workshop facilitator, writer, and founder of Enchanted Forest Foundation in Nelson, British Columbia. For more than two decades, she has devoted herself to understanding how our earliest relationships shape who we become and how we experience belonging.
Her work weaves together early childhood development, attachment, developmental neuroscience, pre- and perinatal psychology, somatic practice, and a deep respect for the inner life of the child. Through her work with children, parents, educators, and adults exploring their own earliest developmental patterns, Aliyah creates spaces where people can slow down, listen more deeply, and reconnect with what is true.
At the heart of her work is a lifelong inquiry into belonging: how it begins, how it can be disrupted, and how, through relationship, we can find our way home to ourselves.
Visit aliyahhamilton.com
Visit thebeautyway.ca
Amanda Smith McCombs
Amanda is a storyteller, former educator, and founder of Soil to Soul Collective, where she supports people in remembering their sovereignty and returning to their Wild Belonging.
After illness shattered her life and grief reshaped it, she learned to rise through community, land, and the courage to choose herself. A married mother of three, pageant titleholder, and caretaker of a peahen named Liberty, Amanda’s work blends resilience, ritual, and reclamation.
She writes for anyone ready to leave behind what no longer holds them and step into a life rooted in truth, connection, and the freedom to belong fully.
Niitsikómmapi Ponticaspian Steppe
An adventurous traveler, having worn scrubs next to patient beds and in patients' homes for almost 13 years, an EMT and nanny. Grew up on two different reservations and rural communities. Gold refined. “Oro y Plata” & “Big Sky country.” Community is a primary value. Lovers of animals and people, and an appreciator of friendships and grafted-in-kinship.
Experiencing life next to bison ranges, milking cows, churning cream into ice cream and butter, constructing fences and log houses, facing into the wind while horseback riding, roaming wildernesses, pitching hay bales, ice fishing expeditions - until city life finally called. Once living in Colorado Springs, Denver; Phoenix, AZ; New York City; near Washington DC; Los Angeles, and DFW; in Chicago; Indianapolis; and dwelling in rural and rugged Dakota towns and throughout various New England states.
Experiencing diverse cultures among the author’s most treasured life experiences. A dog named “Enduring Voice.” Compassionate growth being the invitation. Welcome to sharing as life’s “ashes” (experiences of childhood brutality for the author) transform into Beauty. Still painful at times is finally becoming purposeful. Refractions of light beaming through broken pieces within a kaleidoscope.
Amie Verhagen
Amie Verhagen is the creator of Trauma to Sovereignty—a practical framework that helps people navigate the often-disorienting terrain of Complex PTSD recovery with greater clarity, capacity, and self-trust.
Through surviving multiple forms of abuse, depression, chronic fatigue, recurring miscarriages, and the long road of complex trauma recovery, she became consumed by one question: What creates the conditions from surviving to thriving?
That question launched years of research, experimentation, and lived practice, ultimately leading her beyond the loop of endlessly “healing” into what she calls Post-Traumatic Sovereignty—a life oriented around autonomy, growth, authentic choice, and authentic connection.
Raised across the world and currently living in Alaska, she’s a homeschooling mom of two who lives for deep conversation, spontaneous adventure, authentic connection... and at any given moment probably knows where the nearest dark chocolate is. 😉
Cara Leonard
Cara Leonard is an adoptee, adoptive mother, life and adoption coach, and the host of Roots and Wings: A Lifetime Journey of Adoption. Her work is rooted in identity, belonging, healing, and the courage to come home to yourself. In her chapter, “911,” Cara shares the pivotal moment that forced her to confront the pain, confusion, and self-abandonment within her marriage—and ultimately began her journey back to herself.
Through vulnerability and hard-won wisdom, she invites others to recognize their own worth, reclaim their voice, and remember that it is never too late to choose yourself.
Corrine Christian
Corrine Christian is a passionate community gatherer, eco-event planner, and retreat travel specialist creating meaningful experiences designed to unite everyone. She blends sustainability, intentional living, and authentic connection into every event and journey she leads.
Wife to Brandon of 24 years, open adoptive mom of seven, Corrine is passionate about helping others discover their voice, step into their purpose, and embrace growth in every way. She loves witnessing the “aha” moments when people recognize their own potential and begin moving toward what brings them joy.
Outside of work, Corrine loves traveling, the beach, singing, dancing, fitness, musicals, and spending quality time with her family and friends. Her friends call her caring, playful, knowledgeable, genuine, dynamic & compassionate. Her kids say she’s helpful, amazing, kind, bossy, funny, old, and embarrassing!
Follow Corrine on:
Deidra Towns
Deidra Towns. Political fishbowl survivor. Certified F.L.Y. Girl.
A Brooklyn-born community builder and Curator of Provisions for Integrated Leadership, Deidra has spent over two decades helping leaders close the gap between who they're performing and who they actually are. She works at the intersection of leadership and practical spirituality — bringing straight talk, deep listening, and a little magic to every room she enters.
She speaks, writes, and coaches leaders who are done waiting for old systems to work and brave enough to build the new ones. Her current passion projects include Her Power Network, a media platform for women holding entire worlds together, and Good Gathers, spaces for the ones who want new pathways, not easy answers.
She is a lifelong student of ancient wisdom, mother of three grown humans, and only interested in rooms where truth is welcome even when it's uncomfortable.
Maddie Tate
Maddie Tate is a writer and storyteller whose passion is crafting stories from real-life experiences. She writes about family, relationships, love, loss, grief, resilience, and the ways life surprises us into becoming the people we were meant to be.
Maddie lives in Florida with a serious love for animals and a tendency to overthink just about anything and everything. When she’s not creating, you’ll most likely find her cuddled up with a dog somewhere, volunteering for animal rescues, drinking too much caffeine, and dreaming up her next story. Maddie lives her life knowing that nobody actually knows what they’re doing and believing that the human experience is a beautiful, messy, chaotic ride.
Mallory Kiersten
The Joy Goddess is a creative, coach, and clairvoyant who believes in curiosity, pleasure, and creating a life that feels deeply and unapologetically your own. When she's not writing or coaching, you'll probably find her reading, dancing, making up silly songs, exploring a new hobby, watching cartoons, tending to her many plants, or making a list of things she'd like to try.
Visit Mallory at www.mallorykiersten.com for more shenanigans.
Meghan Mason
Meghan Mason is an intuitive mentor, medium, trance healer, writer, and host of the Clarity Calls podcast, where she creates space for honest conversations about healing, conscious living, and when the life you’ve always known no longer fits. Her journey has required her to question inherited beliefs, family expectations, religion, motherhood, and the roles she believed she had to play to belong. Through that unraveling, Meghan discovered that true belonging isn’t found by changing yourself to be accepted. It begins with having the courage to choose yourself.
Today, she helps others find clarity, trust their inner knowing, and move forward in ways that feel authentic to who they are becoming. Meghan lives in Ohio with her husband and six children, the heart of her life. She values living with presence and intention, growing, and making time for meditation, yoga, movement, traveling, outdoor adventures, and the people she loves most.
Minito Reasor
Minito Reasor is the dynamic force behind Minito HR Solutions, LLC, bringing over 15 years of invaluable experience in Human Resources. With a robust skill set spanning HR operations, compliance, workforce planning, talent mapping, and succession planning, Minito is a trusted advisor known for her commitment to excellence and human-centered strategies.
Minito has extensive experience partnering with nonprofit organizations and foundations across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Colorado, supporting mission-driven teams in strengthening their people practices, building sustainable systems, and aligning workforce strategies with organizational goals.
Driven by a relentless pursuit of excellence and a passion for facilitating positive change, Minito Reasor stands as a trusted partner in the field of Human Resources, empowering individuals and organizations to reach their fullest potential.
Nilzara Rivera
Nilzara Rivera (Nez) is a West Coast soul navigating East Coast living, feral by nature, fluent in cuss words, and most alive on a skateboard or chasing anything that scares the absolute shit out of her. Third-time wife who finally got it right, devoted special needs mama, and forever both teacher and student.
She's a bestselling author, light language healer, somatic breathwork guide, and water alchemist working at the intersection of raw truth and radical reclamation. Equal parts love and thug. A Sacred Disruptor who doesn't coddle, doesn't sit in pity parties, and doesn't do the work for you.
Nez helps eldest daughters of addict fathers reclaim their mind, heart, and Cookie™️through shadow work, energy healing, and boundaries that actually stick.
We break patterns here.
Nina Kropp
Nina Kropp exudes positivity and is living her best life despite her trauma and struggles with depression for 46 years. She will remain a child advocate forever, even though she has retired after 37 years in education. She was a former teacher, vice principal, principal, high school counselor, administrator in a women’s correctional facility, juvenile sex offender counselor, and abuse survivor. Nina will continue to spread sunshine and encouragement to those who need it despite the things that tried to hold her back.
Roni Thompson
As a woman who has struggled to take up space and to boldly embrace and use her gifts, Roni Thompson helps people reconnect to parts of themselves they abandon in order to survive, succeed, or be accepted. Her unique gifts create a safe space where people can become emotionally honest enough to finally receive the life they want.
Roni loves to learn, travel, spend time with friends and family, jump right in when her gut says “yes!”, and be a cheerleader and support as people work to accomplish their goals and dreams.
She is a mother of five adult children, a high school teacher, a Kundalini Yoga Teacher, a Women’s Circle Keeper, a guided imagery facilitator, a life coach, and a facilitator on the soon-to-be-launched platform “The Village,” where women will gather online to create connection and community.
Sherie Brooks
Sherie is a Hypnotherapist, Seer and Shamanic Practitioner who helps people address trauma and limitations through NLP, M.E.R. (mental and emotional release) technique, energy medicine, and music medicine. In this chapter, she shares her experiences through shadow work and the fundamentals that helped her find a way back to herself.
Sherie is a remarried mother of three from California who began her career in alternative medicine after years battling illness, religious persecution, and limiting beliefs that kept her from achieving personal freedom. Whether her perspective feels familiar or challenges what you believe, this chapter invites you to consider how much of reality may exist beyond what we can see and why energy medicine may be essential for humanity’s evolution.
Tanisha Martin
Tanisha Martin, SELF-Empowered Life Mentor, 6th Degree Kung Fu Master, and DVSA Survivor, guides women to their innate knowledge that they matter and have actual power in their lives.
Tanisha discovered these truths for herself through profound inner work and subconscious reprogramming that led to her tripling her income and safely leaving a bizarre, abusive marriage (and his 150+ unique personas) in just 30 days. This pivotal breakthrough launched her journey of self-love and mission to uplift others.
Today, she pours her strength and expertise into coaching clients toward fulfillment and success, hosting healing and content creation retreats for women entrepreneurs, raising awareness about abuse, and running a kickass kung fu school.
She enjoys a beautiful life alongside her wonderfully well-aligned forever partner and the entertaining tolerance of their two ridiculous cats. Her story is living proof that reclamation and joy are entirely possible.
Sheela Reddy
Dr. Sheela Reddy, Ed. D., Counseling and Multicultural Systems, is a Psychologist and Certified Executive Leadership Coach. She holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship Certification in Trauma.
Her work integrates evidence-based psychological approaches with mind-body practices, specializing in trauma, ADHD, and autism spectrum profiles. With over 30 years of experience, she helps diverse leaders navigate their internal world to unlock sustainable, high-impact performance.
She is the creator of the EQi 30 model, a holistic system for building resilient, emotionally intelligent leadership in complex environments, and the RiseMind App, which provides Mind-Health tools. She is deeply committed to advancing emotional intelligence in diverse leadership, supporting trauma recovery, and helping individuals build confidence, resilience, and lasting transformation.
