When I was 18 years old, my mother was shot and killed in a convenience store robbery in New Orleans, changing every preconceived notion I had about the world and what it meant to feel safe.  Twenty years later, I found my mother’s killer and forgave him, just before he died in the notorious Angola State Penitentiary. It was then that I realized that I had been as much of a prisoner as he was.

With a searing honesty that will make readers’ hearts both ache and sing, Notice of Release chronicles my traumatic and at times dangerous childhood as an expatriate in South America, my shift from grieving college student to high powered ad-executive, and how I reconciled my deep connection to my own children, with my fear of being taken away prematurely from them.  In this memoir, I prove that shedding the weight of the past can unlock a brave and beautiful future, and come to see that finding and forgiving my mother’s killer is as much a journey of finding myself.