{"product_id":"cracked-open-a-memoir-love-loss-and-becoming","title":"Cracked Open: A Memoir: Love, Loss and Becoming","description":"CRACKED OPEN: Love, Loss, and Becoming\nWhat happens when the life you've spent decades building suddenly falls apart?\nFor most of her life, Michelle Cooper believed strength was the answer.\nChildhood trauma taught her to survive. Grit and determination enabled her to succeed. She built a career that carried her from engineering roots to the executive ranks of a Fortune 50 company. She became the woman who could handle anything—the leader, the achiever, the strong one.\nThen she fell in love.\nFor the first time, the armor she had worn for decades began to crack. Through unconditional love, Michelle discovered parts of herself she never knew existed beneath the performance, perfectionism, and relentless drive to prove her worth.\nThen the unimaginable happened.\nIn 2021, Michelle's husband, Bill, died at just fifty years old.\nGrief shattered more than her heart. It dismantled the identities she had spent a lifetime constructing. Without the roles that had defined her—wife, executive, caregiver, achiever—she was forced to confront a question many of us eventually face:\nWho am I when everything I was is gone?\nCracked Open is a deeply personal and unflinchingly honest memoir about childhood trauma, ambition, marriage, betrayal, caregiving, faith, corporate leadership, widowhood, and the courage required to begin again.\nBut at its heart, this is not a story about loss.\nIt is a story about becoming.\nWith vulnerability, wisdom, and hard-earned insight, Michelle invites readers into a journey from survival to success to surrender—and ultimately toward a more authentic life. Through reflection questions at the end of each chapter, readers are encouraged to examine their own armor, uncover the stories that shaped them, and consider what it might mean to live more freely.\nIf you have ever experienced grief, reinvention, burnout, heartbreak, identity shifts, or the feeling that the life you've built no longer fits, this book will remind you that you are not alone.\nWe do not choose every breaking.\nBut we can choose what comes next.\nYou are not finished.\nYou are becoming.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: B0H4HCYVT7\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: BVV.B0H4HCYVT7.VG\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Very Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Cooper, Michelle Mapp\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Book has little sign of wear or use  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43608329519165,"sku":"BVV.B0H4HCYVT7.VG","price":16.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/B0H4HCYVT7-0.jpg?v=1789161773","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/cracked-open-a-memoir-love-loss-and-becoming","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}