Sage Was the Perfect Shadow: A Survivor’s Story

"A few moments on an icy bridge changed everything: the skid, the sliding, the impact, the gas pouring out on me. It is easy to toss out words like shattered and tragic, tougher to take them in and swallow them." Thus begins a three-decade tale of recovery and identity reconstruction for an 18-year-old college girl severely burned in a car accident. Searching for the whys and working through the grief, the memoir takes us on a journey to find hope, coaxing people past the scars and tugging others toward life along the way. Alive with honest perspective and the defiance of despair, Sage Was The Perfect Shadow will encourage and inspire.

With Master degrees in both Pastoral Studies and Social Work, the author draws on her experience with burn injuries to reach out to other trauma survivors. After living and working in Southern Russia as an ESL teacher and humanitarian aid advocate for a portion of her career, she is now living stateside. Mona is the founder of Perspective Ink, LLC and helps to coordinate peer support for survivors at the Oregon Burn Center.