Our lives don’t unfold like a novel-they are episodic, and don’t always have a clean narrative. Our lives are a collection of essays.

When you identify yourself, where do you begin? Which labels do you use, where did they come from? Do you define yourself or are you living a narrative someone else created for you? Why do we need labels in the first place? Author Maryann Lombardi shares her experiences and insights answering these questions and more. In It’s Your Story to Tell: Essays on Identity from a Messy Life Well Lived, readers can witness how Lombardi learn to tells her story so they can explore how to tell their own.

Lombardi’s essays cover

• Gender identity and what it means to be a women
• The power of the mother child bond
• How family history drives family dynamics
• The discombobulation marriage, divorce, and dating again has on your identity
• The hijinks of many wild trips across the world

It’s Your Story to Tell: Essays on Identity from a Messy Life Well Lived by Maryann Lombardi is a guide for readers who are ready to rethink the narratives they tell themselves, who owns their stories, and how to take them back.