Book excerpt: Bestselling romance author Julianne Donaldson has written deeply emotional, sweeping love stories in Edenbrooke and Blackmoore, often commenting that her characters were a reflection of what she wanted a woman's life to be: happy, secure, unconditionally loved, and fulfilled. But in reality her own life was far more marked by difficult challenges and disappointments. In her new book, Donaldson reveals her thoughts and feelings from that unsettled time of despair and suffering so women can know they are not alone and that there is hope even in the hard times. Compiled from years of inspirational words of encouragement to herself on social media--and even bits and pieces of random musings written on scrap paper, this is a unique writer's journey through a life passage marked by cancer, a bitter divorce, legal battles with her ex-husband, mental illness, and persistent feelings of rejection and abandonment which also rendered her unable to pick up her career as a writer to support herself and her family. Overwhelmed by sadness and almost paralyzed into inaction by despair, she slowly finds her way back to her writer's toolbox, unpacking the pain and sharing her innermost feelings as if revealing a character's thoughts in a novel. In her writing she begins to find rays of understanding and acceptance and eventually finds strength from knowing that God's love and His grace and guidance give greater meaning to our suffering and light the way to hope.