A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love by Doreen Evette Carroll is a deeply personal memoir about grief, trauma, faith, resilience, and rebuilding life after the sudden death of her only son, Theartis, in Tijuana, Mexico. Carroll recounts crossing the border alone, navigating unfamiliar systems, identifying her son’s remains, and bringing him home while carrying overwhelming grief. The memoir also looks beyond the immediate loss, exploring childhood trauma, difficult marriages, family estrangement, and the emotional patterns that shaped her life. Through therapy, faith, boundary-setting, and self-reflection, Carroll begins to understand the difference between simply surviving and truly healing. Written in an intimate, diary-like style, the book offers an unfiltered look at complicated grief and the gradual process of reclaiming identity, peace, and self-love.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
One Mother’s Fight to Turn Devastating Loss Into Lasting Love
Phoenix, Arizona – Sept 23, 2026 – A single phone call shattered Doreen Evette Carroll’s world. In that instant, she became a mother who had lost her only son, and nothing prepared her for what came next.
Carroll’s new memoir, A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love, takes readers inside the days, weeks, and years that followed her son Theartis’s sudden death in Tijuana, Mexico. She crossed the border alone, navigated an unfamiliar system, and fought to bring her son home, all while carrying a grief no parent should ever have to endure.
The book does not stop at the funeral. Carroll opens her life completely, tracing decades of hidden pain, difficult relationships, and quiet resilience that shaped her long before this loss. She writes about childhood trauma, three marriages, estrangement from her daughter, and the slow, often messy work of healing that therapy and faith eventually demanded of her.
Readers follow Carroll through a birthday spent identifying her son’s remains, a Celebration of Life that reunited a fractured family, and the months of isolation that came after, when the mask of strength finally started to crack. Her story refuses to offer a tidy resolution. Instead, it shows what it actually looks like to keep living after an unimaginable loss.
At its core, A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love is about reclaiming yourself after loss steals everything you thought you knew about strength. Carroll’s central message is that survival and healing are not the same thing, and that real peace only comes when a person stops carrying burdens that were never theirs to hold. She writes candidly about learning to put herself first, set boundaries, and rebuild an identity outside of caretaking for everyone else.
This memoir speaks most directly to grieving parents, women rebuilding their lives after trauma, and readers drawn to faith-centered stories of resilience. It will also resonate with anyone who has ever worn a mask of strength while quietly falling apart, and with readers who want an honest, unfiltered account of what grief actually demands of a person.
Carroll writes in an intimate, diary-like style that pulls readers directly into each moment as it happens. Her prose moves quickly between raw emotion and everyday detail, often within the same paragraph, which gives the book an unfiltered, conversational feel rather than a polished retrospective. Short chapters and dated entries create urgency, while her habit of returning to faith and family grounds even the hardest scenes with warmth.
A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love does not shy away from anger, doubt, or moments that reflect poorly on the people around her. Carroll’s honesty is the book’s greatest strength, and it gives readers permission to feel messy, complicated emotions without shame.
A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love is available now on Amazon, at all major online retailers, and at major bookstores nationwide.
For more information, review copies, or to schedule an interview with Doreen Evette Carroll, please contact:
Doreen Evette Carroll
About Doreen Evette Carroll
Doreen Evette Carroll has lived through some of life’s most painful losses, one after another. Through unimaginable grief, she found her purpose, fighting her way back to loving herself and others. Today, she continues discovering herself in a world of endless possibility, embracing genuine happiness from within. A Mother’s Journey: From Loss to Love is her debut memoir, born from her determination to turn devastating loss into a story that helps others heal.
