The Morning Glory Project

Toby Dorr dared the unthinkable. She broke a convicted murderer out of Lansing Correctional Facility. Since completing her time in Federal Prison, she has achieved two Master’s degrees and rebuilt a broken life. Since her first visit to The Morning Glory Project in 2019, Toby has been making good on her promises to herself and her community.

She’s written and published what she calls her Unleashed series—a series of three workbooks to help women to gain strength and power and to avoid the mistakes that she has made.

Through her memoir, Living with Conviction: Unexpected Sisterhood, Healing, and Redemption in the Wake of Life-Altering Choices, Toby takes readers through all of the heart-pounding, tear-jerking, heartbreaking, eye-opening experiences that touch the most primal human need, the need to be significant. A fascinating prison tale, through the lens of love, inspires change.

Jess Ayers is a seasoned musician turned successful freelance writer. On the day that she and her husband brought their three-day-old son Jax home, and loved ones came to welcome the new arrival, nobody could have imagined what would happen. A random bullet, shot by a neighbor more than 200 yards away traveled past dozens of trees, entered their house and killed Jess’s husband, and father to their newborn before her eyes. Through the shock, grief, and profound loss, Jess needed to take care of her newborn and build a life different than she’d planned for herself and her son. Jess had to find her own music, her own voice without Justin, and turned to writing as part of her own healing and to help others deal with their loss. Through her blog, The Singing Widow, and as a contributor on POPSUGAR, and Love What Matters, Jess continues to share her story of love, loss, and healing.

Lorinda Boyer strove continuously to be virtuous in the eyes of God and to live the life she believed He intended for her. She married her high school boyfriend at eighteen and had two kids by twenty-eight. Although she created a perfect Christian home for her family, she never felt wholly content in her role as wife and mother. Then her life intersected with Robin’s-the woman who would ultimately awaken her sexuality and show her true love for the first time. Struggling to come to terms with her sexual identity within the confines of her strict fundamentalist Christian upbringing, Lorinda is pushed into living a double life: one part perfect housewife and mother, the other part sexual addict. She soon finds herself in the fight for her life. More than a coming-out story, this is a coming-into story. It is the story of coming into an authentic life and self.

After a five year struggle with infertility, many heartbreaking disappointments, and with the help of IVF, Jessica Pritchett was finally pregnant. She and her husband awaited the arrival of their much-loved daughter, Izabella. But after multiple medical complications far outside of their control, and after all medical intervention failed, losing Izabella was inevitable and they were faced with the most horrible of choices: to carry the child further would result in Jessica’s death and her daughter’s too. The pregnancy was not far enough along for the infant to be viable outside the womb. Together with her husband and her doctors, Jessica made the agonizing choice to induce labor, knowing that her daughter would likely not survive it. This was grief upon grief for this couple that so wanted to be parents.

Now, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to disregard 50 years of legal precedent, and to overturn federal laws to protect a woman’s right to body autonomy and medical privacy, Jessica has discovered a new kind of grief. She’s been called vile, disgusting, selfish, and a murderer by those who claim to hold a “pro-life” stance.

This is a story of hard choices and a family that has faced them, lived with them, and remained a loving family.

Dr. Lucinda Jackson is the author of the memoir Just a Girl: Growing Up Female and Ambitious about her struggles to succeed as a scientist in male-dominated oil and gas and chemical organizations. Her story continues in her new book coming out April 2022: Project Escape: Lessons for an Unscripted Life about the complex transition from hard-hitting career to retirement. Jackson is the Founder of LJ Ventures, where she speaks and consults on energy and the environment and empowering women in the workplace and the Next Act.

Lauren Trantham is the founder and executive director of Ride My Road. In 2016, Lauren started Ride My Road as a personal photography project to photograph American Survivors of abuse and sex trafficking. Since that time, and in addition to photographing over 80 survivors, she has ridden tens of thousands of miles on her motorcycle raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for survivor-led organizations.

Meredith May was our guest, sharing her intimate and inspiring memoir, The Honey Bus. We welcome her back to share the story she portrays in Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to be Brave. This new memoir is a story of a dog, to be sure, but it’s also much more than that. This is the story of what our relationships with vulnerable creatures can teach us about ourselves.

Meredith’s books have been published in 17 countries and her first children’s book, My Hive, will be published in spring 2024. Previously, she was an award-winning journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle, where her reporting won the PEN USA Literary Award for Journalism, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Carmel Valley where she spends her time writing, beekeeping, and volunteering as a scuba diver for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Kevin Berthia is a suicide survivor and prevention advocate. Kevin was born with a genetic major depression disorder. In 2005, at the age of 22, Kevin attempted to take his own life by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Eight years after his attempt, Kevin was reunited with the officer who talked him back to safety. Since then, Kevin’s story of HOPE has touched a diverse group of audiences all around the world. Kevin has had the opportunity to share his story with several magazine outlets along with local and national news stations. Kevin’s story was also featured on the Steve Harvey Show. The photo of him standing on the bridge was front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and placed on the 75 most iconic photos of the 21st Century.

Kevin believes that having survived an attempted suicide plays a major role in the prevention of additional suicides. No one knows more about the darkness that surrounds suicide than those who have walked in its shadow.

Kevin Briggs, a retired California Highway Patrol sergeant, spent a decade patrolling the Golden Gate Bridge. A trained negotiator, Briggs handled 4-6 crisis calls a month on the bridge. These challenging but rewarding efforts earned him the nickname “Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

On one fateful day in 2005, Kevin met with one of the most challenging, yet rewarding encounters of his service career with a young man of twenty-two who had come to that destination to end his life. Kevin Berthia was that young man and the 90-minute, over-the-rail exchange between these two men not only saved his life but was the start of a life-long friendship.

Their hopeful, life-affirming story offers insight into how we can gain an understanding for those in the throes of personal anguish and how to extend compassion to those who may be struggling.

Kevin Briggs has shared what he’s learned in his memoir, Guardian of the Golden Gate. He currently speaks with law enforcement organizations, schools, and businesses to share inspire compassion and understanding about mental health and suicide issues.

Silvia Foti was raised on reverent stories about her hero grandfather, a martyr for Lithuanian independence and an unblemished patriot. His granddaughter, growing up in Chicago, was treated like royalty in her tightly knit Lithuanian community. But in 2000, when Silvia traveled to Lithuania for a ceremony honoring her grandfather, she heard a different story…a “rumor” that her grandfather hand been a “Jew-Killer”.

Silvia, an award-winning investigative journalist could not ignore such a sharply barbed rumor and embarked on a wrenching twenty-year quest for the truth. This journey into World War II history is intensely personal, but filled with universal lessons about courage, faith, memory, and justice as told her memoir, The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal.