Sleep, Pray, Heal: A Path to Wholeness & Well-Being (Healing Memoir)

Book Synopsis: For 17 years Donna relied on opiates, cane, and wheelchair to get around. Now she walks freely. A multi-generational family excursion, including her nursing infant and preschool daughters, started with a freak accident and disabling brain injury for Donna Fado Ivery. Sleep, Pray, Heal chronicles her transformational journey through chronic pain, career loss, and child-rearing/marriage challenges, to healing through faith, poetry, and painting. With humor and humility, she shares her struggles through medical, legal, social, and church barriers with the abiding support of family and the Holy Spirit. This book is helpful to those with brain injury, their caregivers and professionals. And to those who feel stuck and need of inspiration!

Finalist, William Faulkner-William Wisdom International Creative Writing Competition, 2019 Nonfiction Book
Award Winner, Writer's Digest Competition, in the area of Inspirational, 2019.

Read her miracle—and yours.—Cornell William Brooks, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, and 18th President and CEO, NAACP

Sleep Pray Heal … is a testament to the power of prayer, the invincibility of the human spirit and the mysterious energy of belief.—Mike Farrell, Actor and Author, (Best known as BJ Hunnicutt of M*A*S*H)

I have seen patients with all kinds of brain trauma. Sleep, Pray, Heal provides a different and much needed perspective. It would benefit any medical student, medical professional to read.–Jenny Motley, MD, Cincinnati, Ohio

Sleep Pray Heal provides both insights and strategies for healing, that will be helpful to the sufferer and those who are trying their best to understand and be helpful. –Jen Tellier, Neuropsychologist, Alameda, CA

I must admit that as a non-religious person, Sleep, Pray, Heal is not a book I would have reached for in a bookstore. I am so glad that I read this joyful book. It is inspirational to anyone housed within a body.— Kelly Whitney, Private Investigator

A beautiful story rising out of a beautiful life. I read it with joy.—John Shelby Spong, Bishop Emeritus of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. Author of 30 books, with over a million sold.

Sleep, Pray, Heal is a beautifully and powerfully written book, where the Rev. Fado Ivery unfolds for us her theological thinking on so many issues of life, including sexism, racism, interracial marriage, suffering and pain, and faith in God. What a gift she has given us!—Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan, President and Professor of Hebrew Bible, Claremont School of Theology

Donna Fado Ivery … offers the great gift of herself and her spiritual journey, evoking quiet tears and big smiles in this reader. … It is a very human and spiritual gift—a treasure.—Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean Emeritus, Boston University School of Theology

Each page, each poem, each painting is a prayer – often rising from loss and anguish – but never apart from a profound trust embracing the searching love of God. I was moved and challenged.—Gordon Light, Retired Bishop, Anglican Church of Canada

I will definitely make an order for my Sunday School class. …she made her way out of the pit and was healed, and you will want to share her story.—Lynette Renee Grandison, M.D. Stanislaus Medical Society President 2018–2019

Her creative use of art in the quest for healing is unique and impressive.—J. Philip Wogaman, Former Pastor of President Clinton and Former Dean of Wesley Seminary, Washington D.C

Sleep, Pray, Heal is a modern sermon on faith — a beautifully articulated, joy-based sermon, full of ups and downs — imbued with an uplifting sense of the miraculous. —Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Author of Navigating the Divide, Namako, and The Hand of Buddha.