Sharon Diotte Te’ora memoir: Author Interview

Some books arrive loudly, announced by urgency and opinion.

Others enter the room the way breath does—softly, steadily, asking nothing but attention.

Te’ora feels like the second kind.

There is a particular intimacy to memoirs born from survival. You sense it in the pacing, in the refusal to rush toward redemption. You feel it in the way pain is neither sensationalized nor neatly resolved, but held with care, like a fragile truth finally allowed daylight.

Sharon Diotte’s Te’ora: From Vulnerability and Wounding to Wisdom and Freedom unfolds this way—through lived geography and inner terrain. Canada, the United States, Pakistan, and Rapa Nui are not just locations but chapters of becoming. Each place carries its own lessons about power, belonging, silence, and voice.

The book moves through sexual assault and domestic violence without spectacle, focusing instead on the quieter aftermath: how identity fractures, how trust erodes, how one learns—slowly—to inhabit a body and a life again. Its title comes from the Rapanui word Te’ora, meaning “a beautiful new life,” a phrase that does not promise erasure of the past, but transformation alongside it.

Diotte’s years on Rapa Nui, where she founded and ran a boutique hotel that became the island’s top-ranked lodging, mark a pivotal turning point. Not as a triumph narrative, but as an education in community, rhythm, and spiritual connection. The island does not save her. It listens with her.

Now living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sharon Diotte brings with her a lifetime of roles—registered nurse, educator, entrepreneur, mother, grandmother—and the hard-earned wisdom of second acts chosen consciously. Te’ora is not written to persuade. It is written to witness.

What follows is not an interview in the conventional sense, but a conversation—about survival that ripens into meaning, about rebuilding a self without betraying one’s wounds, and about what freedom actually asks of us.

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The Human Threshold

Q1. What was the first quiet signal that Te’ora wanted to exist as a book, not just as lived experience?

SD: My nursing career was a catalyst in Te’ora’s gestation. I could see that people of the same age with the same diagnosis did not respond equally to identical standards of allopathic medical care. Some recovered, some remained unchanged and some died. The problem was that we were treating the illness, not the person. Female patients were often regarded as less emotionally and mentally stable than male patients. Words like “anxiety” were frequently attached to women’s diagnoses, with little concern for what lay beneath. Their distress was labeled as weakness rather than understood as a response to lived experience.

I wanted my work to contribute to wellness, not simply manage sickness. My spiritual journey was teaching me that physical disease is often rooted in spiritual dis-ease. So I focused on creating a women’s wellness and empowerment program that explored how good health co-exists with spiritual awakening. The exuberance of the women who attended my classes, showed me I had found meaningful work.

That was the first, quiet signal. Guidance planted a seed. I was meant to write more than classes. I was meant to write a book about surviving and thriving.

But I had constructed a mask that protected me from pain and shame, and I was terrified that removing it would cost me the respect of friends, colleagues, and family. I did not yet feel strong enough to expose my underbelly. I wanted to write from the vantage point of healing, not from inside my wounds. I told myself that with age I would worry less about what others thought. I believed I needed more living—and more healing—before I was ready.

Thirty years would pass before I finally sat down to the task.

A Memory or Moment Kept Returning 

Q2. Was there a particular memory or moment that kept returning, asking to be written no matter how much time passed?

SD: The tender story of my mother’s slide from vibrancy to suicide was one that would not leave me. I wanted to tell it with loving, clear honesty.

In her short and pain-filled life, my mother showed me the dangerous cost to women forced to live by rules that suffocate rather than elevate. She was a stellar mother. I cannot remember a single moment in my childhood when, if I was within arm’s reach, she did not extend a loving touch. She adored my sister and me — and she showed it. She wanted the very best for us. She wanted us to know we were perfect in her eyes.

And yet, even with all that love, her depression overtook her. It led to alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, and finally suicide. Her doctors and her priest did not see her as a fully equal human being, but as another “hysterical housewife.” She did not die because she was weak. She did not die because she failed to love her children enough. She died because she was forced to live in a world that demanded she be someone she was not.

It is important that we tell our mothers’ stories. In keeping with my legacy of truth-telling, writing Mom’s story was an act of honoring her. I am grateful that Te’ora holds her with dignity.

An Act of Release, or as a Form of Understanding 

Q3. When you began, did you imagine this memoir as an act of release, or as a form of understanding?

SD: Understanding was my initial goal. My life had felt unusually burdened by trauma. I carried shame not only for what had been done to me, but also for decisions I had made during difficult passages. I believed those experiences diminished me.

I longed for someone to paint a large mural of my life so I could step back and see the threads that shaped who I had become. I sensed that if I could see the whole story at once, my life would begin to make sense. So that is what I did. In deciding which stories supported the theme of my book, I created a detailed timeline of every memory I could retrieve—a list that ran several pages. It was my first step toward bringing order to chaos.

When I finally published Te’ora and held her in my hands, I felt an exhilarating sense of completion. Writing my story had been demanding work, but in doing so I came to understand something essential: even in my darkest moments, when shame weighed heavily on me, my soul had been whispering a quiet truth—that I was never a lesser person.

Craft, Memory, Tension

Q4. Writing about trauma often means choosing what to leave unsaid. How did you decide where restraint mattered more than detail?

SD: “Primum non nocere” — first, do no harm — the phrase associated with the Hippocratic Oath, guided me as I wrote.

Although my memoir is an honest account of surviving patriarchy-induced abuses and moving from surviving to thriving, I was determined it would not become a “man-bad, woman-good” narrative. We are all, men and women alike, shaped and wounded by patriarchal systems. When a friend read the book immediately after publication, her first words were, “I’m so glad it’s not a male-bashing story.” That felt like high praise.

In several chapters, I chose restraint over detail. I did not want to cause unnecessary harm — not to the men in my life, not to readers, and not to myself. Telling the truth was essential. But I wanted that truth to clarify, not condemn.

Holding Space for Your Own Story

Q5. As a nurse and educator, you’ve spent years holding space for others. What was different about holding space for your own story?

SD: The difference was vulnerability.

Pain recognizes pain. Fear recognizes fear. My personal experience with both helped me empathize with my patients and students so I could hold safe space for them to heal and learn. Safe space is sacred space. Holding sacred space is holy work. In my professional role, however, there was just enough emotional distance to allow me to be effective.

When I was writing my story, that distance disappeared. This was holy work too, but without the professional armor to shield me from vulnerability. There was no breathing space between me and my memories.

So I sought a therapist who could hold that sacred space for me as I stepped out from behind my protective mask and broke my silence. I needed help in learning how to be gentle with myself, and to forgive myself for foibles that never needed forgiveness.

Which Part of Te’ora Resisted?

Q6. Which part of Te’ora resisted you the most during the writing—and what do you think it was protecting?

SD: My inner critic was the part of Te’ora that resisted the work most. She desperately wanted me to turn away from this venture of self-destruction.

She hissed such warnings as: “Who do you think you are? You’re not a good enough writer. Who would want to read anything you have to say? You’re going to destroy what you work so hard to hide your whole life. What will friends and family think when they find out you’re a phony? Stop before you ruin your life.”

She was scared. She thought my reputation needed guarding. She saw change as destruction, and she knew that breaking my silence was going to create irreversible change. After three years of doggedly writing while my stomach churned with her screaming in the background, an interview of Dale Allen, the creator of the film and the book “In Our Right Minds,” shifted my relationship with fear. Dale suggested that instead of battling the inner critic, love her. Assure her you are listening and then bring her along as you go about your work. Her advice changed my relationship with my frightened core.

I wrapped mama wings around her. I listened to her without rush or annoyance. I accepted her as my protective ally, not my foe. I thanked her for trying to keep me safe. And yes, once she felt heard, she no longer had to scream. Together, we finished the book.

Geography Shapes Sense of Self

Q7. Your life unfolds across multiple countries and cultures. How did geography shape not just events, but your sense of self at each stage?

SD: It is beneficial for every white person to live in a nonwhite culture where she is the minority. We quickly lose our sense of white privilege. Immersion in other cultures is not just a movement across maps, but an expansion of identity.

Leaving family and friends behind forced me to rely on my own strengths. Being sidelined in conversations for long months while I slowly learned new languages, taught me to watch and listen closely. Without language to express an opinion, I learned that my opinion is not really all that important all the time. Living as a foreigner, I discovered that regardless of color and culture, we are all so unique and yet all so much the same.

Living among people who could not pronounce my name altered me in a quiet but lasting way. A feeling of small but persistent dislocation, over time, opened a deeper empathy in me. I began to understand, in my own body, what it means to be linguistically displaced. I thought of immigrants in my own country whose names are altered or ignored to make others comfortable. Constantly having my name mispronounced made me more careful with other people’s names, and with their stories. It expanded my capacity for solidarity.

Rapa Nui Plays a Quiet yet Powerful Role 

Q8. Rapa Nui plays a quiet yet powerful role in the book. What did the island teach you about healing that no textbook ever could?

SD: In my late 30s, the weight of shame and guilt over divorce, and fear of the unknown transitions that lay ahead, led to what I now call a holy breakdown. I thought I was crazy, I thought I was dying. Yet without knowing what I was doing, or why, I felt called to sit on the Earth from sunrise to sunset feeling the warmth of the sun on my face and the solid safety of the ground holding me.

I lay on my belly and cried my grief into Her waiting heart. I bathed in moonlight. My tears were softer at night—a cooler release than the daytime floods. I did this hour by hour, day by day for a month. As the month closed, my shame, guilt and fear were replaced by a quiet knowing that I was not crazy. I was not dying. I was loved and I was safe.

This healing by the Earth Mother quickened a spiritual awakening and began a life-long relationship with Her. I meditated on daily walks, breathing in rhythm with the green ones. I studied plant medicine and participated in Earth based prayer rituals with like-minded women.

In my late 40s, after a decade of rooting myself among the trees, I stood in the woods behind my house. Looking up at the patches of blue peeking through the tree branches, I prayed a promise:

“Great Cosmic Mother, thank you for healing me. Thank you for your protection and guidance. Thank you for the teachers you laid in my path. When I was frightened, you called me to you and I was renewed. Now. I want to serve you. Show me the steps and I will take them.”

It was a fervent, heartfelt prayer. I gave the Great Mother God a signed blank check, not knowing the cost of my promise. Within a year, The Great Mother swooped me up in her arms and set me down softly on the tiny island of Rapa Nui.

“OK, my daughter. You feel ready. Your journey continues here.”

In Rapa Nui my relationship with Mother Earth intensified. With no electricity or running water, no television or radio or computer or cell phone, my nervous system began to settle in ways I had never experienced.

I entered into a co-creative partnership with the elements: the soil gave me

vegetables and fruits, the ocean provided fish, fire cooked my food, rain supplied water, the sun and wind dried my house after the rain, and the moon guided footsteps after dark.

There, in Rapa Nui, I was asked to surrender everything I thought defined me – family, friends, language, familiar customs, even my name. I underwent a personal Inanna-like journey into the cave. In that cave, I came face to face with layers of trauma I had not yet been able to confront. As I navigated frightening challenges, I relied on the Earth Mama to steady and protect me.

What Rapa Nui taught me—what no textbook ever could—is this: when we are stripped of identity and distraction, and held firmly by the Great Mother, the wounds we could not previously reach rise to the surface, and a deeper healing begins.

A Beautiful New Life

Q9. The word Te’ora speaks of a “beautiful new life.” How did your understanding of beauty change as you moved through loss and rebuilding?

SD: Loss and rebuilding have shown me that a beautiful life has little to do with material accumulation or fame. It is about loving self-knowledge, connection with Source and with all that is. Beauty finds purpose in each stage of life. Purpose finds ways to give back.

Our bodies are temporary. We have visible proof that all bodies die. A beautiful life builds a legacy that outlives the body. My legacy is truth-telling. Breaking my silence about patriarchy-induced traumas showed me that truth not only frees us individually but also disrupts the culture of misogyny that depends on secrecy and shame. Now, looking back as an old woman, I see that those shame-laden challenges baptized me in grit. Without them, I would not be me.

I’ve lived a beautiful life.

Philosophy & Being

Q10. Trauma can fracture identity. How did you recognize when you were no longer surviving, but beginning to choose who you wanted to become?

SD: In my late 30s, my Spiritual journey awakened. I left a marriage that did not allow growth. Decades of trying to squeeze my body and psyche into a tiny slice of temporary safety in a dangerous, male dominated world – I say temporary because the goalposts were always moving – created a rancid mist of depression that oozed through my metabolic system. I feared I was doomed to follow my mother’s path toward suicide. It was the 1980s, a time before #MeToo. Our foremothers had passed us the women’s liberation baton. Women were now speaking and writing with a language that was raw and real and unafraid, exposing the lies of the male narrative. My trophy wife role had shielded me from their message but now, a curtain rose and flood lights poured through me. Dread shifted to determination.

I read only female authors for 13 years. I joined women’s circles. As I immersed myself in the female narrative, I began to see the world differently and to change the way I expected the world to see and treat me. The long-forgotten mother tongue that had been denied for centuries ignited an inner knowing that I was born to help heal the schism between the male and female.

It was clear to me how religious, social, economic, and political systems jeopardize women’s health. So, when I created the women’s wellness and empowerment program, I addressed the necessity to create a new, healthy model for women at each stage of life.

Years earlier, when my children were in school, I had wanted to take classes at a local college. I had carefully arranged the schedule so my pursuit would not interfere with my wifely or motherly duties, but my husband refused to hear of such “nonsense.”

Now I was invited to teach my program at that very college.

As I walked across the campus green on my first day, I felt the weight of invisible chains fall away. In my marriage, I had been respected as a doctor’s wife. Here, I felt something entirely different: deep, unshackled self-respect — respect I had earned through my own becoming. That was the moment I knew I was no longer merely surviving the world as it was but consciously choosing the woman I was growing into, while helping shape the world I wanted to live in.

Wisdom Comes from Endurance?

Q11. Do you believe wisdom comes from endurance itself, or from the way we reflect on what we’ve endured?

SD: Each soul incarnates with a purpose, and each is given sacred assignments that help us fulfill that purpose. This is the spiritual journey. Your biography is a road map to your soul’s purpose. Socrates famously said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” An honest review of my biography helped me see the strength and resiliency that had carried me through that long, twisted journey, and I discovered how Divine intervention had helped me steer the journey. Courage in the face of danger gestates wisdom, yet we only claim that wisdom when we reflect on what we’ve endured.

Q12. How has your relationship with uncertainty evolved—from something threatening to something generative?

SD: At first, uncertainty felt terrifying. I was deeply afraid to break my silence about decades of experiences cloaked in shame. I feared being seen behind my protective mask. Writing my book slowly turned my fear into possibility.

Now I see I have far more to be proud of than to be ashamed of. The experiences that once carried the most shame have become my success stories. The result of breaking my silence is happily shocking—and it makes me smile.

What Does Responsibility Mean?

Q13. Many readers will encounter your story while navigating their own wounds. What does responsibility mean to you when telling a story like this?

SD: Responsibility means honesty.

I felt responsible to be honest when I wrote my stories. An example: as a survivor of rape, it was always painful to me that no one actually wanted to know what happened. I was allowed to admit I was raped, but no one wanted me to expand on it. How did it happen? When? Where? How did it affect the rest of my life? There would be polite nods and then the conversation would change to another topic. This amplified the deep shame that coated my innards. Rape is still a taboo subject. We are allowed, maybe, in the right place and at the right time, to admit to being raped, but not often. Rape is not a milky, bland event. It is a ripping, raw, horrific assault on the body, the heart, and the psyche. It inflicts life-long, painful consequences. I wanted to tell the truth about such an assault. I struggled with the choice for months because I was terrorized by the thought that telling the raw truth might arouse insanity in the mind of a stalker. Ultimately, I decided to tell the details of the rape.

I feel responsible to speak for women who are still shackled by the shame of what was done to them so they cannot speak out themselves. I feel responsible to educate doctors who tell survivors that “women get over rape.” No, we don’t get over rape. We struggle throughout our lives, learning PTSD management skills. We learn which events trigger anxiety, which triggers we can handle and which ones need to be avoided. We suffer life-long medical illnesses. I feel responsible to help women have meaningful conversations with their doctors around rape and the long-term effects on their health. I feel responsible to talk about the kinds of wholistic therapies that can help women move through surviving into thriving.

This book was written not only for my own healing. I wrote it with all raped women in my heart. When I was being raped by a group of frat boys in a dark basement, I knew that I was one with all women who were being raped at that moment, with all women who had ever been raped, and with all women who will be raped. It was a profoundly spiritual connection in the darkest of moments. I have never forgotten the responsibility that I have to speak and write for all of us.

Stories Heal or Show Mirror?

Q14. Do you believe stories like yours heal readers—or do they simply offer permission to look more honestly at their own lives?

SD: When I was stuck in a dark passage of my life, reading women’s stories ignited a spark of hope inside me. Their words invited me to change how I saw the world and my place in it. Though I was frightened, women’s stories helped me take my first quiet, small steps toward self-agency.

A friend who has achieved sobriety recently told me that an alcoholic needs a recovered alcoholic to partner him on his path to sobriety. It is the same for women seeking self-agency. We need models to partner us on our journey. By sharing our stories, women help each other discover our inner strength and resilience as we keep walking our own paths to healing.

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Resonance, Not Resolution

Reading Te’ora leaves one with the sense that healing is less about arrival and more about orientation. Toward truth. Toward gentleness. Toward a future that does not demand amnesia in exchange for hope.

Throughout this conversation, certain threads quietly repeat: the courage to stay with discomfort, the humility of rebuilding without guarantees, and the freedom that comes not from erasing pain, but from refusing to let it define the whole story.

Sharon Diotte does not frame reinvention as reinvention alone. It is relational—to place, to community, to memory, to self. Her story reminds us that second acts are rarely dramatic. They are chosen daily, often invisibly, through patience and attention.

In the spaces between her words, there is an invitation—not to overcome, but to listen more deeply to one’s own becoming.

For readers drawn to stories of inner worlds, mindful resilience, and lives reshaped by honesty, Te’ora rests comfortably among PebbleGalaxy’s explorations of literature, healing, and slow, meaningful living.

Perhaps that is what a beautiful new life looks like—not a clean break, but a widening of breath.