About
J. Lauren Sangster was born and raised in Kentucky. She has been writing short stories since her teen years, but only began to show her work in 2018. That year she won the Richard F. Snow Nonfiction Award for her creative short story I Love You, I Miss You Already, about the two year journey she shared with her husband after his diagnosis with cancer. Lauren’s short stories were regularly printed in Portland Press Herald newspaper from late 2018 until 2020. She was honored to learn that the collection of her articles was to be presented at the Portland PechaKucha forum in March of 2020. In 2019 she won second place for the Kaleidoscope Women’s Journey (WOJO) nationwide contest with her short story A Silent One Woman’s Rights Movement, about her mother’s quiet struggle with domestic abuse during the height of the Women’s Rights Strike for Equality march in 1970. That story is published as part of the Kaleidoscope: In My Shoes anthology. Lauren was thrilled when a two-page article she wrote as a tribute to her mother’s 100th family reunion during the height of Covid was printed in The Citizen Voice & Times, a publication serving Irvine, Kentucky where her parents were both born. She is thrilled her memoir The Girl Who Flew Over the Honeysuckle Hedge: Her Lifelong Journey of Coping and Healing with C-PTSD is now published. She currently resides in Maine.
Featured Work
The Girl Who Flew Over the Hondeysuckle Hedge: Her Lifelong Journey of Coping and Healing with C-PTSD
At five-years-old, young Janet raised out of her body and flew over a honeysuckle hedge. It was this dreamlike experience offering her mind momentary respite from the dysfunction and abuse surrounding her that began her difficult life journey toward healing.
In this riveting memoir, J. Lauren Sangster tells her personal story of surviving childhood sexual abuse, family dysfunction and violence. Trying to escape her past with a new identity as Lauren in New York, she discovers love and heartbreak with a man of Hungarian nobility and his whirlwind high society life in Newport, Rhode Island, then endures abuse and torture while held captive by a philatelist deep in the French Alps. Amid the darkness, and still haunted by childhood trauma, Lauren manages to survive and finds support with a circle of trusted friends back in New York… and even finds love again.
J. Lauren Sangster’s memoir is a testament to remarkable resilience during her journey to cope and heal with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Complex PTSD). Writing with humility, compassion, and a sense of humor, she provides an unfiltered examination of how her traumatized mind works while finding joy in friends, love, silly riddles, a pet dachshund, and learning to live authentically as she discovers new ways to heal more deeply, thus offering the reader hope that they, too, may triumph over trauma.
