Published Works
Books written from
the inside out
Each book is a map of interior terrain — grief, memory, legacy, and the essential self that persists through loss and change. Written by a coach who has walked every path she describes.
Becoming Sanctuary - Available Now at Amazon
Choose the support that fits your journey
One Mother's Journey through Seven Sacred Spaces of Grief
DESCRIPTION
On September 17, 2015, at two in the morning, a police officer knocked on Susan Sterkenberg's door and told her that her son Greg was dead. She had spent her career helping people navigate life's most profound transitions. None of it had prepared her for this.
Becoming Sanctuary is the story of what happened next — not the surviving, but the transformation. Drawing on a decade of lived grief and a doctoral framework in hope-developmental theory, Sterkenberg maps the interior terrain of profound loss through seven inhabitable spaces she calls sanctuaries: not stages to complete, but sacred places to dwell in, return to, and ultimately grow from.
"Grief is not something to get over. It's something to walk through — and discover who you're becoming on the other side."
From the initial shattering of the Threshold Room to the hard-won arrival of tragic optimism, this is a book about what grief can become when we stop fighting it and let it crack us open. Emotionally unflinching, spiritually rich, and practically grounded, Becoming Sanctuary offers the bereaved something rare: a companion who has walked every step of the path, and the quietly revolutionary promise that you will not only move through these sanctuaries — you will become one.
FULL TITLE
Becoming Sanctuary: One Mother's Journey through Seven Sacred Spaces of Grief
ISBN
979-8-88171-512-0
What Remains — Coming Soon
Music, Memory, and the Miracle of Barbara
DESCRIPTION
Barbara Ellen Stonesifer had a musical gift present since the age of three — and it stayed with her, intact and extraordinary, to within a week of her death at eighty-five, untouched by the dementia that took nearly everything else around it. What Remains is a true account of that gift, and the question it raised: when the mind dissolves, what is it that persists?
Drawing on neuroscience, deep attention, and the irreplaceable vantage of a daughter who was paying close attention, Susan Sterkenberg maps the interior experience of caregiving and loss — not as a clinical manual, but as a human one.
"My mother became more herself as her mind dissolved. More present, more joyful, more essentially who she had always been. When everything else fell away, there she was."
For anyone in the middle of the dementia journey, on the other side of it, or drawn to the deeper questions underneath — about identity, about what it means to be human, and about what remains when the world goes soft and quiet. Be ready to be transformed.
FULL TITLE
What Remains: Music, Memory, and the Miracle of Barbara
Manuscript complete · Publication forthcoming
ISBN
TBD
Wavelengths of Wisdom — Available Now
Wavelengths of Wisdom:
The John Jaminet Legacy Story
From tracing the warm glow of vacuum tubes in postwar Kansas to bouncing signals off the moon, Wavelengths of Wisdom follows John Jaminet's six-decade odyssey through the world of amateur radio — a story that reveals how genuine achievement lies not in trophy distances or rare DXCC cards, but in every moment a newcomer's question sparks curiosity and a mentor's patience opens doors to wonder.
Written as a legacy keepsake and deeply personal tribute for John's 90th birthday, this book traces his boyhood explorations with surplus gear, his pioneering feats in microwave radio, and the relationships that transformed radio into a lifelong community. Along the way: how building one's own equipment breeds a better operator, how a well-timed question can inspire a new leader, and why the true legacy of an amateur lies in the spirit of service above self.
Peppered with vivid anecdotes, field-tested wisdom, and John's own reflections, Wavelengths of Wisdom is both a technical memoir and a celebration of the invisible bridges that radio has built across continents and generations.
FULL TITLE
Wavelengths of Wisdom: The John Jaminet Legacy Story
Manuscript complete · Publication forthcoming
ISBN
979-8-88170-778-1
Available on Amazon
The Stirring
Excavating Your Authentic Self for the Life That Is Waiting
You are feeling it. A quiet restlessness beneath a life that is, by most measures, full something has been stirring - patient, persistent, waiting for you to finally stop long enough to listen.
In the Stirring, Susan Sterkenberg invites you into nine transformations excavations - through the layers of Truth, Voice, Vulnerability, Presence, Connection, Loss, Transformation, Desire, and Essence. - to uncover who you actually are beneath everything you have performed, managed, and survived.
“The pearl is not made by force. It is formed, layer by layer, in the quiet dark - from exactly what the oyster already holds. So is the authentic self. So is the life that s waiting.”
Part memoir, part guided excavation, part coaching companion, The Stirring weaves Susan’s own story with deep questions that ask you to do the same. It is an excavation, patient, curious, unhurried. What emerges is not a life you engineered - It is the life that has always waiting for you to arrive in it.
Now Available on Amazon
FULL TITLE
The Stirring: Excavating Your Authentic Self for the Life That is Waiting
ISBN
9798881716912
Available on Amazon
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
Ready to walk this
path together
Susan’s coaching deepens and personalizes what her books begin. Schedule a free consultation to find the right starting point.