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advance praise for

Permanent Marker

“In Permanent Marker, Aimee Ross doesn’t shy away from telling the hard truths of tragedy. She explores her own, personal trauma with raw honesty from her newly recharged heart while searching for that trauma’s meaning with a candid, conversational style. Aimee’s story reminds us that even when our truths don’t reveal themselves in the ways we wish they would, we can always choose how those truths shape, rather than define, our lives.”

Darin Strauss

Bestselling author of Half a Life: A Memoir

“In a series of tragedies that would be unbelievable in fiction, everything is broken—Aimee Ross’s marriage, her heart, and finally, her whole body, tooth to toe. A devastating car accident could have been the end of her story, but Ross possesses an indomitable spirit and fierce humor that breathe new life into every page. Clear-eyed and open-hearted, Ross throws open the curtain to her hospital room, revisiting the harrowing, daily details of her trauma and recovery, writing herself to wholeness, and reminding us all of the crucial difference between merely surviving and making a decision to live.”

Jill Christman

Author of Darkroom: A Family Exposure and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood

“Filled with brutal honesty, heartbreak and humor, Aimee Ross’s gut-wrenching story is an inspiring portrait of strength and resilience. Aimee, a truly gifted, creative, and award-winning high school teacher, discovers that it was her students who help her abandon her fears, renew her passion for teaching, and find the joy and meaning in her spared life…sharing a lesson that can help any one of us in our personal or professional life.”

Debra Hurst

2016 National Teachers Hall of Fame Inductee

“Aimee Ross spares no details in her raw, unflinching account of what it means to have your life torn apart—physically and emotionally. Permanent Marker is a remarkable story of healing, courage, and finding the strength it takes to rewrite your life’s story.”

Tina Neidlein

Humor writer and author of The Girl’s Guide and It’s a Mom Thing

“Aimee Ross sees the patterns of literature weaving through life. So when she is slammed with catastrophes that shatter her body and threaten her soul, she finds signposts to recovery through foreshadowing, symbols and yes, irony—which makes hers not just a resurrection story, but one laced with laughs.”

Jan Shoemaker

Author of Flesh and Stones: Field Notes from a Finite World

Permanent

Marker

A Memoir

• • •

Aimee Ross

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to, reprint in whole or part, paraphrasing, photocopy or recording without the written permission of the publisher.

A version of “August 2012” first appeared as the essay “Permanent Marker” in Scars: An Anthology (Wood, Et Alia Press, 2015).

A version of part of “March-May 2010” first appeared as the essay “Crossing” on SixHens.com (Issue 4).

Cover and book design by Mark Sullivan

ISBN 978-0-9991581-0-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9991581-1-1 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

Published by KiCam Projects

www.KiCamProjects.com

For Jackson,

who believed in me

before I believed in me

The Trifecta of Shit.

That’s how I like to refer to it.

The end of my marriage. My own heart attack. An under-the-influence driver on a collision course to destroy the life I had just started to rebuild.

And all within six months.

The Triple Crown. A trio. Isn’t the third time the charm?

Heart, body, soul: I was marked.

But I couldn’t let—scratch that—I wouldn’t let the Trifecta define my life.

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected.”

~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

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