HELLO AND WELCOME!

I’m Deborah Svec-Carstens.

Author, Book Coach, Spiritual Director

I believe healing comes in telling our stories. Your story matters—and you deserve a companion on your journey of telling it.

My work lives at the intersection of trauma, the body, and spirituality, and arises from lived experience. After being sexually assaulted in Paris in my early twenties, I had to rebuild my foundation by excavating the depths within to discover the courage, strength, and resilience that had always been there. Through community, years of spiritual searching and therapy, and finally, through writing, I continue finding my way back to myself. My memoir, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris, tells the story of those first fragile steps.

Now I walk alongside other women who are ready to go deeper into their stories, their questions, and their lives.

Let’s work together.

COMING SEPTEMBER 2026

Toward the Light: A Year in Paris

At twenty-two, I left small-town Iowa for a yearlong nanny job in Paris, knowing no one. Two months after my arrival, a morning run alone in the Bois de Boulogne ended in a sexual assault that shattered everything I thought I knew about myself, about God, and about what I could trust.

Panic and fear urged me to leave. I stayed.

Toward the Light dwells in the first fragile months after trauma, through the unsteady steps when there are more questions than answers. It focuses on an essential question: How does healing begin when you’re far from all you know?

Day by day, I stitched together a community, sought answers to my spiritual questions, kept showing up for the six-year-old girl I’d come to care for, and found solace by singing in a church choir and exploring the beauty of Paris.

For survivors. For spiritual seekers. For anyone who has ever asked what sustains us when the ground gives way.

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BOOK COACHING

You have a story of transformation, spiritual growth, or resilience that you’ve been carrying in your body for a long time. You feel the nudge to share this story with others, but you’re not sure where to begin, or how to shape what you’ve already started.

I am an Author Accelerator certified book coach in memoir. I’ve written and published my own memoir. I bring a survivor’s journey, a lawyer’s eye for detail, and a spiritual director’s gift for deep listening to every writer I work with.

I know what it takes to get a story out of your body and onto the page, and I offer a steady, compassionate, and accountable presence every step of the way.

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DOWNLOAD MY FREE DISCOVERY EXERCISE

Begin your memoir with clarity and confidence.

You’re carrying a story that matters. A story of transformation, healing, or resilience. If you feel the nudge to get it out of your body and onto the page, this free discovery exercise with writing prompts and a guided meditation will help you take the first step: naming your WHY. Understanding your WHY will guide you in shaping key components of the book and keep you from writing around your story, rather than into the heart of it.

Enter your name and email below and I’ll send it straight to you.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone

You have questions you can’t quite name. About faith. About Spirit (or God, Universe, Divine Mystery—however you name the ground of all being). About what you believe and how to live it.

A spiritual director doesn’t tell you what to believe. She listens, asks questions, and walks beside you as you discern your own path.

I work with female survivors of trauma who are not in crisis but sense another layer of healing is waiting, and with women navigating transition—a career shift, an empty nest, a loss, a turning point. Women asking, “Who am I now?”

Together, we’ll explore your sacred story and discover the wisdom that already lives within you. Online and in person.

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COME WALK WITH ME ON SUBSTACK

Life is like a spiral staircase that we travel up and down, circling back to familiar places with new awareness. Perhaps it’s easier to navigate the second—or third or fourth—time around. Sometimes we return to learn the same lesson again, and that’s OK, too.

Walking the spiral staircase takes courage, and it’s easier with companions.

Join me at The Spiral Staircase, my Substack newsletter, where I walk beside you, share my stories, and listen for yours.

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