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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