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Heather Moore

Heather Moore is an author, wellness practitioner, and advocate for mental health awareness. With over twenty-five years of experience in holistic health as an acupuncturist, she brings a unique perspective to healing one that integrates emotional, physical, and spiritual resilience. Her personal journey navigating family trauma, addiction recovery, and the complexities of caring for a parent with schizophrenia deeply informs her work. Through her writing, Heather offers an honest and compassionate voice for those facing similar challenges.
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Licensed Acupuncturist, Heather Moore

September 28, 2026
Contributed By: Heather Moore

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My memoir Trusting Resilience: Schizophrenia, Family and the Journey to Love takes readers on a fast-paced, emotionally harrowing journey across the country—from California to the Midwest, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Deep South. After my beloved father died one month before my 40th birthday, I was single and thrust into the most difficult journey of my life: helping my undiagnosed mother with schizophrenia, who had rarely left the house in more than 20 years. My quest became learning to love both myself and my mother while confronting the unpredictability of mental illness and the deep, unhealed wounds it had left in me and my family. But this is not only a story about mental illness. It is also about the invisible weight carried by children of mentally ill parents, the breaking and rebuilding of family relationships, the courage required to advocate for someone who cannot advocate for herself, and the quiet strength it takes to keep choosing love. It is a story of hope and redemption as I battled my own mind and fears while confronting an ineffective American legal and mental health care system that repeatedly failed us. I learned that letting go and letting God was the only way to save myself and, miraculously, to help save my mother and discover the deepest love I have ever known. With unflinching honesty and profound vulnerability, I invite readers into the moments most people never speak about and offers something rare in return. Hope. Healing. And the reminder that resilience is not something we force it is something we learn to trust.

When was your lightbulb moment?

My lightbulb moment was when I realized I couldn’t do anything more for my mother. I exhausted every avenue to get her help. It brought me to a bottom of powerlessness; I had to completely and utterly let her go. I watched her climb onto a 12 hour bus ride bound for Memphis knowing that I may never see her again. I surrendered her to a higher power and had complete trust that no matter what happened to us, that God would take over and we were going to be ok. This decision changed everything. Unbeknownst to me we had touched the deepest shadow our darkest moment, and now we were heading towards the light.

What are your three words of advice?

1) Trust – The book opens with me feeling like I needed to call my father which I did. Unfortunately, this was my last conversation with him. This inner trust or instinct becomes my compass throughout the story and my life at large: trusting my gut, trusting the slow process of healing, trusting that a broken relationship with my mother could still become something real. So much of life is a mystery, full of paradox and contradictions. There were many moments where logic would have said that the decisions I was making were crazy. But in the end, trusting my inner compass was what made everything come together. The advice here isn’t always know the answer, it’s listen to the quiet knowing and act before you have proof.

2) Boundaries – There are real limits loving someone through mental illness and caregiving, not just endurance. The big breakthrough with the relationship with my mother only became possible once there was structure, medication, and boundaries in place not despite them. Love doesn’t require self-erasure. Most people who have C-PTSD have many codependent traits and behaviors. Especially hypervigilence. This often manifests as making sure everyone else is taken care of first because it creates safety for the one with C-PTSD. However, this is not a healthy or helpful strategy due to self-abandonment. Take care of your needs first, fill your own cup, than you can be an effective resource for others. Understanding your psychological and physical limits, and setting clear boundaries is one of the best forms of self-care.

3) Forgiveness – My disclaimer promises readers the book ends in hope, not despair and it does, closing with me and my mother saying “I love you” to each other and actually meaning it. Something that would have been unimaginable years earlier. The story doesn’t minimize how much damage was done throughout my childhood but it holds both the wreckage and the repair. That is true forgiveness. It’s not forgetting or excusing, but choosing connection anyway once safety and treatment made it possible.