Today, I’m hosting author Bridget Budd’s latest release (available in e-book, print, and audiobook), Behind the Mirror, a women’s fiction title. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway–an Amazon Gift Card worth $100.00.
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Title: Behind the Mirror
Series: N/A
Author: Bridget Budd
Genre(s): enres: Contemporary, Women’s Fiction
Publication Date: July 1, 2025
Sometimes, the hardest person to face is the one behind the mirror…
Blurb: Julie Sloan was shaped by abandonment early in life—left behind by the people who were supposed to love her first. In the absence of emotional safety, she became what the world rewarded: high-achieving, self-sacrificing, and always performing. Through four marriages, she searched for stability while suppressing her deepest fears—that she was unworthy of lasting love, and too broken to be fully seen.
But when her fourth marriage nearly collapsed, something shifted. It wasn’t betrayal that broke her—it was the quiet realization that she had never truly lived for herself.
What followed was a reckoning: with her past, with the roles she had played to survive, and with the parts of herself she had long silenced.
Now, years later, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist named Laura wants to profile Julie’s nonprofit work—an organization devoted to helping women heal from emotional wounds. But what begins as a success story takes a deeper turn as Julie reveals the story behind the story—the one she’s never shared publicly. The one about how she abandoned herself first.
Behind the Mirror is a powerful, character-driven novel about emotional healing, generational trauma, and the courage it takes to stop performing and start living your truth.
For readers drawn to novels about inner child work, identity, and spiritual awakening, this deeply personal journey will leave you both broken open and quietly restored.
Available at:
Amazon | B&N | Ingram Spark | Audible
“I’ve been married for more than thirty years,” I said with a grin. “I just haven’t been married to the same man for thirty years.”
People usually laugh when I say that. I think it softens the math. For the record, I’m in my fourth marriage—and before you start counting, yes, I know how it sounds.
Apparently, I’m in good company. Elizabeth Taylor, Pamela Anderson, and Christie Brinkley have all been married four or more times. Statistically speaking, I’m an overachiever in the matrimony department.
Hubby number four and I have been married for over fifteen years now, which defies the odds—something like eighty-two percent of fourth marriages end in divorce. That’s because, as I’ve learned, you have to stop marrying people who trigger your childhood wounds and start marrying people who know where the light switches are.
The truth is, each marriage taught me something different—mostly about myself. The first three lessons came with tuition fees and therapy bills. The fourth came with peace.
I used to see all those divorces as failures. Now, I think of them as degrees. I’m not collecting husbands; I’m earning credits in self-awareness.
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Bridget Budd is the author of Behind the Mirror, a debut novel that blends literary storytelling with therapeutic insight.
After more than twenty-five years in corporate sales, she stepped away to explore the emotional patterns beneath her success—and the cost of always holding it together.
Her work lives at the intersection of fiction and healing, drawing from her background in trauma-informed coaching, somatics, and holistic health. Bridget writes and speaks about identity, self-worth, and the shift from performing to presence.
Often described as “fiction with emotional teeth,” her stories are crafted for deep feelers, recovering perfectionists, and anyone quietly exhausted from chasing “enough.”
She divides her time between Marco Island, Florida, and Marvin, North Carolina, with her husband and two opinionated dogs.
Follow Bridget: Website | Instagram
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Maggie Blackbird 