TOO AUTHENTIC: 25 Years of Not Fitting In

   

TOO AUTHENTIC: 25 Years of Not Fitting In

This memoir follows 25 years of dancing in spaces that wanted me smaller—and my refusal to shrink.

What's inside:

Chapter 1: Go-Go Dancing - Stories from village discos and city clubs where creativity was treated like rebellion. From the DJ who couldn't handle a woman who initiated, to the boss who wanted decoration instead of artistry, to discovering that "too sexual" really meant "too free."

Chapter 2: Belly Dance - Stories from the world of traditional belly dance, where innovation was viewed as vandalism. Teachers who needed obedience, schools that rejected fusion, and the realization that authentic expression threatens those who police tradition.

Chapter 3: Walked Away - Five turning points, including Slovenia's Got Talent (where the national TV audience humiliated me for having body hair), confronting a teacher who wanted devotion over sovereignty, and the moment I stopped trying to fit into spaces not designed for authentic people.

Plus: An epilogue about what I was doing till now, and the declaration I wrote in 2011 that predicted everything: "I Don't Wanna Fit In."

Each story is told with honesty, just what actually happened when I kept choosing authenticity over acceptance.

This book is for anyone who's been repeatedly rejected and has started to doubt themselves. Because after the third rejection, that voice in your head starts to whisper: "Maybe they're right. Maybe you are too much, not good enough. Maybe you should tone it down. Why can’t you just be normal? Your body should be hidden. Your sexuality is inappropriate." But you know what? Fuck that! Move on with me!

This is what sovereignty looks like in practice: seeing clearly, choosing yourself, and leaving spaces that demand you shrink.

Not perfect. Not healed. Just unapologetically authentic.

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TOO AUTHENTIC: 25 Years of Not Fitting In

on Amazon / Kindle / Kindle Unlimited

 

Every Person Has a Story to Tell

    

Every Person Has a Story to Tell

By Dr. Walter R. Hoge

What if a life is not one straight road, but a thousand remembered paths crossing faith, grief, science, ancestry, and wonder?

Every Person Has a Story to Tell opens like a memoir, but it quickly expands into something larger and stranger: a life archive shaped by memory’s unreliability, family legend, spiritual longing, professional reinvention, and the haunting possibility that the most important places we visit may not belong entirely to this world. The book moves through ancestors, frontier histories, veterinary practice, personal losses, philosophical reflections, and a mystical valley that lingers in the author’s soul like an unfinished calling.

At its heart, the book gathers family history, memoir, faith, and reflection into a deeply personal meditation on memory, purpose, and the experiences that shape a life.

Its atmosphere shifts between grounded recollection and visionary experience. One moment, the book is contemplating squirrels, elephants, and the fragile mechanics of human memory; the next, it is standing at the edge of a glowing valley in what feels like a parallel universe, where fear gives way to peace and purpose. That tension gives the book its pulse: the earthly and the eternal, the documented and the imagined, the ordinary life and the life that seems to whisper from just beyond it.

What makes this book stand out is its refusal to separate disciplines that are usually kept apart. Science and religion, memory and myth, family history and personal testimony all occupy the same terrain. The central question is not simply what happened, but what a person does with what happened: how experience becomes meaning, how grief becomes redirection, and how a life can be measured not only by achievement, but by whether it remains open to wonder, service, and a second chance.

Some stories are told to preserve the past; others are told to light the way back to the self.

Click here to get Every Person Has a Story to Tell on Amazon

 

Website: www.drwalterhogebooks.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/booksbydrwalterhoge

Lessons from the Front: A Rookie War Correspondent in Ukraine and Israel

  

Lessons from the Front:

A Rookie War Correspondent in Ukraine and Israel

Robert Sherman was a 25-year-old kid who thought he knew everything about the world. One day, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the young journalist who had spent his time covering local politics found himself smack dab in the middle of the world's biggest geopolitical crisis -- fleeing air raids and getting accused by local authorities of being a Russian spy. A year later, he found himself in the Middle East running from rockets and diving into Hamas tunnels in Gaza. There's no textbook that teaches you that. In the end Robert's whole view of the world changed and he quickly realized its the simple things in life that matter most: family, home, community, and time. I'm attaching an excerpt of the book here too

 

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Lessons from the Front:

A Rookie War Correspondent in Ukraine and Israel

on Amazon / Kindle / Audiobook 

ORIGIN OF MIND: The Conscious Mind and 3-D Images in the Brain

   

ORIGIN OF MIND:

The Conscious Mind and 3-D Images in the Brain

Fully illustrated throughout with challenging 3-D illusions and some of the most extreme examples of the “spooky action” of the brain from bizarre beliefs we still hold true, to ideas of sexual attraction, this book takes us through a new perspective on how words create our very perception of reality, from the point where consciousness and cognition of our mind kick in, to the study of how easily any stimulus, even pain, can be associated with any response, even pleasure. This accounts for the 700 named phobias and the 547 sexual paraphilias identified by Anil Aggrawal.  In a review of old and new evidence, we find explanations for the "spooky action" of the conscious mind and how the mind is deceived by the brain.
This sets the stage for a journey through your own mind. The first ideas embedded in our brain by others, like the language we speak, become the criteria by which we judge all things. All of this is learned through a process so subtle and so unconscious that it is taken for granted. We see this daily in our politics, our religions, our sports, and our personal relationships.
AI, or Artificial Intelligence, scans the internet, picking up relevant facts, images, and ideas, and presents them in an organized form. The brain has its own version of AI that scans our memories, selects relevant information, and presents reality to our conscious mind as reality. From this reality, our conscious mind "sees" what the brain has been “hard-wired” to perceive by our earliest experiences. This applies to language, ideas, religion, politics…
CHAPTER I ORIGIN OF THE BRAIN. Learning does not just give the brain information to use in processing, as a computer; it changes the brain itself so completely that it creates a new reality in the brain. From this reality, our conscious mind "sees" what the brain has been “hard-wired” to perceive by our earliest experiences. This applies to language, ideas, religion, politics…
CHAPTER II PSYCHOLOGY’S THEORY OF RELATIVITY Learning, at its core, goes beyond merely associating two stimuli. It involves forming an impression in the brain of all the visual, auditory, and sensory experiences happening at the same time. Through repeated exposure to the same stimuli, these experiences can create a perception. By connecting multiple perceptions, one can develop a concept (or a learning set, or an algorithm, or a heuristic) into a concept. Perception Can Determine Experience
CHAPTER III Learning happens with no conscious awareness, and we have limited ability to change our brain’s perception.
CHAPTER IV Origin of the Individual We are not born knowing who we are. We are not born knowing who our mother is. We have no clue even what species we are. We have no language to speak. We are the center of our own unique world of experience. Everything relates to us. This gives us the perception of a separate and self-conscious mind.
CHAPTER V THE CONSCIOUS MIND The relatively high speed of the Beta waves of our brain, which scan across the cortex, linked to areas deep inside, combined with our focus of attention, is what makes consciousness possible. Our learned experiences allow the brain to anticipate whatever will come next.
CHAPTER VI THE ILLUSION OF THOUGHT, RELATIVITY: The fact that we can think has created the illusion that we do think.
CHAPTER VII INVISIBLE PERCEPTION Learning is so profoundly important that it changes the biology of your brain.
CHAPTER VIII PERMUTATIONS The Third Variable of Relativity
CHAPTER IX THE CONSCIOUS MIND AND THE PROGRAMMED MIND 

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ORIGIN OF MIND:

The Conscious Mind and 3-D Images in the Brain

on Amazon 

    

Kader's Quest

Middle school student Kader is on the precipice of the turbulent path to adulthood. Join him on this journey of discovery and healing through dazzling art replete with puzzles, hidden images, symbolism, reflection and silence.

Award-winning artist Nadir Balan brings this deeply human story to life with stunning illustrations that invite readers to feel every emotion alongside Kader as he uncovers his past and searches for belonging. Written by psychiatrist Dr. Yener Balan and psychotherapist Duygu Balan, this graphic novel embraces raw vulnerability and authentic experiences, creating a story that feels real, digestible, and powerfully relatable.

Kader's Quest offers behavioral health specialists an invaluable therapeutic tool that resonates with young adults facing similar struggles with family dynamics, anxiety, friendship, bullies, and major life transitions. The carefully crafted narrative allows readers to process their own complex emotions through Kader's journey, helping them feel seen in their experiences. For professionals working with teens who struggle to articulate their feelings, this graphic novel provides a meaningful conversation starter grounded in evidence-based principles, making it a compelling read and a powerful clinical resource.

Click here to get Kader's Quest on Amazon / Kindle 

Tech Equity: Freedom Through Enabling Technology:

 

Tech Equity: Freedom Through Enabling Technology:

A Dream Officer's Playbook for Tech Equity in Disability and Aging Services

by Precious "Preciosa" Myers-Brown

What does freedom actually look like for someone who has been told what they cannot do their whole life?

That question lives at the heart of Tech Equity: Freedom Through Enabling Technology by Precious "Preciosa" Myers-Brown. It is a book about what becomes possible when a whole community -- providers, families, Direct Support Professionals, policymakers, and the people being served -- decides that the way things have always been done is not good enough anymore.

The care system we are working inside was built in the 80s, way before we had the tools we have today. Imagine finding a pager from that era and thinking it still works -- then spending years looking for the payphone you need to go with it. We honor what was built with what we had. And now it is time for all of us to move forward together.

This is not a book about technology replacing people. It is about technology giving people back their time, their dignity, and their choices -- and giving the communities around them the tools to actually support that. DSPs who are burned out. Families who are exhausted. People with disabilities who deserve more than a system running on assumptions from 40 years ago. The blueprint is here. The community that changes this already exists. This book is for all of you.

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Tech Equity: Freedom Through Enabling Technology

on Amazon / Kindle 

or Visit

https://techequitybook.com/

The Design of Perfection: 300 Million Years of Silence

   

The Design of Perfection:

300 Million Years of Silence

What if the most sophisticated technology on Earth is not hidden in a lab in Silicon Valley, but hovering right before your eyes?

Meet the dragonfly. It has five eyes. It sees the world 200 times faster than you do. It hunts with a 97 percent success rate, making lions and great white sharks look like amateurs. And it does all of this on a battery of just 0.0001 watts.

But here is the real mystery: It has not changed in 300 million years.

In this provocative journey through biology, engineering, and cosmic philosophy, Jure Ivankovic challenges everything we think we know about life on Earth. Is the dragonfly a biological fluke, or a message in a bottle waiting for a civilization advanced enough to read it?

The answers are not in the fossils. They are in the code.

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The Design of Perfection: 300 Million Years of Silence

on Amazon Kindle / Kindle Unlimited