<p><strong style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)"><em>She bought a gun, shot my father once in each knee, then shot herself in the head.</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Mali Ponday</strong><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)"> learned of the suicide during her senior year of college. Her beautiful, loving, complicated mother died instantly. Her father survived, but Mali's own spirit had died long before.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Or so she believed.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Raised by a diagnosed narcissist, Mali had trouble imagining any future for herself. Like many such children, she suffered from a sense of learned helplessness, unable to trust her own gut or act on her own instincts for self-preservation no matter how hard they screamed at her.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Feeling profoundly unworthy of love or even friendship, she married a man who would cheat on her and lie to her for almost two decades. Every time she discovered the truth, she forgave him and repeated the cycle.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Until she finally found the courage to stop.</span></p><p><br></p><p><em style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)">Quiet Little Mouse</em><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)"> tells the bold, poignant truth about what it really means to trust yourself, sharing one woman's lifelong journey toward three simple words: "I belong here."</span></p>