What I Thought Love Required

Some beliefs arrive quietly.

Be useful. Be agreeable. Need less. Carry more. Hold it together.

Most of us never question those rules. We build our lives around them and call it love.

What I Thought Love Required follows Jesse Sloane through childhood, marriage, heartbreak, parenthood, ambition, and burnout as she begins questioning the beliefs she inherited before she was old enough to choose them.

If you have spent your life earning love, approval, or belonging, her story may feel uncomfortably familiar.

This is not a book about finding love or blaming people who got it wrong. It is an honest look at what happens when being loved requires becoming useful, agreeable, and smaller than you are.

Warm, intimate, and quietly confronting, What I Thought Love Required is about the imperfect process of letting go of the price you learned to pay and discovering you were never meant to earn love.

“For one of the first times, I felt seen.”
Jamie Michele · Readers’ Favorite · ★★★★★

Book 1 · The What I Thought Series

Available Now

What I Thought Loss Meant

Most people think loss begins with goodbye.

A phone call. A funeral. A packed suitcase. A final breath.

But loss has been shaping us long before we recognize its name. Sometimes it arrives as a move, a friendship that quietly ends, a dream that slips out of reach, or a version of ourselves we thought we left behind. Sometimes nothing has ended. Something has simply changed.

What I Thought Loss Meant follows Jesse Sloane through childhood goodbyes, fractured friendships, professional collapse, parenthood, and losses that arrive without funerals.

If people, places, dreams, or moments still live inside you, her story may feel familiar.

This is not a book about getting over loss or forcing grief into an inspiring conclusion. It is an intimate, honest exploration of how loss changes us and the process of discovering what remains.

What you carry may not be only grief.

It might also be love.

“Readers who enjoy memoirs about how love survives change will be genuinely touched by this book.”

Jamie Michele · Readers’ Favorite · ★★★★★

Book 2 · The What I Thought Series

Coming October 2026

What I Thought Joy Was

What if the life you were waiting for was already happening?

In What I Thought Joy Was, Jesse turns her honest, humorous gaze toward the expensive candles she never burned, the dress she was afraid to wear, the good towels nobody used, and the ridiculous moments that interrupted her carefully managed life.

What she finds is not a formula for permanent happiness. Joy still leaves. Difficult days still come. Life remains unfinished.

But something good may already be happening inside it.

Warm, funny, and deeply human, What I Thought Joy Was is for anyone who has spent years building a life they are proud of and is ready to stop standing beside it, waiting for permission to enjoy it.

Book 3 · The What I Thought Series

Coming December 2026