My Life in Mud: A Path to Choosing Love is a trauma-informed healing workbook by Vietnamese American author Noel Nguyen, created to support self-reflection, nervous system regulation, and the reclamation of self-worth after trauma, abandonment, and early loss.
About the Workbook
Designed as a companion to My Life in Mud: A Memoir, this guided workbook transforms lived experience into practice. Through reflective writing prompts, somatic awareness exercises, meditations, and affirmations, readers are invited to gently explore the patterns shaped by adoption, emotional neglect, addiction, codependency, people-pleasing, and relational abuse.
Rooted in the Mud to Bloom healing framework, A Path to Choosing Love supports conscious choice over survival response—helping readers move from hypervigilance into presence, from self-abandonment into self-trust, and from fear into love.
What You’ll Find Inside
Guided journal prompts for trauma integration
Somatic grounding and nervous system awareness practices
Reflective exercises for boundary setting and identity reclamation
Meditations and affirmations focused on self-worth and safety
Gentle tools for choosing presence, compassion, and love
Who This Workbook Is For
Trauma survivors seeking practical, compassionate healing tools
Adult adoptees and individuals impacted by early separation
Those recovering from codependency, people-pleasing, or emotional abuse
Readers ready to move from survival patterns into intentional living
How This Workbook Supports Healing
This workbook is not a linear program or a fix-it guide. It is a reflective space that honors each reader’s pace and lived experience. By integrating body awareness with narrative reflection, A Path to Choosing Love helps soften internalized survival strategies and cultivate emotional safety, agency, and self-compassion.
Healing is approached not as erasure of the past, but as remembrance—an act of choosing oneself again and again.
About the Author
Noel Nguyen is a Vietnamese American author, educator, and trauma-informed mentor. Evacuated from Vietnam as an infant during Operation Babylift, her work centers on identity, early loss, and healing through storytelling and reflective practice. She is the author of My Life in Mud: A Memoir, an International Impact Book Award winner, and the creator of the Mud to Bloom healing framework.
Companion Reading & Availability
Available in print via Books.by: https://books.by/my-life-in-mud/my-life-in-mud
Preview available on Google Books: https://play.google.com/store/books/category/coll_1673?pli=1
Amazon Kindle: https://a.co/d/3hm21VV
Companion workbook: My Life in Mud: A Path to Choosing Love: https://books.by/my-life-in-mud/my-life-in-mud