A new memoir by Rikki Jo Neyer, Do You Believe In Miracles? Our Journey Out of Darkness and Into the Light, shares the harrowing eight-and-a-half-year journey of her mother's unexplained illness, which left her in a catatonic state, and the extraordinary recovery that followed treatment with Ativan. The book, released by Lucid Books, is significant for its unflinching portrayal of caregiving, medical uncertainty, and the resilience of faith, offering a lifeline to others navigating similar darkness.
For nearly a decade, Neyer watched her mother disappear into an illness that no doctor could name. Her mother wore sunglasses inside the house because light became intolerable, and she eventually experienced catatonia that went unrecognized. Neyer's family searched desperately for answers while her mother retreated further into darkness. The experience placed Neyer in a role familiar to countless caregivers: loving someone fiercely while navigating medical uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, and the growing realization that no one else may fight for a loved one quite as relentlessly as family will.
Neyer explains that writing the book was never about becoming an author. "I did not set out to become an author," she says. "I set out to survive a season that felt impossible. For eight and a half years I watched my mother disappear into an illness no doctor could name, and I realized that if I did not write it down, the world might never know what she went through." Her mother could not always advocate for herself, so Neyer became her voice.
The book does not rush readers toward a triumphant ending or sanitize the years that preceded it. Instead, Neyer deliberately invites readers into the darkness her family endured before revealing what happened when her mother was finally treated for catatonia. "Most miracle stories begin with the miracle and work backward," Neyer explains. "This one makes you live through every year of the darkness before you get there." After years of decline, Neyer's mother received Ativan and woke from the catatonic state. Her mother later summarized the experience: "I did die. And God brought me back."
Neyer admits that one of the most difficult parts of writing was resisting the temptation to make those memories easier or more palatable. "The reader who is sitting in their own dark room right now does not need a polished version of suffering," she says. "They need the truth." That honesty distinguishes Do You Believe in Miracles? from a traditional inspirational memoir. The book includes four interviews with key witnesses, a scientific summary of catatonia, Scripture, and appendices written specifically for caregivers, people struggling to keep going, and those trying to support someone they love.
Neyer hopes the book will reach other families asking painfully familiar questions. "I hope caregivers feel seen in a way that nothing else has made them feel seen," she says. "I hope anyone who has ever loved someone through a darkness that has no name finds language for what they have been carrying." She also hopes her family's experience encourages readers facing unexplained symptoms or a diagnosis that does not seem to account for what they are witnessing. "I hope anyone sitting with a misdiagnosis or fighting to be believed by a medical system that keeps looking away finds courage in these pages to keep asking questions," she says.
At its core, the book asks the question in its title: Do you believe in miracles? Neyer does. "And I hope every reader who has ever wondered whether God still finds people in the darkest places finds their answer here," she says. "He does. I am living proof. My mother is living proof." The years Neyer spent caring for her mother transformed her understanding of beauty, suffering, and faith. She came to see that beauty and suffering are not opposites but companions, and that hope can remain present even when circumstances offer little evidence that anything will change.
Neyer describes the journey of writing the book in three words: "Witness. Endure. Return." "I witnessed what happened to my mother and to our family," she explains. "I endured the process of putting it on the page and going back into rooms I had worked very hard to leave. And through the writing, I returned to myself. I returned to hope. I returned to a version of faith that had been tested in every possible way and was still standing." Perhaps most importantly, the book is being published while Neyer and her mother can share the story together. Her mother is alive, participated in the book, and after eight and a half years that once seemed to have stolen so much, mother and daughter are making up for lost time.
For more information on Lucid Books, visit lucidbookspublishing.com.
