Author Rica Ramos-Keenum
Rica Ramos-Keenum is a journalist and the author of Petals of Rain and Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound. Through the power of storytelling, she explores the implications of unresolved trauma and the generational patterns that program our toxic beliefs and perpetuate our suffering.
Rica’s essays for women are widely published, covering a range of topics including trauma, the mother wound, parenting, writing and more. Her stories are vivid, insightful, laced with wisdom, hope, and humor. In 2023, Rica received the Literary Titan Gold Star Book Award for Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound. Her forthcoming novel features best friends separated by betrayal and heartbreak, and follows their lives into adulthood and womanhood—until a new tragedy brings them face to face.
Read more…
Latest Memoir:
Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound
She Writes Press
by Rica Ramos-Keenum
Should Rica invite her mother to her wedding?
In her early early forties, Rica Ramos is about to remarry. But she soon realizes that starting over could mean leaving her mother behind. Her mother refuses to acknowledge the sexual abuse Rica suffered at the hands of her stepfather, or her own culpability throughout the years. With old traumas resurfacing and a new life unfolding before her, Rica grasps the power of unspoken grief. In the process, she sees the potential to suffer or heal. Will she and her mother ever cross the chasm between them, or are some secrets meant to stay buried?
As Rica navigates her options, she faces two ultimate choices: Submit to the culture that shames daughters for not honoring their mothers, or muster the courage to go her own way. Offering a bold and lucid look at mother-daughter relationships, Nobody’s Daughter underscores every woman’s right to truth and validation.
Praise for Author Rica Ramos-Keenum’s Latest Memoir
“Nobody’s Daughter : A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound is a compelling tale I would recommend to many… The book offers an insightful look at the mother-daughter relationship and shows readers that their own self-worth matters over the cultural stigma of honoring their mothers. Through Rica’s story, other women will find validation and strength to stand up for themselves and know their voice matters.“
~ Literary Titan, 5 Star Review (Winner of the Gold Book Award)
“Nobody’s Daughter is a lucid recollection… heartbreakingly raw. In a fiercely candid voice, Ramos has crafted a tale that resonates with the universal truth that our past doesn’t define us; it refines us.”
~ Allison Hong Merrill, author of Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops
“In Nobody’s Daughter, Ramos displays her craft mastery with colorful, imaginative, and descriptive language. She fleshes out her host of characters—the many mother substitutes—and rounds them out with realistic dialogue. Readers wind up wanting to be friends with Ramos; her writing is that engaging.”
~Story Circle Network, Paula Shaffer Robertson
“Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound is masterfully written! With insight, love, forgiveness, and an evolved understanding (of abuse and the mother wound), Rica Ramos-Keenum dives deep into the complexities of mother-daughter relationships as they are woven through real life ups and downs and the traumas that so many of us must overcome. A compelling read I could not put down. This book will benefit every woman.”
~Linda Lee Blakemore, Speaker, Advocate, Author of Entrenched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, and Kids Helping Kids Break the Silence of Sexual Abuse.
“Rica’s imagery is fresh, precise and strongly drawn. “Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound” is written with a beauty as brutal as it is breathtaking. Her memoir is a compelling account of her lifelong journey from unspeakable betrayal and violation to healing and wholeness. She pulls apart and examines with precision the many interwoven layers of love, loss, and the lies we live with. Ramos is a writer of extraordinary talent, with a gift for bringing clarity to complex issues. Her voice demands to be heard.”
~Lee Gaitan, award-winning author of four books, named 2018’s Georgia Independent Author of the Year.
“(In her mother wound book, Ramos) pulls no punches in analyzing the wellsprings of her adult challenges and childhood angst…. She emerges from this reflective process to a new position of power…Very highly recommended for anyone interested in self-help strategies, memoirs of abuse and recovery, and those involved in transforming lives from a foundation of abuse to achieve empowerment.”
~ Midwest Book Review
Petals of Rain: A Mother’s Memoir
A Journey Through a Toxic Marriage & Painful Divorce, Single Motherhood & Raising an ADHD-Diagnosed Son
About the Book
Taking a girl’s voice is the same as taking her power. Petals of Rain is a memoir about love and loss, secrets and lies. When a young girl from a broken family meets a charming man, she attempts to build a new life. But after a whirlwind marriage and the birth of two sons, their love story rips apart at the seams.
Petals of Rain explores the impact of parents’ sins on the lives of children, and the fates we endure for the chance to be loved. Ramos-Keenum navigates motherhood and womanhood as an abuse survivor. She learns to speak, to scream, to sing to her own wounded heart. At last, she understands what it takes to be whole after breaking to pieces. Weaving the present and past together, the author reveals her truth in hauntingly evocative scenes.
As surely as the sun shines behind the grayest clouds, healing comes drop by drop. Like petals of rain.
