I HOPED MOVING TO QATAR WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING. UNTIL IT DID.

LL Kirchner was excited for change. The thirty-eight-year-old American journalist to Qatar for work, hoping to improve education for Muslim women while building a nest egg to start a family. But after months of struggling with Middle Eastern patriarchy, communication problems, and constant heat exhaustion, the intrepid ex-pat was stunned to discover she’d entered early menopause.

Devastated when the diagnosis meant she could never have children, Kirchner and her spouse sought fertility treatments to fight nature’s cruel blow. But after a vacation to Turkey convinced them to return to the U.S., she suffered another emotional gut-punch when he decided he wanted a divorce.

Abandoned in the Persian Gulf, would this woman reeling from loss find a way to recover?

In this darkly comedic memoir, LL Kirchner recounts her extraordinary transformation in a daunting crucible. And as she journeys from hope to betrayal to peace, you’ll laugh and cry at her remarkable redirection from seeking approval to loving herself.

American Lady Creature is a fascinating account of one woman’s experience of hard-earned redemption. If you like moving narratives, honest confessions, and emerging triumphant from darkness, then you’ll adore LL Kirchner’s unforgettable reinvention.

Never give up, especially on yourself

Before my marriage ended over the telephone — from another country — I thought I knew from wellness. My parents owned a gym and I’d spent more than a decade in substance abuse recovery. But after that soul-crushing phone call, I wasn’t so sure.

Would I return to my substance addiction? It wouldn’t have been the first time heartbreak sent me down that shame spiral. How had the man I’d married blindsided me like that? A mentor once told me, “the answer is always more spirituality.”

But for an addict at their bottom, when is more enough?

Desperate for answers, I tested out every spiritual journey imaginable—yoga, silent meditation retreats, gurus. Along the way I thought I was healing, but I kept returning to toxic relationships.

Driven to a sex cult, I was finally forced to confront unresolved family dynamics. I discovered I’d been asking the wrong question.

In a memoir that’s both rapturous and page-turning, Kirchner captures the terrors and joys of searching for radical honesty — and a second date.