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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 already spent more than a decade in substance abuse recovery.
After that soul-crushing phone call, I feared a return to my substance addiction if I didn’t make a radical departure from life as I knew it. It wouldn’t have been the first time heartbreak sent me down that shame spiral. I turned toward the only answer I knew, one her sobriety mentor had shared — “the answer is always more spirituality.”
But when is more enough?
Desperate for answers, I tested out every spiritual journey imaginable—yoga, silent meditation retreats, gurus — but I kept returning to toxic relationships.
Driven to a sex cult where I was finally forced to confront unresolved family dynamics, I discovered I’d been asking the wrong question. Ultimately, I recognized my mother’s lasting gift—hope.
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.
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OTHER BOOKS AVAILABLE NOW.
My essay, “Would My Heart Survive Donald Trump?” is part of the 2020 collection from Regal House, edited by Amy Roost and Alissa Hirshfield, Fury: Women’s Live Experiences in the Trump Era.
My essay “But Would You Fight With Me Forever” appears in the LOVE, DAMMIT collection (Brandt Street Press, 2016).
In 2015, after Donald Trump announced his run for president, a group of Tampa Bay-area writers gathered for a Halloween event and tackled the writing prompt of “What would the world look like if Trump becomes president?” The answers were horrifying, hilarious, and surprisingly accurate. With stories by C.A. Bellamy, Troy Cunio, Elena Firschein, Warren Firschein, D. Michael Hardy, L.L. Kirchner, Erika Lance, Rob McCabe, Wayne Totin, and Lynn Waddell.
My flash essay, “My Husband: My Moto,” appears in this Miranda July compilation, Learning to Love You More (Prestel Publishing, 2007).