Our favorite local sensei/life coach, Kelly Muir, can add a new description to her title: author. Her book, Lessons from Nowhere, shares her personal childhood and young adult journey.

“During that time, I moved over 30 times and endured a tremendous amount of family chaos that included mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction and absolute instability. I always found it embarrassing when someone would ask where I was from because I never knew what to say. Ultimately, I would just say, 'nowhere.' When I was younger, I thought the constant shifting was detrimental, however, as I got older, I realized that each move taught me something about life, about myself, and about others. Those lessons became the guiding force in the success that I would later find as a human, an entrepreneur, a leader...and as a parent.”

Kelly was inspired by the impossible standards of carefully curated social media to write the book. “The real beauty of life is actually found in the fragmented, imperfect and painful moments. I wrote the book to help others, especially my own children, understand that life was never guaranteed to be smooth, or easy.

There will be moments that are beautiful and enjoyable, of course, but there will be many hard moments, too. I wanted readers to realize that it is in those moments, the imperfect ones, that they will learn the greatest lessons.”

“From an emotional standpoint, writing the story was very difficult for me,” she says. “It took about two years to put the pieces together and get everything down on paper. When I was finished, though, it was incredibly liberating. For the first time, I felt like I had a true foundation in my life. The irony is that I had a foundation all along...I just didn't realize it. My foundation was, literally, crafted in the imperfections of my journey.”

Though she’s from nowhere, Bexley does play a large role in the story. She attended BHS for three years until she dropped out as “my family life deteriorated.” She recalls, though, that her teachers here were the first people to encourage her to go to college. Inspired by the community, Kelly eventually returned to raise her family here and is now, finally, at age 54, a full-time student at Ohio State. “It took me decades to get there,” Kelly says, “but the inspiration was established years ago in the Cassingham Complex.”

Kelly says the reception to Lessons from Nowhere has been amazing. “Both in Bexley and beyond, I have received notes and emails from readers who thanked me for helping them to view their life from a different perspective.”