{"product_id":"brick-by-brick-a-memoir-of-endurance-healing-and-becoming-9798891387010","title":"Brick by Brick: A Memoir of Endurance, Healing, and Becoming","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen a doctor examined Anna Hertel's damaged knee and asked, \"What was it all for?\" he was referring to the toll of years of endurance training. But the question opened a deeper reckoning.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eBrick by Brick\u003c\/em\u003e, Anna traces the story of a woman who poured everything into motion, becoming a two-time Ironman and completing forty-five triathlons years earlier in an effort to move beyond two abusive relationships in early adulthood that left her fractured. After she finally got away, the imprint lingered for over a decade, showing up in perfectionism, self-erasure, and a nervous system wired for survival, long before she understood its source.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn in Germany and raised in the United States, she grew up in a loving, privileged family, afforded safety, education, and opportunity, yet internally splintered by cultural dislocation and a deep hunger for connection she did not yet know how to name. Years later, a late-in-life diagnosis of ADHD would cast new light on her emotional intensity, impulsive trust, and relentless drive to prove her worth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe turned to discipline, believing it could hold what her relationships could not. But the body keeps score. Injury, not insight, finally made her stop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eTold in vivid scenes and braided with reflective footnotes, this memoir begins in the doctor's office and spirals backward through collapse, migration, and reclamation. In the end, she would leave two more relationships, guided by a quiet knowing that the echoes of trauma still required excavation before she could move forward as an integrated self. Choosing single motherhood was not an ending but an arrival, a way of finally finding the home she had always longed for inside her body.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith insight into trauma recovery, somatic memory, ADHD, and the myth of romantic salvation, \u003cem\u003eBrick by Brick\u003c\/em\u003e is a meditation on endurance, identity, and the long way home.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Amplify Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/04\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798891387010\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.37h x 5.78w x 0.88d","brand":"Anna Hertel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52750298513589,"sku":"9798891387010","price":23.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/brick-by-brick-a-memoir-of-endurance-healing-and-becoming-9798891387010","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}