This or Something Better

A Memoir of Resilience

Elisa Stancil Levine

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781647423629
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

When the Sonoma Complex fire came to Elisa Stancil Levine’s California doorstep in 2017, her world changed overnight. The devastating fire torched thousands of acres, but for Elisa, a world-class decorative artist, it was her reaction that night that cracked her wide open. A loving wife, mother, and grandmother, Elisa thought she had reckoned with her early childhood trauma. But when she fled the midnight firestorm without alerting a single neighbor, she had to ask herself: Who does that?

In This or Something Better, Elisa revisits her past and the one force in which she has always found true kinship: the wild river. Nature, her lifelong ally, gave solace . Through teen pregnancy, her baby’s stillbirth, and a mystical near-death experience at eighteen, nature shaped her character, and it later informed her wildly successful career. But was there an unintended consequence?

The fresh trauma of the firestorm sparked a quest: what treasure awaited if Elisa learned to trust human nature? Vivid, poetic, and intimate, This or Something Better reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time—and invites us each to consider and embrace our own path toward wholeness and authenticity. 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• One: Firestorm, Sonoma Mountain, 2017
• Two: Where We Used to Go
• Three: Unearned Shame
• Four: Even So, Present Day
• Five: Fear Not
• Six: Proving Ground, Placerville
• Seven: The River
• Eight: Grandpa Again
• Nine: How to Be Human 54
• Ten: A Spirit Door
• Eleven: Unintended Consequences
• Twelve: Subterranean
• Thirteen: Trying to Make It Real
• Fourteen: Wishing and Hoping
• Fifteen: Kenny Kenny Kenny, Seattle
• Sixteen: The Unknowable
• Seventeen: Alchemy
• Eighteen: Out of the Echoing Emptiness
• Nineteen: Hallelujah Chorus
• Twenty: Together Forever
• Twenty-One: Making it Work
• Twenty-Two: Rescue Me
• Twenty-Three: Sacramento
• Twenty-Four: Pollyanna
• Twenty-Five: Fragile Interconnections
• Twenty-Six: Losing
• Twenty-Seven: This or Something Better
• Twenty-Eight: Sun and Shadow
• Twenty-Nine: Redemption, Sonoma
• Thirty: Kismet
• Thirty-One: Diamonds and Rust
• Thirty-Two: Listening
• Thirty-Three: Into It
• Thirty-Four: Coming Undone and Becoming
• Thirty-Five: Seeking Belonging
• Thirty-Six: Roses All Around
• Thirty-Seven: Together
• Thirty-Eight: Just Plain True
• Thirty-Nine: Gather Round the Roses
• Forty: Glen Ellen, 2009–Present
• Acknowledgments and Gratitude
• About the Author