For every searching soul and every wounded spirit who was handed shame before they were ever handed love - this is the memoir you have been waiting for.
Fenix Shepard was fourteen years old when she left home. What followed were years of addiction, abuse, betrayal, and the particular, devastating grief of being cast out by both family and faith for who she was born to be. She knows what it is to sit in a church pew feeling invisible. She knows what it is to be loved conditionally - and to have that condition slowly destroy her. And she knows what it is to hit the kind of bottom where disappearing feels easier than surviving.
Loved Unconditionally is the story of what she found there.
Raw, unflinching, and deeply personal, this memoir traces Shepard's spiritual journey from the wreckage of addiction and religious rejection to an encounter with a God she never expected to find. A God who required nothing from her, excluded no part of her, and had, it turns out, never stopped looking for her. This is a book about the kind of love that cannot be earned, voted on, or taken away. Not necessarily about religion. About something far more real.
But this is not only a queer story. It is a human one.
It is for the veteran who came home broken and couldn't find their way back to themselves. For the addict who has tried to get sober more times than they can count and still believes they are too far gone. For the daughter whose father made her feel like a mistake before she was old enough to know what a mistake was. For the survivor of betrayal who gave everything to a marriage and still lost it all. For anyone who has ever wondered whether God forgot about them - or worse, whether He never cared to begin with.
This book is your answer.
For LGBTQ+ readers who have left the church but not the longing. For survivors who wonder whether they were ever worth staying for. For anyone who has carried the weight of shame so long it began to feel like identity - Loved Unconditionally is an invitation back to yourself, back to healing, and back to a God who has been loving you unconditionally all along.
