Neptune resident Latisha Channiel has released Still I Rise: A Journey Through Affirmations, a 300-plus-page guided journal built around reflection, emotional wellness and personal growth.
NEPTUNE, NJ — Latisha Channiel remembers being a teenage mother and hearing predictions about what her future would become.
Years later, the Neptune resident is a college graduate, entrepreneur, mother of two and now a first-time published author.
Channiel has released Still I Rise: A Journey Through Affirmations, a 300-plus-page guided affirmation journal and workbook created from a philosophy she describes simply: turning pain into power.
“I didn’t create Still I Rise because I had everything figured out,” Channiel said. “I created it from the things I needed while I was figuring it out.”
More than a blank journal
Channiel designed the book as something readers actively work through rather than simply a collection of inspirational statements.
Still I Rise combines affirmations with guided reflections, emotional check-ins, breathing and grounding exercises, writing prompts and activities intended to give readers space to examine what they are experiencing.
The book addresses themes including self-worth, safety, shame, guilt, exhaustion, numbness and release.
For Channiel, the goal was to create something that acknowledges a reality sometimes overlooked by conventional motivational advice: telling someone to “think positive” may not be enough when that person is dealing with grief, stress or a difficult period in life.
Instead, the journal encourages readers to slow down, identify what they are feeling and work through it.
Monmouth County roots shaped her journey
Channiel has deep ties to Monmouth County.
She grew up in Red Bank and attended Red Bank Regional High School before eventually settling in Neptune.
Her path included becoming a mother as a teenager, earning a bachelor’s degree, building a business and raising two children while also dealing with loss, financial hardship and mental health struggles.
She said those experiences became part of the foundation for the book.
Publishing it represents what she sees as a full-circle moment after once being told that becoming a young mother would determine the course of her future.
‘Turning pain into power’
The central idea behind the book is not that difficult experiences disappear, but that people can find ways to process them and move forward.
Channiel said she hopes readers come away understanding themselves better than they did when they started.
Her work through Phoenix Power LLC is centered on creating spaces where people feel seen and encouraged without being expected to have every part of their lives figured out.
Still I Rise is her first published book.
Book now available
Still I Rise: A Journey Through Affirmations is available in paperback through Amazon.
For Channiel, reaching publication means more than putting a book on a shelf. It marks another step in a journey that began with people telling her what she might become and ended with her deciding that answer for herself.