For eight and a half years, Rikki Jo Neyer watched her mother vanish into an illness that no doctor could name. Her mother wore sunglasses indoors because light had become unbearable, and she eventually experienced what Neyer describes as catatonia that went unrecognized. Now, Neyer is sharing that journey in her debut book, Do You Believe In Miracles? Our Journey Out of Darkness and Into the Light, a memoir that confronts the cost of loving someone through the unthinkable.
The book arrives at a time when caregivers and families grappling with unexplained medical conditions often feel invisible. Neyer's account places readers inside the relentless search for answers, the exhaustion of advocacy, and the spiritual crisis that accompanies watching a loved one suffer without a diagnosis. "I did not set out to become an author," Neyer says. "I set out to survive a season that felt impossible. For eight and a half years I watched my mother disappear into an illness no doctor could name, and I realized that if I did not write it down, the world might never know what she went through."
That decision carries implications beyond one family's story. As her mother's primary advocate, Neyer became a voice for someone who could not always speak for herself. Her experience mirrors that of countless caregivers who navigate medical uncertainty while battling exhaustion, fear, and the growing realization that no one else may fight as relentlessly as family. The book does not rush toward a triumphant ending; instead, it deliberately immerses readers in the darkness before revealing the turning point: after years of decline, Neyer's mother received Ativan and woke from her catatonic state. Her mother later summarized the experience: "I did die. And God brought me back."
Neyer resists sanitizing those years. "This book required me to go back into rooms I had worked very hard to leave," she says. "The dark years, the doubt, the moments when my faith was barely a thread." That honesty sets Do You Believe In Miracles? apart from traditional inspirational memoirs. It combines faith, caregiving, medical questions, and firsthand testimony, including four interviews with key witnesses, a scientific summary of catatonia, Scripture, and appendices written for caregivers and those supporting loved ones. For Neyer, the recovery did not erase the suffering but gave it purpose, compelling her to tell the full story.
The book's release also matters because Neyer's mother is alive and participated in it. After years that seemed to steal so much, mother and daughter are making up for lost time. Neyer hopes the book reaches families asking painfully familiar questions. "I hope caregivers feel seen in a way that nothing else has made them feel seen," she says. "I hope anyone who has ever loved someone through a darkness that has no name finds language for what they have been carrying." She also wants readers facing misdiagnosis or a medical system that looks away to find courage to keep asking questions.
At its core, the book returns to its title question. Neyer's answer is unequivocal. "And I hope every reader who has ever wondered whether God still finds people in the darkest places finds their answer here," she says. "He does. I am living proof. My mother is living proof." Published by Lucid Books, an independent hybrid publisher in the Houston area, the memoir offers a raw testament to endurance, faith, and the possibility of light after years of darkness.
