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Review of Embracing the Power to Live by Marsha Ingrao

September 29, 2025 / 10 Comments

Embracing the Power to Live is a memoir written in prose, verse, and photographs. Author Marsha Ingrao reflects on the milestones of her life such as childhood, moving, parents, friends, career, the death of her first spouse, and a second marriage. Her retirement as a teacher now gives her the opportunity to reflect about the deeper meanings and reactions to these episodes of her life. Ingrao contemplates her past life as she remembers how she felt about these events compared to her emotions now. She writes about the lessons learned from both good and negative incidents and how these can be used to help others. The author has used her gifts as inspiration for her writing. She writes about the value of these insights gained through self-reflection, which gives her encouragement to continue growing and embracing life.

I enjoyed Embracing the Power to Live and highly recommend the book to all those readers who like memoirs and inspirational books. Marsha’s original poetry makes the book unique. You will be entertained by how she weaves memories with free verse, syllabic poetry and photographs into a fascinating volume of faith, hope and inspiration. She has included an appendix of poetic forms plus helpful captions of her photographs. I discovered that Marsha and I both grew up in Indiana, so I especially enjoyed the reminiscences of her life there.

Marsha Ingrao began Story Chat Online Writing Group where she leads others to grow in their writing skills. She is the editor of several anthologies of stories and poems in Story Chat Volumes I and II. Marsha’s poetry, stories, and articles can be found in numerous anthologies and publications.

https://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Power-Live-Marsha-Ingrao-ebook/dp/B0F6423PSJ/

Kay Castaneda is retired from a career as a college English instructor in Indiana. She received a B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University. Her articles about education and sociology are included in Sage Publication’s Education and Society Reference Book. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been published in literary journals. Kay is currently researching the history of Ireland and Scotland for a novel based on her ancestors, in addition to editing her poetry manuscript. Kay’s hobbies include reading biographies, memoirs, traveling and baking.

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