The Mother Vine Book Feature

Plant medicine has moved from the fringes into mainstream conversations, featured now on everything from celebrity websites to wellness podcasts. Shannon Nering’s new memoir, The Mother Vine: How I Healed My Heart With Ayuhuasca (4/21/26, She Writes Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster) is a soulful, oftentimes hilarious, journey from a harried mother’s rat race in the TV industry to mysticism and medicine in the lush wilds of Hawai’i.

The Mother Vine: How I Healed my Heart with Ayahuasca

Author: Shannon Nering

Release Date: April 21, 2026

Publisher: She Writes Press

Blurb: For fans of Eat Pray Love and Untamed, a soulful memoir of motherhood, mysticism, and plant medicine that chronicles one woman’s journey of healing and transformation in the lush wilds of Kauai.

What if your greatest teachers weren’t shamans in the jungle but the people you eat breakfast with every morning?

The Mother Vine is a raw, often funny, and deeply human story of one woman’s awakening through plant medicine—and the winding road that leads her there. After walking away from a high-powered TV career and a picture-perfect life in Canada, Shannon moves her family to the jungled slopes of Kauai in search of a more laid-back existence. But instead of fresh mangoes and good surf, she finds herself swept into a tide of unexpected revelations.

In the crucible of motherhood, Shannon’s two sons and husband become unlikely teachers, reflecting her forgotten pieces with unrelenting love and occasional ferocity. Their struggles crack her open in ways no self-help book ever could. When deep-seated heartache has her seeking transformation, an invitation to drink ayahuasca becomes a lifeline. Guided by ancient wisdom and insatiable curiosity, Shannon begins the journey of remembering who she truly was—and still is.

More than a memoir of healing, The Mother Vine is a love letter to the mess of motherhood, the mystery of the medicine path, and the sacred power of being fully alive. If you’ve ever longed for something deeper, this book is for you.

Author Interview

By Shannon Nering,

Author of The Mother Vine: How I Healed My Heart With Ayahuasca

At what point did you decide to be an author, and what was your path to publication?

Every one of us is a storyteller. That’s what this human journey is about—making meaning and expressing it through whatever medium calls us: words, music, paint, landscape design, or something else entirely.

For me, it has always been words. I love their placement. Each sentence feels like a tiny portrait. At heart, I’m a journalist—I like to observe what’s unfolding, understand it, then share it with anyone who may care to listen. There wasn’t a specific moment when I decided to become an author. If anything, it feels like something I’ve slowly grown into.

I wrote my first book in my twenties. It was about a road trip I took with three other women on a quest to find our soulmates while filming a documentary we hoped to sell to a network. Neither the documentary nor the book was sold—or even agented—but the project opened doors. That effort helped launch my career as a TV producer in Los Angeles.

About a decade later, I wrote a second book, Reality Jane, about my experience working on a very popular syndicated talk show. That was the moment I realized writing was calling me in a deeper way. But life had other plans. My husband and I soon started our family, and motherhood became my center of gravity. Raising our boys—and sustaining a demanding television career—left little room for anything else.

Then life shifted again. In 2017, our family came to Kauai seeking respite from the pace of mainland life. With my television career largely behind me, and a nutrition degree I had hoped to put to use, I found myself drawn back to writing. It was the most soothing thing I could do. I was lonely in those early days on the island, and writing became a way to honor my nervous system for the first time in years.

Not only were we called to build a life in Kauai—I felt called to write this memoir.

Since 2017, the manuscript has been rewritten three times. I brought it to agents and publishers at the Kauai Writers Conference. People responded warmly to the story, but most weren’t willing to take a chance on a relatively unknown author.

That’s when I discovered She Writes Press. Often described as the gold standard in hybrid publishing, it offered a path forward that felt aligned. I was tired of trying to convince agents searching to back the next flash-in-the-pan influencer. Instead, I decided to back myself.

So here I am—about to publish my memoir. And I can finally say, with pride: I did that.

 

What do you do when a new idea jumps out at you while you’re still working on a book? Do you chase the squirrel (aka “UP syndrome”) or do you finish your current project first?

Oh yes—I definitely have UP syndrome.

That said, I’ve learned that if I’m becoming too preoccupied with another idea, it usually means it’s time to step away from the current project for a bit so it can breathe. A little distance often brings the work back to life.

If that doesn’t work, I ask myself, “Well Missy, if you’re getting bored, your book is probably getting boring too.” That’s my cue to shake things up. I’ll go for a walk and look for topsy-turvy ways to approach whatever I’m writing about. Even a few minutes in my fruit orchard—with its magical butterflies and shama thrush belting out a tune—can spark a new perspective. And if that still doesn’t do the trick, I dive into research. Anything that makes the work feel fresh again.

Like many writers, though, I’d happily skip the part where I have to sell my wares. Can’t I just write the book and have someone else handle the promoting and posting? I’d much rather be working on the sequel—or an entirely new book—than dealing with marketing and paperwork.

That said, once I invested in myself—publishing, building a website, hiring PR and marketing consultants—it was game on. I couldn’t afford to mess around anymore. I became focused on the work in front of me, whether that meant doing my tenth proofread or mapping out a book tour.

Frankly, I can’t wait until the book is fully birthed and begins its own life in the world. Then I can return to what I love most: dreaming up the next story and painting the sky with words.

 

What have you found to be most challenging about writing in memoir?

The most challenging part of writing memoir is writing about the people we love—especially family.

What makes a memoir readable, relatable, and ultimately unputdownable is honesty. And while I’ve learned to become more comfortable making myself vulnerable on the page, it’s another thing entirely to expose the deeper truths of the people closest to me—my husband, my mother, the family members who share my life.

In many ways, their stories are theirs to tell, not mine. So I sometimes feel like I’m overstepping. A part of me wants to ask permission before putting certain moments on the page. But writing doesn’t really work that way. The story has to flow from the heart if it’s going to feel true.

Ironically, this tension has become the most transformative part of writing memoir. Whenever I felt tempted to blame someone else for my pain—whether my mother, my husband, or certain friends—the writing pushed me to go deeper and deeper into my own experience. That process required me to take radical responsibility for my life.

In the end, the most difficult part of writing memoir also becomes the most rewarding. The deeper the honesty, the more compassion and understanding tend to emerge.

 

Have you been able to incorporate your previous experience in your jobs/education in your writing?

Yes—very much so. In my twenties, I wrote all of my own reporter packages and host stand-ups while working as an on-air broadcaster. Later, in my thirties and forties, I wrote scripts for documentaries and various television shows. Those experiences trained my ear for story: what captures attention, what builds tension, and what keeps an audience leaning forward.

Television also taught me some simple but powerful storytelling principles—like never burying the lead.

That sensibility absolutely shaped how I wrote The Mother Vine. The book is structured in a way that could easily translate to the screen. Each chapter unfolds in four parts, and many begin with a playful multiple-choice question, almost as if inviting the reader to choose her own adventure.

Who knows—perhaps it will one day make its way to Netflix or Apple TV. (If you’re listening, please call!)

 

Describe the book or series in 10 words or less for people just learning about it.

Raw funny memoir of motherhood, marriage and healing through ayahuasca.

 

Is there anything you would like people to take away from your book?

At its heart, I hope readers come away feeling less alone in the messy and beautiful process of becoming themselves. Midlife can feel like an unraveling: marriages shift, motherhood evolves, identities crack open and the life that once seemed stable suddenly asks deeper questions of us. Mine is an honest account of what it looks like to follow those questions with courage, humor and, hopefully, humility.

I want readers to close the book feeling the permission to trust their inner compass—even when the path looks unconventional. Healing almost never arrives in a neat or polished way. It comes from discomfort, relationships that mirror our wounds and also unexpected teachers—including plants/ plant medicine, nature and the intelligence of the body.

My journey with ayahuasca was not about escaping my life, rather about embracing it more fully. Transformation is available for everyone. If people walk away from my book feeling this curiosity rather than fear, then The Mother Vine has planted the seed it was meant to plant.

 

About the Author

Subscribe to Chapter Break posts.