After eight and a half years of watching her mother disappear into an illness that no doctor could name, Rikki Jo Neyer is sharing the family's journey in her debut book, Do You Believe In Miracles? Our Journey Out of Darkness and Into the Light. The book, released by Lucid Books, chronicles not only the darkness of those years but also the extraordinary recovery that followed when her mother was finally treated for catatonia.
Neyer's mother wore sunglasses inside the house, not as a style choice, but because light had become something her brain could no longer tolerate without pain. Over the years, her condition deteriorated to the point of what Neyer describes as catatonia that went unrecognized. The family searched for answers while the woman they loved retreated further into darkness. "For eight and a half years I watched my mother disappear into an illness no doctor could name," Neyer says. "I realized that if I did not write it down, the world might never know what she went through."
The book deliberately avoids rushing toward a triumphant ending. Instead, Neyer invites readers into the darkness her family endured before revealing the moment that changed everything: after years of decline, her mother received Ativan and woke from the catatonic state. Her mother later summarized the experience in words that became central to the family's understanding: "I did die. And God brought me back."
For Neyer, the recovery did not erase the years of suffering but gave them new purpose. "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." She resisted the temptation to make those memories easier or more palatable. "The reader who is sitting in their own dark room right now does not need a polished version of suffering," she says. "They need the truth."
That honesty distinguishes Do You Believe In Miracles? from a traditional inspirational memoir. The book brings together faith, caregiving, medical questions, family experience, and firsthand testimony. It includes four interviews with key witnesses, a scientific summary of catatonia, Scripture, and appendices written specifically for caregivers, people struggling to keep going, and those trying to support someone they love. Neyer's own experience as her mother's primary advocate gives those resources particular weight.
She hopes the book will reach other families asking similar questions. "I hope caregivers feel seen in a way that nothing else has made them feel seen," Neyer 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 hopes it encourages readers facing unexplained symptoms or a misdiagnosis. "I hope anyone sitting with a misdiagnosis or fighting to be believed by a medical system that keeps looking away finds courage in these pages to keep asking questions," she says.
Yet beneath the medical questions and caregiving realities is the question contained in the book's title. Neyer does believe in miracles. "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."
The years Neyer spent caring for her mother transformed her understanding of beauty, suffering, and faith. She came to see that beauty and suffering are not opposites but companions, and that hope can remain present even when circumstances offer little evidence of change. She describes the writing journey in three words: "Witness. Endure. Return."
Perhaps most importantly, the book is being published while Neyer and her mother can share the story together. Her mother is alive, participated in the book, and after eight and a half years that once seemed to have stolen so much, mother and daughter are making up for lost time.
