For the parent sitting in the waiting room, wondering if your family is going to be okay.
I remember sitting in the car after one of Heather’s appointments, not able to drive yet. Just sitting there.
I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t know if I was making things worse. I didn’t know if she was going to be okay, and I was so afraid to say that out loud that I hadn’t said it to anyone.
I went home and searched for something to read. Something that would tell me what to do, or at least make me feel less alone. I found books for therapists. Books for patients. Books about recovery written from the other side of it.
Nothing for the parent in the middle of it. Nothing for the person who loved someone through it and didn’t know how to do that well.
I felt invisible in a crisis that was consuming my whole life.
That invisibility is why this book exists.
Heather and I wrote it together — her from inside the experience, me from the outside — because we both know what it’s like to feel like no one wrote anything for you. Every chapter holds both perspectives: what it looked like from where I was standing, and what was actually happening inside Heather at the same time. For the first time, you don’t have to guess what your child might be feeling. You can read it in her own words.
We wanted to change that feeling of invisibility — for both of you.
If you’ve ever sat in a parking lot unable to drive home because the fear was too heavy, this book is for you.
I’m Jennifer Hope Longenecker — author, certified mental health coach, and a mom who has been exactly where you are. When my daughter Heather was struggling with an eating disorder, I searched for someone who could hand me hope that was honest and real. I couldn’t find what I needed, so I wrote it. My faith isn’t tidy or polished — it’s been wrestled with and held onto in the dark — and that’s exactly why I think I can walk this road with you.
Heather is my daughter — and she is also my co-author, my collaborator, and living proof that there is light on the other side of the dark.
She was the one I sat in those waiting rooms for. She was the one I couldn’t fix, couldn’t reach, couldn’t find the right words for. And she is the one who, years later, said yes when I asked if she would write this book with me.
Held in the Dark exists because Heather was willing to go back into that story — not just to survive it again in the telling, but to offer what she wished someone had offered her: the truth about what it actually felt like from the inside, written for the parents on the outside who were desperate to understand.
Her courage made this book possible. Her voice made it whole.
Out of that same season, Heather built something beautiful.
The Unstable Snail is her snail mail subscription — handwritten letters, carefully curated pieces, delivered through the mail the old-fashioned way. It grew out of her own healing journey, out of a belief that connection matters, that being seen matters, that sometimes the most powerful thing you can receive is something someone took the time to put in an envelope and send to you.
It’s separate from the book, and it’s entirely hers. But it carries the same heartbeat — the conviction that no one should have to feel invisible in their hardest season.
If that resonates with you, we’d love to introduce you to what she’s building
