Cat Over Chaos: Choosing Peace After Counterfeit Love

Choosing Peace After Counterfeit Love A Memoir of Breaking Free From Toxic Love and Restoring Your Peace

Some love feels intense but leaves you unsettled.
Other love feels quiet and steady—and brings peace.

In Cat Over Chaos, Debbie Strauch, LMSW, writing as Lee Lamore, tells a deeply honest story of discernment, caregiving, and the courage it takes to walk away from emotional confusion without bitterness or blame.

Through the lens of lived experience, this memoir explores the difference between attention and affection, intensity and intimacy, and counterfeit love versus covenant faithfulness. It weaves together the return of an old relational pattern, the sacred weight of caregiving through frontotemporal dementia, and the quiet wisdom that comes from choosing peace when chaos once felt familiar.

This is not a book about exposing others.
It is a book about recognizing patterns, setting boundaries, and learning to trust clarity over emotion.

Written for readers who are:

• navigating emotionally confusing relationships

• caring for a loved one while grieving along the way

• wrestling with guilt, regret, or unanswered questions

• seeking faith-based wisdom without shame

• longing for peace but unsure how to choose it

Cat Over Chaos offers grace for those who guarded their hearts and compassion for those who didn’t—reminding readers that healing is still possible, discernment can be learned, and peace is always worth choosing.

If you are ready to stop chasing what unsettles you and start trusting what brings peace, this book will meet you where you are.