A Divided Life Collection

A Divided Life Collection

A memoir, a learning guide, and a personal reflection journal exploring identity, belonging, resilience, faith, self-discovery, and the lifelong journey toward becoming whole.

The A Divided Life Collection began with a memoir about growing up gay in a small Midwestern town during the 1970s and 1980s. Over time, it grew into something larger: a collection of resources designed to encourage reflection, conversation, learning, and personal exploration.
The collection includes:

  • A Divided Life a memoir of hiding from myself, survival, and becoming whole  —  the memoir
  • A Divided Life: summary and learning guide — chapter summaries, deeper analysis, discussion topics, and lecture resources
  • my hidden self — a reflection journal inspired by A Divided Life and created for readers exploring their own stories, questions, memories, and discoveries

While each work can stand on its own, together they explore themes of hiding, survival, friendship, faith, family, identity, courage, reconciliation, and peace.

At its heart, the collection offers a broader invitation than simply:
"My story is your story."

It is more modest, and perhaps more human:

If you have ever survived by hiding, what did that hiding protect?
And what did it cost?
What would it mean, now, to live more whole?

A Divided Life

a memoir of hiding from myself, survival, and becoming whole

What happens when survival requires silence?

Growing up in a small Midwestern town in the 1970s and 1980s, Todd Boler learned early that certain truths could not be spoken aloud. Shaped by family expectations, faith, and unspoken rules, he adapted the only way he knew how—by dividing himself in order to endure.

A Divided Life is a deeply...

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A Divided Life Learning Guide

an interpretive companion for reflection and discussion

The story is only the beginning.
Go beyond the story to the meaning beneath it.

A Divided Life Learning Guide is a comprehensive companion to Todd Boler's memoir, A Divided Life. Designed for readers, book clubs, classrooms, discussion groups, lectures, and personal reflection, this volume explores the deeper themes, symbols, relationships,...

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my hidden self - a readers reflection journal

Everyone carries a private world.
Sometimes understanding begins simply by writing.

Some parts are joyful. Some are complicated. Some are deeply hidden. Some are still waiting to be understood.

Inspired by the themes of A Divided Life, my hidden self is a reader's reflection journal created as a private space for writing, memory, questions,...

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