The One Who Left the Table: On Silence and the Cost of Belonging - Softcover

Hogan Cohen, Shannon

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798991323499

Publisher: Deckle Way Press, 2025

Synopsis

Silence is Often Mistaken for Peace

The One Who Left the Table is a compassionate exploration of how silence lives inside families committed to preserving the peace. It asks who benefits from that quiet, who carries its weight, and what happens when the cost of holding it becomes too great.

Through reflective fragments and psychological insight, Shannon Hogan Cohen examines the role of the emotionally perceptive one, where endurance is mistaken for loyalty, and harmony is maintained at the expense of honesty. When truth finally enters the room, it is often met with resistance, recast as disruption rather than recognized as an invitation to see what has long gone unnamed.

Written in short, free-form passages, this book reads like a pocket companion for navigating silence, difficult conversations, and the courage required to choose agency. For anyone who has set aside their own truth in service of the greater whole, this book offers language, clarity, and a quiet reassurance: you are not alone and you can give yourself permission to leave the table.

About this title

About the Author

Shannon Hogan Cohen writes to make sense of the world. From a young age, she filled notebooks with reflections, always searching for meaning, connection, and the hidden threads beneath life's surface, an instinct shaped by her childhood love of Nancy Drew mysteries. Whether it's finding patterns in chaos or truth in tangled relationships, storytelling has always been her compass.A freelance writer with work published across community advocacy platforms, travel magazines, and personal essay outlets, Shannon gives voice to the often unspoken. She writes with heart, humor, and an unapologetic splash of truth-telling. Author of the S.H.E. Share Heal Empower series, the epistolary memoir Love, Me, and Prolific Preambles, a digital diary that is part journal, part roadmap, Shannon's work appears across community advocacy platforms, travel magazines, and personal essay outlets. Her writing gives voice to the often unspoken, with heart, humor, and an unapologetic splash of truth-telling.When she's not wandering the world and championing legacies, you'll find her in her beloved "babe cave," savoring quiet moments of reading, writing, and sipping a cup of coffee or French white wine. She lives with her family in Del Mar, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Deckle Way Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798991323499
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 90