Meet the Author

Marissa is a Philadelphia native — born, raised, and still rooted in the city that shaped her. Growing up, she moved through nearly every corner of this city, searching for stability in places that could not always offer it. But somewhere along the way, Philadelphia stopped feeling like a reminder of what was uncertain and started feeling like home. These days, she walks through Center City with a sense of freedom she did not always have — and she does not take that lightly.

By day, Marissa coaches new teachers in the School District of Philadelphia, pouring into the next generation of educators the same way she pours into everything she does: with compassion, honesty, and a whole lot of heart. She also coaches cheerleading — a passion that started years ago on the sidelines of her little league cheer team, where she began as a junior coach alongside her mother. After some time away, she returned to what she loved, coaching at Enon and Lady Wildcats in Uptown. Six years in, it is still one of the places where she feels most like herself.

Whether she is in a classroom, on a sideline, or in a conversation, the people around her always know one thing — she showed up as herself. The people who know her best would describe her as resilient, inspirational, funny, and authentic — sometimes a little too honest, but never anything less than real.

Marissa never set out to be an author. But life had a way of giving her things to say. Through every situation that shook her, she found herself thinking, I could write a book about this. She kept saying it until she believed it — and in January 2024, she finally sat down and did.

Writing From Wounds to Wisdom was all of the above — emotional, therapeutic, and hard. There were nights she spent writing through tears. Nights when anxiety crept in and made it difficult to keep going. Nights when she grew frustrated with herself because trauma had taken pieces of her memory she was trying to reclaim. But she kept going anyway. Because the story was bigger than the discomfort of telling it.

Her faith does not live only in her writing. It lives in the car rides where she talks to God about whatever is on her heart, and in the quiet ways she shows up for the people around her who need someone in their corner. Her therapist, her grandfather, her mentor Nika, and a handful of people who believed in her before she fully believed in herself — they held her up through the writing of every page.

Now, she wants this book to do for others what healing did for her — give them permission to find their voice and face their own story.

To every aspiring writer and every woman somewhere in the middle of her own healing journey, Marissa wants you to know this:

You can rise and overcome what was meant to break you.