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About Maureen...

Maureen Pratt, MTS, MFA, GIA GG, Gem-A FGA (Merit), is a popular speaker, the award-winning, bestselling author of 9 books and a gemologist and jewelry designer. Her magazine articles have appeared in faith-based publications, including "Journey for Women Magazine," "Guideposts," The UpperRoom Magazine," and "Saint Anthony Messenger Magazine," as well as "Lupus Now," and "Arthritis Today Magazine." As a journalist, she has covered sports, health and medicine, and was a credentialed member of the press corps during Pope Francis' historic trip to the United States in 2015. She is a two-time, second place Catholic Press Award recipient, most recently for her article, "Junipero Serra: Saint or Scoundrel?" published in Saint Anthony Messenger Magazine. 

 

Maureen's books include the award-winning titles Salt and Light: Church, Disability, and the Blessing of Welcome for All, Don't Panic! How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough, and the beloved devotional, Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain & Illness (Image/Penguin Random House), which holds the imprimatur and is the only devotional focused on chronic pain and illlness to be granted this ecclesial designation.

 

After graduating from UCLA with her Master of Fine Arts in the School of Theater, Film, and Television, Maureen began to write scripts, and her plays won several awards. She fully expected to be writing in the heart of Hollywood, but God had other plans. From childhood, she had suffered with serious illnesses and chronic pain. But it was a life-threatening, disabling diagnosis of lupus that was the catalyst to turn her life and her writing in an entirely different direction. She first penned two health-based books to assist other patients in coping with difficult diagnoses. Taking Charge of Lupus: How to Manage the Disease and Make the Most of Your Life (New American Library/Penguin Random House) and The First Year: Hypothyroidism (First and Second editions, Perseus/Marlowe & Company;Hachette).

Then, from her deep faith and reliance on God, Maureen began to write about cultivating the spirit and a closer relationship with God while living with serious illness. These efforts resulted in more books including Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain and Illness (Image/Penguin Random House) and Beyond Pain: Job, Jesus, and Joy (the Revised Edition is now available from Galilee Road Publishing LLC).

Maureen has presented workshops, retreats, and in-service seminars for medical professionals, religious education instructors, patients, businesses, parishes, and patient advocacy organizations throughout the United States and in Canada, in person and online.

 

During the pandemic, while caregiving with her mother in the last years of her life, Maureen earned a Master of Theological Studies from the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University. In 2021, while focused on caregiving, unbeknowlnst to Maureen, a parish in New Canaan, CT, started a Wellness Group that used the book, Peace in the Storm..., as the basis for its reflections at group meetings. Shortly before her mother's passing, the leader of the Group contacted Maureen about another of her books, and a collaboration began.  In 2023, the fruit of that collaboration was born - The Peace in the Storm Project is a new, parish-based model of spiritual and theologically sound accompaniment for people living with chronic pain and illness that is growing rapidly throughout the United States.

 

To help others on a broader scale, Maureen also established her own publishing company, Galilee Road Publishing LLC, with the intention of offering work to further encourage, inspire, and guide those navigating through the toughest of life's challenges. The first book from Galilee Road Publishing, now available, is Beyond Pain: Job, Jesus, and Joy Revised Edition

 

Maureen is a graduate of Georgetown University and is also a Graduate Gemologist (Gemological Institute of America) and a Fellow, Gemmological Association of Great Britain (FGA), with Merit, and is owner/designer at Galilee Road Jewelry, where she designs jewelry that evokes faith and the beauty of God's natural world.

 

Although lupus and its effects are still a reality, Maureen continues to find much joy in her life and work and inspiration from others who are also living with serious challenges. Throughout all of her endeavors, Maureen's intent is simple: To show and encourage others that no matter how hard the crisis or sharp the pain, God loves each of us, we need not fear, and we should, most especially, never give up!