Shelf Life of a Trophy Wife: A Memoir

Front Cover
Fitting Words, May 6, 2025 - Biography & Autobiography - 256 pages

To the outside world, Lisa Kaye Rayner seemed to have it all. But beneath the picture-perfect veneer of her Southern Baptist upbringing were the haunting secrets that she kept. Afterthree failed marriages and one failed suicide attempt, she found herself in the office of a psychiatrist who began to chip away at the portrait of perfection she so carefully painted.Shelf Life of a Trophy Wife is a heartfelt and harrowing memoir that reveals the unspoken costs of fitting in, along with the struggles that come with polishing our past, and a reminderthat the dust always settles in the end.

Shelf Life of a Trophy Wife is the intimate battle of a Southern Baptist Barbie who finds the courage to unlock her menagerie of carefully hidden secrets and unpack years of traumatic men-tal, physical, and sexual abuse I experienced while living an outwardly beautiful and glamorous life. With the help of my daughter, sister, and a myriad of fashionable friends, I claw my way through a hard-fought, inspiring journey of discovery, empowerment, freedom, self-love, and truth, one husband at a time. Or do I?

Other editions - View all

About the author (2025)

Lisa Kaye Rayner is a lifelong creative thinker who wrote her first poem at the age of seven, her first manuscript at 21 and her first suicide note at 50. She is a proud graduate of UGA- Grady College of Journalism, a recovering PR specialist and a Telly Award-winning producer, director and writer. A native Atlantan, she is the mother of two daughters and Grand-mere to two. In 2010, she received the Woman of the Year award from Chayil, a foundation dedicated to helping battered women navigate life after leaving lessons she is still trying to learn. A proud survivor, she now makes her home in a historic loft on the Oconee River in Athens, Georgia.

Bibliographic information