Genre: Self Help

Sub-genre: Inner Child Self Help/Transformational Self Help/Motivational Self Help

Publisher: Mija Media House

Publication Date: June 23, 2026

She Forgot She Was Free is an invitation to remember the woman you were before fear, expectations, achievement, disappointment, and survival convinced you to forget.

In this deeply personal and transformational book, two-time best-selling author and founder of The BECOME Method™, Giselle Mascarenhas, shares the lessons, questions, and revelations that led her back to her truest self. Rather than offering quick fixes or another self-help checklist, she invites readers into a journey of honest reflection, identity, healing, and intentional growth. Through compelling stories and practical insights, readers are challenged to release limiting beliefs, reconnect with their authentic voice, and rediscover the freedom that has been within them all along.

Rooted in the principles of The BECOME Method™, She Forgot She Was Free equips readers with a powerful way to move beyond simply surviving and begin living with clarity, courage, and purpose. Whether you’re navigating a season of transition, rebuilding after loss, or simply sensing there is more waiting for you, this book will remind you that the life you long for doesn’t begin by becoming someone new, it begins by remembering who you have always been.

Because the person you are searching for has never been lost.

She has simply been waiting for you to remember her.

Excerpt

“Beat It”

If you grew up in the 80s, you understand what Michael Jackson meant.

Not as a celebrity. Not as a pop star. As a feeling.

My bedroom walls were covered in him. Floor to ceiling. Every page I could tear from every magazine that had his face on it, I put it up. I would climb on my dresser drawers and stand on chairs just to reach higher, just to fit one more. My brother John knew this. And because brothers are built to find the exact thing that will undo you, ripping one of those pictures was his most effective weapon. That was the deal, unspoken but understood, touch my Michael Jackson pictures and I stop raiding your Little Debbies and cereal. We had a whole economy built around it.

But Michael Jackson wasn’t just decoration on my walls.

He was proof that you could be fully, completely, unapologetically yourself, and the whole world would not just accept it, they would lose their minds over it.

Third grade. The school talent show.

I signed up to dance to Beat It. I borrowed a dress. Black tights that were slightly too small. I was not nervous. Not even a little. I was a great dancer and I loved Michael Jackson and the combination of those two facts felt like more than enough reason to get on a stage in front of the entire school.

When the music started, I stopped thinking.

I just danced.

I hit every move. I got lost in it, the way you only get lost in something when you are doing exactly what you were made to do. No performance. No awareness of being watched. Just a little girl and the music and the complete and total freedom of a body that knew what it was doing.

When it was over, the cafeteria stood up.

The whole cafeteria.

Elementary kids on their feet, cheering, for me, for little Gi who had just danced her whole heart out in slightly-too-small tights without a single moment of self-consciousness.

I remember that feeling. I want you to feel it with me for just a second before I tell you what happened next.

That feeling, of being fully yourself, fully alive, and being met with that kind of love, that is vitality. That is exactly what this book is about. Not the applause. The aliveness that came before it.

I signed up again the following year.

I was going to dance again. At this point I was certain, certain, that I was either going to be a ballroom dancer or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. It was not even a question in my mind. It was just a matter of which one.

Then I got called to the principal’s office.

Mrs. Champion sat across from me and told me that before I could perform in the talent show, I would need to audition privately for her. Because last year, she said, and I still remember her tone more clearly than her words, my dance moves had been vulgar. And I would not be allowed to perform if I did anything like that again.

I was in third grade.

I did not fully understand the word she used. But I understood her face. I understood the disgust in it. The way she looked at me like my aliveness, my joy, my freedom, the very thing that had made every child in that cafeteria rise to their feet, was something to be ashamed of. Something that needed to be contained. Auditioned. Approved before it was allowed to exist.

I went back to my homeroom teacher and told her I had decided not to perform.

She asked why.

“I just don’t want to anymore,” I said.

And I sat down.

I did not have the language for what had just happened to me. I did not know that a grown woman had just looked at a little girl on fire and made her feel like her flame was a problem. I did not know that the thing I did most naturally, the thing that made people come alive, had just been handed back to me with a note that said too much.

What I knew was the feeling in my body.

The same body that had been lost in the music, free and uncalculating, was now sending a different signal.

A warning.

A familiar click.

When the light shines too bright on you, move it.

Point it somewhere else before someone decides your brightness is the problem. Before they call it vulgar. Before your heart gets shattered by someone else’s discomfort with your aliveness.

I had already learned the light switch.

Mrs. Champion just gave me the first real reason to use it.

– Excerpted from She Forgot She Was Free by Giselle Mascarenhas, Mija Media House, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

Buy on Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Giselle Mascarenhas is the founder of BECOME™, creator of the BECOME Methodology™, and author of She Forgot She Was Free. An entrepreneur, speaker, and transformational guide, she has dedicated her life's work to helping people reconnect with who they were created to be so they can live with greater purpose, freedom, and intentionality.

After years of building businesses, leading organizations, and walking through seasons of personal growth, Giselle recognized that lasting transformation does not begin with external success, it begins with remembering one's authentic identity. That realization became the foundation of the BECOME Method™, a proprietary methodology designed to guide individuals through a transformational process of self-awareness, healing, alignment, courageous action, and embodied growth. Unlike a framework that offers guidelines for achieving a specific outcome, The BECOME Method™ is a comprehensive method of personal advancement that can be applied across every area of life, leadership, and purpose.

Her debut book, She Forgot She Was Free, is both a deeply personal memoir and an invitation for readers to embark on their own journey of remembrance. Through honest storytelling, reflection, and faith, the book explores the universal experience of losing ourselves beneath expectations, fear, pain, and performance, and the courageous journey of rediscovering the freedom, identity, and purpose that have always existed within us. Rather than simply telling her story, Giselle invites readers to see themselves in its pages and begin writing the next chapter of their own lives.

The book became the catalyst for the broader BECOME movement, an expanding ecosystem of transformational experiences designed to help people move beyond inspiration into intentional action. Through immersive workshops, retreats, leadership development, educational programs, community experiences, publishing initiatives, and speaking engagements, Giselle equips individuals with practical tools to create meaningful and lasting transformation. Every experience is grounded in the belief that personal growth is not about becoming someone different but remembering and embodying the person God uniquely created each of us to be.

Known for her ability to blend heartfelt storytelling with practical application, Giselle creates spaces where people feel seen, challenged, and empowered to take meaningful action. Her presentations combine vulnerability, strategic thinking, and actionable guidance, allowing audiences to leave not only inspired but equipped with a clear path forward. Her work resonates with entrepreneurs, leaders, professionals, educators, faith-based communities, and individuals seeking deeper purpose and authentic fulfillment.

Beyond her work as an author and speaker, Giselle is passionate about developing leaders who create ripple effects within their families, businesses, organizations, and communities. She believes transformation is contagious, that when one person remembers who they are and chooses to live courageously, they give others permission to do the same. This philosophy continues to shape every initiative within the BECOME movement.

Through future books, collaborative publishing projects, leadership academies, retreats, and global speaking engagements, Giselle's mission is to help millions of people reconnect with their God-given identity and become the fullest expression of who they were created to be. She envisions BECOME as a worldwide movement that empowers individuals to live intentionally, lead authentically, and create lasting impact for generations to come.

Giselle lives in Texas with her family and continues to write, teach, speak, and expand the global reach of the BECOME movement. Whether on stage, in the pages of a book, or through transformational experiences, her message remains the same: the person you are searching for has never been lost, you have simply forgotten who you are. Remember. Rise. BECOME.

Visit her website at www.thebecomemethod.com.

Connect with her on social media at:

Twitter: https://x.com/giselleempowers

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giselleempowers

Instagram: https://instagram.com/giselleempowers

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21957760.Giselle_Mascarenhas

Mario Cartaya was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1951. Eight years later, the turbulent winds of change forced his family to immigrate to the United States in search of a new life lived in freedom.

Fifty-six years later, Mario returned to Cuba in search of the long-forgotten memories of his childhood. Now a successful American architect, this once “unsung child” of the Cuban diaspora went back to face his old demons (who were no longer there) and to recall his earliest experiences. Mario eventually regained the memories of the first 8 years of his life, repaired the tattered tapestry of his existence, and found an inner peace he never knew he needed.

In Journey Back Into The Vault, Mario confronts the contents of the mental lockbox he had built to protect him from his challenging past. In his journey of self-discovery, each chapter reveals relics deliberately buried by his subconscious mind.

Mario’s personal story is also a universal one: how love and enlightenment can only begin with our search for self-actualization and peace of mind. More than a memoir of a Cuban refugee, it’s a story that uncovers the psychological forces that help define us, the power of enduring hope, and how—by achieving purity of heart, reconciliation, and a soul at rest—we can evolve into better versions of ourselves.

Excerpt

“The one constant through all the years has been baseball ... baseball has marked the time ... it reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
—Field of Dreams

George, José, and I joined Maidel in his car, waved goodbye to the Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos steel portraits, smiled at the huge Martí monument, and left the Plaza de la Revolución. It was time to visit the place where the Cuban baseball gods of my youth once played.

Baseball is a bonding agent among families in Cuba as well as in the United States. Parents take their sons and daughters to ball games. They, in turn, eventually take their own sons and daughters to baseball’s cathedrals as well, thus sustaining a tribal ritual continuously repeated through- out generations. Baseball is an ingredient of the chemical composition of many Cuban and American families, including my own. I had the fortune of sharing the love of baseball, first with my father and later with my son. It is an integral part of the family bonds we share.

When I lived in Cuba, my family rooted for the Almendares Scorpions of the Cuban Professional Baseball League and the Cuban Sugar Kings, Havana’s AAA International League baseball team. I would ritualistically listen to the play-by-play nightly radio broadcasts of their games or watch them on our family’s black-and-white TV set at home. Now and then, my father and I would go see them play at the old Cerro Stadium (the Sugar Kings in the summer and Almendares during the winter months).

Riding in Maidel’s official-looking black sedan toward the former Cerro Stadium, now called Estadio Latinoamericano, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the many baseball games my father and I once watched there. They were always special times for us.

My most vivid memory of a game at the stadium was from the fall of 1959, when the Cuban Sugar Kings played the Minneapolis Millers in a dramatic best-of-seven-games series for the Triple-A International League baseball championship crown.

The teams split the first six games of that most important series, with two going into extra innings and another decided on the final at bat. When an early October snowstorm and frigid weather in Minneapolis shifted the seventh (and deciding) game to Havana, my father wasted no time buying tickets for him and me to attend.

At eight years of age, game 7 could not arrive soon enough for me.

The day of game 7 was not the only thing that arrived that championship morning. Unfortunately, I awoke sick that day, having developed a cold with a fever overnight. My mother put me to bed, lathered my chest with Vicks VapoRub, and covered me with heavy wool blankets. She fed me an overdose of orange juice and even made the Cuban cure-all—chicken soup—trying all she could for me to feel better by game time. Nothing she did, however, worked.

My father, I thought, would have to attend the game without me.

Later that afternoon, my father arrived home from work, changed into his game clothes, and walked toward my room to check in on me. My mother stopped him just outside my bedroom door and, using the stern maternal voice I knew so well, warned him, “Don’t even think about taking Mayito to the game!”

“Of course, Chinita,” my father agreed, uncharacteristically sheepish.

Moments later, he walked into my room and sat on the bed next to me, wanting to talk about the lineups and pitchers announced for the game that night.

Then everything changed. When my mother, oblivious to our baseball conversation, walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, my father—buoyed by this unexpected opportunity—flashed his we-are-about-to-do-something-really-crazy-grin and winked at me. He touched my forehead, realized my fever had diminished, and asked if I felt well enough to go to the game. Of course, I said yes!

What would you expect?

My father held his index finger in front of his lips, motioned for me to stay quiet, and asked me to dress quickly. I threw on my lucky Sugar Kings clothes, silently followed him out of my Sevillano home bedroom (shielded by the sound of my mother’s shower), and hurriedly climbed down the stairs toward the living room below. With no one around to see us, my father and I ran out the decorative glass and metal-framed front door I once shattered with an errant curveball pretending to be Orlando Peña and soon found ourselves in his blue-and-white 1957 Ford on our way to Cerro Stadium.

Fever or not, we were going to the Triple-A International League Baseball Championship Game!

The gloom and doom that clouded my emotions all day had suddenly changed into the excitement and joy of a most unexpected escape!

This excerpt is from Mario Cartaya's award-winning book, Journey Back Into The Vault: In Search of My Cuban Childhood Footprints. Reprinted with permission from the author, Mario Cartaya.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardcover | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Mario Cartaya was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1951. Eight years later, the turbulent winds of political change swept over the land of his birth, leaving his family with little choice but to immigrate toward the United States in search of a new life lived in freedom. There, he realized his earliest Cuban childhood dreams of becoming an architect and started an enduring and highly acclaimed architectural firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His life’s story and award-winning architectural designs were entered into the United States Congressional Record of the House of Representatives in 2019, forever enshrined into the US Library of Congress. An American flag was flown over the US Capitol to celebrate his American legacy in 2022.

With the same dedication and love that made him an architectural success and iconic designer, Mario has now turned his attention to writing books. His debut, Journey Back Into the Vault: In Search of my Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints, was recently released in new hardcover and paperback editions. The Spanish-language book, La Bóveda: En busca de mi niñez cubana was released in 2026. His fresh voice and humanist values will refresh one’s soul.