The Tighter I Held is out now.
I spent 40 years learning to be afraid. Then I stopped.
My memoir, The Tighter I Held, is out now. If you’ve been carrying something you never asked to carry, this book was written with you in mind. You don’t have to be ready yet. Start whenever you are.
About the Book
In the dead of night in Jerusalem, something woke Kristy Sullivan — and for the first time in her life, she didn’t shrink from it. She spoke commands into the darkness, stood her ground, and became a woman she never expected to be.
That moment didn’t come from nowhere. It was the final note of a symphony that had been building for a lifetime.
Kristy grew up learning to read the temperature of a room before her feet hit the floor — small, quiet, careful, a girl who folded her pain away and kept going. She built a life around music and achievement, only to watch her body and her faith quietly buckle under the weight of panic attacks, a chronic illness that went undiagnosed for decades, career betrayal, and a marriage she almost didn’t choose. Piece by piece, everything she thought was holding her together had to come apart before real healing could begin.
The Tighter I Held is a raw, honest, and ultimately hope-filled memoir about the difference between surviving and surrendering — about a God who was composing something redemptive long before she could hear the music.
If you’ve ever held on so tightly you forgot how to let go, this story will meet you there.
From the Book
You’re not invited here. You don’t belong here. Leave and never bother us again. Jesus has got this.
Knowing what the Bible says and letting it change you are two entirely different things.
God does not wait for people to be whole before He works through them. He works through broken things all the time.
This is what I believe now: the body keeps score. It does not forget what the mind tries to set aside.
About the Author
Kristy Sullivan is a musician, composer, and leader whose life’s work is helping people grow in their craft, character, and faith. A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University with degrees in music, she has spent her career at the intersection of creativity and calling, including years in leadership at Ramsey Solutions. Her own journey through anxiety, chronic illness, career upheaval, and a faith that had to be rebuilt from the ground up shapes the honesty at the heart of her writing. Kristy lives near Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Dewayne. The Tighter I Held is her debut book.
Thank you for reading. It means more than I can say. If the book meets you somewhere, I’d love to hear about it.