Who I Am
Maria Ceres Ria (Sara) is a full time mental health therapist and a novelist whose work explores memory, trauma, and the quiet psychological negotiations that shape identity over time. Her writing is grounded in character-driven realism, with a particular focus on interiority, relational power, and the long aftereffects of love, loss, and survival. She is especially interested in the spaces where silence replaces language and where endurance is mistaken for strength.
Her debut novel, Watch as We Cry, is a literary examination of return geographical, emotional, and moral—and traces how early attachments and unspoken harm reverberate across adulthood. Drawing on a restrained, psychologically attuned style, the novel interrogates nostalgia, self-erasure, and the difference between being wanted and being known.
Maria approaches fiction as a means of ethical witnessing rather than spectacle. Her work resists sensationalism in favor of emotional precision, allowing meaning to emerge through behavior, memory, and the body rather than exposition. She writes characters who are often misunderstood by others and by themselves, and is drawn to stories that ask what it means to reclaim agency without rewriting the past.
She currently lives in Michigan, where she continues to write and revise, balancing long-form fiction with ongoing study and research. Watch as We Cry is her first novel.
Her debut novel, Watch as We Cry, is a literary examination of return geographical, emotional, and moral—and traces how early attachments and unspoken harm reverberate across adulthood. Drawing on a restrained, psychologically attuned style, the novel interrogates nostalgia, self-erasure, and the difference between being wanted and being known.
Maria approaches fiction as a means of ethical witnessing rather than spectacle. Her work resists sensationalism in favor of emotional precision, allowing meaning to emerge through behavior, memory, and the body rather than exposition. She writes characters who are often misunderstood by others and by themselves, and is drawn to stories that ask what it means to reclaim agency without rewriting the past.
She currently lives in Michigan, where she continues to write and revise, balancing long-form fiction with ongoing study and research. Watch as We Cry is her first novel.
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When Maria is not writing or counseling, she is off adventuring with her family. She has been married to her beloved husband for 20 years and together, they have 5 children, two cats and a dog.
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https://substack.com/@arasmoon?