Still Mountain Press

Scared and Alone — A Memoir

A memoir about survival, resilience, and the lifelong search for belonging.

Born into poverty and instability, Ed Arnold grew up amid abandonment, fear, violence, and uncertainty. Raised in the segregated South and later in the welfare projects of upstate New York, he learned early that survival often meant relying on no one but himself.

What follows is not a traditional autobiography. Told through a series of personal stories and reflections, Scared and Alone traces a journey from a chaotic childhood through military service, marriage, education, business success, family relationships, personal loss, and ultimately recovery and self-understanding.

Along the way, Ed explores the lasting effects of trauma, the drive to escape shame, the pursuit of achievement, and the people who offered moments of kindness, guidance, and hope. The book is neither an attempt to assign blame nor a search for sympathy. Instead, it is an honest examination of how early experiences shape a life and how meaning can emerge from even the most difficult beginnings.

Written with clarity, humility, and reflection, Scared and Alone is a story about perseverance, personal responsibility, forgiveness, and the possibility of building bridges where barriers once existed.

For anyone who has struggled, felt alone, or wondered how the past continues to influence the present, this memoir offers a thoughtful and deeply human perspective.

Creating Movement in Thai Traditional Medicine

A Living Tradition of Opening

What allows a body to move?

Thai massage is often taught through techniques: where to place the hands, how to position the client, how to apply pressure, and how to move the body through familiar forms.

Creating Movement in Thai Traditional Medicine begins somewhere else.

Rather than teaching another sequence of techniques, Ed Arnold explores the ideas beneath them. Beginning with the traditional Thai understanding of Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire, the book asks what allows movement to emerge in the first place.

From this foundation, traditional observations are placed in conversation with contemporary understandings of the moving body without redefining Thai concepts as Western anatomy or science.

The practitioner does not create movement.
The practitioner creates the conditions in which movement becomes possible.

Support, space, touch, and movement can invite change rather than impose it. What is commonly called stretching can then be understood more broadly as opening: movement becoming available, becoming familiar through experience, and eventually becoming part of the person.

The book describes this through three overlapping phases: Immediate Permission • Repeated Recognition • Long-Term Adaptation

Written for students and practitioners of Thai massage, as well as readers interested in movement and bodywork, this is not a technique manual. It is preparation for seeing technique differently.

Thai massage is the gateway. Movement is the subject.