You don’t always know when you’re rising. Sometimes, it looks like getting up again. And again. And again. Built from wreckage. Carried by grit. She became the light they said she’d never find.

The Big Light is a memoir about rising through it all and finding light in the places no one thought to look. Nicole Legerra doesn’t offer a polished narrative, she offers the truth. From the streets that shaped her to the silence that nearly broke her, this is a story built from grit, and grace. It’s about pain that didn’t just leave scars, it carved purpose.

With language that burns clean and cuts deep, Legerra traces the anatomy of endurance and resilience. This isn’t a tale of arrival or redemption, it’s a reckoning. 
A blueprint for how to survive the hard and still build something luminous from it. 
This is for the ones who survived the hard, who love fiercely despite it, and those who have learned to carry both grit and grace in equal measure. 

For those who’ve walked through the dark and wondered if there was anything left to find, The Big Light is proof: it is light that saves you in the dark, and it’s always there…even when you can’t see it.

Drawing from her own experience Nicole Legerra is a Board Certified Mental Health Coach and in Crisis Intervention. She is dedicated to helping others find hope and healing through life’s most challenging moments. Nicole is a writer who believes in the power of true stories—the kind that hit somewhere deep and stay with you. She’s a mom to five amazing humans and married to her best friend, juggling family life with a love for books, running, and the kind of music that carries you through. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her hitting the pavement with a playlist or audiobook in her ears, escaping into the world of words and sound. She owns more vintage rock band T-shirts than she’ll ever admit and still holds out hope for that one unforgettable Broadway stage door is opened…just once.