Description
What if your greatest challenges could become your greatest strengths?
Life has a way of knocking us down — sometimes lightly, sometimes with a force so brutal we wonder if we’ll ever rise again. But what if the very falls that leave us broken also contain the seeds of our greatest transformation?
In Victory in Every Fall, Kurt Warner, LMSW, draws inspiration from the Greek myth of Antaeus — a giant who gained strength each time he touched the earth. Like Antaeus, Warner shows us that every time life knocks us down, we have the opportunity to rise even stronger. Through five deeply personal and life-altering experiences — a traumatic brain injury, severe OCD, bipolar disorder, profound grief, and chronic back pain — Warner reveals how each “fall” was not an end, but the beginning of something powerful.
With raw honesty and vivid storytelling, Warner demonstrates how adversity can become the source of unforeseen strength. He shares how, by embracing the struggles that seemed to overwhelm him, he found resilience, empowerment, and ultimately, triumph. His story is a testament to the Antaeus approach: when we hit rock bottom, we can find new strength by grounding ourselves in the struggle and using it as a foundation for growth.
This is more than a memoir of survival — it’s a guide to overcoming even the most overwhelming obstacles. Whether you’re battling illness, mental health challenges, or personal loss, Victory in Every Fall offers more than hope — it offers a roadmap for transforming pain into power and weakness into wisdom.
Falling is inevitable. But what comes after is up to you. Will you stay down? Or will you rise, like Antaeus, stronger than ever before?
Endorsements
“Kurt’s thoughtful and honest approach in describing how he has navigated life with mental illness and adversity acts as a true instillation of hope, leaving readers considering possibilities for a life worth living.”
— Garra Lloyd-Lester, Coordinator, Community and Coalition Initiatives, Suicide Prevention Center of New York, Office of Mental Health
Press for Victory in Every Fall
A philosophy based on falling down — and getting up again
By LYNN OLCOTT / Courtland Standard
Nowadays, Cortland County resident Kurt Warner is a psychotherapist, and he is also a successful author who has two more books coming out soon. It wasn’t always this way.
The puzzling regimens of obsessive-compulsive disorder began to torment him around age 5. He suffered a severe head injury due to the carelessness of friends as a teen. Mammoth swings from bipolar disorder interrupted all aspects of his life as a younger man, and he sustained a severe back injury from plain honest work. What to do?
The author shares his experiences in “Victory in Every Fall: The Antaeus Approach to Overcome Disabilities” in hope other people will find them useful, as we all have disabilities of some kind. He battles his “giants” with Greek mythology, simple pleasures, knowledge and grit. Over the years, various treatments, pharmaceuticals and therapies have ranged from helpful to harmful. Three things have always had restorative value: empathy from others; his faith; and the act of writing.
The author offers a strategy based on a fellow named Antaeus. In Greek mythology, Antaeus was the son of gods. He derived his amazing strength from physical contact with the Earth. In short, he was made stronger and more victorious when he fell down — and got back up.
Warner recommends his mom for the Mother Hall of Fame and writes movingly of his appreciation for people who have helped him along the way.
Many things have helped: a desk with a sliding drawer; a voice activated software system; the words of the great philosophers.
The book is dense with experience and thought. It is written with emotional honesty and just enough distance to make the concepts easily accessible to others. “Victory in Every Fall” is available from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Kallisti Publishing, Google Play Books and Apple Books as well as through the Finger Lakes Library System from the Cortland Free Library.
Mountain Top native Kurt Warner releases inspiring book
A Mountain Top native who has lived through some formidable challenges in his life has written a book aimed at helping others overcome the obstacles they face in their own lives.
The book, “Victory in Every Fall: The Antaeus Approach to Overcome Disabilities,” written by Kurt Warner, LMSW, was released in October by Kallisti Publishing.
The Crestwood High School graduate suffered traumatic brain injury in 2001 when he was assaulted at a party at Nuangola. As a result of the assault, he had a significant portion of his brain removed, forcing him to re-learn how to walk and talk at age 18.
Warner also has had severe obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) since age 5, struggled with bipolar disorder since he was a teenager, and debilitating back pain.
Yet, despite all these challenges, the 42-year-old Warner now is a therapist in upstate New York working with individuals to help them overcome their own issues.
“I’m not trying to trumpet what I’ve been through and what I’ve accomplished,” Warner said of his book. “Rather,” he said in a recent interview, ‘it’s about helping people realize that despite what may seem like impossible odds they can make something of themselves.” The book, he related, is about helping people “make their yoke lighter.”
Though his bachelor’s degree from King’s College was in English, Warner felt himself drawn to social work. Having known and felt suffering, he said he developed empathy for others facing similar obstacles.
The title of his book, “Victory in Every Fall: The Antaeus Approach to Overcoming Disabilities,” really is descriptive of the importance of the help it offers to people facing what they may perceive as disabilities in their lives.
In Greek Mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was said to reside in Libya. He was the son of the sea god Poseidon and the Earth goddess Gaea and he compelled all strangers who were passing through the country to wrestle with him. Whenever Antaeus touched the Earth (which was his mother), his strength was renewed, so that even if thrown to the ground, he was invincible.
Warner’s 256-page guide to overcoming life’s greatest challenges, the author explained, is meant to help people like himself gain strength when they’ve been “thrown to the ground.” The book offers readers a groundbreaking approach to resilience: every time life knocks you down, it’s an opportunity to rise stronger than before.
Most readers, he explained, can use this approach to overcome their own obstacles. “I do it every day,” Warner said of his own life. And through his work he has become proficient in helping people become stronger when they have what they consider ‘disabilities.’
“We don’t have to hide our deficits. They are part of the character that builds us,” he offered.
“Kurt Warner’s story is nothing short of transformative,” says Anthony Raymond, CEO of Kallisti Publishing. “His candor about living with OCD, bipolar disorder, severe traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain offers readers more than hope — it provides a blueprint for turning life’s darkest moments into opportunities for growth. We believe this book will profoundly impact anyone struggling to find strength in the face of overwhelming challenges.”
The book is available through major retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from Kallisti Publishing.
Review Victory in Every Fall.