Love Isn't the cure
By Michael E. Merritt
A Memoir About Survival Intelligence
Coming October 2026
The framework is the map. This is the territory.
Love Is Not the Cure is the story of a life organized around survival—how Survival Intelligence formed, what it protected, what it cost, and what happened when the strategies that had worked for decades finally became visible.
There is Seamus. A music box. A monster who may never have been a monster at all. And the people who stayed without trying to rescue me.
This isn't a story about healing.
It's a story about finally seeing what kept me alive—and learning what it might mean to live with it.
-Michael E. Merritt
By Michael E. Merritt
AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON
Survival Intelligence: Understanding What We Build to Survive is a short introduction to the framework—a way of understanding what we build when something happens and we have to find a way through it.
It explores how Survival Intelligence forms, why what worked can follow us long after the circumstances have changed, what happens when we finally begin to see it, and why seeing it doesn't necessarily make it stop.
For anyone who:
- Has spent years wondering why they keep doing the things they know they do
- Can see the pattern but still finds themselves living from it
- Is tired of being told that everything needs to be fixed
- Wants understanding without another set of steps
This isn't a book about fixing what survived.
It's about finally understanding why it had to.