"Emotionally, I flourished after graduating from MSU. Practically, I lost everything,” Slater said. “After completing my study abroad with the school and coming back to East Lansing, I did not have a job offer.”

Slater received a bachelor’s degree in science with a concentration in psychology. However, she was not made aware that in order to get a job offer, she would have to have a master’s degree. With no intentions of pursuing higher education at the time, she was left in an unforeseen situation with her son.

Temporarily moving to Grand Rapids to live with her father and brother while sharing a room with her son, Slater was determined to get back on her feet and find sustainable employment.

“After three months and only being able to get into very dead-end jobs, nothing that was utilizing my degree or providing a substantial income that would allow us to sustain while we were there and also plan for a future, I ended up moving back to the Detroit area,” Slater said.

Upon moving back to Detroit, Slater would soon find out that she was “blessed” with a house for her and her son, completely paid for.

“It was one of my best friend's aunts' houses,” Slater said. “And at that time, she had already paid the house off. She hadn't found anybody who would pay to rent it out, so she just had an empty house sitting there with no one in it.”

Being offered to stay in the house as long as she needed, Slater said not worrying about rent helped her a lot while being able to find a job in Troy, Michigan.

“It's a little bit of a way from Detroit, but I was working in Troy,” Slater said. "I enrolled my son in the Rochester Hills School District so he could be somewhat closer to me while I was working. It was that buffer of living arrangements that allowed me to save up enough money while working, and then we eventually got our own apartment in Utica, Michigan, in 2019.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Slater began working remotely and took on two full-time remote jobs to increase income, continuing this setup for five years and remaining with one employer to this day, all while being able to save enough money to go towards her first home in Redford, Michigan.

For Slater’s novel, “D.E.P.T.H.: Designed Evolution Promotes The Hierarchy”, she always knew that she wanted to write a novel about her time at MSU and growing up.

“After graduating MSU and navigating Grand Rapids and then Utica, those experiences, along with the prior experiences of my childhood and adolescent years, shaped the focus and the model for why I named it the way I named it and also what the meaning of the name stands for,” Slater said.

Explaining the meaning behind the title, Slater said it represents the depth from the lens of redefining the designed ways that evolution promotes the hierarchy.

“In life, there are going to be times where you have to redefine your depth,” Slater said. You have to understand what you've learned from the depths of the situations in your life and redefine that to change the trajectory of your life.”

Slater shares that the book walks readers through her entire life: from a challenging childhood to emotionally separating from family during adolescence, to entering college with a lone-wolf mentality. 

“From there, I go into graduating high school and then going into college with that mindset of it's me against the world and understanding that there's no way that you can make it with that mentality in the real world,” Slater said. “I might have been okay when I was under someone else legally, but as an adult, you cannot live life that way and actually flourish. Going through the reality check of understanding that and how that mindset would hinder me more than help me in the real world.”

Slater said she is learning how to shape her mindset so she can stay true to herself while also acting as a protagonist in her own life, rather than working against her environment. By understanding this part of her personality, she’s finding ways to use it to her advantage—and hopes others can do the same.

“It's a framework of going through identity crisis, through life, but understanding that those identity crises were not meant to stop you from being that person, but to help you understand how to be that person and still also grow and develop in life,” Slater said.

While she chose not to name individuals directly, she crafted vivid, descriptive accounts that highlight how each person influenced her growth during specific life seasons, explaining her approach to writing about close relationships in her novel.

When asked about the book's intended audience, Slater said the book is written in a way that a lot of the terms are abstract.

“For the most part, my nine-year-old could understand the stuff that I wrote in my book because he can relate to a lot of things in there,” Slater said. “But if someone were to choose to read a certain chapter for any age group, they would be able to comprehend and understand what was meant by that chapter.”

For when readers reach the final page of her novel, among being moved to tell their own stories or seek meaningful life changes, Slater hopes readers feel empowered and equipped to pursue their purpose.

“My hope and prayer is that it's a turning point because I know now more than ever that my purpose is to share my story to inspire others,” Slater said. “Without me being able to vocally get in front of places and enter rooms that I otherwise haven't been in, there's no way my story can be told because no one else can tell it but me.”