The Official Launch

I’m excited.  I’m terrified.  I’m nauseous knowing my boss is reading it right now, and that my mother soon will be.  The idea of my intimate self being out for the entire world wide web to see is mortifying.  I realize these are things you’d think of before releasing your innermost story to the wilderness, but that is often how I roll.

I don’t realize the big deal I’m in the middle of experiencing until after it’s gone.  And it’s not gone, but it’s done.  It’s out there.  It’s in print and in digital and people are fucking reading it.  They’re counting the F-bombs per paragraph and I wonder if they’re reliving it with me.

I have no idea what I wrote.  I have no idea what message I convey or what part of my self I disclosed when.  What I do know is that I wrote from my heart.  I wrote from my very core.  I wrote to you from the darkest recesses of my mind so that I could show you what it’s really like.  I wrote from a place of complete and utter trust so that I could unveil what it’s like to walk this Earth thinking that you don’t always deserve it.  Even though it always looks like you do.

I wrote because I want to change the stigma.  I want to show people what addiction actually looks like, not what the movies portray it as.  I want to show people what recovery actually looks like, not what I know I thought when it was first introduced to me.

I want to help somebody; anybody.  I want to uncover their eyes and show them what it’s like.  I want to shed light on the dark spaces in every corner, in the spaces where they’re most vulnerable, and give them permission to do the same.

I want to tell you that you’re not alone.  I want you to know that I get it.  I want you to know that it may look a lot different than it is.  I appear extremely normal, even better than normal.  My pieces are cemented together, not even glued.  But it took, and continues to take, an army to keep them cemented.  It takes daily vigilance, grace, and gratitude.  It takes daily action, prayer, and pause.  It takes daily pursuit of different thoughts, different choices, and different actions.

I wrote this book because it helps me.  It helps me understand.  It helps me see.  It helps me relate.  It helps me be better.  It helps me practice what I preach.  It helps me pay attention.  It helps me remember how far I’ve come and where I could go.  It helps me appreciate what so many think is impossible.  And it makes me insatiably thirsty for more – more service, more purpose, more passion.

I wrote this book because as much as my fear tells me I can’t, I never really thought that I couldn’t.  Yes, somebody told me to do it, but the seed was planted when I was little, and I had an unshakable want to change the world.  The seed was planted that I had something powerful within me, a way with words, a way to connect and articulate things that other people felt but couldn’t explain.  I’m not being arrogant; I’m being truthful.  I’m connecting to my cause.  I’m connecting to my higher purpose.  God blessed me with the ability to put words on paper and words in the air and I’m finally ready to utilize that gift.  I was misdirected with the horses because I loved them more than I loved myself for many years, but now it’s time to send that love forward.

It took me a year to write it all out, at most.  I just started typing – I tried to remember how other books I loved were outlined and follow a flow as it came.  I would reread some, but I’d try not to reread much or else I’d get too distracted with errors or rabbit holes and not make progress.  If there’s anything I excel at in life, it is making progress and moving forward.  I had a brief period of unemployment before Insperity and it enabled me to get going.  I had a lot brewing for a long time, so it wasn’t hard for me to start to let it out.  It’s hard to look back and remember much other than I just kept writing.  I just kept telling more and more.  I tried not to get caught up in the particulars like chapters, number of words or pages or if it really made sense in the order it was coming out.  I asked a few people what they did and how, I was connected to an editor and that man helped me bring this first book into the world as it is today.

And I have no idea how it turned out.  I learn so much by turning pages, and I have no doubt that I’ll learn a Iot by turning my own.

I wrote this book because somebody wrote one for me once too.  I wouldn’t be here if one brave woman didn’t share her story with me – just one.  And that’s all I am: one brave woman sharing her story with you.

If you are brave enough, please support me and my cause and buy this book. And don’t just buy it – read it. Read every page. Read every page again. Live this with me. Cry with me. Feel with me. And then tell everyone in the world about what you saw, what you lived, and what you felt.

Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Addict-Aisle-Myself-Through-Body/dp/B088GJF6WV/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1589369567&sr=8-1