He and my mom never married, but they were together for 35 years, and he was a welcome sober soul at boozy family gatherings. At one point, he had to stop drinking to save his liver, and for a while, he went to meetings. We had sobriety in common until he started to drink socially …
The year was 2017. I lay in a hospital bed, unsure of my surroundings. I could not walk, eat, remember my name, or correctly identify a lion on an aptitude test. I was informed that I’d had an alcohol withdrawal seizure so severe that my prognosis was uncertain. I had been in a medically induced …
“No one will ever love you.” Mom jabbed her index finger into my bicep for emphasis, so I would not forget. I almost dropped a dish as I cleaned up the kitchen. “You think you’re better than us, smarter than us, but you’re too stupid to do anything,” she yelled. “Yeah,” chimed in my brother …
It was May and I had just passed through the most painful period of my life. I was 51 years old and living alone in the same city I had lived with my family for the past twenty years. On warm evenings, I sat in a lawn chair and enjoyed the setting sun. One evening, …
My higher power (God) has shown me the meaning of hope, of trust, and through his love, his forgiveness, and mercy, all the work you have done within recovery, you begin to transform yourself, flourish into a new life from the ashes of gambling addiction, learn to break free from gambling and begin a new …
My name is Tracy, and I am a 54-year-old single mom in Connecticut. I was in a car accident in 2000 that resulted in back surgery, and subsequently taking a prescription of opioids and Xanax which lasted 25 years. I took them as prescribed as I thought I needed them for pain and anxiety and …
Mom’s green thumb was legendary. In addition to a phalanx of houseplants, every April she started hundreds of vegetable seeds inside under grow lights in order to plant green sprouted seedlings. Plants in Northern Minnesota need a head start in the short, 135-day, Zone 4 growing season. As a farmer’s daughter, a farmer’s wife, and …
I grew up in a world of Dichotomy, a world of beer cans and Bibles, I was expected to be nice to others, but treated not so nice in our home by my alcoholic father. I recited prayers but felt panicked. To me this was normal. When I was somewhere around thirteen years old, one …
My story is kind of long and complicated, but the best place to start is in Iowa City, around 2011/2012. I transferred there from Iowa State University, because of the famous Writer’s Workshop, and I had made the recent decision to pursue my passion as a writer. But that year at the University of Iowa …
You’re never quite right again after feeling the life exit a person’s body, especially when it’s your younger sister. That’s when the road to disfunction and addiction began in my life. Being a young girl of only nine years old, the loss of my sister Debba Jean was crippling for me emotionally, mentally, even physically, …
