Introduction: My Story

Part I: Spiritual Diagnostics

• Self-Control Won’t Keep You Sober
• The Opposite of Addiction Is Not Connection
• The Truth about Admitting You Are Powerless over Alcohol (Or Anything Else…)
• What Is an Eating Disorder?
• What a Craving Is Really Like and What I Do About It
• Why Another Day of Sobriety Is Not My Goal
• The Difference between a Spiritual Mentor and a Therapist

Part II: Stepping Away from Secular Spirituality

• Trusting God Isn’t Trendy, but the New Age Left Me Empty
• Artificial Versus Organic Gratitude
• Self-Love Is Not My Goal
• How I Stopped My Negative Thoughts Once and for All
• What if Your Triggers Are Just Sins You Haven’t Confessed?
• The Real Secret to Happiness (and the Delusion of Unhappiness)
• So, You Think You Want to Be Confident
• Is Expressing Emotions to Other People Actually Healing?
• The Truth about Low Self-Esteem

Part III: Coming to Believe

• Don’t Believe in God? Try Prayer
• Do you Live in Faith or Just Believe in God? (The Grocery Store Metaphor)
• How Deep Do You Need to Go?
• How Do You Know That God is Real?
• Why I Stopped Trying to Change My Behavior
• The Outcomes Are Up to God, Not Me (No More “Magic Pillow Cure”)

Part IV: Denial and Guilt

• Guilt Is Not a Feeling
• Are You in Denial?
• Your Pain Is Not Their Fault
• You Aren’t Actually Angry at Yourself
• Are You Guilty of Splitting Your Guilt?
• Connect with the Whispers of Your Conscience and You Won’t Have to Hear the Screams
• If No One Else Will Get Hurt, Is It Still Wrong?
• The Importance of Pulling the Root

Part IV: Forgiveness

• A Story of Radical Forgiveness
• I Let Go of the Past and Stopped Saying — “They Did the Best They Could”
• You Might Have Forgiveness All Wrong
• The Resentment Paradox
• How to Get Rid of Resentment
• I Stopped Trying to Rationalize and Justify Other’s Behavior and This Happened…

Part V: Prayer and Everyday Miracles

• A Way to Pray
• The Story of the Blue Truck
• Learning to Differentiate God’s Plan from My Plan
• If Life Feels Hard, Lack of Humility Might Be the Cause
• The Incredible Results of Turning Off My Internal Calculator
• If You Give, You Will Receive
• Two-Way Prayer: A Lesson, Sharing My Own, and an Exercise to Do Right Now
• Why I Don’t Pray that the World Changes
• Don’t Get Lost in the Big Picture
• How a Totaled Motorcycle Reminded Me to Trust God’s Plan

Part VI: Relationships

• Why I Don’t Ask People for Forgiveness
• The Way Out of the Cycle of Shame
• How I Let Go of My Addiction to Approval from Others
• I Don’t Trust My Friends
• Discovering the Reality of Friendship
• It’s Okay to Not Have the Last Word
• How to Stop Caring What They Think
• On Feeling Forced to Take a Side: The Relational Pep Rally
• A Deep Dive into Dishonesty
• The Dark Side of Boundaries
• The One Relationship I Need
• I Thought I Was a People-Pleaser

Part VII: Life Events

• A New Year’s Resolution You Can Start Today and Why I Gave Away Brand-new Diamond Earrings
• Four Hours after I Lost My Job, I Wrote This
• Grief, Selfishness, and Faith: How I Understand and Experience Grief after the Recent Deaths of Five Loved Ones
• What Will Your Gravestone Say? “I Wish It Would Have Been Different” or “That Sure Was Fun!”
• The Wedding Day Essay
• A Reflection on My Grandparents Passing
• Sadness, Grief, and God
• If the Holidays Are Hard on You, I Have Been There, Too, and This Could Be Why

Acknowledgments
About the Author

When I hit rock bottom, I was twenty-nine years old, and my life looked like a success on paper. I was a researcher at a well-known school of medicine. I had authored publications that appeared in prominent scientific journals. I had finished my PhD in psychology when I was twenty-eight years old. My expertise was in behavior change. I had been the graduate student council chair of the health psychology division of the American Psychological Association where I sat on the board. I had been a finalist for a prestigious National Science Foundation fellowship. Before that, I graduated near the top of my class from an east coast university where I had been a Division I athlete and served as the scholarship chair of my sorority. I was a certified yoga instructor. I volunteered regularly for various community groups. Although I was single at the time, I generally had long-term boyfriends, all of whom were successful athletes or entrepreneurs.

At the time that I hit rock bottom, I also blacked out almost every time I drank, which was nearly every day. I drank before I went out, I drank while I was out, I drank after I got home, and I drank when I wasn’t going out. I was sweating through my sheets and often peeing my bed. I was chewing up my time-release ADHD medication. I took my public speaking anxiety medication just to calm the intense pain of daily living. I was going on dates and sleeping with men to feel less alone, and occasionally peeing their beds. None of my recent relationships had been very long-lasting. I had strained relationships with most of my friends. I had also been diagnosed with various mental health conditions throughout my life ranging from ADHD to eating disorders to depression to panic and anxiety disorders. I had also been diagnosed with various unexplained physiological conditions ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to food intolerances to spinal compression, and alopecia areata, which at its worst, manifested as six large bald spots that covered nearly 30 percent of my head.

***

On Christmas morning, after almost seven months of trying to do recovery my way, I walked into a recovery meeting in the most unlikely part of town and into a room full of joyful, friendly people, who were laughing and joking with one another. I didn’t understand. Did these people not realize how serious this was? As it turns out, they did, and they had found a solution that gave them a whole lot more than abstinence from alcohol and drugs. It was through this group that I found faith and a mentor who had a spiritual awakening and lived in spiritual principles. These people weren’t perfect, nor did they pretend to be, but they understood that God is love, that God is forgiving, and they too were aimed at being unconditionally loving and forgiving. We cannot transmit something that we don’t have, and God walked me right into the arms of a group where faith was alive, well, and ready to be transmitted.