Born in 1953, I grew up the oldest of eight children in a devout Catholic family. For 16 years I did everything I could to be pleasing to God. I thought that meant finding out the right way and following it.

When I was 17, my Dad died, and our storybook family blew apart. I took my first drink with my mother at Dad’s wake. Within a few months she was a hopeless alcoholic, and I had stepped out of my good-girl identity into a rebel persona as a one-woman sexual liberation movement.

At 21, I met and moved in with the man who is still my husband today, 33 years later. I was monogamous (if not quite sane) until alcohol and cocaine became more pressing priorities than fidelity. As I sank into alcoholism and promiscuity, I came to believe that I was a bad person who had been trying to pass as a good one.

In 1984, I became a poster child for recovery from dual-addiction. I loved treatment – it gave me a new set of rules to follow, a new way to be right. That worked for me for a long time. But inevitably, my underlying self-disgust and fear bubbled up, sending me into one depression after another. At the same time, I had gone to work for myself as a fiber artist, and my interior anguish was mirrored in my business. Life was a series of highs and lows, and somehow even the highs ended in suffering.

Throughout this journey, I sought tools and practices that would make my clients and me whole. I studied the work of Carol Jung and Arnie Mindell. I trained as a professional coach and incorporated somatic intelligence (body smarts) and Ken Wilber’s Integral theory and methodology into coaching. Nothing holds a candle to The Work when it comes to undoing the stressful thoughts that keep us from each other and ourselves.

Before The Work I often felt as though I were my own worst enemy. Today I can find that I am my own best friend. I would love that every man and woman would experience this sweetness.