On October 14, 2020 I entered Rehab for the first and last time as a client. I made a promise to myself never to return as a patient; but come back as a Speaker to share what the experience did for me. While in Santa Monica for 90 days at an all women’s facility, a Counsel asked all the women in December the following question: “If you had NOTHING standing in your way, what will you accomplish by this time next year?” This was a pop question, with no time to think that prompted the True Desires to surface. One by one we all answered something so impossible, so far away, a dream hidden underneath layers of pain, remorse, regret, shame, fear, and blinding rage from years of drinking hard liquor. My answer was, “I will be a published writer by next December.”
In December 2021, I published a 20 year old story I made up for my than, 4 year daughter Isabella Moana. Name of the book is, Pick Me. It’s on Amazon. It was the weirdest humbling feeling to have co-workers buy the book and ask me to sign it for their children or grand-children. And even more humbling when Samoan kids handed me their book and asked if I could sign it. I think I went to the restroom and cried. Because I remembered rehab, and the women I met along the way.
The following year 2022, I started a YouTube video: EZ336. It stands for Ezekiel chapter 33, vs 6: The Watchman on the Tower that sees danger approaching and Sounds the Alarm. I read Ezekiel in Rehab and that verse showed up again the following year.
August 2024 - Started Substack blogging (Thank you for tuning in ☺)
December 2024 - Second children’s book
February 2025 - Third children’s books
Lastly, I kept my word and returned to an All women’s Rehab center in Dec 2021, after 1 year of sobriety; to share my story of hope to other women that were sitting in my seat only 365 days earlier…
If you have a flashlight and know The WAY out of a dark hopeless state of mind? Then by all means, turn on the light and lead the way back Life.
Live in the moment. That’s the present (gift).
Adventures in Rehab: Rage & Other Character Defects