PROLOGUE

Jamie took her first drink a few weeks after she turned 14.

By the time she was 18, she was a full-blown alcoholic.

Over the next 12 years, Jamie descended into the consuming hell of addiction. She suffered beatings, broken bones, blackouts, a violent rape, DWI arrests, hospitalizations, a broken heart, a shattered life.

At 31, after multiple attempts, Jamie finally got clean. She went back to school. She became a mother. Now, she is an addiction counselor. The price that Jamie paid for her high was exorbitant, parts of it almost unspeakable.

It's not a pretty story.

We are telling the story as a conversation occurring for the first time. It is a story told in the voices of a family of three sober adults who have been through hell and back.

This conversation was not able to happen during the years that Jamie was lost. It didn?t happen because it couldn?t happen. Addiction has a way of shutting down every meaningful attempt at real connections. It has a way of isolating people in their pain. It has a way of amplifying the fears of the people involved. It whispers the threat of what can happen if the secret is revealed.

We are sharing this conversation because it offers a new perspective. The roles that a mother, father, and daughter played in the addiction. We share how we each coped with the pain, the fear, and ultimately chose to hold love, hope and forgiveness in our hearts.

This story, as hard as it is to tell, is our way of sharing what we have learned about the power of belief. We have written it so that people who are living in the web of addiction will hear a voice that inspires, encourages and offers an antidote to fear.