I somehow made it back home, but besides that physical presence in the passenger seat next to me, I don’t remember anything else about the car ride. I was in complete shock. I had never realized it before, but I am now fully convinced that shock is a survival mechanism created by God. It’s a way that we don’t have to experience something terrible all at once, because I think if we did, there’s a good chance we would just die. At least that’s how I felt. I think part of me was thinking this was just a horrible, horrible…

Up until this point in my life, I thought I had a pretty strong relationship with God. Allow me to backup and briefly tell you about my faith journey. I think I already told you that we grew up in a Lutheran Church. If not, here it is: we grew up in a Lutheran Church. I apologize if any of this is repetitive, but I want you all to have the complete picture. We went to church every single Sunday. Every. Single. Sunday. I do not recall a single Sunday that we did not go to church, except for maybe…

It was the perfect plan. I had a whole $35 on a Target gift card that Thomas would never know about. Each day, I’d go buy a $5 bottle of wine, and I’d drink it before he got home from work, and disposed of the bottle in a trash can down the street. It was my last hoo-rah. I knew I couldn’t keep living like this. My plan was to buy 1 bottle a day for 7 days, and after that, I’d be done. Forever. Or at least for now. Monday, July 15th, was the last day of the gift…

I spent 3 weeks abstaining from alcohol and treating my self-diagnosed, non-existent co-dependency problem. After going 3 weeks without a sip of alcohol, I decided I clearly did NOT have a drinking problem. I went a whole THREE weeks without drinking. And I did it all on my own. No rehab. No AA. It was all me. I also decided that Thomas was NOT going to continue to control my drinking. He wasn’t going to tell me what to do. HE was the real problem. We’d have to have a long conversation about all of this soon, but first, I…

I don’t remember the details. All I remember is that one minute Thomas saw the glass on the curb, and the next minute we were both inside. Thomas was going from one closet to the next, inspecting every little nook and cranny, pulling out empty bottles of wine left and right. It was a complete nightmare. My deepest, darkest secret, the secret I hid so well for so long, now completely exposed. I felt my whole life shattering, just like the wine bottles shattering on the curb. Why didn’t I do a better job cleaning up the glass? I thought…

We weren’t able to move back to my hometown, but Thomas’s company agreed to move us back to the Carolinas. We ended up living about 3 hours away from my parents, which actually wasn’t too bad. It was an easy car ride, and it was even possible to make a daytrip out of it if necessary. Luckily, I didn’t ever have much time or motivation to make that drive, because if I had, there’s a good chance I would have been drunk while doing it. But I still felt better being close to family if I ever needed help. Again,…

The time came for me to pack up all of my belongings from my parent’s house (and dispose of the remaining empty bottles and boxes) and drive down to Florida. Thomas and I had talked every day while he was in Florida, and I remembered about half of those conversations. Our marriage was pretty rocky. I should mention that before he moved down to Florida, there was an incident with TJ. To this day, I don’t really know what happened. I had been drinking, and it came time to go upstairs and put TJ to bed. He was still sleeping…

Up until now, I had been able to manage life’s circumstances relatively well, and I did an even better job hiding the parts of me that weren’t managing. What I expected to be one of the best events of my life – the birth of my first child – had become something quite different. I initially thought it was just the post-partum hormones combined with a lack of sleep. I was crying constantly. I was anxious. That darkness that descended on me when I got home from the hospital continued to linger. What I didn’t realize was I had post-partum…

It had been a few months since I graduated from college. I had no job, no place to live, and I was forced to move back in with my parents. This was not supposed to be Grace the Great’s life. Grace the Great was smart and successful. She had plans to be the best of the best. She was going to make a lot of money and leave her broken childhood behind. Living at home was probably the worst thing for me at this point in my life. It was a constant reminder of how awful my past was, and…

*Parts 1-5 are available under the Story tab on the blog. For much of my life, I never really had “close” girlfriends. I was always in the “popular” crowd, and I had several friends who I’d hang out with, but I was never the leader of the group, and I always kind of felt like my girlfriends I did have didn’t care much whether we were friends or not. I think much of that had to do with I typically had serious, long-term boyfriends. My boyfriend during much of high school was a great guy. We were together from my…