Today I have an excerpt for you for the book Transition by Jo Huey.
Blurb
An autobiography of Jo’s life from the trauma and unpredictability of living in an alcoholic home, through self-development transformation to the more content, happy and successful business woman she is today.
Jo shares her many insights into alcoholism and the effects on the family. An honest and brutal account of Jo’s experience with her father’s addiction to alcohol, she shares the highs and lows of life with an absent father and busy mother.
After life hit an all-time low in adulthood she decided to turn her life around and start a journey of self-discovery. Jo transformed herself through therapy, self-help books, groups, events and more which she shares in the book.
If you have experienced the challenges of living with someone’s drinking, then you’ll relate to Jo’s experience and feel the connection with her story.
If you are interested in an inspirational and motivational story, then you won’t be disappointed. Within the book, Jo shares several techniques you’ll be able to learn and use in your life if you really want the change you seek.
Jo Huey is an inspirational & motivational speaker, coach and author.
Jo gets up every morning wanting to help those with experiences like hers, those affected by someone’s drinking. She connects the dots to form a new picture using practical tools & techniques with the aim that they would genuinely feel better about themselves and live a calmer and chaos free life.
Excerpt
Living in such an unpredictable environment made it necessary for Daisy and me to be independent and know the practical things, because we ended up having to support Mum every day. My dad was not present in more ways than one. That meant we had to be responsible at an early age and help around the house and do chores.
Mum wasn’t the strongest of characters and struggled to stand up to my dad because he was quite intimidating, I didn’t really understand at the time why she wouldn’t speak up and felt very let down by her. I needed her to protect me and stand up to my dad when I wanted to go to a school event or have friends over, but she didn’t feel comfortable doing it a lot of the time so we ended up missing out on things.
A lot of the time Mum was very busy managing the house, students, working and raising Daisy and I so time was a limited resource to her. I really felt deprived of attention because Dad wasn’t there and Mum was too busy. I understand that she had a lot on her plate but at the time I just wanted her to be available more.
Because of some of the situations that occurred at home I felt that as a parent my mum was the one to fight my corner as it were, unfortunately this wasn’t something she found very easy to do. I’m a strong person and have really struggled to get my head around this. I have a whole lot of expectation and morals about how a parent should behave and treat their children and I guess that is very idealistic and we are all imperfect.
With my feelings of anger, sadness and hurt I punished my mum for most of my life. I think a lot of these emotions were misdirected at her instead of my dad. What I never appreciated until very recently was that she too was a victim. When I realised this, I cried so hard my tummy hurt, I hadn’t cried like that in a long time but I just felt such guilt for being so horrible to her. I will go into more details later in the book as to why I had such strong feelings about my mum.
About The Author
Jo is an inspirational speaker, coach and author. She is also an adult child of an alcoholic and shares her personal story of living with an alcoholic father for 16 years and how that has impacted her adult life.
Jo is brutally honest about her experience, explaining how she coped as a child in an alcoholic home and the self-development journey she took in her twenties to overcome the trauma.
If you’ve experienced the impact of living with a heavy drinker, someone’s addiction or mental health problem you’ll relate to Jo’s story. For those of you that haven’t experienced what an alcoholic home brings it will give you an insight into the damage it causes to the family.
Jo shares her story for two reasons, the first is to connect with those that have been affected so they know they aren’t alone and the second to educate and inform others about this very hidden problem.
Purchase Link: Transition by Jo Huey
Thanks for reading
Emma-Louise x
Read, Write, Inspire 