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From Hell to Heaven shares many essential themes woven around the life and trials of one courageous woman, Linda, a young child born in the Midwest, and then thrust from country-to-country during war times in a military family. She, from the very young age of 12, learns a destructive coping skill that many of us may know—using alcohol to attempt to feel normal and numb her pain. This was only a gateway. As she then, at age 17 discovered something that could take her even further from the pain, heroin. As you can imagine, this took her to a deeply dark place along her life path which you might even call hell. Using promiscuity, opiates, lying, and other means to also numb the pain and find a way out, she came to the threshold between life and death multiple times.

Linda hit rock bottom at the age of 25 when she found herself working at a pharmacy where she could easily fortify her drug intake by stealing pharmaceutical drugs when no one was looking. But one morning when there was no moment to make her usual steal, she began unraveling. Since she’d been in and out of outpatient drug therapy, psych wards, and had now racked up two suicide attempts, something inside her said: make a phone call. Shaking from the withdrawal symptoms, she thumbed through the phone book to find the number for ADCO, the last outpatient facility she’d been to, and dialed the number. On the other end of the line someone from Alcoholics Anonymous answered. She’d never heard of AA, but for some reason stayed on the phone with this person who invited her to leave her number so someone from the program could call her. Someone did call, and then took her to her first meeting. This changed the whole trajectory of her life…the next 40+ years, 20 of which are explored in great depth in the 16 chapters of this book through flashing back to life circumstances that have shaped who she is today.

Linda takes us, step-by-step through the exploration of what sets someone up to be predisposed to alcoholism/addiction, and the journey to recovery. We witness Linda’s journey to wholeness, including shifting family dynamics over her lifetime. An overarching theme is self-awareness—getting to know ourselves more intimately. We also get a chance to witness the value of community support when one is in a deeply transformational process. Each chapter allows a new character in Linda’s life to emerge onto the pages and be celebrated for their unique part in helping bring her across the threshold of healing and recovery. Beyond recovery. 

Linda’s memoir takes us along a journey from hell to heaven, where we get to…

• experience the power of choice at the threshold of death,
• feel the intensity of emotions rather than numbing them,
• find our essence underneath our familial and cultural conditioning,
• learn to shift our perception from outside-in (cultural and familial influences) to inside-out (awareness, intuition, and Spirit),
• re-evaluate the American Dream,
• relax into the grace that is always at play in our lives,
• reframe life’s struggles as gifts that we get to learn and grow from,
• deepen our understanding of the science of addiction,
• witness the depth of forgiving ourselves and others,
• embrace our humanness, and
• experience hope for what is possible, beyond recovery.

Linda’s reflections at the end of each chapter, called Lessons & Blessings, helps us find the essential nature of countless seemingly dark experiences. We wouldn’t be who we are without them. She even goes so far as to say that she would do it all again exactly the same way, because the lessons and blessings she’s learned along the way have far outweighed any of the perceived pain that was experienced during the addiction years.