TRUST YOURSELF TO BE ALL IN

The loss of her beloved brother to a drug overdose sets a woman on a deeper quest for spiritual and emotional health in this memoir and self-help guide.

In 2018, Flanagan had been in recovery from alcoholism for more than a decade when she received a devastating phone call: “My childhood idol, my first friend, my brother, had died at forty-one years old after a twenty-five-year hell-ride with addiction.” This nearly unbearable loss became the catalyst for Flanagan’s rigorous pursuit of spiritual and emotional healing from past traumas, which also involved a reevaluation of her marriage: “I was not happy and hadn’t been for years. It was time to look behind the heavy curtain and face these disquieting emotions.” The author takes readers along on a tour of healing modalities, interspersing accounts of life events among descriptions of personal philosophy and deepening spirituality. She identifies herself as a member of multiple 12-step programs; beyond staying sober, she says that she wanted to be freed from “generational dysfunction” and “faulty thinking patterns” handed down by family members. For example, she realized that it’s unwise to hold off on loving someone fully just to prevent the pain of loss. Flanagan quotes Buddhist philosophies and Christian prayers, and music also plays a big part in her process, especially that of the band Pearl Jam, whom she first saw perform at 16, accompanied by her brother. Over the course of this work, the author’s writing style is often vibrant: “The waves crashing at the shore I sat at hundreds of times before now had a heartbeat. The rushing wind whistled with spirit.” However, it also relies on clichés at times (“Desperate times call for desperate measures”), and the timeline can get confusing. That said, she effectively stresses the value of working with therapists, writing in journals, and pursuing meditation throughout the book, and she goes into specific detail while doing so. She also describes how she and her husband, who suffers from PTSD, pursue wellness through eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and rapid resolution therapy.

A thoughtful but unevenly executed account of a search for wholeness.