This isn’t the standard way to write a book description, but let me take a minute to be straight with you: writing a memoir was never a part of my plans. While when men plan, God laughs, I think when women plan, God shudders. Why? Well, it seems that we women have a special gift for learning our lessons the hard way. And being the overachiever that I am, I have, at times, signed up for the hardest crash courses on life.

For the most part, you will find within these pages a bunch of stories with many, MANY, instances of precisely this: me, not knowing what the hell I was doing. It cost me a lot. From battling religious conditioning with naivete to escaping horrors with my life as the price, you will come face-to-face with my skeletons and demons—and, maybe, even yours. But, if you can join me in this analysis of Past-Me through those sometimes painful, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes dangerous stories of how I became who I am today, you’ll realize that in some ways, even when I didn’t know what I was doing, I had planted seeds.

This memoir is the harvest I never knew pain could produce. I believe I’ve found a thread that connects it all, even every crisis hidden within the darkest moments of our memories. It’s provocative (maybe even a bit controversial). It’s honest (embarrassingly so, at times). And, it’s somewhat spiritual (even if you aren’t). I call it Worship.