Alcoholic finds Christ and her writing vocation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEfMfs5qFQ

Heather King, who lives in LA and is a Catholic, tells her story of addiction and compulsion to coming to sobriety and joy, and then her vocation, writing. I found her reading her blog, which included this video. Funny, inspiring and entertaining.  You'll love this. I learned so much--and enjoyed her talk thoroughly.

"I'm an ex-barfly Catholic convert and I'm proud. I write, speak, give retreats, edit, and clean bathrooms.

Look for my monthly column, "Credible Witnesses," in MAGNIFICAT; and "The Crux," my weekly column on arts and culture in TIDINGS, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of L.A.

My heroes are Flannery O'Connor ("The writer has no rights except those he forges for himself within his own work”) and the late comic Bill Hicks ("Play from your F-ING heart!")."

Poor Baby, her book (essay) about abortion, available on Amazon.

" I came of age during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. I’m a former waitress, an ex-lawyer, a sober barfly, a Catholic convert, and a self-supporting writer. I’ve been financially independent all my life. But I’ve never much been able to reduce the mystical to the political. I’ve never been much moved to call myself a feminist. The feminists had said that sleeping around would be empowering. The feminists had maintained that “choosing” would make me free. The feminists had asserted that there’d be no repercussions. The feminists had been wrong. That I’m for life—and against abortion, war, the prison industry, capital punishment, and the destruction of all that is most precious in us and the people around us—is a given. That I’m for life is why I suffered, in silence, in guilt, in sorrow, for over twenty years. Even women, who will talk about anything, don’t talk about abortion. But I do, in this 10,000-word essay that I hope might open the door to a new way of thinking about and talking about this difficult subject. Because abortion is not a political issue; abortion is a mystical issue. Abortion is a matter of emotional and spiritual poverty, of what we inherit from our parents and what we pass on to our children, of what we absorb from a culture that is saturated with violence. As Dostoevsky observed: “Love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” "Poor Baby" is the tragicomic story of a harsh and dreadful thing. May it shed some light on our collective yearning for love. NOTE: POOR BABY is a 54-page essay, not a full-length book."

http://shirtofflame.blogspot.com/p/books.html