From Alcoholism and Codependency to Wholeness: The Story Behind My Memoir and Healing journey

Free Recover Your Soul Mini Workbook 🦋 www.recoveryoursoul.net/whatisrecoveryoursoul

Something really big is happening.

After more than a year of dedication, vulnerability, late nights, self-doubt, and some of the most profound healing I have ever done, my memoir is almost here. Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Journey of Healing from Addiction, Codependency, and People Pleasing releases on April 13th, 2026. And this weekend, I held the paperback copy in my hands for the first time and I was elated and excited to have it come to life and share with the world.

I cried. Of course I cried.

And then I started reading it that night and every limiting belief, every fear, every old story about not being enough, not being worthy, not deserving to be seen, came rushing right back up to meet me. Which, honestly, felt like the most perfect reminder that this work never really ends. It just gets deeper. And more beautiful.

In this episode I'm pulling back the curtain on the journey behind this book — what it took to write it, what it brought up in me, and why I made the choices I made about how to tell this story. Because this memoir is not a tell-all. It is not a detailed account of every painful moment. It is something I believe is far more important than that.

It is an invitation. To you. To remember your own wholeness.

Because here is what I know with everything I am. This book is not about me. It was never about me. It is about you finding yourself in these pages. It is about you hearing something that reminds you of what you already know. It is about that small, steady voice within you, the one that has always been there — finally getting a little louder.

The book releases April 13th on Amazon in Paper Back and Kindle. Join the inner circle  www.recoveryoursoulbook.com

The Recovery Your Soul Podcast courses and content is for educational purposes only and is not affiliated with or representative of any organization, recovery group, or religion. And reflect the personal experience and opinions of Rev Rachel Harrison and her guests. RYS claims no responsibility, any person or entity for any loss, liability, damage caused or alleged to be caused, direct or indirectly by the use application or interpretation of the information presented within. 

Transcript

A Voice That Remembers Wholeness

Rev Rachel Harrison 0:00

There is a voice within you that knows and remembers your wholeness. No matter how lost you feel, how broken your life seems, or how impossible the pain appears, there's still a small voice that whispers the truth your soul has always known. You are not here to be small. You are not here to drown in suffering. You are here to remember who you truly are and shine that light into the world. Those are the first few lines out of my upcoming book, Recover Your Soul, a spiritual journey of healing from addiction, codependency, and people pleasing, that comes out April 13th, 2026. And today's episode talks about uh how this book came about and the opportunities that it gave me to really see my life and rewriting the story as part of the Recover Your Soul process, to take what we've been through and then to rewrite it from our soul's hero's journey and not from our wounded victim place. And although at times it was very difficult to go back and go back into those stories, I knew that sharing them with you really was not just sharing my story. It was sharing our story, our story of healing and awakening. Enjoy the episode.

The Book is coming! And Why Now

Rev Rachel Harrison 1:14

Welcome to the Recover Your Soul podcast and community, a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover Your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency, people pleasing, and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and the recover your soul process to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our interchange and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recover Your Soul Podcast. I'm Rep Rachel. It's kind of a big time in my life right now. Something really exciting is happening, which is that after really over a year of dedication in writing my memoir, spiritual journey of my own healing from addiction, codependency, and people pleasing. The book is going to be coming out on April 13th. And this weekend I received my first hard proof of it. The softback copy came in Amazon. And for those of you on video, you're seeing it right now. And uh it was it was a really big deal. You know, it was a really big deal. And it's terrifying and it's exciting, and it's brought up so many emotions around everything that I want to do for the world, everything that I feel so compelled and honored to be in your lives, first and foremost. And this journey that we're all on together and healing from our codependency, from our people pleasing, and stepping into our authentic selves,

Ego Death And The Need To Be Seen

Rev Rachel Harrison 3:00

finding ourselves. And also, it's an interesting journey. When you're in spirituality, one of the things that we're doing is we're stepping into our self in a way that is very different than who we were before. And at the same time, we're valuing everything that came before in an empowered, healed way. And at the same time, we're having an ego death. We're letting go of our attachment to ourself, to our identity, to who we think we need to be, to be loved and to be accepted. And all of those things swirl together at the same time. And we're being invited to be more shining lights than ever. And at the same time, we're being invited to be humble and to um let go of all of the posturing and the, you know, who am I? So, in the midst of all of that, here I've got this book that I want to promote, that I want to do well so that it can get out to more people. And to be honest, I think there's a part of me that wants it to do well so that it can validate everything that I've been through. And then I question myself around that wanting a validation. And the words that I got today in my journaling was that it's not about validation, it's about having people see me, you know, to be seen and witnessed, which is one of the limiting core beliefs that I had that I've been resolving is that I'm not worth seeing, that other people are more important than I am. So this healing process has so many layers to it, so many factions to it. And I think that part of what I know that we relate to in each other, and the reason why many of you that keep coming back is I'm still working it. I am not without my own struggles or my own fears. And at the same time, in reading the book, you know, I've been working on the manuscript for so long, so long, so long. There is something that's totally different about opening up a book and reading in a book, I'll tell you what. And reading in the book, it's so wild because it's like I'm reading somebody else in a way because it feels so foreign and so distant from the experience that I have in my life now compared to what it was just not that long ago. And what I'm hoping this book does on an energetic level is the same thing that I hope this podcast does on an energetic level. My goal and my purpose is to be of service. My goal and my purpose is to witness and see you, for you to remember your wholeness, for there to be something in the words that I say that give teeny tiny little reminders of what you know and feel about yourself already, that feel aligned and true and in the frequency of who you are, and that you are ready to shed all this old pain, but it doesn't dismiss the value of what we've been through because every single

Broad Brushstorytelling Versus Grit

Rev Rachel Harrison 6:10

situation that you've been through has been part of your soul's hero's journey about really being through very challenging, difficult times. And when I go through and I'm rereading the book and I'm witnessing the stories, and the way that this book is written is not like a tell-all um memoir. I love those, and I think there's a purpose for them. And if anybody's read Elizabeth Gilbert's Down to the River, which came out recently, which is phenomenal around codependency and addiction. And I think the voice that she has about speaking about codependency, as we are as addicted to people as people can be to drugs and alcohol or behaviors, that behavior, that codependency to people, you know, but man, she talks about it in a way that really brings it to life and has a really, really good handle on sex and love addiction that is really profound and I think is going to change people's lives. And she is a phenomenal writer in how she can pull you into the story and describe each of those moments, and you're in those moments. That's not the kind of writer that I am. You know me, you've heard me in the podcast. I'm a big brushstroke person. I am a big brushstroke artist in the way that I do art. This piece of art that's behind me, if you're on video, is something that I did. That's very Rachel. That is very Rachel right there. It's um, it's colors, it's um, it's wild, it's uh unexpected, it's not detailed. That's how I do my art and that's how I do my life, very broad stroke. So as I was reading the beginning of the book, and it's the you know, kind of laying out the history of Rich and I and the expectations and some of the hardships that went we went through and and kind of things where things started to fall off the rails. It's not detailed details. And part of me knows that some people are gonna want detail details. And actually, one of my beta readers, who's somebody really important to me, said, Oh, I want more grit in it. And I totally respected that opinion and I had to think about it a lot. Am I gonna completely rewrite this to go in and give the more gritty details of each of the experiences? And my answer was no, because I'm not writing my story, I'm writing our story. And part of what's happened in my recovery is that the intensity around story as a um pain point versus as a learning experience. Sometimes it's valuable to go and tell all the little details, but sometimes when we go tell all those little details, we slide back into some of that dense, painful. Um, this is what happened to me. And we can be very easily derailed from our empowered, embodied self who needs to tell the stories, to feel the feelings, to witness what was for us, and the part of us that kind of wants to get somebody to be on our side about how horrible it was or how painful it was from the part of us, and it's so hard to describe it. I'm being trying to be very cautious with the way that I describe it, because we have to validate how we feel. And each of us has a different way of doing that. So for some of you, you might be more of a fine brush stroke person, and it may mean that you have to go in and really relive some of those stories, the exactedness of the stories. And you can do that from that more uplifted, higher self-witnessing space. And that's really important. That's just not who I am. So as I was reading over the book again last night in this particular chapter, and I was thinking to myself, there's some gaps in there, you know, like it kind of

How The Book Was Created

Rev Rachel Harrison 10:15

jumps. The way that I wrote the book was mostly transcribing it first. Maddie Murray, who's my co-collaborator in this, is a person who I've worked with. That's how she came. She was a client, she was a podcast listener, she was a coaching client. She was having profound changes in her life. And she reached out on an email and said, I don't know if this is appropriate, but I have a company called My Ghost Writer, and I help authors, either in ghostwriting or in coaching, write a book. And I think you have a book in you. And I said, Oh, that's so interesting because I've been kind of working on a book. I actually started a book, but I'm completely overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to start. I don't know, it's not my skill set. Writing is not my skill set. And she said, I would love to collaborate with you if you would be interested. And I said, absolutely. So we've spent over the past year in her coaching me and collaborating with me. And she coached me on how to move things around and how to organize things thoroughly and to tell the story in a clean, clear way. And then after I had done all the transcripts and all of the editing and all of moving things around, she came in after me, which is what I, you know, she's she's not an editor, she's a collaborator. Because then she came after me and and sort of smoothed out some of the places that were a little rough, but she didn't take away from me because I'm a little bit of a broad brushstroke person. But the elements of the recover your soul process are the most important part to me because you've been listening to this podcast for now seven seasons. And on some level, almost all the stories that are in the book have been told on a variety of podcasts, but not in a linear format, which is why it's important to have them in the book. But the most important thing to me about the book is not that I go into detail about all of the minutiae of my woundedness and the stories of

The Recover Your Soul Process Benefits

Rev Rachel Harrison 12:20

my woundedness. The important part to me is that I share with you a process that profoundly changed how I lived in my body, that ended up saving my marriage, that has changed my relationship with my children, that has changed my relationship with my parents, that has changed the kind of friends that I have, the kind of way that I spend my time. And mostly it has changed how I feel in my body. That I no longer am in level nine anxiety every single day. I no longer am in depression. I no longer am killing myself with alcoholism. I no longer am killing myself with codependent behavior styles, and I no longer want to be out of my life. I'm very invested in being alive. I really want to be alive and I and I can be present in myself in a way that honors everything I've been through and has a detachment, a loving detachment of every person in the world that lets me love everything even more. And that's what I hope that you get by walking through the journey of the memoir. And at the same time, it's so interesting to um, and I'm just gonna touch on this again. I think I'm gonna read a little bit out of the introduction for today's episode. Everything that could have come up around all of my limiting beliefs, and every single one of the patterns, beliefs, and stories about not enoughness, rejection, not being loved, fear of being uh judged, fear of um being in trouble, fear of not being smart enough.

Reading The Introduction Aloud

Rev Rachel Harrison 14:00

Oh, all those things came up. Every, every single one of those aspects of myself has been up and being revealed to be healed on a deeper level while I've been doing this process. And yesterday I was so excited when I got the books, and there'll be a social media post with me opening up the book and seeing the book for the first time. And of course, I cried because you know me, I cry a lot. And I was so proud. And I took a book to my mom and she was so proud. And then I started reading it last night, and I was filled with doubt, and I was filled with fear, like, oh God, Rachel, what who do you think you are? And why are you bringing this out into the world? But you know what? I could see is I could see that part of myself that is still healing those parts that is scared to death of being rejected. But my higher self can come in and say, this isn't about you being somebody. This is about you helping people. This is about you reminding people of their wholeness that they too can walk onto a spiritual path of their understanding with the God of their understanding, with the wholeness of their understanding, with their soul's journey, and maybe, maybe a handful of people, maybe a thousand people, maybe a million people, but whoever it is that is able to find an element of themselves that awakens just a tiny bit from these words, from the energy that's in these stories, that's all that matters. It's not about me. And yes, there will be people who read the book and think it's not a very good book because, you know, in all honesty, it's not a top-level book. That's not what I do. I'm no Elizabeth Gilbert. I am Rachel Harrison. And writing is not my strong suit, but I wrote this book and I'm proud as hell of this book. I'm gonna read a little bit out of the introduction. And um I just I just thank you all for being here. I mean, this community means everything. And if I think about where I started in 2020, talking into my cell phone in a voice memo and just loading it up onto Buzz Sprout, which is a podcast platform, and you know, having 20 or 30 downloads per episode. And then when I started talking about detachment, it moved up to hundreds of downloads. And now I have thousands and thousands of downloads per episode. I am so honored to be in your life, and I'm honored that we're doing this together. Ooh, I'm no cry already. Because I think that the beauty of the technology that we have today is that there is more access for us to be in community in ways that we couldn't ever be before. So whether you're local or whether you're somewhere where there's not a lot of people, or maybe you're in a place where there's a lot of people, but they don't line up with how you resonate or what you feel. So you can feel really isolated and alone. There is a path for you. There is a community for you, and you can find it outside of your front steps. You can find it through this technology that we have. And it's about us raising our consciousness because our healing heals the world. Our healing heals the world. So I'm gonna read out of the introduction of Recover Your Soul, a spiritual journey of healing from addiction, codependency, and people pleasing by Reverend Rachel Harrison in collaboration with Maddie Murray. Introduction Remembering Who You Are. Awakening begins the moment you choose yourself, Rachel Harrison. There's a voice within you that knows and remembers your wholeness. No matter how lost you feel, how broken your life seems, or how impossible the pain appears, there's still a small voice that whispers the truth your soul has always known. You are not here to be small, you are not here to drown in suffering, you are here to remember who you truly are and to shine that light into the world. I know this voice exists because I almost lost it completely. For more than 20 years of my life, I was convinced that everybody else held the keys to my happiness. If my husband would just stop drinking, if my children would make better choices, if my family would be the way that I needed them to be, I could finally be okay. I was attempting to control what felt unmanageable. I became a masterful fixer, a professional people pleaser, and a codependent, and eventually an unhealthy alcoholic, all while desperately trying to save everyone around me from their pain. What I discovered when I finally surrendered to what I now call the recover your soul process was that everything I had spent years running from to my own inner awakening was the only path to freedom, peace, and joy I'd been seeking all along. So that's just one page of the book. I really hope that you see in yourself something in it because I think that as we come together and recognize the value of each of our stories and begin to see that we've all been through such intense challenges and a lot of really difficult moments. But instead of us seeing ourselves as victims or as broken or as not enough, we flip it and we use the recovery soul process, which begins to see, ah, I can live a different life by seeing myself and my world around me differently. And that's a power that I have. I'm gonna take my power back. So the book comes out April 13th. If you are interested in getting a preview

Taking Your Power Back

Rev Rachel Harrison 21:57

chapter, which I'm gonna be sending out soon, you can go to the recoveryoursoul.net website on the book page and sign up to be in the inner circle. We're gonna do some um launches, some book launches in person here in Colorado on April 17th, just prior to the April Recover Your Soul retreat, which is the 18th, 19th, which I'm super excited about having that retreat happen right when the book comes out. And then we're gonna do some online

Launch Plans And How To Join

Rev Rachel Harrison 22:27

book launches. And I'm hoping that um I can get the whole family on a Zoom so that you can ask all of us questions, uh, Alex, Bodhi, Rich, and myself. But I know I can for sure get Richard and I. So that will definitely happen, that kind of a thing. So I encourage you to get involved if you're interested in that by signing up on that email. I'll be sending out newsletters. I just want you to know that this is not for me, this is for you. And I am honored and blessed every single day to be here in this incredible community, but to be a leader, a teacher, a way shower, and a demonstrator of shining our light and in our wholeness. And I just thank you so much. And I'm really excited for what's to come. And I will be talking more about different parts of the book. And Rich and I are gonna do an episode together in the next couple of weeks as we lead up to the launch. So thank you so much. I love you all so much, and I am so grateful. Until next time, Namaste. Thank you for trusting me to be part of your journey to. Recover your soul and being part of this incredible community. There's so much going on, and I hope that you'll get involved. First, I want to invite you to our free first Monday of every month support group from 6 to 7 p.m.

Community Invitations And Ways To Support

Rev Rachel Harrison 23:47

Mount Time on Zoom. This is where we come together in community, meet in small groups, and connect on our recover your soul journey. I'm so excited to announce that on April 13th, the long-awaited Recover Your Soul memoir around my walking the steps that created the Recover Your Soul process and how it profoundly changed my life from codependence, addiction, people pleasing, an unhappy marriage, an unhappy life to what I am living today, peaceful, happy, and free. I also would love to invite you to join me for the Friday Recover Your Soul bonus podcast, where you get an additional episode taking a deeper dive into this amazing restorative process. You can become a Patreon member or an Apple Podcast subscriber to receive over 200 past episodes and get a new episode every Friday. Free members on Patreon have access to listen to new episodes for the first week. And of course, I'm on social media and I'd love to have you follow Recover Your Soul on Instagram and Facebook and even join the private RecoverYour Soul Facebook community. If you enjoy Rev Rachel's meditations, I encourage you to follow me on InsightTyber for an entire catalog of guided spiritual meditations. All of this, along with ways that you too can work the Recover Your Soul nine-step process to healing and awakening, can be found on the website recoveryoursoul.net. And lastly, thank you for sharing this podcast and community with any friends or family that you think it would support their spiritual journey to healing and awakening. And those five stars and great reviews help us spread the word and increase the algorithm so we can reach even more people. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.