Inspired by popular television shows such as “Fixer Upper,” “Property Brothers,” “Flip or Flop,” and other programs featuring home remodels and makeovers, author Hope Andersen sought to answer the question, “How does one remodel a life?” After all, it was her own “remodel” that rejuvenated––and ultimately saved––her own life.
Just in time for Mental Health Awareness Month, Andersen has released her self-help memoir, How to Remodel a Life: A Guide to Living Well with Alcoholism and Bipolar Disorder, published by Charlotte-based PipeVine Press, an imprint of Warren Publishing. With honesty and poignance, Andersen shares how she learned to live a happier and more peaceful life despite her illnesses, and the many struggles and pitfalls she faced in order to get there.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her forties, though having lived through its effects since childhood, Andersen struggled for years to find inner peace. Her journey led her to alcoholism, pills, sexual promiscuity, turbulent and abusive relationships, and the brink of suicide. While getting sober in her mid-twenties improved her life greatly, she was still subject to despair. But it was her husband’s own brush with death as they entered their sixties that opened her eyes, allowing her to begin life anew.
Writes Andersen, “At the onset of [a life] ‘remodel,’ you’ve gotten to a point where you simply can’t take it anymore. You can’t keep going the way you have been going … but you can’t stop either. Beautiful desperation. That’s the beginning.”
For Andersen, that “desperation” point arrived in 2015 when she learned that her husband Thom, who had been diagnosed with stage four liver cancer several years prior, had just three months left to live. “Two weeks later, as a result of nothing short of a miracle, he received a new liver, ‘preowned,’ as he likes to say,” explains Andersen. Since then, Thom has become a personal trainer and Hope, a novelist, poet, and now memoirist.
“When you remodel a home, you must reach the point where the old structure simply does not fit your needs anymore. In rehabbing a life, the same is true. The first step to changing your life is recognizing that your old way of being is seriously flawed, non-functioning; you need help from someone, somewhere to create this new version of yourself,” Andersen continues. It is her wish that this book might be that help, the gentle push, and––yes––the hope that encourages others to turn their lives around for the better. Written with honesty, poignance, and a touch of wit, this powerful and courageous tale serves as a guide for anyone looking to experience more joy and peace in their lives.
About Hope Andersen:
Hope Andersen is an author, poet, blogger, screenwriter and coach. Since her return to writing in 2015, she has published two novels, The Book Sisters and When the Moon Winks, and awaits the release of a third titled Paperwhites. Her poems have appeared in a chapbook, Taking in Air (Kelsey Books, 2017), and in a variety of journals, including Ink&Nebula, The Pangolin Review, The Literary Yard, Time of Singing, and The Awakenings Review. In the summer of 2019, she was asked to share her work at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in Ledbury, England. She was commissioned to write two screenplays and began her own online coaching business for writers. She lives in North Carolina with her husband of more than thirty years, Thom. They have three grown children, two dogs, and a cat. For more information about Hope or her books, visit her website at hopeandersen.org.
Available at warrenpublishing.net, amazo
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