Stepping Out of It All: A Guide to Recovery from Everything

By Christine J. Allen

Stepping Out of It All - A Guide to Recovery from Everything is a book designed to help you to work through the internal and external things that get in the way of successful living. It is a quasi-autobiography that highlights the challenges of a woman who found an effective approach to identify and recover from many of her persona

• Language: English
• Publisher: GoldTouch Press, LLC
• Release date: Oct 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956803129

Christine J. Allen

Christine Allen is a New York City Baby Boomer, born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens. She is an exemplary product of the NYC public school systems - from elementary to high school to graduate studies at The City University of New York colleges. After decades of service to New York City, Christine continues to serve as an Educator, Mental Health practitioner, Family Recovery Counselor, Therapist, Life Coach, Business Consultant and CEO of two businesses. Although she has had many challenges, Christine has been successful at demonstrating the powerful influence that recovery can offer. As a divorced woman of a certain age, Christine has experienced life at its very worst. And yet, she worked through every situation using recovery principles and a spiritual foundation to overcome them. Christine's life work has been to empower, inspire, encourage and support others in their efforts to recover --- from everything. This book is her effort to do just that...

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Stepping Out of It All

A Guide to Recovery from Everything…

Christine J. Allen

Copyright © 2021 by Christine J. Allen.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2021920331

HARDBACK:    978-1-956803-11-2

Paperback:    978-1-956803-10-5

eBook:            978-1-956803-12-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Dedicated To My Mother

Foreword

What Had Happened Was…

How I Got To Here…

What Happened Next Was…

How The Transformation Began…

The Twelve Steps Of Recovery

How Spiritual Principles Transformed Me

After Thought….

Another Thought….

Almost Final Thought…

Final Thought…

Dedicated To My Mother

Mommy --- I never thought that I could become who I am, that I’d think like I think, or have the unbelievable ability to do what I do. I never would have made it without you – without your unconditional love, faith, support, encouragement and inspiration. You inspired me to just be me. I am who I am because you believed...

This book is dedicated to my mother, Juanita, who was, by far, my biggest fan and perpetual supporter. She genuinely loved me far more than I could love myself, consistently told me that I could do anything that I put my mind to, and took great care of me until the day she died. My Mom believed I was exceptionally talented, beautiful, extraordinary, brilliant, special and amazing – long before I believed in my own gifts, talents, and abilities. Because of her belief in me, I have learned to be confident in my ability to be all that I was destined to be. I am blessed with virtuous character, integrity, substance, vision, and purpose. I am a woman of indescribable strength, fortitude, tenacity and power. I am enough! I am more than enough! I believe I am so much more today than I ever imagined I would be! Thank you for your guidance, for all of the needed care, and for loving me in ways that only a mother could.

And God, thank you for Your Love, Your limitless Grace and unending mercy that continues to cover me. Thank you for ordering my steps according to your will and purpose for my life. Thank you for helping me to see your hand in everything I do. Thank you for all that you have done and will do for me. This book is a reality because of God’s amazing grace and limitless favor…..

"Make the most of yourself.

For that is all there is of you."

--- Emerson

Foreword

I have put together all the information that I believe could serve as a basic guide to sort through some of the things that stand in the way of your potential greatness. I assure you, this book will help you in ways that you cannot imagine in this moment. What I have written has certainly helped me….

I wrote this book because I felt compelled to tell my story. I genuinely want to help others. And it makes no sense to have learned all that I learned on this incredible journey called Life, only to keep those insights and lessons all to myself. I began this work in 2008, a year after my mother passed away. I was not inspired to write again until New Year’s Day of 2011, right after the tragic death of a struggling superstar. In 2012, I was motivated to finish what I started. And now, in 2021, I am revising this book to share new insights, new revelations, new awakenings, and inspiring moments that changed my life.

I’ve been so many different versions of myself – The Teenaged Me, The Me of my Twenties, of my Thirties, of my Forties, of my Fifties, and now, the 60-something version of myself. It’s crazy because after all these years, right now, I am the best version of myself that I’ve ever been. I am becoming more compassionate, loving, confident, valuable, valued, self-determined, and more self-assured. I am becoming the version of woman that I always wanted to be, but didn’t quite know how to be, or maybe was just too afraid to step out and be that. That’s just not my story today….

I have gone through quite a lot in my life, and have had a wide range of thoughts, ideas about life, about people, places, things; reasons, rationales, assumptions, conjectures about life. And now, at this time in my life, I have experienced a miraculous transformation of my personal views, of my beliefs, my values, my perception, my perspective, and my overall philosophy about life. My vision has changed. My self-image has changed. My perception has changed. What I believe in and how I believe about myself has changed. And change just keeps happening. Maybe because I’m open to it or maybe because the season to change has come. I just know that everything that concerns me has changed. And sometimes, the changes have occurred without my permission. At other times, I made a conscious decision to do something different that caused the change to happen. But, every thing that changed was necessary. And despite my resistance to change, today I am learning to accept and embrace change as it comes. I do so, mainly, because it is less painful to accept and embrace it than it is to resist the inevitability of it. Yup….

---

In my life, I have self-loathed and self-loved. I have had a sense of superiority and felt deep-rooted inferiority as a result of the recurring conflict with my unpredictable ego and an unbalanced sense of self-esteem. I’ve had times when I valued no thing, and have experienced instances when I’ve felt genuinely grateful for everything. At times, I’ve felt hopeless and suicidal. At times, I’ve had deep rage and felt disturbingly homicidal. Sometimes, I felt both of those things at the same time. I have come to know that I am not alone with these feelings…

I have been absurdly self-righteous, blinded by ego and a grand sense of self. I’ve been, consequently, humbled by my ego and the excessive levels of pride and arrogance. I’ve accepted the unacceptable because I didn’t feel enough self-worth to not accept it. I have loved and lost. I’ve been lost by that kind of loss and was left with no one to love but me. And I didn’t….

I have been removed from life-threatening circumstances, and have been miraculously resurrected like a Phoenix from the dust. More than once…. I’ve felt low and desperate, and could not see a way out. I’ve heard a quiet voice in the midst of my desperation, and acted as if it was not a message specifically designed for me. I’ve ignored things I knew were presented to gain my attention. I’ve been deeply hurt by some unexpected life situations. Deeply saddening disappointments that could have broken me. And I did wonder, in anguish, why God would allow these things to happen to me. Yet now, I appreciate every one of those experiences because they shaped me, changed me, redirected and recalibrated me. Those things made me who I am today. I am grateful to have learned what I learned from those life lessons. Grateful, in retrospect, to have gotten to a place where I embrace even the not-so-nice experiences --- just for what they were and for what they meant to my personal development. Now, I recognize fully that my present life is the sum total of all those moments: the well-thought out and the irrational choices; the hurts, the fears, the failures, and the successes; every tear, every pain, every joy, every victory, every thought, every decision that I’ve made. I learned that it was all necessary. I have learned to embrace it all.

It was all good. It is all good….

And with all of my lived experience, after all of the life-changing situations that I went through, just when I thought that my life had taken all the turns that it could, another change happened: The COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020! I started to look at my life with a spiritual microscope. My God!!! What had I done with my life? What had I actually done with all of the years that had passed? I began to recognize, through a changed lens that was altered by the reality of my own mortality, that my time, my life was getting shorter -- by the minute. I experienced a pronounced, very overwhelming fear that I was getting closer to my end. I recognized that I’d wasted so much time, obsessing over and being consumed by ridiculous, inconsequential nonsense. I had overlooked some very important moments, missed some things that I should have been paying attention to and didn’t. I had focused so much time and energy on things that really didn’t matter. Well, things that no longer mattered in the context of a global pandemic. I don’t know when I lost my focus and went off track, but I knew that it was time to get my life in order. I began to think about the end-game: How much more time did I have? How long would I