Overview

Shifting Winds reads like a novel but it is a real-life story about one couples' journey down the PATH of alcoholism. The author, Kym Rupeiks, shares her personal story of being married to an alcoholic, giving the readers the understanding that they can empower themselves to live with, or detach with love from, an alcoholic. Through Kym's raw and impactful life stories, the reader will peer into two lives ravaged by alcoholism and understand the changes in behaviors of the alcoholic and the family member as the addiction progresses. The book starts at the end of a thirty-nine-year relationship, showing what happens inside one (mental and physical) who becomes addicted, and then steps back to examine how the addiction started and how events in life can help shape the addiction. The author creatively turns the investigation of understanding alcoholism into a lesson of personal awareness, taking the reader down a PATH of understanding partnership, anger, tolerance and healing. What Kym interweaves throughout the pages of Shifting Winds will significantly impact not only the lives of numerous family members and partners of alcoholics or those with other addictions, but those who themselves suffer with addictive behaviors as well.

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9781737588306

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Reviews

Kym bared her soul in this powerful book about her life with an alcoholic. While trying to help her husband quit drinking, she actually ended up enabling him. Kym suffered physical and emotional abuse during her long marriage, and successfully hid it from friends and relatives because she felt shame! Her husband ended in the ICU of the local hospital, and Kym alternates writing about visiting him there and what brought him there. She injects humor into a serious situation with some of her chapters (eg, Wipe Your Own Ass). This book is a must-read for anyone who lives with an addict. The advice Kym offers is built on a strong foundation from support groups and her own experience. - Judy Eddy, editor Shifting Winds is a deeply inspiring journey of courage that infuses realism, struggle, pain, and introspection while gifting hope, healing, and practical insight. Courageously raw and impactful. A healing vehicle for those living with addicts and addicts themselves. - Stephen Panebianco, MD In this book the author, Kym Rupeiks, offers a concise, easy-to-read, sensitive and informative approach to the difficult and societally prevalent issue of coping with an alcoholic spouse, who also was abusive. Rupeiks-in her fascinating debut novel-writes in a novel-like style that keeps you reading until you'll find you're hard pressed to put it down. It's great as an educational tool and also gives sharp insight for those who have endured the same issues as well as those who have not and would a window into the psyche of this dynamic. - Melanie H, journalist Shifting Winds uses an alcoholic's visit to the ICU as a lantern to reveal the choices that were always there, yet seemed hidden in real time, obscured by the storm clouds of false hope that dominate relationships affected by addiction. Kym Rupeiks carries that lantern through time, staying within its light so she can see her part in the gradual loss of self that is the usual outcome of remaining in a relationship with an active alcoholic/addict. She shares the concepts she learned later for codependency recovery and shows the reader the mistakes she made throughout the years as her husband's disease worsened. Anybody with a partner, family member or close friend in the grip of addiction knows well the deep emotional swings that accompany this loss of self. The alcoholic/addict's promises to change during periods of sobriety keep us hooked on hope. The delusional beliefs that we can somehow heal the addict or, worse, that our own behaviors are somehow the reason why the addict drinks or uses drugs can lead us to our own addictions, and sometimes lead us to the grave. Kym offers Shifting Winds as both lantern and roadmap for navigating one's PATH through one of the most difficult and heartbreaking life situations we can encounter in our lives. - Kai L, reader

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