Amanda, let’s start by talking about your book. TRUST YOURSELF TO BE ALL IN chronicles the loss of your brother to addiction and the radical transformation of what you call “The Great Myth.” What made you decide to go “all in” and write so bravely and candidly about your experience? And what is “The Great Myth?”
Writing this book wasn’t a decision so to speak. It was more of a compulsion. When my brother Jeremy died, I decided I didn’t love my 9/11 first responder, chronically ill husband. We began marriage counseling (and individual—me to treat my grief and my husband to treat his PTSD) and I learned that I had lived with a false story that says everyone leaves me or hurts me so I must protect my heart because pain is on the way. (This is The Great Myth.) After three years of healing through the 12-steps of recovery, individual and marriage counseling, Imago Relationship Therapy on our own during COVID, hours of deep meditation, and lots of time alone in nature, I admitted that my “I don’t love you” was really “I’m afraid you’re going to die.” I learned how to walk through the fear of future loss by trusting I will show up for myself no matter what pain is coming down the pike, and I knew I had to share this experience and healing with others. If I was feeling this way (and still do to a degree when my husband gets sick), then I know others are too. My friend says, “don’t waste the pain.” This book is my attempt to use the pain to help others, to turn pain into purpose.

Your book is different than a typical memoir in that it doesn’t follow a linear timeline. What made you decide to organize it out of sequence? (Which I love, by the way – the whole book feels like a conversation in a safe space with a close friend).
It didn’t begin as a memoir. It was more of a personal development book where I was teaching lessons through my own experience, so it didn’t require a timeline. However, my editor convinced me that my story is the most powerful tool I have to help others (it’s all about identification), and it morphed into an inspirational memoir. I almost feel like I created a new genre because it’s not straight memoir nor is it straight personal development/self-help, it’s both. Ultimately, the lessons are more important than my individual story, so to me, it wasn’t important in which order I told the reader about parts of my life. The lessons are chronological, not the story so much—the lessons sort of build on each other.

What truth do you hope your readers will replace “The Great Myth” with?
I hope readers will learn how to find comfort in all of their emotions, so they feel safe to be “all in” with themselves (the lovely and unlovely parts) and other people. I want to inspire people to find the courage to face and heal their wounds (mainly from childhood) as a means to find emotional security within, no longer looking for outside validation. The reader is their own hero, and once they grasp this unconditional self-love and unwillingness to betray their light and love, they are fully equipped to never self-abandon when the going gets rough. A central theme of the book is that healing our pain has the power to heal the collective. So, this is not just a personal growth book, it’s a collective growth book.

Tell me about your nonprofit, Castle Rock Clubhouse.
The Castle Rock Clubhouse is a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to provide meeting space for 12-step recovery groups. I was nine years sober when we moved from New York to Colorado and Castle Rock was a town of 55,000 people functioning on small town recovery. Things needed to change in order to attract and help newcomers. More than just attract, we needed to maintain newcomers because working with others is what creates lasting sobriety and without newcomers, there is no one to pass the message of recovery to. Shortly after moving, we met a bunch of people who were interested in starting a clubhouse, and we began meeting monthly. After three years of fundraising, we opened the club in downtown Castle Rock in 2019 and it’s thriving.

Your book just won the CIPA EVVY 2023 Gold Award and I couldn’t be more excited for you! What are you working on now?
Right now, I am focused on marketing my book through speaking engagements, podcast interviews, book clubs, and facilitating workshops. I did write a prologue for a realistic fiction book similar to Trust Yourself to Be All In. It’s about a little girl who is abandoned by her father when she is five and her life of navigating feelings of low self-worth, feelings of inadequacy, addiction, recovery, grief, troubling relationships, etc. Essentially, I will take bits and pieces of friends and family member’s stories and stitch together a fiction story based on realistic events.

Okay, I can’t wait to read that! Meanwhile, where can readers find you?
At my website: www.amandamckoyflanagan.com (And check out my trailer!)
On Instagram: @amandamckoyflanagan
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amandamckoyflanagan
You can also listen to my podcast Sol Rising: All In on Love, Loss, and Connection on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen.

Before we go, we’ll wrap up with our Lunchtime Poll…
Okay, Amanda, besides being a Pearl Jam fan, you are also a drummer. So let’s end our time together with some some 90s-music silliness.

1)      If aliens landed on earth tomorrow, which Pearl Jam song would you play to welcome them?  Worldwide Suicide (I swear it’s a real song!)

2)      If you were going to front a grunge band, what would your band name be? Girl Jam

3)      If you could pick one song to play drums on, which would it be? “Surrender” by Cheap Trick

4)      What’s the first album you owned on both cassette tape and CD? (Bonus if you also own/owned it on vinyl)? First record at 7 years old was Pat Benatar. My first CD in 5th grade was Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. I can’t remember my first cassette tape, but it may very well have been Debbie Gibson. I invited her to my 2nd grade birthday party (she didn’t come).
Author sidenote: Okay, that is AWESOME. And I bet she would have come if she could have.

5)      Which 90s album do your kids love to crank up? They are pretty much subject to any and all Pearl Jam all the time or Lithium on Sirius XM. We don’t listen to many albums.

6)      Which 90s album do they beg you to turn off? None. They like all music (except country. We are vehemently opposed to country in this house, haha).

7)      What’s your favorite Eddie Vedder track in a movie? “Rise” from Into The Wild.

Thank you for sharing your story, Amanda. I’m so happy that we met and have been able to travel this debut road together! The pleasure is all mine!