It’s around 4am on Boxing Day 2009 and we are about to drive to Noosa this morning to spend our holiday at one of Australia’s most beautiful beach holiday destinations. And as I sit here to type to you before we leave in downtown Bris Vegas it is pouring with rain outside as dawn tries to break through the heavy cloud. It's lovely to hear Mother Earth being given a big drink but the need to pack extra indoor card and board games is now my best mother, wife move.

I heard this phrase years ago.   It was in a recovery group somewhere and a woman who had put down one addiction was now finding she had started to eat regularly for the first time in her life and was putting on weight.  The reality was that she was actually only just beginning to eat like a healthy human being again after years of being emotionally numb and disconnected from her body and her natural appetite.

My need to write has always been driven by the heart fuelled necessity to work out all the shit that is going on in my life.  My first book was never intended to be a book.  It started out as a collation of notes written for pure survival.  Before I got organized and purchased a journal, a helping hand was what I so desperately needed so I created a portal on paper for all my confusion and clarity.   Writing was the helping hand I craved, it saved my sanity.   And so I called the book, “A Helping Hand”.