I was married to the wrong man for nineteen years and had given up my career in advertising to raise our three sons. When I married my husband, he was sober. Ten years into the marriage, he started drinking again. In 2005, we invested everything we had, including the proceeds from the sale of our home, to purchase a car dealership. In 2008, after the economy crashed, the dealership closed its doors. By this time, the marriage was eating me alive. I often pictured myself hanging from a noose while living with crippling fear every day. How would I survive with no money? Where would my kids and I live? Plus, the sheer terror of leaving a man that I loved who was incapable of loving me. My strength came when my fourteen-year-old son told me, “Dad doesn’t love you. Dad doesn’t know how to love. You should leave him.” After I told my husband I wanted to separate, I moved into the guest room of our rental house. That night, my hair felt as though it was on fire. A sensation I had never felt before which I believe symbolized of the magnitude of fear trapped inside my body. At the time of my separation, I was teaching private Pilates part-time so I ramped up my hours by picking up new clients. It was important to me to keep my boys in the same school district so I sold most of the antiques and china my mother had left me when she passed away. No material possession was worth me tearing my kids from their community. I found a small rental house and leaned on friends to help with driving so I could teach more hours. We endured days with no power and water, times when the landlord would hand me an eviction notice as I was loading my kids in the car for school. What I learned about myself is that I am stronger than I believed and although it wasn’t easy, I faced my fear and never gave up. At night, after teaching Pilates, I began writing my novel. There was a universal story inside of me that needed to be told. Had I not witnessed my own personal strength after leaving my husband, I couldn’t have written my book. When the self-doubt and negative self-talk crept in with tremendous fear of being a failure, I pushed it away. I wondered why I had chosen the wrong man yet some stay happily in relationships forever. I dug deep into my childhood and pondered how my experiences had molded me as a woman. Why had the child of a drug addict/alcoholic married a man with a drinking problem? The more I wrote, I stronger I became and when I received my first rejection it motivated me to work harder. The negative part of fear turned into my motivation to do more with my life, to count on myself, and believe anything is possible with hard work and dedication.