It scares the crap out of me to include this drawing here but its that fear that tells me YES!! YES! Do that thing that scares the living shit out of me. And then drink some water.

I’m Brandi, the creator of Junkies Rising and the keeper of this blog. Junkies Rising is my heart’s expression of my deepest values and the foundation for what I hope becomes my life’s Great Work. I have watched too many people fall, myself included, lost to the madness and destruction addiction brings to the lives of otherwise brilliant, talented souls to sit quietly by and not make use of the abundant resources available to me, even on an SSI income, to speak up and speak out.

Addiction goes back generations on both sides of my family tree and just about all the various branches as well. Suicide and tragic untimely death also run deep into our roots. So does creative genius, though, so go figure. Through sharing my stories I hope to reach out to other addicts facing the challenges of living consciously and fully in the present with the past of a Junkie and all the baggage that comes with. I pull from all sources to create a path that works for me. It changes, and those changes can be witnessed within the posts of this blog.

I am on a journey of conscious evolution and moving along a rising spiral of growth. There is no part of this journey that I will leave off the page… besides, I’ve come to know that the greatest treasures can be found in the unlikeliest of places. I fully believe that each one of us has been birthed into this life, here and now, with a specific set of inherent gifts. Addiction would have us strip our souls bare and consume us completely, but through the power of self-awareness and self-compassion, we can regain access to that which we thought was hopelessly lost.

Where there is pain, there is potential for healing.

I believe that each of us are gifted with our addiction so that we may learn the harder lessons. I also believe that the Universe never throws us anything we can’t handle or anything that we aren’t meant to learn from. Our early exposure to the dysfunction that comes with using leaves the mark of addiction across every aspect of our lives… the road back involves much and more beyond simply “getting and staying clean.”

Its time to take our power back and rise up. Your heart will show you the way.

Ultimately, I’d like to turn the stigma attached to being a Junkie on its head by turning all the pain and suffering that addiction is into a fuel of sorts, using pain and shame as tools for healing. Through the pages of Junkies Rising, I am sharing my insights, my experiences, and my struggles with coming back into myself after years and years of being away. In the posts of this blog, you will find stories from my past, inspiration, the processes through which I shine light into my own dark places, and watch as I make sense of my place in this world.

Join me as I dig deep, from scary uncomfortable lows to the unimaginable highs and every twist and turn in between, and learn to rise from the ashes of a life after addiction, reborn like the mythic Phoenix.

Like the Phoenix, we will rise from our own ashes.