Mary Beth O’Connor
From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction
May 4, 2023
4 PM PDT | 5 PM MDT | 6 PM CDT | 7 PM EDT
When I was appointed a federal judge in 2014, I reflected back on my story. I had an extensive history of abuse and neglect, including child physical and sexual abuse, two multi-assailant rapes, and an abusive boyfriend. I also had a 20 year history of drug use, which began at age 12, continued until 32, and included over 10 years of shooting methamphetamine. Since I’d attained sobriety in 1994, I’d worked hard on recovery from my substance use disorder and my trauma. I thought that perhaps my junkie to judge story could be of value. My primary goals included reducing stigma, giving hope to those suffering and their friends/family, and standing up as an example of attaining recovery using secular methods. I also thought that learning to write a good memoir would be an intellectual challenge.
I started taking notes, then organized these ideas into chapters. I also began reading a lot of memoir, taking writing classes, including via NAMW, attending writing conferences, and participating in a critique group. Of course, as a full-time judge, I spent the time available to me for a hobby. Still, I was persistent and finished my book in 2021. I then found an agent, which took 4 months, and signed with HCI (Health Communications, Inc.) a few months later. During this time, I also developed a role for myself as an advocate, writer, and speaker for multiple paths to recovery and a wide variety of addiction/recovery topics.
SUMMARY:
My memoir is divided into three sections. My glamorous and narcissistic mother’s abandonment and neglect, followed by my stepfather’s physical and sexual abuse, which led to childhood addiction. The chaos and agony that resulted from shooting meth, and an acceleration in my descent after a gang rape and abusive boyfriend. And the first three years of recovery from my addiction and from the trauma, including building my own secular recovery plan.
THEMES
How does inescapable childhood pain lead to addiction?
How can someone so addicted ever climb back out?
How wondrous is the human capacity for resilience?
ULTIMATE THEME
How can we find our way back to our true and best self, despite deep and complex layers of trauma and agony? How does recovery work on trauma or addiction strengthen us to take on all the challenges of life? How do we balance considering the techniques that worked for others with trusting that we can do the analysis to make decisions about what will work for us?
WHAT MEMBERS WILL LEARN FROM MY PRESENTATION
- How to frame your story within a narrative arc.
- How to immerse the reader in traumatic events but then provide breaks that allow her to catch her breath.
- How to distinguish your story from other memoirs in your genre.
- How to build a writer resume.
- How to build a non-traditional platform.
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Mary Beth has been clean and sober since 1994. She also is in recovery from abuse, trauma, self-harm, ptsd, and anxiety. Her history and her recovery are chronicled in her memoir From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction. She’s had essays in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and Recovery Today.
Mary Beth is a Director, Secretary, and Founding Investor for She Recovers Foundation, and a Director for LifeRing Secular Recovery. She regularly speaks on behalf of these organizations and about multiple and secular paths to recovery. This includes conferences, podcasts, radio, television, and recovery houses. She develops relationships with other organizations, such as Women for Sobriety. And Mary Beth trains attorneys and medical professionals about substance use disorder and recovery.
Professionally, 6 years into her recovery, Mary Beth attended Berkeley Law. She worked at a large firm, then litigated class actions for the federal government. In 2014 she was appointed a federal Administrative Law Judge, from which position she retired early in 2020.
LINKS
Website: junkietojudge.com
Twitter: @MaryBethO_
Book: https://a.co/d/6QFkRJP
I was able to breathe regularly from my nose to exhaling too.
My daughter is a psychotherapist.
She could, and is, putting together a memoir of her studies. Her own life has been slowly transformed to living and breathing while teaching to others.
Today while walking past some shop windows I marveled at the cartoon figures representing life episodes. Cartoon artists are big in representing real life through cartoons. The emotions depicted by present well known universal images are. A free breath of air.
Please sign me up for the May virtual book club.
Hi Mindy,
You have been signed up for today’s event. Please be on the lookout for the Zoom details in your email.
Kind Regards,
Erica
NAMW
Sign me up for the Book Club.
Hi Pat,
You have been signed up for today’s event. Please be on the lookout for the Zoom details in your email.
Kind Regards,
Erica
NAMW
Please sign me up for Mary Beth O’Conner’s presentation today at 4:00 PDT. I also have an important story to tell and at the beginning of writing a memoir and need some direction. My story is about a mother’s journey through her children’s, addiction (not one but two) to drugs and alcohol, experienced through her eyes and heart. My purpose is that other mothers, who read this memoir and are experiencing this parent’s nightmare, feel supported by knowing their fear for their child’s life, their feelings of helplessness to protect them, the guilt they feel for thinking it’s their fault, and their hopes that. never wane, and their grief from having to let go is all part of this life crisis.
Judge O’Connor’s memoir is the other side of the story from the eyes and heart of a child’s trauma and pain that led to her addiction and the obstacles and successes she had to overcome and learn from her nightmare. It can serve as the light at the end of the tunnel for a mother’s journey while she is in the throes of the pain from her child’s addiction.
Hi Carolina,
You have been signed up for today’s event. Please be on the lookout for the Zoom details in your email.
Kind Regards,
Erica
NAMW
happy for you.
Thanks for having a woman in recovery as your May writing guest. This is especially meaningful and timely, since May is Mental Health Awareness month.
We need all the positivity and anti-stigma messages voiced as possible. Having the story presented in memoir is welcome. Many of us managing mental health issues strongly believe storytelling saves lives.
Looking forward to tonight’s Zoom session.
Gratefully,
Patti Uhrich