Join us on June 5th at 6:30 PM at Congregation Etz chayim. Register HERE

Bring your questions. Henriette will have some of the answers. If you cannot join in person, a Zoom link will be provided to those that request it on the registration form.

What if you needed something for pain, but knew it would kill you?

Two years after In Pillness and in Health, a sober Henriette is faced with a demon darker than the addiction that nearly killed her. Out of nowhere, a violent rash appears on her arm and spreads across her body. It is suffering she has never known. Worse than kidney failure. Worse than dialysis. Worse than drinking rubbing alcohol on her husband’s donated kidney.

Pain.

Endless doctors say the same thing. “We don’t know.” Some doctors don’t believe her. She is lost inside the world of medical science she once revered. Each intervention makes her Pain worse, pushing her to the brink of relapse, or the unthinkable.

She wants drugs. She needs drugs. How else can she survive this Pain?

In 12-Step recovery they suggest she pray on it. That she find a higher power. But how can she believe in anything after the way her father died?

Together, they collected stamps, sang along to The Beatles and went trainspotting. They went everywhere, and the brown bottles came along, too. There were strange needles. And then one day, he was gone.

Where was God then?

But to use drugs as a recovering addict is like dancing on razor blades.

She doesn’t want to die, but she doesn’t want to live with Pain anymore.

In the sequel to Pillness, Big G and Me asks the unanswerable. Is there a purpose to our pain? Can good coexist with bad? When our lives are shattered, how do we walk through the darkness and find the light that’s always been waiting inside?