Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After

It's been over a decade since Jowita Bydlowska published her bestselling lightning rod of a memoir on overcoming alcohol addiction as a young mother. Both hailed and criticized for its no-holds-barred transparency, Drunk Mom was--and continues to be--refreshing and revelatory in its gritty exploration of addiction and relapse in the context of new parenthood, specifically from the experience of a woman. But what happens after the last page is turned, after the "happy ending" of an addiction the world assumes is safely in the rearview?

When Bydlowska relapses after the success of her book, her overwhelming sense is one of shame. She struggles to reconcile the knowledge that she's helped bring comfort and hope to countless readers with her own frustration and mounting fear that the truth will only let others down. In prose that is by turns harsh and beautiful, tender and devastating, she writes about her ensuing spiral into alcoholism--and the climb back up and out.

Unshaming is a raw, unsparing navigation of the intricacies of shame. With the same generosity and grim humour that made Drunk Mom such a standout, Bydlowska uses her own story as a vehicle to interrogate and challenge the narrative surrounding addiction, exploring the ways in which the conversation has both evolved and stayed the same over the last decade. Told with breathtaking narrative immediacy, Unshaming transcends the typical self-help memoir and punches through every expectation about what the perfect woman, mother, and writer in recovery should look like.