AddictionLand

A Love Story in Real Life

About the Book

A memoir told in real time

AddictionLand: A Love Story in Real Life is the unflinching, intimate account of one couple’s fight to stay together through the storm of addiction—and into recovery. Told over 30 raw, relentless days—his from inside rehab, hers from the life he left behind—this is a story that captures the aching space between love and betrayal, survival and surrender.

AddictionLand discards the conventional redemption arc, wrapped in a bow, and reveals the real-time fight to get sober, to stay married, to parent through grief and rage, and to hope that love can survive the damage. It’s a rare, unfiltered look at what it means to do the work—inside rehab, and at home.

Mimi’s voice is sharp, spiraling, and furious with grief. Ben’s is quiet, searching, and thick with shame and determined strength. Together, they tell a third story: the fragile, messy truth about love and what it takes to hold on.

AddictionLand is a love story that happens amid the chaos of addiction. A story about choosing to stay. About fighting to love someone without losing yourself. And about the small, stubborn hope that even when trust is broken, something real might still be there.

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Why We Wrote the Book

30 days. 2 voices. 1 story.

We wrote this book for anyone who has ever sat in the wreckage of something they loved and thought, “I don’t know how to do this.”

AddictionLand-Hands-Cover At its heart, AddictionLand is about more than addiction. It’s about what happens when your life fractures—your marriage, your identity, your sense of safety—and you have to figure out if there’s anything left worth saving.

We wanted to offer a rare, real time look inside a young family trying to survive something bigger than themselves. Addiction was our spark, but the story underneath is deeper: love, trust, grief, parenting, and the brutal, beautiful effort to keep going when everything feels lost.

The path forward is always messy. Rarely pretty. And that’s okay.

We wrote this book to tell the truth about what it means to stay. To show what it really looks like to fight for connection amid chaos.

Most of all, we wrote this to say what we wished someone had said to us back then: This is hard—but you are not alone.

Stone path winds through vibrant flower garden beside a rustic log home

Prologue: Perspectives on Time

There was a summer when everything bloomed.

The house was ours, the garden was coming alive stone by stone, bed by bed.

I would stand at the window barefoot, wearing denim shorts and a t-shirt or maybe a dress, iced coffee in hand, watching him lay out the garden pathways with a stick in the dirt.

His hands—those beautiful, capable hands—were always in motion. Tamping soil, smoothing mulch, brushing hair from his brow. His hands built things. They fixed things. They reached for me, often. I reached back.

The days were long and drenched in gold. Even now, I can smell the sweet punch of peaches while we ate them on the porch and hear the rustle of tomato leaves in the breeze.

We were a little wild then. Taking it all in. Dinners late, laughter loud. We were so in love we didn’t notice time was speeding up.

That’s the cruel trick of joy. It rushes by while you’re trying to memorize it.

When I wrote the poem—”Time sped up when the days got sweet”—I meant it. I knew not to grasp too tightly. I told myself to hold the joy lightly, like a thread. But still, I tried to grasp it. To slow it down.

I failed, of course. But I’m glad I didn’t yet know the storm was coming. The destruction it would bring.

No matter what happens we will always have that summer.

Meet Mimi & Ben

Mimi is a mother, writer, and a woman who fought to hold her family together. Ben is a father, builder, and a man who learned what it took to stay. In 2025, they celebrated their 20th anniversary.

Together, they built this book from the inside out.

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