Cold Heart, Warm Hustle: Still Breathing Kindle Edition

Still Breathing is a raw, unflinching story of addiction, grief, survival, and the quiet courage it takes to keep choosing life. Told in first person, this book traces one woman’s descent into drug and alcohol addiction—not as a cautionary tale, but as a human one. What begins as unresolved grief after the loss of her grandmother slowly turns into a search for relief, connection, and safety. Substances don’t enter her life as destruction; they arrive as silence. As comfort. As a way to survive feelings that were never given room to exist. What follows is a devastating unraveling: repeated overdoses, jail stays, felony charges, abusive relationships, and the unbearable pain of losing custody of her children. The system labels her broken. The streets harden her. Addiction convinces her she is unworthy of love or redemption. And still—she breathes. Through halfway houses, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, faith rediscovered in desperation, and love found in the most unlikely place, she begins the slow work of rebuilding. This story doesn’t shy away from the darkness—fentanyl and meth addiction, selling her body to survive, mourning friends and a fiancé lost to overdoses—but it also refuses to end there. At its heart, Still Breathing is about showing up when everything in you wants to disappear. It is about motherhood from a distance, forgiveness without guarantees, love that grows alongside recovery, and the fragile hope of six months sober after years of chaos. This is a book for anyone who has ever felt too far gone. For those who have loved an addict. For those in recovery, and those still finding their way there. It is proof that even after everything—even after loss, relapse, and ruin—survival is possible. And sometimes, staying alive is the bravest thing you’ll ever do. Read more