Memoir Takes Readers On A Healing Journey

Bridget Harris wrote her memoir Wine, Therapy & God with the hope people who read it will feel seen and understand that they are not along. Photo provided by Bridget Harris.
Bridget Harris wrote her memoir Wine, Therapy & God with the hope people who read it will feel seen and understand that they are not along. Photo provided by Bridget Harris.

Memoir Takes Readers On A Healing Journey

By Tia Carol Jones

Bridget J. Harris was encouraged by her father to write her memoir, Therapy, Wine & God. He was a writer, a playwright and a journalist. He would always tell her that she needed to write a book. She knew she wanted to write a book, but wasn’t sure what story she would tell. The stories that resonated with her were rooted in raw, hyperhuman experience that explored love, friendship, tragedy, redemption and good people making bad decisions and the consequences of those decisions.

Harris went through an intense personal transformation where she was closing a chapter on a 20-year relationship, trying to explore becoming a mother after 40-years old, dealing with fertility challenges and becoming a stepmother. She was trying to navigate her identity in a new space of being a mother, a stepmother and a wife.

“I realized these are the type of stories that I like, I have a story worth telling now,” she said.

Harris said writing the book was her way of processing everything that she had going on and had been through on her journey. Being able to share, in an honest way, with clarity, was something she felt was the right thing to do. She wanted to share her story with the world, with the hope that people who were dealing with similar situations could relate and feel seen, inspired and have some key takeaways as they navigated their own journeys.

Harris said what made her want to be so vulnerable in sharing her experiences was that she felt like the season she was entering in at that point in her life demanded a different level of truth and real healing. She was someone’s wife, she was someone’s mother, and she had lost a parent, which are all things that will help a person come to the realization that they are an adult.

 She said writing the book, which took her a year to write, helped her to heal out loud. She said her father helped her write an outline for the book and suggested ways to make it flow, using his expertise as a writer.

Harris wants people who read the book to relate to it, even if they have not had the exact same experiences as she has had. She wants people who read the book to feel more empowered and to know that they are not alone in their journey. One of the things Harris hopes to dismantle with the book is the idea that prayer and therapy are mutually exclusive. She said they are not, and she thinks that they can both work together and that they can feed off each other.

“I always say, if you’re praying for peace in your life, therapy can help you understand how to set boundaries and do whatever it is you need to do to get that peace you’re praying for,” she said.

Harris said she hopes the book feels more like a conversation with someone who understands what the reader is going through and people will feel seen in their journey. As a stepmother, what she wants people to be aware of is stepmotherhood and she wants people who are dealing with that feel seen, heard and supported without judgement. She said it was a big part of her healing journey, navigating stepmotherhood and figuring out what her role was.

For more information about Bridget J. Harris, visit www.bridgetjharris.com.

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