FROM PULPIT TO PRESENCE
A Memoir of Losing Faith, Finding Recovery, and Learning How to Stay
by Don Phelps
From Pulpit to Presence is a
memoir about addiction, loss of faith,
and rebuilding a life grounded in
mindfulness and presence.
It speaks to anyone
navigating recovery, uncertainty,
and the challenge of
learning how to stay.
What Readers Are Saying
As a social worker, this is one I would recommend to clients. There is something here for anyone exploring faith, struggling with substance use, or trying to live more honestly.
— Jordan R.
This isn’t just another addiction memoir. It’s a gut-wrenching look at alcohol use disorder interwoven with an existential crisis of faith. I highly recommend it inside and outside of the recovery community.
— JC
Raw, honest, and zero BS. Don doesn’t preach at you, he walks you straight through the wreckage and into something real. This isn’t a recovery story with easy answers… it’s one that actually tells the truth.
— Rob K.
A courageous and heartfelt memoir of real-world struggle and inner turmoil on the way toward healing and inner peace. What stood out most was how mindfulness shows up in everyday situations we can all relate to.
— Lisa W.
Where my story begins
By the time the church exploded, I was already living a split life.
On the outside: pastor, chaplain, community leader.
On the inside: an active alcoholic, hiding a growing dependence I couldn’t name and wasn’t ready to face.
I drank to dull the ache of incongruence, to numb the fear that I wasn’t who people thought I was. I drank to quiet the dissonance between the role I carried publicly and the person I felt privately. I drank because alcohol worked, until it didn’t.
So when the building shattered, I did what I always did: I put on the mask of steadiness and stepped back into the role. I had no idea how much pretending my life still had left.
If I’m honest, the fire didn’t break me.
It revealed the breaking that was already underway.
Presence was not something I understood then, not the grounded, honest presence I would come to know years later. Back then, strength meant composure. It meant burying fear deep enough that even I had no name for it. It meant walking back into the smoke with trembling hands and a steady face.
It would take almost two decades, and another collapse, before I learned that presence isn’t about being unshaken. It’s about telling the truth. It’s noticing what’s happening inside without rushing to outrun it. It’s recognizing that the danger was never only the fire outside of me, but the one I kept refusing to see within myself.
This is where my story begins. Not with the explosion itself, but with what it revealed: the quiet, persistent burn of a life lived out of alignment.
Continue reading in From Pulpit to Presence.
