Kosher Girl Cracked
With stacey dorenfeld
Extraordinary stories of crack cocaine, cracking open & cracks in the facades we live in.
Kosher Girl Cracked
With stacey dorenfeld
Extraordinary stories of crack cocaine, cracking open & cracks in the facades we live in.
No one tells you how lonely rock bottom feels.
Or at least, no one told me.
But there I was, a 40-something Jewish mother & wife from a horrific past that I hid from the world — sitting on my bathroom floor & literally begging g/d to help.
I didn’t want to go to the hospital, not again, so I swore out loud that if She got me out of just this one last mess, I’d never use again.
That was a big promise for me to make.
After all, my mother died of an overdose when I was 23—choosing crack cocaine, prostitution, and handfuls of pills over me from the day I was born—and addiction & dysfunction ran our entire house.
By the time I was out on my own, I’d already spent a lifetime steeped in shame, secrets, and morbid curiosity.
Even after I escaped my childhood home, made a name for myself, and moved to New York, that trauma refused to be ignored.
So when the heir to a ritzy department store offered me my first hit of crack cocaine during our first date, I said yes—and fell headlong into years of various drug addictions.
Drug abuse was a shadow of my past and a dark cloud on my future. The parts of myself I rejected followed on my heels for decades; and sometimes it overtook me.
Needless to say, things got dark for a bit.
As in: Pleading with g/d to save my life.
After all, my mother died of an overdose when I was 23—choosing crack cocaine, prostitution, and handfuls of pills over me from the day I was born—and addiction & dysfunction ran our entire house.
By the time I was out on my own, I’d already spent a lifetime steeped in shame, secrets, and morbid curiosity.
Even after I escaped my childhood home, made a name for myself, and moved to New York, that trauma refused to be ignored.
So when the heir to a ritzy department store offered me my first hit of crack cocaine during our first date, I said yes—and fell headlong into years of various drug addictions.
Drug abuse was a shadow of my past and a dark cloud on my future. The parts of myself I rejected followed on my heels for decades; and sometimes it overtook me.
Needless to say, things got dark for a bit.
As in: Pleading with g/d to save my life.
But even as I slumped against my bathroom wall — a silent surrender to my circumstances —I found this seed of wisdom inside of me that knew it wasn’t the end of my story.
Just like light reflects through a broken pane of glass, in many different directions I prayed I'd find the light that would lead me to myself.
There was always a part of me deep inside that knew there was a path to healing and life.
Like a lotus growing through mud,
I pushed my way to brighter days.
And while it wasn’t always graceful, my grit got me through.
Over the course of several decades, I began untangling the trauma that was never mine to carry, hurdled over obstacles others set in my way, and ultimately started loving myself in a way I didn’t think possible.
I’m Stacey DorenfelD
Advocate, storyteller, & survivor.
And let me be the first to say—you’re not in this alone anymore.
Because there is space here for all of us.
Our secrets and our shame.
Our loss and our light.
Our pain and our power.
No matter what you’re going (and growing) through, this is a shame-free space as you sift through your life and find a way UP.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s possible to rise up through the cracks.
I went from quite literally being a drug addict to becoming a National leader for a world-renowned nonprofit organization where my impact has been felt throughout the country.
But most importantly, I became happy.
I know you can rewrite your stories and rise resiliently—because if I can do it, you can too.
You know that promise I made to g/d?
I kept it, and never turned back.
You know that promise I made to g/d?
I kept it, and never turned back.
This is a shame-free place for topics such as:
Best-kept secrets
Depression & anxiety
Suicidal ideation
Addiction & recovery
Self-worth & identity
Toxic family dynamics
Escapism (in all forms)
Disordered eating
Verbal abuse
Domestic violence
Molestation
Abandonment wounds
Complexities of motherhood
Forgiveness for yourself
Resilience & grit
Wanting to break free
Because picture-perfect doesn’t exist, and we’re more powerful when we own it.
Meet the upcoming book!
kosher crack
The brutally honest novel about the cracks we come from & the ones we rise through.
Meet the book of uncut confessions from behind the facade of perfection that so many pretend to have.
Growing up, my family presented a polished picture to the world about the sort of upstanding, good people we were.
But behind the traditional values of Judaism, physical and mental abuse ran rampant. It was a perfect Kosher Cocktail of fear, pain, and isolation—and it burned the whole way going down.
Join me as I face the ghosts of my past, discover the miracle in the mud, and push through the cracks in search of bright sun.
Praise for Stacey Dorenfeld
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…for cracking wide open
READ the letters for letting go & rising up
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