EP50_Expect the Miracle with Author and Trauma Survivor, Alle C. Hall, (Personal Story)

Curious About Recovery - Diving Into Eating Disorders

In this episode I speak with author and recovery warrior, Alle C. Hall who identifies as a person in recovery for 35 years from codependency, bulimia, alcoholism, and sexual anorexia. Her lived experience is shared through her work as an author, speaker, and writing instructor who focuses on the joy and creativity resulting from trauma recovery.

Alle’s debut novel, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, has been honoured fifteen times; including 1st place in The National League of American Pen Women’s Mary Kennedy Eastham Prize for an excerpt, and most recently: finalist for The Nancy Pearl Book Award (winner announced 9/21/24).

Alle (pronounced “alley”) started her external, as well as internal journey when in 1988, with a whopping $1,000 and one year of Japanese language study crammed into three months—though no housing or job lined up—Alle moved herself to Tokyo. She there for three years, teaching English and writing for Tokyo City Life News. Her first assignment was to cover the capitol’s Tai chi scene. She backpacked through Hong Kong, The Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, where she immersed herself in Tai chi on Koh Phangan, the island that plays a critical role in As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back. With Tai chi enriching her recovery, Alle was able to face the abuse that characterised her childhood: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and sexual.

Returning Stateside, Alle wrote for The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, and was a contributing writer at The Stranger. Her short stories and essays appeared in journals including Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, Tupelo Quarterly, New World Writing, Litro, Creative Nonfiction, and Another Chicago. She continues to live in Seattle with her husband and their two shining sons, with some subset of whom she has traveled to Japan, Bali, Vietnam, Laos, Taiwan, and Shanghai.

About As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back

Alle’s fiction debut, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back (Black Rose Writing, March, 2023) is a-girl-and-her-backpack story with 12-Step recovery framed as a Tai chi practice: Carlie is an incest survivor. As a teen, she steals ten thousand dollars and runs away to Asia. Falling in with an international crew of tai chi-practicing backpackers, Carlie uses a Tai chi her practice to find the self-respect stripped from her as a child and the healthy sexuality she desires.

Purchase her book here: https://www.amazon.com/Far-Before-Have-Come-Back/dp/1685131476