To Be Somebody is a story about alcoholism and pain, about faith in a higher power and healing of the soul, about joy and recovery. In To Be Somebody, Evelyn Leite shows the truth that those who love and live with a drinking alcoholic become victims of the illness just as surely as the alcoholic. Fear, resentment, and an ego big enough to think it can change another person are problems painfully shown by the teller of this story as she ever so slowly comes to realize the stranglehold on her life she has allowed alcoholism to gain.Her experiences show how the illness, when unrecognized, affects and afflicts those around the alcoholic, and how the methods of coping with the problem, and ultimately recovery, form an almost identical process for both the alcoholic and the co-dependent. Those who have lived through recovery will recognize the truth and the ordinariness of this story. Those who are searching for help will find truth and perhaps a shortcut through the ravages of the illness. Evelyn Leite has been in the addiction and mental health profession for 35 years and has a private practice, Living With Solutions. She also founded a non-profit corporation, A Center For Training And Restoration. She is an author and she holds workshops nation wide which are devoted to teaching individuals and families about mental health and addiction, much of her work is trauma related with men and women who have been abused . Because her work as a humanitarian has been widely recognized she was installed in the SD Hall of Fame in 2008. Her work has included founding a youth center in Ft Pierre, SD, helping establish a women's shelter in Pierre, SD, and helping to establish the Hope Center , a day shelter for the homeless in Rapid City, SD. Currently she is finishing a 4th memoir. Much of her work is a personal story of family abuse that asks a key question: How does a loving father turn into an alcoholic verbal abuser? And why am I just like him? Addiction, pain, and healing are outlined in a manner that will be more than familiar to those raised under similar conditions; but the difference in these memoirs lie in the focus on how Evelyn Leite chooses to survive her circumstances and rise above them. Her evolving perception of both of her parents is one of the highlights presented as Leite grows older: "I just look at them, my parents, so far removed from the reality of my life, so unaware of the aching, agonizing, humiliating pain I live with...so unbelievably ignorant."
