Joyce Beauchamp
Special to the Tribune
It takes only two minutes of speaking with Jocelyne Gagnon of Verner to realize that she’s not all about herself; she’s interested in you. It takes only two minutes of looking over her new book to realize that it, too, is all about you. When Gagnon recovered from an addiction many years ago, she understood how she fell into it and also how she recovered from it. She was so grateful for her recovery that she resolved, “If I can help even one person overcome their chaos, I’ll be happy.” Gagnon is now happy to have helped many, many people overcome not only addictions but other kinds of chaos in their lives.
Gagnon is now a registered psychotherapist and certified addictions counsellor, and she recently launched a book titled The Truth Beneath the Chaos. “This isn’t a book about psychology,” she says. “It’s a book that does two things. It explains how chaos enters a person’s life, overwhelms them and brings them down. It’s also a personal workbook that helps the reader identify what will pull them out of the overwhelm and put them back on track. And the extraordinary thing is that everybody has the knowledge or ‘cure’ within themselves. It’s the questions in the workbook that, when answered by the individual reader, identify the problem and suggest the answers.”
Chapter 1 is where Gagnon writes, “If you’re holding this book, something inside you is stirring. Maybe it’s a quiet ache. A restless question. Or the small, exhausted whisper: ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ Perhaps you are longing for peace, clarity, purpose or simply a softer way to live inside your own skin. Whatever brought you here, know this: You belong here. This workbook is not about fixing what is ‘broken.’ You are not broken. This journey is about remembering your wholeness beneath the pain, loosening the grip of old stories, and returning to yourself with gentleness… Healing rarely begins with clarity. It begins with one quiet moment of truth, ‘Something needs to change.’ Let this book be a companion, a small, steady light to return to. You don’t need to be ready for all of it. You just need to begin.”
