March 6, 2011
The Imprint Journey:
A Path of Lasting Transformation Into Your Authentic Self
Liliane Desjardins
Life Scripts Press (imprint of Loving Healing Press) (2011)
ISBN: 9781615990870
New Book Offers Healing by Rewriting Imprints to Find Authentic Self
In “The Imprint Journey,” Liliane Desjardins has boldly stepped forward to tell her own story of dysfunction, misguided beliefs, and an amazing recovery. After working for more than thirty years as a clinical addiction specialist, formulating the Desjardins Unified Model of Treatment of Addictions, being cofounder with her husband of Pavillon Gilles Desjardins, and co-authoring the book “Rewriting Life Scripts,” she now tells her own long overdue story of an amazing journey that transformed her into a woman with a mission to help others find their authentic selves.
Liliane’s personal story reads like a good novel, full of excitement as well as fear and confusion, that reveals to the reader how she formed her often negative imprints—misguided beliefs that crippled and limited her life. One riveting passage from the book describes her childhood as a little girl in Croatia during World War II following the explosion of bombs in the city of Zagreb:
Like in a horror movie, our home had been turned into a war zone. Pieces of trucks, tires, metal, and glass were covering our furniture. Walls were cracked; windows were blown out. The floors were covered with glass, pieces of china, and bricks. In the backyard, hanging on the tree branches were pieces of human bodies.
In the midst of this terror, Liliane grows up, trying to understand the fear her parents project and which she adopts as her own. That fear soon becomes her reality when her father is taken away by the Germans. She also questions her grandmother’s religious devotion—an addiction in itself—when she sees the local bishop blessing the German soldiers, which makes her believe God is against her people:
On that October day when I was four years old, God became a problem, not a solution….He was for the Fascists and against us. The fear of Hell was transformed into a conviction that we were in Hell. The voices of my Grandma’s angels had been silenced.
Liliane’s story becomes one of feeling inferior, and although she and her family finally escape from Croatia, first to France and then Montreal, Canada, she grows up with the imprint that she is unworthy, that life is hard, that she is not good enough.
Liliane’s path of pain results in her inflicting harm upon herself before realizing her core mission in life as she undergoes her own recovery and seeks to bring to others the freedom from negative imprints she has herself discovered.
While the first section of “The Imprint Journey” is Liliane’s own informative and riveting story, the second section analyzes her imprints and offers action steps that can lead to transformation and freedom. Liliane breaks down the addictions that serve as coping mechanisms for dysfunction, and she shows how she and others have transformed their lives by rewriting those imprints. Extremely helpful in this book is her discussion of the four Core Addictions: Security Addiction, or the Not Enough Syndrome; Power and Control Addiction; Sensation Addiction; and Addiction to Suffering.
Liliane discusses her work at Pavillon Gilles Desjardins, with her husband, for whom the center was named. She details how she, her husband, and other staff members helped the many people who came to Pavillon to seek freedom from the pain and fear, the low self-esteem and self-loathing that marred their lives. She has presented here, in their own words, the stories of several people whose journeys are as inspiring as Liliane’s own and represent a large cross-section of people, from a Muslim woman to an Argentinian man, from female entrepreneurs to a doctor with HIV and a lawyer who battled with the FBI. Their stories explore issues of self-worth, addiction, lives out of control, and how they reprogrammed their imprints so that today they live productive and self-affirming lives.
“The Imprint Journey” is a book that will help inspire and transform anyone wise enough to read it. Even people who have been in recovery for many years will find new insights into themselves in these pages that will help them live even more authentic lives. Thank you, Liliane, for telling your story—for having the courage to share so much of yourself with others, and for leaving this book as part of your legacy and the culmination of an unforgettably powerful life and career.
For more information about Liliane Desjardins and “The Imprint Journey,” visit www.lilianedesjardins.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., and author of the award-winning “Narrow Lives”
