Highlight Real

Finding Honesty & Recovery Beyond the Filtered Life

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Pub Date 14 Aug 2019 | Archive Date 02 Jan 2020

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Description

A music prodigy, head of her class, and well-liked in school, Emily Paulson decided early that embellishment paved the road to success. As she grew up, she figured out how to make the picture look even better - with a successful husband, five beautiful children, and all the required accompanying accoutrements.

Then along came social media, where those pictures of the perfect life grew her a following of women who believed that everything about Emily was blessed and inspiring. But behind the filtered façade was a reality filled with trauma, addiction, and dysfunctional behavior. From disordered eating to breaking the law and nearly destroying her marriage, Emily had been running from her own trauma for years. Living a life shot through with more self-destruction than she could track, Emily knew things had to change when she woke up one morning and realized that she was barely participating in the picture she had so carefully crafted.

Highlight Real: Finding Honesty and Recovery Behind the Filtered Life is the true story of what happens when a so-called perfect mother and businesswoman is forced to find reckoning with her past and build a future based on the authenticity she has always sought. Searingly honest, heartbreaking and packed with uncountable did-she-actually-just-say-that moments, Highlight Real is a memoir of healing as well as a fully modern look at what happens when the filters fall off and real life emerges into the light.


Author Bio:

Emily Lynn Paulson is an author, network marketing leader, certified professional recovery coach, and a member of the long-term recovery community. Formally trained as a chemist and a teacher, she rose to success in the top tiers of a direct marketing skincare company, where she gained her voice and a platform for sobriety and healing. Sober since January 2, 2017, her recovery path is focused on ruthless honesty, grace, and self-love. She is passionate about connecting women with resources for recovery from trauma, eating disorders, and substance abuse, and believes that sharing our truth with each other is the best resource of all. You can find her on Instagram at @highlightrealrecovery and on the web at Emilylynnpaulson.com. Emily lives in Seattle with her husband and their five children.

A music prodigy, head of her class, and well-liked in school, Emily Paulson decided early that embellishment paved the road to success. As she grew up, she figured out how to make the picture look...


A Note From the Publisher

Author is available for interviews, blog tours, autographed tours, autographed book giveaways, contests, and book club discussions.

Author is available for interviews, blog tours, autographed tours, autographed book giveaways, contests, and book club discussions.


Advance Praise

“In Highlight Real, Emily Paulson has given women—not just those who struggle with alcohol but all women—a true gift. It is a page-turning, starkly honest account of a beautiful-on-the-outside life that was in truth a collision course of self-destruction. Highlight Real is the rare memoir that should be considered an instant classic in the addiction recovery genre.” –-- Lisa Smith, recovery advocate, lawyer and award-winning, bestselling author of Girl Walks Out of a Bar

“In Highlight Real, Emily Paulson has given women—not just those who struggle with alcohol but all women—a true gift. It is a page-turning, starkly honest account of a beautiful-on-the-outside life...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781733853217
PRICE $15.95 (USD)

Available on NetGalley

Send to Kindle (PDF)

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

This was one of the most honest books I have ever read in the addiction and recovery genre. Whenever I see books on NetGalley that intrigue me but I haven't heard a lot about them, I immediately look up the reviews on Goodreads. After I read the raving reviews I downloaded Highlight Real right away. Emily Paulson shares vulnerability about her struggles and also her triumphs with substance abuse.

I am a huge fan of memoirs and it impressed me how easy to read this book was, as painful at the topic could be at times. Paulson traced a lot of this back to a traumatic childhood event that affected her through the rest of her life. I appreciated so much her introspection and willingness to share her journey. Thank you to NetGalley, Emily Paulson, and Light Hustle Publishing for an advanced copy.

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