Where I Learned to Stay is a memoir about a lifetime spent moving toward the next place, the next opportunity, the next version of herself, without realizing that what Gretchen was really searching for was home.

Growing up as an expat and third culture kid, Gretchen Aubuchon moved from New Jersey to Hong Kong, Miami to London, learning early how to adapt, begin again, and become someone new. It was an extraordinary childhood shaped by constant movement and punctuated by moments she would understand differently years later, from demonstrations in Hong Kong to Hurricane Andrew.

As an adult, the movement continued. A career in public relations led to fashion, interiors and design, taking her from New York Fashion Week to interior design shows in High Point and Las Vegas. There were celebrity video interviews too numerous to count, remarkable clients, a frightening accident, and a close encounter with the events of September 11.

She married, became a mother of three, and found herself living in the big house she once thought would mean she had finally arrived.

She built a colorful life. And then it unraveled.

Somewhere along the way, alcohol began taking up more and more of the life she had worked so hard to create.

In 2017, she got sober.

Where I Learned to Stay offers a glimpse inside a life that could look glamorous from the outside, while revealing the addiction quietly taking hold underneath it. It is a story about ambition and motherhood, addiction and sobriety, trauma and trust, art and identity, and the deeply personal path Gretchen found forward.

Her hope in telling this story is that someone who has struggled to see themselves in a traditional path to sobriety might begin to believe there are other ways forward.

This is her story. Her path to sobriety. It is not the only way. Just another way.

Most of all, Where I Learned to Stay is about the complicated meaning of home and what can happen when, after a lifetime of becoming someone new, you finally begin to understand who you already are.