Society and Culture

Jodee Prouse is the Embattled Woman’s Champion. She helps woman recognize that they have the strength to transcend family trauma, and the power to disengage from codependency with those family members who are at the heart of the drama.

Her mission is to help women recognize that love is the reason NOT to engage, that taking care of oneself first is not a betrayal or selfish. Making the hardest choices may seem to be cruel or callous, but, in fact, are healthier for all parties.

Jodee spent more than 30 years seeking to protect a brother ultimately lost in alcoholism, giving so much it nearly cost her marriage and risked endangering her children’s mental health.

The grand-daughter, daughter, stepdaughter, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, niece, great-niece, aunt, cousin and sister to alcoholics, she has tremendous empathy for anyone who has gone through or lives with a family in constant emotional crisis.

Her gripping and tragic story, told powerfully in The Sun is Gone: A Sister Lost in Secrets, Shame, and Addiction and How I Broke Free, unfolds while she is also growing an enormously successful beauty products business. Pulled in so many directions personally and professionally, she finally finds the strength to make the painful and necessary decisions that restored her emotional equilibrium, self-respect and protected herself and those closest to her. All along the way, while still loving her brother as he lived his own journey.

Committed to her new mission to empower women to find their strong inner core and make healthy decisions amidst family dysfunction, chaos and crisis, Jodee recently sold her business and now serves as an advocate. She speaks on women’s empowerment, addiction and mental illness from the family perspective and breaking away from longstanding, destructive family patterns.  Half of the profits from her book, an Amazon category bestseller, go to non-profit organizations that support addiction and mental illness programs.

Jodee has two adult sons, and has been married to her husband, Jim, for 27 years. They split their time between Sylvan Lake, Alberta and cottage in Oroville, Washington.