Waking Up Alone

Name: Waking Up Alone
Author: https://www.simonandschuster.biz/authors/Nicole-Wordlaw/258203364
ISBN: 9781591813736

Navigating the Narrow Passage Through Master-Slave Narratives

By Nicole Wordlaw

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

Ships on or around July 7, 2026

Excerpt
Rave and Reviews

About The Book

In this unflinching and vulnerable book, psychologist Nicole Wordlaw exposes the impact of intergenerational trauma and internalized race and gender narratives, through the lens of a Black woman seeking spiritual freedom on her own terms.

Waking Up Alone is part memoir, part map: a vulnerable, fiercely honest exploration of what it means to awaken as a Black woman in a world built on master-slave narratives, gender roles, and spiritual illusions.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Nicole Wordlaw—Stanford and Berkeley-trained, longtime Buddhist practitioner, daughter of a Black father and white mother, and former partner of a well-respected spiritual teacher—traces her journey from a little girl seeking love through obedience, to a woman unraveling the cultural myths that shaped her. Through the lenses of race, womanhood, and power, she reveals how systems of domination live not only in institutions but inside our most intimate relationships, and in the stories we’re taught to believe about ourselves.

Eerily prescient in the era of the Epstein files, the book chronicles the author's relationship with a prominent male spiritual teacher—its highs, shadow side, and entanglements—and how the author ultimately finds her own path to awakening.

Waking Up Alone invites readers to recognize the cages they’ve inherited, question the roles they’ve been taught to play, and listen for freedom’s quiet song within. This is a book for anyone ready to unlearn, to awaken, and to remember who they were before the world told them who to be.

Excerpt

My mother says it took me months to tell her about the abuse, though I remember telling her in a matter of days. Regardless, we agree it was a tearful revelation. We stand in her bedroom as I gather the courage to say, “I’ve done something very bad. I don’t want him to get in trouble. It’s all my fault.”

She responds kindly, expressing love for me, and so much remorse. She is a puddle of pain. It is not my fault, she says, and she is not angry with me. She cries slumped over on the floor, with her head down, in deep guttural sobs. I hug her, studying my fingers, brown on her pale, pinkish- white skin, taking comfort in the softness of her arms. Her arms are so soft, like breasts. My hand pats her back. I am a cooing sense of sorry. I am so sorry.

We hold each other and then she gathers herself to leave. Catching her breath, she rises from the floor. She will talk to him. She will take care of it.

When she returns, he is with her. They have both been crying. They left the house, returning home with dark chocolate orange slices, my mother’s favorite, which they give to me in a white wax paper bag. The bittersweet candy melts in my mouth as he looks into my eyes, his rimmed red with tears. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”

They are not angry with me. I am a good girl: pleasing, pleasant, wanted. It is all over. We can move on.

A year before this moment we sat at a table in a Cuban restaurant in Florida. I told you I didn’t want to love a man who needed other women. You told me you would be different if you fell in love. I told you I needed to take care of myself this time; you told me the fear was all in my mind.

Now we are love, the magic of nature, warm honey in my mouth. But here they are, women still hidden, stuffed into your pockets.

The sun has fallen and the room is dark.

We move up the steep, twisted stairs toward your bedroom. This house has a set of stairs in the very center, so steep and irregularly placed that a person could easily fall down if not for the rail. I hold on.

Our little room is oppressively hot. I open the window for the ocean’s breeze, then go down on my knees, resting in child’s pose. With my face on the floor, I give my mind to the sound of waves moving rocks on the shore.

We are quiet.

There is safety in quiet. Without words, you can’t find me—can’t ignite the master in my mind. I stay in the stillness until I am one with the ground. Then, I let words fly into sound.

“Jon, I know you’re hiding. I can feel something you won’t say.”

You become angry, defiant, indignant. You look down at me. “Oh God!” you exclaim, letting out a big sigh. “This morning, I felt so much love for you, Nick, and now I think you come with so many problems. There’s nothing going on!”

The master looks down with a pointed finger. He has that kind of power, that kind of privilege.

You want too much. You need too much. You are too much. You don’t make sense. You are the reason love won’t work.

I want to run from the gathering storm, but the storm is inside of me.

A long line of women knocks at my door; they ask me to invite them in.

So, I do, following my breath into my body: heart thumping, jaw clenched, a falling, a tight, hot, pulling, stretched across my chest, a hanging, a heaviness that does not drop, a body screaming, sharp and shrill--, a screaming that will not stop.

I drop into the feeling, with a gentle sway of my body. I follow the tight, the hot, the hallowed ache. I let the pain be a being I need to Be.

And I see.

If I follow your mind—the mind of the master, a mind foisted upon me—I stay trapped in the brothel, wedded to what is not free.

About The Author

Nicole Wordlaw

Dr. Nicole Wordlaw is a clinical psychologist, a longtime practitioner of Buddhist meditation, a lover of Spirit, and the daughter of a white mother and a Black father. She completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Stanford University, graduating with honors and distinction in 1992, and then earned a Masters and Doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. She is passionate about helping those she serves notice and follow their own inner guide.

Product Details

Publisher: Sentient Publications (July 7, 2026)
Length: 275 pages
ISBN13: 9781591813736

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Raves and Reviews

With unflinching courage, rare honesty, and a medicinal dose of hard-earned wisdom, Nicole Wordlaw invites us into the tender, imperative work of seeing clearly. Waking Up Alone illuminates the subtle and often painful ways inherited stories of domination and submission—the “master–slave narratives”—live not only in our history, but in our minds, bodies, and relationships, both personal and collective. Wordlaw’s journey is a powerful invitation to face our pain, reclaim our inherent dignity, and find the true path of liberation—one that cannot be given by another but is realized when we settle deeply into the heart of who we are. This book is both a personal reckoning and a compassionate invitation: to soften into the presence of Love and to learn to listen to the still, small voice within, against all conditioned odds. Nicole generously opens the shell of herself in the name of supporting whoever is ready for the pearl she offers. I highly recommend you take her up on the gift.

– —Caverly Morgan, Teacher and Author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together and A Kids Book About Mindfulness

In Waking Up Alone, Nicole Wordlaw lays bare 5 master-slave narratives through heart-breaking personal reflection. Wordlaw's exquisite story-telling and brilliant analysis illuminate these deeply internalized narratives in ways that allow her readers to recognize their own embodiment of them, whether relating as "slave" or "master." In so doing, she uncovers a way forward for her readers as well

– Robin DiAngelo, PhD, Author of

As gurus fall in the wake of #MeToo and the Epstein files, as women wake up to the bad trades we've made to bow down to masters who aren't grateful for our devotion, as BIPOC rise because #BlackLivesMatters, and as Trump's army of ICE commit atrocities against immigrants and those who protect them, there couldn't be a more important story to tell than that of a biracial psychologist who was the lover of a white male spiritual teacher, who then "wakes up alone" and deconstructs the guru/ devotee archetype through the master/ slave narrative. Nicole Wordlaw finds her way to a truer spirituality, one that isn't founded upon oppression, patriarchy, white supremacy, and white male power in America. If you're looking for a spiritual leader you can trust, one who won't gaslight you with spiritual bypassing but will guide you to the guru inside, look no further than Nicole Wordlaw.

– Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Ti

With a truth-telling flame, Dr. Nicole Wordlaw illuminates the wounds of racism, power, and generational trauma, guiding us toward the liberation that arises through loving presence. Her storytelling is lyrical, unflinching, powerful, and deeply wise. This book calls us to a shared courage—to face what we inherit and, together, to rediscover the deep belonging that frees the heart.

– Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance

An inspiring, eye-opening, and third-eye-opening combination of memoir, cultural commentary, ancestors’ tales, and somatic practices. Nicole Wordlaw—an earnest spiritual seeker who became the longtime partner of a highly respected spiritual teacher—courageously and mindfully explores the underlying damaging narrative that so many of our relationships follow. Then she offers us some equally courageous and mindful opportunities for healing.

– Scott Edelstein, author of Sex and the Spiritual Teacher and

In Waking Up Alone, Nicole Wordlaw tells multiple interlocking stories—some from her own life, some from the mouths of our ancestors—each one gripping, instructive, and, ultimately, wise and inspiring. Her book investigates how the same basic narrative—the master/slave narrative—forms the foundation of white-body supremacy, patriarchy, and many student/teacher (and guru/disciple) relationships. This deeply important and brilliantly written book dovetails profoundly with the core insights of Somatic Abolitionism.

– Resmaa Menakem, author of the New York Times bestseller

In Waking Up Alone, Dr. Nicole Wordlaw fearlessly illuminates how the master-slave dynamics that shaped our nation continue to echo through our most intimate relationships and spiritual communities. With the precision of a clinical psychologist and the vulnerability of a true seeker, Dr. Wordlaw reveals how systems of domination live not only in our institutions but inside our own minds. What makes this work extraordinary is Wordlaw's recognition that true liberation requires us to discover the teacher within—to stop seeking freedom through external authorities and instead listen to the wisdom that emerges when we dare to wake up alone. She shows us that love, not judgment, is the key that unlocks the cages we've inherited and taught ourselves to maintain. This is essential reading for anyone who enjoys a good read and is ready to examine the stories they've inherited and discover who they truly are beneath the layers of collective conditioning.

– Loch Kelly, M.Div, LCSW, Creator of the Mindful Glimpses app, author of The Way of Effortless Mindfulness

Dr. Wordlaw's Waking Up Alone is a decolonial offering in the slave narrative legacies left by Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, with the artistry of feminist Audre Lorde's biomythography, in the spirit of Black liberation psychologies, while identifying the gaslighting dynamic and techniques of emotionally abusive spiritual leaders. Your quest for freedom needs this book.

– Pamela Ayo Yetunde, author of Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, & This Thing Called Life