After years stuck in a painful cycle fueled by past abuse and ongoing addiction, actor, artist, and director Blaine Hogan finally hit rock bottom. No longer able to hide behind the veneer of success or find comfort in the shadows of compulsion, Blaine was forced to look at the story his life was telling and realize he'd lost the plot.
Desperate to find hope, he gave up a budding career and took a major life detour where he discovered that facing his past was the key to unlocking a new kind of creativity. In Exit the Cave, Blaine shares the stories that shaped him while exploring how our relationship to our past defines how we imagine the future and live in the present.
Through powerful personal revelations, he invites you to take up the practices of radical imagination and real creativity so you can tell a better story with your life.
“A tender but fierce story of survival, reckoning, and redemption. Blaine manages to somehow weave themes of acting, allegory, addiction, family, and faith into one beautifully written account of his own healing. This is the kind of story that will redeem you.”
“Blaine Hogan has inspired me for many years with his unique way of seeing the world. In this book you’ll find a blast of inspiration and a trusty guide to help you exit the cave and enter a world that is real and beautiful and vital.”
“Blaine Hogan's memoir is an intense, stunningly honest, and profoundly hopeful promise that telling the truth can set the heart free. This brilliantly written and holy transformational book will allure you to tell your truths and find yourself stumbling into grace.”
“Blaine Hogan has given us a rare gift in this book. Through storytelling rather than sermonizing, Hogan shows us the power of blessing the parts of our stories that have remained cursed for far too long, and he somehow wields his welcome with such levity and humanness that you won’t want to stop reading. This is a story that heals.”
“Honest. Brave. Moving. Blaine turns his scars into lanterns, giving us faithful guides out of our own dark caves.”
“There is a subversive holiness in telling a story others are too scared to tell, and Blaine has mastered the art of doing this over and over again. Don't miss the invitation in this book to understand the significance of your own scars and what to do with them.”
“Blaine Hogan is a master wordsmith. As a creative who has also had my fair share of wrestling through the journeys of inner healing, trauma resolution, and mental health recovery, I savor each word as true, good, wholesome food for the soul. I am better today, in art and heart, because I’ve read this book.”
BLAINE HOGAN is a writer and film and creative director. Formerly the creative director for Willow Creek Community Church, Hogan is currently a full-time filmmaker who directs celebrities from LeBron James to Carrie Underwood. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Margaret, and their three daughters. He holds a master’s degree in theology and culture from the Seattle School for Theology and Psychology and has appeared in many stage productions and television shows.