Mary Detweiler became fascinated early in life by the idea that there are reasons why people do what they do and feel what they feel. This grew into a lifelong desire to understand what makes people tick and to help people live healthy, happy lives emotionally and relationally. She started with herself, engaging in psychotherapy as a young adult while simultaneously embarking on a career as a psychotherapist.

Though therapy helped her identify unhealthy thought and behavior patterns, understand why she had developed these patterns, and change them to healthy ones, it didn't fill the emptiness or give her a sense of being valuable and worthwhile.

In When Therapy Isn't Enough she explains how her emptiness was eventually transformed into a sense of purpose and passion, and her worth and value validated in a most unexpected place, or rather in an unexpected relationship. She celebrates this relationship every Christmas.