We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

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We think it is the aloneness we fear, but I believe what we actually fear is not having a home within ourselves. For so long, I did not trust my own landscape. I had believed the stories I learned about it, and I had taken every chance to avoid living there and learning her. Sobriety forced a closeness to myself and to life that was at first excruciating. It burned, and it burned, and it burned. But in the ashes from burning all the things I was not, I found her. I found me. We created The Sober 90 to provide a simple entry point for people who are new to sobriety. It's also perfect for not-so-new folks who need extra support and community. When you are high functioning in your day-to-day life, it's easy to write off these 'things' that get in the way, because they are not 'really' getting in the way after all. They aren't causing harm to others and why does it matter if it's not hurting anyone else? What I mean by faith is simply this: when you enter into an unknown place, one where you haven't yet developed the skills to operate - and especially one where you don't even want to be - you have to rely on some idea that you will be carried through it and that it will be better.

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Days later, I'm still thinking about parts of Laura's journey through active abuse of alcohol to the freedom of sobriety. Her words are startling, beautiful, and easy to understand. I will not be the only one who says that they relate to Laura and her story. I will be one of many who say, "This is ME!". I think that is the mark of an artist. The ability to write in a way that vastly different people relate because the author is inhabiting a space that is fully human. If something is keeping you from being fully present and showing up in your life the way you want, then deciding to change that thing is a matter of life and death. It's the difference between existing and actually living." Forming a new life is a really, really big deal. As John O'Donohue says in his blessing called "For the Interim Time," It is difficult and slow to become new. It's supposed to be difficult It's supposed to take everything you have. It's supposed to take longer than you want and to change you, completely. This often won't feel good when it's happening, but nothing worth having ever does.”

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One stranger who understands your experience exactly will do for you what hundreds of close friends and family who don't understand cannot. It is the necessary palliative for the pain or stretching into change. It is the cool glass of water in hell.” How fragile this was. How powerful. They were just words: sounds I could make with my mouth. But if I never made them, he would never know, And strangely I believed I wouldn't have to know either. I believed if I could only hang on for long enough, eventually it would all disappear inside me, like salt dissolving into water.” Thank you Laura for the gift of this book, and thank you Nora for posting about it. I listened through tears repeatedly. For my friends who may read this review... I don't struggle with refraining from alcohol now but the advice was useful for my tendencies to over eat and spend! There are prompts at the end of the chapters to get you writing and thinking about situations and more!

We Are the Luckiest Quotes by Laura McKowen - Goodreads

This book, and Laura’s work in general, rings so true because it brings the language of recovery beyond AA meetings and therapists down to the specifics of everyone’s individual struggle. How she describes the milieu of her life, and her perspective on children, relationships, self and the divine are very much in tune with how people relate to the world and each other in modern terms. Things like approval seeking, people-pleasing, not voicing my opinions, and avoiding conflict at any cost — these were all dishonesty masked as something sweeter and more socially acceptable.” I hadn't noticed the totality of the distance I'd created between us until it was so big that I could physically feel it...

The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

Over time, and with each right choice, I got stronger. I started to feel something magical growing inside me, getting bigger, more substantial, and pulsing with life. We can wish for, hope for and pray for change, but ultimately it’s our decisions that lead to creating a new normal for ourselves. We can learn new coping mechanisms and ways to deal with stress or embrace our emotions – but if we don’t actively use them, then they won’t work. If we are watching someone who’s been sober for a long time, it would be a disservice to us to look at the journey and compare it to our own. Without missing a beat, he smiled, looked at him, and said, "Of course you can. Are you drinking now?""No.""And now?" In The Divine Comedy, Dante described purgatory as a place where the soul is cleansed of all impurities, It is known as a place where suffering and misery are felt to be sharp, but temporary. This for me was what it felt like to have one foot in the new, strange land of sobriety and the other firmly, desperately, in my old life. The is what it feels like for all of us, I think, when we have only half-decided to own our thing, When we have only half-surrendered, only half-committed to becoming different... My drinking — and whatever it is you do to feel better — was born of a natural impulse to soothe, to connect, to feel love. And although alcohol hadn’t actually delivered those things, it was absolutely yoked to them in my mind. In my heart and body, too. It was just what I knew.”