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

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if you truly want to live with peace in your heart and be free of the burdens of the past — you must be brave enough to be willing to look at yourself honestly, clearly, and without reservation. You must take responsibility for everything that’s ever happened to you. Not blame. Responsibility.” This is the singular, hard truth I come up against every day: I am the only one responsible for my experience. I decide what I let in; I decide who I let in; I decide how to perceive things; I choose it all.” 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." 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.”

Push Off from Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Th…

something within me began to shift. I started to turn away from him, and though I hated myself for it, I didn't know how to stop. 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. I guess I didn’t know if I would connect with her or could relate to what she would have to share. By the way, this says way more about me than it says about Laura. My insecurities highlighted The truth is alchemical. It transmutes the bitterness of pain and dishonesty and shame into something else, something we can actually live in and stand on.”Laura speaks to that place within us where what breaks our heart becomes our highest learning and our most invaluable currency.”

Luckiest Club // Online Sobriety Support Community The Luckiest Club // Online Sobriety Support Community

Having a witness also means being seen. Really seen. In all our humanity - flaws and ugly bits and all. Even the most courageous of us are willing to go about 90 percent of the way there, but we hold on to that last 10 percent, the part that could allow us to be really known. Sobriety hasn't so much been about revealing the 90 percent but that last 10. The little bit I always want to keep to myself. With just a few words, I could change that. I could create one reality again, instead of two. But I didn't. I couldn't. Furthermore, as someone in long term sobriety, I found her writing and the tools she provided gave me an insertion point from where I am in my life today. While her book touts this, I was still surprised when her questions and tools helped me navigate a specific fear I've grappled with that has nothing to do with drinking! It's also easy to see the value in how it will help many others who are in early sobriety or sober curious or struggling with issues other than alcohol or substances. I will confidently recommend it to people for whom I think it is a good fit. Laura is lovely, her story is compelling, and I love the structure of the 9 essential truths in this book. For most of my life I believed I had to lie to get what I needed. I'm guessing somewhere inside, you believe this, too...While lying almost works, just like drinking almost works, neither will ever take us all the way home. While the path may be longer and harder and a little lonelier at times, honesty will always move you closer to love, not further away.It took an inability to breathe (literally: I found myself gasping for air) to heed the warning flares being sent up from my physical being. Something really, seriously had to give. And so, I set out to recover. In a series of disruptive and identity-challenging steps I confronted my own nonsense, assembled tools (yoga, therapy, meditation, all things Brene Brown) and found new and kinder ways to apply my hard-fought professional skills. In short: I got my act together.

We are The Lucky We are The Lucky

Benefit from weekly 90-minute live calls, weekly private sobriety support meetings + weekly office hours* (see details here) The book is truly moving. I wanted to drink it all in at once, but it brought out so much emotion that I had to pace myself. Very little that I’ve encountered in the recovery rooms (or anywhere) speaks directly to my heart like this. My path has been similar to the author's in many respects, but quite different in others. This book simply and powerfully captures the shame, pain and confusion of the alcoholic, before and during early sobriety. 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. Laura has a way of making things that don’t make sense, make sense. And that’s an incredible skill for a human to have. Although this book is about sobriety, it’s also a book about growth, change, & evolution. It’s a book that teaches us that the things that break us, that we hate & curse, are actually the things that lead us to our magic, lead us home - to ourselves. ⁣A masterpiece. The truest, most generous, honest, and helpful sobriety memoir I’ve read. It’s going to save lives." -Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Warrior and Carry On, Warrior much the same way as I feel about becoming a mother: it has brought me right up to the nose of life itself and forced me to look it straight in the face. At first, the nearness was too much; there was nothing to protect me from the immediacy of things - not from the bright lights or the sharp pain. But then, eventually, I came to realize that this is what it means to be alive - to not look away from any of it - and that all I was really doing before was pretending: floating through my days half-numb, half involved, half-awake, thinking I was really living when in fact I was missing it all.” Until about 5 years ago, the "thing" that ran my life was perfectionism. Pair that with a demanding career (for which I got all kindsa high fives for said perfectionism), the challenges of new motherhood, a comparison habit, catastrophic thinking, a punishing intolerance for mistakes and an under-trained ability to notice and diagnose my own feelings... and more, but you get the point... and what you've got is a legit perfect storm. I'll never forget the day it hit me that things were altogether different...My mind started to wander, searching for the familiar grooves of worry or scheming or protection to run down, but there wasn't anything there but smooth spaciousness. There was the warm sun making rainbows behind my eyelids and my bare feet hitting the baking asphalt and a bit of chewed-up carrot in my mouth. I’ve found myself inspired to foster my wellness, presentness, and honesty as a therapist, mother, and human.