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

Product Information

We know we're lonely...but we don't really know why...I felt a nagging ache of separateness I could not name. Despite being surrounded by people, having a big social life, more plans than I had time for, and a solid group of people I considered friends, I still felt very much alone. I felt alone in my marriage. I felt alone in my friendships, And actually being alone by myself? Forget it - that was intolerable... 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. 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...

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

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.” You are always with me. You are never alone. And everything I have is yours. You are granted all the love in the universe simply because you exist, not because you are good. Love was never yours to lose — you cannot lose it. It will never let you go.” This is the 10 percent withholding. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but right then they agreed it was okay to lie to each other - even if only a little...But they were always operating just left of center, hovering around the truth of who they were, unwilling to life the film from their eyes. Glennon identified this book - one which I gobbled down in 2 days flat - as one of her must-reads, alongside a little known work called "Just Mercy" and an author you've never heard of named GLORIA STEINEM. Eek. I stopped drinking alcohol over 3 years ago, at the beginning of 2020. I’ve never considered myself an “alcoholic,” but started to recognize that I didn’t like the way alcohol was making me feel, and decided to stop. My favorite “Quit Lit” is mentioned in this book - “Quit Like a Woman” by Holly Whitaker. It was the perfect book for me that arrived at the perfect time in my life.This is how it is done - how anything is done. One moment, then the next, then the next. This is how this book is being written: I type this word, then this one, then this one. The words build sentences. The sentences build a paragraph. A book is impossible, but a word and then another word is not. A lifetime of sobriety was impossible, but a moment of sobriety was not. I was doing it, and I was doing it, and I was doing it again.” Often for me, faith simply meant deciding to trust the people who had gone before me. Like the women whose books I had read...surely they couldn't all just be full of shit, right? I had faith in that.” To have a direct experience of life. To know its depths completely. To be enraptured in the mystery. To be the hero of my own great adventure." It would have been a risk to call him out on the little fudging of the truth...she would have had to withstand a moment of discomfort...it might have allowed then to actually fins an honest ground zero from which to build something.”

We Are the Luckiest Quotes by Laura McKowen(page 2 of 2) We Are the Luckiest Quotes by Laura McKowen(page 2 of 2)

The antidote to loneliness wasn't just being around others or sharing common ground. It was intimacy. I chose to read this as I’m working with many people at various points in their sobriety journey. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but after finishing this book, there are words, emotions, and stories that I think will always stay with me. I’ve already found myself loaning ideas and quotes from this raw and captivating book both with my patients and in my personal life. Oncologist Hill (pediatric palliative care, Indiana Univ. Riley Hospital for Children) shares a deeply personal story of addiction, depression, hope, and recovery in an effort to improve access, treatment options, and resources for all affected by similar conditions. Writing from firsthand experience, he relates feelings of extreme turmoil as well as the disappointments he faced in seeking treatment, emphasizing throughout the important role empathy plays in the process of healing and understanding the suffering of others with addiction issues.Laura was the first person I found online in 2014 who was telling the truth about addiction & recovery. Ever since I found her, I’ve read every piece she has written, taken her online courses, and even participated in one of her yoga workshops and I don’t even yoga.⁣

We Are the Luckiest - Libby We Are the Luckiest - Libby

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. I also had to believe I had in me the capacity for things I could not imagine in my mind. That somewhere within me there was a primal wisdom I could not possibly understand or access, but that not being to didn't make it any less real. There was so much of life beyond my limited mental grasp - most of life, in fact. Breathing, for example. The impossible expanse of the ocean and the underworld it contains. Quantum physics. Animals. My daughter. So when I got really scared and thought a proud, dignified, peaceful sober life was beyond the pale of what was possible for me, I would say to myself, I can't do this, but something inside me can. I can't tell you how many times I've whispered those words in the dark.” 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.”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. I started to do the thing I had been doing, which was to bypass my actual feelings and say the thing I knew I was supposed to say: the more spiritual thing, the thing I thought she wanted to hear...But I stopped myself. I breathed. The mental load required to plan, monitor, adjust, control, and otherwise manage the proper or “ideal” amount of alcohol intake is exhausting to even imagine. I searched for that elusive third door for years, and I believe I would have died trying. In the end, it was far more peaceful to accept it wasn’t there. More critically, though, what I’ve gained from sobriety completely eclipses any loss. To think I would forsake all the gifts that have come from giving up alcohol so that I could find a way to fit a few ounces of liquid into my body each week is laughable. I can’t prove that moderation was scientifically impossible for me, but my inner knowing is crystal clear: I would never have touched a fraction of my own possibility if alcohol was still in my life. As Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue says, “The normal way never leads home.”