Quit Something!

Dear Enchanting Friends,

Let’s add QUITTING something as a Summer Enchantment possibility.
(If you’re not sure what we’re talking about, check out this What Should We Do This Summer post. In short we’re setting goals/intentions/experiments et al and calling them “enchantments.”)

Twenty-six years ago today I quit drinking. Enchantments galore ensued. The Thing you choose to quit, give a rest, or take a three month sabbatical from doesn’t have to be life changing. But I’ll tell you: anytime we make any kind of change, our life shimmies, swivels and recharges itself. Cool, eh?

So today, on that Enchantments List, add a few things you might like to STOP this summer. Then Register here for the pop-up salon on June 22, 9 - 10 am on Zoom where we shake out & share our enchantments, and make this a summer to remember!

I’ve included a piece I wrote on my 20th soberversity. To anyone out there who is struggling or loves someone who is struggling, there’s hope. Change is possible. My story is dark, it got ugly, it turned around. Why? Beats me. The mystery of life. So fortunate, and it takes tending to rebuild a life and stay away from the old booze companion. Hope this inspires. And thank you to everyone I’ve ever said two words to, you all made a difference. And my besties, couldn’t have done it without you. XO

The Last Day I Drank: Everything Was Horrible and Possible

I can do it. You can do it. We can do it.

Twenty-six years ago this week there was a Friday the Thirteenth. A friend invited me to a boating party in Seattle’s Shilshole Beach on a warm blue-sky evening. I think I was wearing white pants. There was wine, there was beer there was god-knows-what-else. Maybe a bit of pot. Whatever was there, I had it all — over twice the legal limit. And then I drove home. On what must have been a zig-zag route back, I dipped into the Wallingford QFC because I had my usual case of the munchies. I stumbled back to the car with my goodies bag and the police were waiting for me. A U.S. marine had been driving behind me, witnessed my weaving, and called the cops.

I was placed in the back of a cop car. I remember crying in the backseat of that cop car, but as a blackout drinker, the rest of the evening is fuzzy.There may or may not have been handcuffs. There may or may not have been a trip to the police station. To this date I have to answer “I don’t know” to whether or not I have ever been to jail. Eventually, I was dropped off by what might have been a somewhat kind (even if appropriately exasperated and disgusted) officer at my apartment at 4 a.m. I made pasta and went to bed. A few hours later I woke up and knew, I just knew:

I was done.

My drinking days were over.

I was 33. I thought I was too old to “start over.” Of course that makes me laugh hysterically today. What a beautifully young and ripe number. In time, I came to think every age is a perfect one to start over. I’ve seen people have amazing do-overs in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

The first year sober was heartbreak. I opened, shattered and cracked all over the place, and it opened me up to my humanity in astonishing ways. I was ready to own myself and my actions and take responsibility for how the wreckage I caused affected others and myself. Ow. Ooooh. Ouch! Achy breaky moments poking and plucking at all corners of my ribs. I went from being a closed non-emoter to someone who cried walking down 3rd avenue. I cried at work, sitting in an open-office environment. I cried while driving. A lot of driving and crying. Not always out of sadness. It was like an internal emotional ice age was melting and it was coming out in tears. Just coming and coming, I couldn’t do anything about it, so I let it. It was a relief and nobody noticed.

What made the hard part of early sobriety endurable was how endlessly fascinating it all was — this transformation business. Since I went to treatment and AA, I had the opportunity to watch others go through their awakenings as well. I was part of something, rather than the lone wolf slinking around town and roving from group to group without staying anywhere too long. Sobering up is a bit of a crazy-making sensation, and being part of a couple of recovery groups kept me from losing my mind; or at least I was more comfortable being OK with the possibility that I might go wack-o.

Thankfully, I was spending time with people who were willing to share their shape-shifting stories and laugh at their most embarrassing actions. They nodded with understanding and a smile when I admitted to the most secretive acts or desires I’d harbored while drinking: intimacies with people I should not have shared two sentences with. Fantasies of talk-show fame for doing basically nothing. One day at a time, other people’s stories were letting me off the hook. I began to breathe.

The world opened up in extraordinary ways. It was hard and scary and magical and creative. I broke down and grew up. I met my shame head-on and survived it (and this work continues). I wrote poetry. I did triathlons. I had friends, family and communities without whom I couldn’t have endured the psyche-breaking transformation. I learned how lucky we are to have this need for each other. I need you. And you and you. So hard and so badly and so happily! Thank you, thank you thank you.

So many of us have a defining moment in life. You have yours.

Something happens. You stop. You turn. You open, accept, and dig down deep to recover and heal and grow up and out into yourself and the world.

We all have an amazing capacity to transform ourselves. So much is possible.

I can do it. We can do it. You can do it.

For years I carried this mysterious, shorn piece of paper with an excerpt that saved my ass day after day. The words connected me to my humanness and in times of panic, I could breathe. I carried it for 10 years before I found its source — the poet Mary Oliver. Here it is:

“Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”

— — Mary Oliver, from In Blackwater Woods

As humans, we are made to create. That means burning down the old barn of bad habits and creating something new for ourselves: experiences, vats of resiliency, fun relationships, new ways of seeing and being. Anything. Anything you want.

In what might at first seem horrible, everything is possible. Believe it.