Thank you. But I have to agree with someone else who wrote a comment. Aren't we supposed to want to give ourselves a chance of less internal chaos in our live's, by working on living our lives without alcohol and that involves moving on from the 'falling apart' stuff', surely ? ..I'm so vulnerable right now that I was a bit confused by the message. But I do understand that I need to embrace the strange. I still like myself ...I'm muddling through. And I'm guilty of letting people know that I'm work in progress' ...fk that..I'm just a human being
I think this stuff is for people who are out the other side of addiction maybe, and onto other things. In 'Quit Like a Woman'...you fell to your knees and prayed for help because things fell apart 'big time' and you then moved slowly through your healing recovery.
Flo <3 Yes, you are totally right that this isn't going to be the exact message someone in early recovery needs and feels like it's perhaps directed at someone at a different phase of recovery. (I wrote something about that in a comment above, maybe the one you're talking about, and said without wanting to be better I wouldn't have gotten sober).
Helpful to think of it in terms of stages of development and what we need at each stage of development; QLAW was written closer to early recovery and stands as a reflection of that experience, all this stuff here is written from the same person but 6-8 years later so what might have been a perfect framework for someone getting sober or in early sobriety, is not always going to be the same for someone who's a decade along. I don't think that's true for everything I write about, but my relatiionship to self-help and self-improvement has definitely changed over a decade. Thank you so much for this comment.
Oct 19, 2023·edited Oct 19, 2023Liked by Holly Whitaker
Thank you SO MUCH for your lovely, comprehensive reply; it means so much. Thanks for taking the time to reply, I really, really appreciated. I love what you do. And this article is incredible: Hello, my name is Holly, and I'm not an alcoholic, it is so brilliant. It should be made compulsive reading for everyone, so many people are still buying the lie. Thank you.
I love this and really needed to hear it today. My kitchen cabinet doors are partially painted in the front driveway and I may not actually do the ab workout today or ever fully process the traumatic experience of my daughters birth that happened 8 years ago. And its fucking fine. Thanks for sharing Holly.
Yes!! Live your life, do what you feel like doing each day, forget the schedule and the rules. Please yourself for a change. People in the US are so goal oriented and work oriented-there are so many more valuable things in the world. I think very few haven't had trauma, we survived it, that's good enough. God didn't mean for us to live like this. Work for the almighty dollar to buy more and better stuff and pay payments and pay 2 or 3 credit cards, the more you make the more you spend. Think that's why I love the concept of tiny homes. Every kid doesn't have to have their own bedroom, things were better when they didn't! Sorry, as my husband would say-get out your soapbox. I did ramble a little. :)
This made me think about the concept of self-actualisation as introduced by Goldstein, made into a pyramid by Maslow, and a foundation of Rogers approach to psychotherapy.
Mostly people seem to focus on the the implicit need to constantly move forwards, ie to self-actualise, whereas I try to think about it as a race that will never be run because there is always further to go, so why knock yourself out trying?
I’m off to have a long bath and then stroke the dog.
Yes, and as in Maslow's "Hierarchy Of Needs" where he says that we are motivated by the desire to fulfil our needs from the basic (food, water, shelter), through the emotional to the eventual goal (at the top of the pyramid) of self-actualisation, and that this desire to be the best version of ourselves is what keeps us striving, except that, as you so eloquently illustrate, it often feels like a fucking chore to keep moving forward and it would be nice if we could just "be" for a while without feeling as if we are somehow failing.
Loved this one, Holly. Thank you. Also, on being close, I like this take:
“Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but by staying close to the way they like to travel, to the way they hold the conversation between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go.”
I adore David Whyte - recommend his Sunday Sessions. He hosts calls 3 sundays in a row (I think the next one starts in Sept), reads poetry and philosophizes. It’s a nice spiritual service to start the week and hearing him give the context behind his poems makes them come alive.
Also, the Discover weekly playlist often feels like a fuck up because the algorithm isn’t broadening my horizons by offering me Noah Gundersen simply because I liked him last week. I can already find the stuff I already like.
I long for the days I used to browse the record shops buying albums purely because I liked the look of the cover.
Thank you Holly for letting us into your always honest, compassionate, bracing thoughts on the moment we find ourselves in and--and on the moment YOU find yourself in--because we are all in some kind of moment, transition, it seems, trying to make sense of us and the world. I related to so much of what you said and at the end of it, I think what was at the tip of your tongue landed for me: "Being what we actually are instead of believing the only life worth living is the one that never actually comes, but that we’re working towards diligently." I am as diligent as a worker ant on the endless trail of the best-is-yet-to-come. Perhaps it's time to look at where that's gotten me.
Thank you. But I have to agree with someone else who wrote a comment. Aren't we supposed to want to give ourselves a chance of less internal chaos in our live's, by working on living our lives without alcohol and that involves moving on from the 'falling apart' stuff', surely ? ..I'm so vulnerable right now that I was a bit confused by the message. But I do understand that I need to embrace the strange. I still like myself ...I'm muddling through. And I'm guilty of letting people know that I'm work in progress' ...fk that..I'm just a human being
Lucie.xxx
I think this stuff is for people who are out the other side of addiction maybe, and onto other things. In 'Quit Like a Woman'...you fell to your knees and prayed for help because things fell apart 'big time' and you then moved slowly through your healing recovery.
Flo <3 Yes, you are totally right that this isn't going to be the exact message someone in early recovery needs and feels like it's perhaps directed at someone at a different phase of recovery. (I wrote something about that in a comment above, maybe the one you're talking about, and said without wanting to be better I wouldn't have gotten sober).
Helpful to think of it in terms of stages of development and what we need at each stage of development; QLAW was written closer to early recovery and stands as a reflection of that experience, all this stuff here is written from the same person but 6-8 years later so what might have been a perfect framework for someone getting sober or in early sobriety, is not always going to be the same for someone who's a decade along. I don't think that's true for everything I write about, but my relatiionship to self-help and self-improvement has definitely changed over a decade. Thank you so much for this comment.
Thank you SO MUCH for your lovely, comprehensive reply; it means so much. Thanks for taking the time to reply, I really, really appreciated. I love what you do. And this article is incredible: Hello, my name is Holly, and I'm not an alcoholic, it is so brilliant. It should be made compulsive reading for everyone, so many people are still buying the lie. Thank you.
Thank you Flo
I love this and really needed to hear it today. My kitchen cabinet doors are partially painted in the front driveway and I may not actually do the ab workout today or ever fully process the traumatic experience of my daughters birth that happened 8 years ago. And its fucking fine. Thanks for sharing Holly.
Amen.
Yes!! Live your life, do what you feel like doing each day, forget the schedule and the rules. Please yourself for a change. People in the US are so goal oriented and work oriented-there are so many more valuable things in the world. I think very few haven't had trauma, we survived it, that's good enough. God didn't mean for us to live like this. Work for the almighty dollar to buy more and better stuff and pay payments and pay 2 or 3 credit cards, the more you make the more you spend. Think that's why I love the concept of tiny homes. Every kid doesn't have to have their own bedroom, things were better when they didn't! Sorry, as my husband would say-get out your soapbox. I did ramble a little. :)
Was just thinking of you today 💫 always good to see your name pop up in the inbox. Bookmarked to read later. Much love ❤️
Much love! We're (emily and I) are taking MBs training program...I think you did that too? Been thinking about you.
Oh fantastic. I absolutely loved it and made great friends from class. Hope it's going well for you both!
So far so good :)
Who is MB?
Yeah?
This made me think about the concept of self-actualisation as introduced by Goldstein, made into a pyramid by Maslow, and a foundation of Rogers approach to psychotherapy.
Mostly people seem to focus on the the implicit need to constantly move forwards, ie to self-actualise, whereas I try to think about it as a race that will never be run because there is always further to go, so why knock yourself out trying?
I’m off to have a long bath and then stroke the dog.
As in, foundational concepts in psych are to constantly develop in a pyramid or linear fashion?
Yes, and as in Maslow's "Hierarchy Of Needs" where he says that we are motivated by the desire to fulfil our needs from the basic (food, water, shelter), through the emotional to the eventual goal (at the top of the pyramid) of self-actualisation, and that this desire to be the best version of ourselves is what keeps us striving, except that, as you so eloquently illustrate, it often feels like a fucking chore to keep moving forward and it would be nice if we could just "be" for a while without feeling as if we are somehow failing.
Loved this one, Holly. Thank you. Also, on being close, I like this take:
“Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but by staying close to the way they like to travel, to the way they hold the conversation between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go.”
~ David Whyte: https://www.kolhai.org/close_david_whyte
Love this line ..."To consciously become close is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament."
And. "we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring."
Ohhh I do love this. I also have yet to read David Whyte but he keeps coming up.
I adore David Whyte - recommend his Sunday Sessions. He hosts calls 3 sundays in a row (I think the next one starts in Sept), reads poetry and philosophizes. It’s a nice spiritual service to start the week and hearing him give the context behind his poems makes them come alive.
Alex ♥️
Also, the Discover weekly playlist often feels like a fuck up because the algorithm isn’t broadening my horizons by offering me Noah Gundersen simply because I liked him last week. I can already find the stuff I already like.
I long for the days I used to browse the record shops buying albums purely because I liked the look of the cover.
That was worthwhile self-actualisation.
Me as well
I feel this so incredibly deeply.
<3
Every time you post a newsletter I wind up buying a new book 😊
True story
LOL. I'm sorry and/or you're welcome
Books are my favorite way to interact with people 😊
Everyone I talk to is lonely. (Granted the list of people I talk to is very short but still)
Ha
Same. Well, almost everyone, and those who aren't alone (are in community) I think feel this core aloneness.
So much for the wonderful friends on FB :(
Been listening to the philosophize this episodes about Byung-Chul Han!!!
You did this to me!
A friend did it to me once, too! Happy to pay PT! forward!!!
I’m going to need to read this a few thousand more times. 😘
lol same
Andrea Gibson is a national treasure. Their poetry is breathtaking.
Yes! I only discovered Andrea in the past couple of years and they and Holly are the only newsletters I get!
TRUTH.
Thank you, as always. So very thoughtful.
I'm hoping you can correct the link to the book recommendations from Slow Factory (it currently links to only "Fateful Triangle."
Oh! Yes! Updated in text, link here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyYYbhROliK/?img_index=1
Thank you Holly for letting us into your always honest, compassionate, bracing thoughts on the moment we find ourselves in and--and on the moment YOU find yourself in--because we are all in some kind of moment, transition, it seems, trying to make sense of us and the world. I related to so much of what you said and at the end of it, I think what was at the tip of your tongue landed for me: "Being what we actually are instead of believing the only life worth living is the one that never actually comes, but that we’re working towards diligently." I am as diligent as a worker ant on the endless trail of the best-is-yet-to-come. Perhaps it's time to look at where that's gotten me.
thank you for this Amy
My friend and I wonder if we are in purgatory?
I mean it would definitely explain a lot
I'd forest bathe with you any day of the week. xo.
Sondra: on some plane somewhere or in some other dimension we're forest bathing naked and drinking topo chico from a geyser