This summer while in Italy I posted a picture of myself on a Massa Lubrense beach in a bathing suit with a damn inspirational quote written across it to Instagram.
Good one, Holly. You had me at the no completion on the poster. I’m a lot older than you and this aging struggle is gnarly. Trying to get off my own back is still ongoing but there is more space between the intense periods. I feel crazy a lot, too. Sensitivity is a double edged sword.
“I feel old and like my vagina is just chalk…” I laughed out loud and said, “girl, same here.”
Your post made me think of the poem below. I have a post it with the last line of it hanging up from when I was crawling out of my skin/mind this time last year. Despite feeling stuck/lost/etc, you are here - “singing” again through your writing (and I am grateful for it!).
Mar 26, 2022·edited Mar 26, 2022Liked by Holly Whitaker
Hi Holly! I’m a new subscriber, passionate fan of your book, and a baby sober human (9 days alcohol-free!).
I just wanted to say thank you for this, for everything. Since I read your book on March 17-18 I feel like my life has changed for the better, and in massive ways.
My mind is on fire to read and consume everything I can that you’ve recommended. I think I’ll start w a book by Pema, but could you recommend one to a first time reader?
Aww Cindy I was talking to a friend who is 18 months sober and I think I said something like, those first few days and months and years feel like time stops; I think 9 days is an epic amount of time. Congrats to you. I would start with When Things Fall Apart. <3
I have been reading between the lines... waiting/hoping you'd explain more if & when you could. Know that you are in a soft place to land, caught by hands who love and respect you.
I keep "scrapbooks" with quotes and snippets in them. They're grouped into different beautiful notebooks organized by "themes". I keep them so that when, in the future, I need reinforcement, or reminding, on a certain theme, I'll be able to go and flip through and get the hit of energy and wisdom I need at that moment. (And the act of printing them out, cutting them down to size, then mounting in the scrapbook with pretty washi tape, also imprints them into my brain for future reference.) Anyway, the last paragraph of this essay is going into one of those scrapbooks. So good, so what I needed to think about today. Thank you. (And it's not the first time you've made it into one of my scrapbooks!)
If there's one thing I've realized during this "sobriety" thing, it's this: "Words are my medicine." Other people's words, or my own act of writing the words to process things. And it's why I could never get with AA... those folks live by words, too, but I find their words to be punishing, disempowering, and downright bad about women. So I create my own "Big Book". I love you too.
"This doesn’t seem fun. Shall we delete this now and just go dance?" This SLAYED me. Never in my wild lil fucked up brain would I ever think of something so easeful and beautiful in a moment like that. A true angel person.
I'm late to the party but #8 rocked my post-pandemic, 1.5 years post-wine, post pink cloud, mid-life. I'm copy and pasting from a private email. Hell, why not....
Pickles, my puppy, ate a whole dead squirrel (from snout to fluffy tail) the other day in the woods. I posted about it on social media and a few days later I heard my husband on speaker phone with my mother in law. My post was funny and light. Friends laugh emoji'd. My MIL of 20 years, in her joy-sucking fashion, drew all the wrong conclusions from the post. Asked my husband about rabies and what if our daughter found out and what would drive him (a species equipped with sharp canines and prey drive) to do such a thing??? Drama, drama, heart palpitations, more drama. Before she finished whatever her point was, just as it was getting started, the frantic tenor in her voice pissed me off. Her exaggerated hysteria, I've come to learn, is rooted in baseless fear, a touch of judgment, and more than anything, boredom and loneliness. Weighing in, even if it comes from ignorance and lack of understanding, at the very least puts her in the conversation. I know she doesn’t do it consciously, she’s not self-aware enough to understand her impulses, but it enrages me.
Thanks to you, HW #8, I realized the uncomfortable ball in my chest that presses on my guts whenever I hear my MIL’s voice might be worth deconstructing and turning my high-powered microscope on myself. Might be worth seeking the fleeting 'softness' you speak of, before lunging at her jugular. xx
I mean my whole body hurt reading this so hats off to you for living with that and through that. But, you know, YES. I mean I think a few things, like i get to erect boundaries I need with difficult people; but difficult people are such teachers. Lately I've been trying so hard to find that fleeting soft moment before I harden; it's hard but it's there and sometimes I find it. GOD SPEED. Also omg your fucking puppy ate a squirrel! That's real.
In Pickles's defense, it was an *already dead* squirrel he swallowed in under 6 bites. He didn't actually kill the squirrel (thank god). As for my MIL, I still have no defense for her...soft moment, soft moment, soft moment. 🙏
I too have had a most painful year, hot on the heels of an extremely stressful couple of years, preceded by two decades of living in an increasingly abusive relationship. I read and studied, meditated and yoga-ed, retreated and prayed myself into more love, more compassion, more capacity to be able to finally wake up to the situation I was in, right in time for him to leave. I thought I had been surrendering this past 12 months and I have been but my God have I been holding on too. I have been neck deep in well worn patterns of blame and shame and self recrimination, FEELING myself as the un-resolvable, forever victim all the while fighting like fuck to let that shit GO! I've been drowning, barely keeping my nose above water, bombarded with ever more betrayal, financial threats, a fucking cancer diagnosis and surgery, COVID and an ex who still refuses to agree to pay a minimum amount of alimony after walking away with the businesses, income, recording studio and atelier that we had built together over 20 years... It's not right. It's not fair. It's fucking criminal. It's happening. And there is nothing that I can do about it, other than keep living it. And keep choosing love. Which of course sounds very corny but it's really the only rich, intelligent, expansive, real choice that I have. And just look at how much love I get to become through this. Look at how loving a man unconditionally, who could not keep his word, prepared and expanded my capacity to be love through all of this. Look at how enormously valuable, extraordinary and miraculous I get to feel because of who I experience myself to be, with and in the extremity of my situation. AND the only way I am getting through any of this is by falling apart on a daily basis. Sitting on my meditation cushion groaning and heaving with grief and pain and rage. Which always clears space for wonder, for peace, for feeling held by something bigger than me.
I noticed this week, that as much as I've been surrendering and allowing myself to falling apart, I have still be clenching on so tight. Grasping on to positive mindset, affirmation, the moments of wonder in meditation, the moments when I feel like I know what to do next, silently begging God to send me sign that I'm headed in the right direction, that I'm going to be ok. And this is the definition of self inflicted suffering. To only let myself feel held when it's obvious, when the light shines through the darkness 45 minutes into my 1 hour daily sit and then loose it all completely when I read the next email from my ex-husbands lawyer. Or to fight the fear with positive affirmation rather than lay down my defences and just let the fear move through and clear the path for love. How can I be love in the face of anyone else's fear when my knee jerk reaction to my own is to shut it down, however "nicely"?
So all of this is to say, I am with you, and what a fucking grand adventure it is <3
Hey you <3 I feel exactly the same; like I think I've surrendered, and then more comes and I realize how much I still had been holding on tightly. I've thought "why couldn't you just let go the first time entirely" but I don't think it works that way?? I love you so much. Here's to our seven year cycle.
Seven years! Maybe it will work that day one day but for now, I think it's a mercy that it doesn't all happen at once. We surrender as much as we can until we're able to surrender more.
All this is exactly what I needed. I laughed through part of it because I so get that wanting to grow and change….but hold the fuck on…not like that!!! I want it to be gradual and allow me to catch up and figure it out and maybe have the lavender scent to accompany it, as you mentioned. I am sorry for your pain and loneliness, and depression. I understand that too. I know you didn’t ask for a pep talk, and I am not giving that, but I do want you to know that you have radically helped me so much through your vulnerability, honesty, and experience. I am a teacher, and some days I feel like I have wasted my life because I haven’t done anything “important.” Other days, I hear from a kid who tells me that my care for them helped them through a hard part of their day, which makes me momentarily feel good. I know you have impacted my growth and if I am passing it on to others in some ways, and maybe that person is passing it on to someone else….maybe growth and change are mundane and slow and a little like that shampoo commercial from the 70s where we pass it on…and so on and so on and so on. I am grateful for you and to you, Holly.
Kelly <3 As someone who comes from a family of teachers, yeah, you definitely changed people's lives. But I hear you on the discounting of that; I've been thinking lately that so much of the discounting comes from our belief that we are supposed to have some kind of perfect, greater than life purpose for existing and in that, we think we aren't really filling it out the right way, instead of realizing that just being alive is a worthy calling. I don't know if that hits what you're saying but that's how I've been trying to make sense of what makes a full life or a life well lived. Just that you do it?
Oh yes, it hits what I am saying. I feel that part often, we are supposed to have some perfect, greater than life purpose for existing-- like if I am not "teacher of the year," I have somehow failed myself and the world at large. When I step away from this crazy thinking, I really do believe that a life well-lived is filled with much smaller things that don't come with awards or recognition (that I don't think I value anyway, but I clearly do?). Maybe the goal is to do it and that is enough. Thank you for all you do, Holly.
English isn't my first language but when I'm angry I'm a fucking English professor! Big words stream out in lengthy sentences and I can slay just about anyone with how RIGHT I am. Anger is my response to fear and I'll survive that charging tiger you watch me. Also the 'why am I never frigging content with life and stuff like everyone else' is a daily struggle to accept...
It's been about 14 years on my recovery "path" or whatever and falling apart has been my biggest teacher. Around year 2 I realized the significance of these times. Thank you Pema. I catch on a bit quicker these days but still it's hard as fuck. I seem to have a life that falls apart often lol
I am a pro too! I have no idea where I would be without Pema; thank you for this. I think it's been my most significant teacher as well. I hate it, but I also love the fruits of going through it. <3
Proverbs 27:11 is this. The devil says humans are just too selfish to do the right thing. He's such a liar. "We have ideas about how we want to live and behave and respond to adversity, but the truth is that oftentimes when we are confronted with the gross reality of what living into our ideals looks like and actually requires, we don’t fucking want it. We miss countless opportunities to truly grow because the way we grow isn’t some shiny annunciation moment where an angel and a dove fly to you on a lightbeam; often it looks more like the exact thing you don’t want to have happening, that is happening." Excellent piece. Thank you, yes, like we're doing it in all those small ways you say. And the aging, that will all be undone soon, so keep going. We will get 1,000,000,000 tries. We're imperfect. That's what Jesus came to earth for - he is The Way all the promises will come, to undo Satan's ghetto lying messhole. Satan's trying to discourage us to death. His time is up. He knows it. But we didn't come this far just to come this far. We may actually get to see it. . . be patient, try to help others. You're such a blessing. It helped me to not be in the self pity mode when I realized I was actually conquering my challenges and the reason I was xxx miserable, was because I was taking the high road. Not the easy bad route. Keeping integrity, sometimes by Not responding, going to bed, letting go, etc. Thanks a million times.
Good one, Holly. You had me at the no completion on the poster. I’m a lot older than you and this aging struggle is gnarly. Trying to get off my own back is still ongoing but there is more space between the intense periods. I feel crazy a lot, too. Sensitivity is a double edged sword.
I know. I wouldn't have it any other way; I love how stupid sensitive I am. But it does require a decent amount of care. xx
“I feel old and like my vagina is just chalk…” I laughed out loud and said, “girl, same here.”
Your post made me think of the poem below. I have a post it with the last line of it hanging up from when I was crawling out of my skin/mind this time last year. Despite feeling stuck/lost/etc, you are here - “singing” again through your writing (and I am grateful for it!).
Our Real Work by Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
UGH that is so good, so perfect. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm keeping that.
Love this poem! Thank you for sharing. Inspired to paint these words 😃
Love that, Heather - would love to see a pic if you make something!
Hi Holly! I’m a new subscriber, passionate fan of your book, and a baby sober human (9 days alcohol-free!).
I just wanted to say thank you for this, for everything. Since I read your book on March 17-18 I feel like my life has changed for the better, and in massive ways.
My mind is on fire to read and consume everything I can that you’ve recommended. I think I’ll start w a book by Pema, but could you recommend one to a first time reader?
Thank you, you beautiful human!
Aww Cindy I was talking to a friend who is 18 months sober and I think I said something like, those first few days and months and years feel like time stops; I think 9 days is an epic amount of time. Congrats to you. I would start with When Things Fall Apart. <3
Holly, thank you so much for saying that. It’s so accurate, about time stopping. I appreciate your encouragement. <3
Also, I can’t wait to start reading! Thanks for the suggestion.
I have been reading between the lines... waiting/hoping you'd explain more if & when you could. Know that you are in a soft place to land, caught by hands who love and respect you.
I keep "scrapbooks" with quotes and snippets in them. They're grouped into different beautiful notebooks organized by "themes". I keep them so that when, in the future, I need reinforcement, or reminding, on a certain theme, I'll be able to go and flip through and get the hit of energy and wisdom I need at that moment. (And the act of printing them out, cutting them down to size, then mounting in the scrapbook with pretty washi tape, also imprints them into my brain for future reference.) Anyway, the last paragraph of this essay is going into one of those scrapbooks. So good, so what I needed to think about today. Thank you. (And it's not the first time you've made it into one of my scrapbooks!)
I love that you keep scrapbooks of quotes. I have always found that other people's words are my salve. I love you.
If there's one thing I've realized during this "sobriety" thing, it's this: "Words are my medicine." Other people's words, or my own act of writing the words to process things. And it's why I could never get with AA... those folks live by words, too, but I find their words to be punishing, disempowering, and downright bad about women. So I create my own "Big Book". I love you too.
"This doesn’t seem fun. Shall we delete this now and just go dance?" This SLAYED me. Never in my wild lil fucked up brain would I ever think of something so easeful and beautiful in a moment like that. A true angel person.
I mean; I would never think to do that on my own. ILY.
The leak could go away on its own, maybe.
YOU WOULD THINK.
I'm late to the party but #8 rocked my post-pandemic, 1.5 years post-wine, post pink cloud, mid-life. I'm copy and pasting from a private email. Hell, why not....
Pickles, my puppy, ate a whole dead squirrel (from snout to fluffy tail) the other day in the woods. I posted about it on social media and a few days later I heard my husband on speaker phone with my mother in law. My post was funny and light. Friends laugh emoji'd. My MIL of 20 years, in her joy-sucking fashion, drew all the wrong conclusions from the post. Asked my husband about rabies and what if our daughter found out and what would drive him (a species equipped with sharp canines and prey drive) to do such a thing??? Drama, drama, heart palpitations, more drama. Before she finished whatever her point was, just as it was getting started, the frantic tenor in her voice pissed me off. Her exaggerated hysteria, I've come to learn, is rooted in baseless fear, a touch of judgment, and more than anything, boredom and loneliness. Weighing in, even if it comes from ignorance and lack of understanding, at the very least puts her in the conversation. I know she doesn’t do it consciously, she’s not self-aware enough to understand her impulses, but it enrages me.
Thanks to you, HW #8, I realized the uncomfortable ball in my chest that presses on my guts whenever I hear my MIL’s voice might be worth deconstructing and turning my high-powered microscope on myself. Might be worth seeking the fleeting 'softness' you speak of, before lunging at her jugular. xx
I mean my whole body hurt reading this so hats off to you for living with that and through that. But, you know, YES. I mean I think a few things, like i get to erect boundaries I need with difficult people; but difficult people are such teachers. Lately I've been trying so hard to find that fleeting soft moment before I harden; it's hard but it's there and sometimes I find it. GOD SPEED. Also omg your fucking puppy ate a squirrel! That's real.
In Pickles's defense, it was an *already dead* squirrel he swallowed in under 6 bites. He didn't actually kill the squirrel (thank god). As for my MIL, I still have no defense for her...soft moment, soft moment, soft moment. 🙏
I too have had a most painful year, hot on the heels of an extremely stressful couple of years, preceded by two decades of living in an increasingly abusive relationship. I read and studied, meditated and yoga-ed, retreated and prayed myself into more love, more compassion, more capacity to be able to finally wake up to the situation I was in, right in time for him to leave. I thought I had been surrendering this past 12 months and I have been but my God have I been holding on too. I have been neck deep in well worn patterns of blame and shame and self recrimination, FEELING myself as the un-resolvable, forever victim all the while fighting like fuck to let that shit GO! I've been drowning, barely keeping my nose above water, bombarded with ever more betrayal, financial threats, a fucking cancer diagnosis and surgery, COVID and an ex who still refuses to agree to pay a minimum amount of alimony after walking away with the businesses, income, recording studio and atelier that we had built together over 20 years... It's not right. It's not fair. It's fucking criminal. It's happening. And there is nothing that I can do about it, other than keep living it. And keep choosing love. Which of course sounds very corny but it's really the only rich, intelligent, expansive, real choice that I have. And just look at how much love I get to become through this. Look at how loving a man unconditionally, who could not keep his word, prepared and expanded my capacity to be love through all of this. Look at how enormously valuable, extraordinary and miraculous I get to feel because of who I experience myself to be, with and in the extremity of my situation. AND the only way I am getting through any of this is by falling apart on a daily basis. Sitting on my meditation cushion groaning and heaving with grief and pain and rage. Which always clears space for wonder, for peace, for feeling held by something bigger than me.
I noticed this week, that as much as I've been surrendering and allowing myself to falling apart, I have still be clenching on so tight. Grasping on to positive mindset, affirmation, the moments of wonder in meditation, the moments when I feel like I know what to do next, silently begging God to send me sign that I'm headed in the right direction, that I'm going to be ok. And this is the definition of self inflicted suffering. To only let myself feel held when it's obvious, when the light shines through the darkness 45 minutes into my 1 hour daily sit and then loose it all completely when I read the next email from my ex-husbands lawyer. Or to fight the fear with positive affirmation rather than lay down my defences and just let the fear move through and clear the path for love. How can I be love in the face of anyone else's fear when my knee jerk reaction to my own is to shut it down, however "nicely"?
So all of this is to say, I am with you, and what a fucking grand adventure it is <3
Hey you <3 I feel exactly the same; like I think I've surrendered, and then more comes and I realize how much I still had been holding on tightly. I've thought "why couldn't you just let go the first time entirely" but I don't think it works that way?? I love you so much. Here's to our seven year cycle.
Seven years! Maybe it will work that day one day but for now, I think it's a mercy that it doesn't all happen at once. We surrender as much as we can until we're able to surrender more.
All this is exactly what I needed. I laughed through part of it because I so get that wanting to grow and change….but hold the fuck on…not like that!!! I want it to be gradual and allow me to catch up and figure it out and maybe have the lavender scent to accompany it, as you mentioned. I am sorry for your pain and loneliness, and depression. I understand that too. I know you didn’t ask for a pep talk, and I am not giving that, but I do want you to know that you have radically helped me so much through your vulnerability, honesty, and experience. I am a teacher, and some days I feel like I have wasted my life because I haven’t done anything “important.” Other days, I hear from a kid who tells me that my care for them helped them through a hard part of their day, which makes me momentarily feel good. I know you have impacted my growth and if I am passing it on to others in some ways, and maybe that person is passing it on to someone else….maybe growth and change are mundane and slow and a little like that shampoo commercial from the 70s where we pass it on…and so on and so on and so on. I am grateful for you and to you, Holly.
Kelly <3 As someone who comes from a family of teachers, yeah, you definitely changed people's lives. But I hear you on the discounting of that; I've been thinking lately that so much of the discounting comes from our belief that we are supposed to have some kind of perfect, greater than life purpose for existing and in that, we think we aren't really filling it out the right way, instead of realizing that just being alive is a worthy calling. I don't know if that hits what you're saying but that's how I've been trying to make sense of what makes a full life or a life well lived. Just that you do it?
Oh yes, it hits what I am saying. I feel that part often, we are supposed to have some perfect, greater than life purpose for existing-- like if I am not "teacher of the year," I have somehow failed myself and the world at large. When I step away from this crazy thinking, I really do believe that a life well-lived is filled with much smaller things that don't come with awards or recognition (that I don't think I value anyway, but I clearly do?). Maybe the goal is to do it and that is enough. Thank you for all you do, Holly.
English isn't my first language but when I'm angry I'm a fucking English professor! Big words stream out in lengthy sentences and I can slay just about anyone with how RIGHT I am. Anger is my response to fear and I'll survive that charging tiger you watch me. Also the 'why am I never frigging content with life and stuff like everyone else' is a daily struggle to accept...
Also the chalky vag.
Yup.. love relating to you as always
<3 same Malou.
It's been about 14 years on my recovery "path" or whatever and falling apart has been my biggest teacher. Around year 2 I realized the significance of these times. Thank you Pema. I catch on a bit quicker these days but still it's hard as fuck. I seem to have a life that falls apart often lol
Guess I'm kind of a pro now hahaha
Great reading as always!
I am a pro too! I have no idea where I would be without Pema; thank you for this. I think it's been my most significant teacher as well. I hate it, but I also love the fruits of going through it. <3
And that is what saves what little sanity I have. The knowing that on the other side, or at the same time, there is relief/light/hope/growth ..
Proverbs 27:11 is this. The devil says humans are just too selfish to do the right thing. He's such a liar. "We have ideas about how we want to live and behave and respond to adversity, but the truth is that oftentimes when we are confronted with the gross reality of what living into our ideals looks like and actually requires, we don’t fucking want it. We miss countless opportunities to truly grow because the way we grow isn’t some shiny annunciation moment where an angel and a dove fly to you on a lightbeam; often it looks more like the exact thing you don’t want to have happening, that is happening." Excellent piece. Thank you, yes, like we're doing it in all those small ways you say. And the aging, that will all be undone soon, so keep going. We will get 1,000,000,000 tries. We're imperfect. That's what Jesus came to earth for - he is The Way all the promises will come, to undo Satan's ghetto lying messhole. Satan's trying to discourage us to death. His time is up. He knows it. But we didn't come this far just to come this far. We may actually get to see it. . . be patient, try to help others. You're such a blessing. It helped me to not be in the self pity mode when I realized I was actually conquering my challenges and the reason I was xxx miserable, was because I was taking the high road. Not the easy bad route. Keeping integrity, sometimes by Not responding, going to bed, letting go, etc. Thanks a million times.