A quick check-in.

Sunday coffee chat kind of stuff.

I didn’t write last week, and I know, I know—who actually cares?

But I do. Writing here is generative for me; it’s a life-giving, steady practice that also provides income and connects me to genuinely great people like you. I think

Elizabeth Gilbert

said Substack is like a walled garden and that’s a perfect metaphor. It is! It’s kinder and brighter and more positively energetic than any other place I can think of on the internet, past or present.

Anyway, I didn’t write. I went away the week before with friends to St. John, which was like this:

The view from our gorgeous house. Thank you, J&J!

And then I came back and re-entry was rough. Not because I wasn’t glad to be home—I am always glad to return home, whether I’ve been away for three hours or three weeks—but because there was a lot of work to do, and grief is chaotic and tiring. My friend uses the word disorienting to describe it, which is also apt. Every day brings something new, sometimes every hour.

I’ve found myself dipping back into frameworks and lessons I learned early in sobriety through AA: working with resentments, reading parts of The Big Book, service, taking inventory, and even prayer (my own style). It’s helpful, and I’m not surprised; I’ve dipped back to these roots many times over the last ten years.

I’ve been writing (really bad) poetry.

I’ve been taking down a lot of notes in a back-and-forth email chain to myself, which is a great way to take notes if you’re not going to carry around a notebook like Mary Oliver or Stephen King say you’re supposed to do! (Where does one put a notebook? I don’t want to take a five-mile walk or go to the grocery store or whatever else holding a notebook, Mary!)

Watched an excellent moving on Friday night, The Anatomy of a Fall. It’s about a woman being on trial for her husband’s death, about the complexity of marriage and ambition, about memory and guilt and perception and motivation. I’m generally a terrible movie watcher as it’s hard for me to pay attention for that long, but this one gripped me. If you need to know exactly what happened by the end of a movie, skip this one. Here’s a clip I saw on IG, which is what hooked me. Sandra Hüller was WOW.

the_goodfilms

A post shared by @the_goodfilms

In 2022, when I signed with my editor, Sara Weiss, she was about to publish What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, a memoir about recovering from complex PTSD. I dabbled in a few pages, and even though what I read was great, I couldn’t take it on at the time or since. I picked it up this weekend and am halfway through; it’s excellent. Her story is brutal—like, brutal—but she’s funny and smart and weaves through a lot of research and theory, which is helpful and gives the reader a break.

Lastly, this morning, I learned from my friend Jim that a bonsai tree is not a kind of tree but any (miniature) tree that one grooms and keeps in a tray. What. WHAT.

I know I’ll be back to writing more involved, thoughtful pieces again soon. I appreciate the grace in the interim.

How are you? What are you reading? Watching? Thinking about?

Love,
Laura

You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing from Laura McKowen. Laura is the founder of The Luckiest Club, an international sobriety support community, and the bestselling author of two books, We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life and Push Off from Here: 9 Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and Everything Else).

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