'Writing changes how we hold things in our bodies.'
Liberating us slowly, gently, fully. A guest post by Ann Dowsett Johnston.
Helloooo, hi, from Mexico. I’m here with T for the week while Alma is skiing with her dad for February vacation. Her birthday is today (Tuesday) and she’s fifteen. Fif-teen. This is the third year I’m not with her on her actual birthday as the day always falls during February break for her school district, and her dad, being a big skier who got her on the slopes at age two, has turned her into one as well. They spend most winter weekends skiing, although now she’s slightly less interested, opting to spend time with friends.
I don’t like being away from her today, but we celebrated over the weekend, and we’ll FaceTime later. Up until a few years ago, her birthday was something we all still celebrated together, but as with everything, the rhythms have evolved. She’s older. Her dad and I both have our own relationships and lives. Time clicks on. You get used to the new normal, again and again.
Last week on our way to do pilates together—something I was never inclined to do, but she wanted to try it, and hey, any activity she wants to do with me, I’m in—she said, “You’re so much cooler than other moms.” “WHAT?!,” I laughed, bending toward the steering wheel. This is not the kind of thing a fourteen-year-old girl says. I figured it was a TikTok thing and the joke was coming. “You actually want to bond with your kid,” she explained. She was serious. I played it so cool, keeping my eyes on the road. “Well, you’re my favorite person to hang out with so it’s easy,” I said, super chill.
There are thousands of moments when I’m sure I’m fucking it all up, but once in a while, they let you know you’re doing something right. I’ll take it.
This week, I’ve got another guest post from you. I talk a lot here about writing and the connection between writing and my sobriety. I have often said that writing saved my life, as in literally. In those early days of facing sobriety, when the fear and shame were so thick and my sadness felt dangerous, writing gave me a place to put it—a place to go with it all. It didn’t keep me from the pain; quite the opposite. It bore me right into it and stretched it and broke it apart and made it dimensional so I could eventually see what else was there. As Kahlil Gibran said, “Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Writing, for me, provided both the immediacy and the remove I needed to withstand the breaking.
One of the gifts of both sobriety and writing is meeting other people along the way. Especially other women. I spent the years before I got sober reading memoirs from women I only dreamed of meeting, and the years after actually meeting them. And some, like Ann Dowsett Johnston, have become the dearest of friends.
Ann was the first guest on HOME podcast in 2016, and when I tell you we about shit our pants when she agreed to come on. We’d both read and loved Drink, so talking to her felt very celebrity and dreamlike. She and I have remained close since and as the years go on, I just love and admire her more. I asked her to write a guest piece here on Love Story, and this first one (there’s another coming down the line!) is about writing and recovery, though you don’t need to be sober or have struggled with an addiction of any kind to get it. We’re all recovering from something; we all face parts of ourselves or life that push us past our edges.
Ann offers her own experience, plus prompts and guidance to get you started. (You do not need to consider yourself a writer to do what Ann is suggesting, by the way; I’ll go to my grave screaming that it’s one of the best tools we have for self-exploration and healing.). Thank you Ann, for your wisdom, intelligence, generosity, and humor.
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