For most of my life I believed I had to lie to get what I needed. I'm guessing somewhere inside, you believe this, too...While lying almost works, just like drinking almost works, neither will ever take us all the way home. While the path may be longer and harder and a little lonelier at times, honesty will always move you closer to love, not further away. I don't struggle with refraining from alcohol now but the advice was useful for my tendencies to over eat and spend! There are prompts at the end of the chapters to get you writing and thinking about situations and more!

We are The Lucky We are The Lucky

No matter how far astray you’ve gone or how many times you’ve tried and failed before, as long as you’re still sitting here, breathing, and reading these words, freedom and joy are still possible. much the same way as I feel about becoming a mother: it has brought me right up to the nose of life itself and forced me to look it straight in the face. At first, the nearness was too much; there was nothing to protect me from the immediacy of things - not from the bright lights or the sharp pain. But then, eventually, I came to realize that this is what it means to be alive - to not look away from any of it - and that all I was really doing before was pretending: floating through my days half-numb, half involved, half-awake, thinking I was really living when in fact I was missing it all.” The truest story - the one that will always be truest - is that I am a human being, being human. Sometimes, I am my best self. Sometimes, not so much. But goddamn, I am trying to do better. I am always trying to do better. My guess is that you are, too.” The effort of putting words to my experiences, of trying to describe things as accurately as possible, felt like it was saving my life. One sentence at a time, I was writing my way to an understanding and a grace I could not otherwise reach. I breathed power into a new life for myself and also slowly started to make sense of what I'd never been able to before.”

The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

Laura was the first person I found online in 2014 who was telling the truth about addiction & recovery. Ever since I found her, I’ve read every piece she has written, taken her online courses, and even participated in one of her yoga workshops and I don’t even yoga.⁣

We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

I'll never forget the day it hit me that things were altogether different...My mind started to wander, searching for the familiar grooves of worry or scheming or protection to run down, but there wasn't anything there but smooth spaciousness. There was the warm sun making rainbows behind my eyelids and my bare feet hitting the baking asphalt and a bit of chewed-up carrot in my mouth. We think it is the aloneness we fear, but I believe what we actually fear is not having a home within ourselves. For so long, I did not trust my own landscape. I had believed the stories I learned about it, and I had taken every chance to avoid living there and learning her. Sobriety forced a closeness to myself and to life that was at first excruciating. It burned, and it burned, and it burned. But in the ashes from burning all the things I was not, I found her. I found me. Her profound description of her spiritual journey moved me to tears almost every chapter in the book. I cannot say enough about how incredible this book is, and what a gift she has shared.I would have spiraled, hidden myself away, and done anything to unhear those words. I had worked my entire life to try to shape your opinion of me, and to avoid - at any and all costs - criticism and judgment...Why? Because I was ashamed. My drinking — and whatever it is you do to feel better — was born of a natural impulse to soothe, to connect, to feel love. And although alcohol hadn’t actually delivered those things, it was absolutely yoked to them in my mind. In my heart and body, too. It was just what I knew.” I came to realize that this is what it really means to be alive — to not look away from any of it — and that all I was really doing before was pretending: floating through my days half-numb, half-involved, half-awake, thinking I was really living when in fact I was missing it all.” A masterpiece. The truest, most generous, honest, and helpful sobriety memoir I’ve read. It’s going to save lives." -Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Warrior and Carry On, Warrior I started to do the thing I had been doing, which was to bypass my actual feelings and say the thing I knew I was supposed to say: the more spiritual thing, the thing I thought she wanted to hear...But I stopped myself. I breathed.

Luckiest Club Sign In | The Luckiest Club

You are always with me. You are never alone. And everything I have is yours. You are granted all the love in the universe simply because you exist, not because you are good. Love was never yours to lose — you cannot lose it. It will never let you go.” This is the singular, hard truth I come up against every day: I am the only one responsible for my experience.” Furthermore, as someone in long term sobriety, I found her writing and the tools she provided gave me an insertion point from where I am in my life today. While her book touts this, I was still surprised when her questions and tools helped me navigate a specific fear I've grappled with that has nothing to do with drinking! It's also easy to see the value in how it will help many others who are in early sobriety or sober curious or struggling with issues other than alcohol or substances. In The Divine Comedy, Dante described purgatory as a place where the soul is cleansed of all impurities, It is known as a place where suffering and misery are felt to be sharp, but temporary. This for me was what it felt like to have one foot in the new, strange land of sobriety and the other firmly, desperately, in my old life. The is what it feels like for all of us, I think, when we have only half-decided to own our thing, When we have only half-surrendered, only half-committed to becoming different... She is at her best when she honestly and openly describes inner struggle and growth; going beyond the compulsion to drink, into a clear-eyed analysis of how we relate to other people, and ultimately to ourselves. Laura gently yet unflinchingly carries us through her journey from those trying early days, to how she learned acceptance, self-awareness and self-love. How she has come to terms with both the good and evil within, the fact that we are all 'magnificent monsters'.Over 90 days, or 13 weeks, you will learn about the five core practices of sobriety as defined in Laura’s recently published book, Push Off From Here. Things like approval seeking, people-pleasing, not voicing my opinions, and avoiding conflict at any cost — these were all dishonesty masked as something sweeter and more socially acceptable.” if you truly want to live with peace in your heart and be free of the burdens of the past — you must be brave enough to be willing to look at yourself honestly, clearly, and without reservation. You must take responsibility for everything that’s ever happened to you. Not blame. Responsibility.”

Push Off from Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Th…

something within me began to shift. I started to turn away from him, and though I hated myself for it, I didn't know how to stop. I also had to believe I had in me the capacity for things I could not imagine in my mind. That somewhere within me there was a primal wisdom I could not possibly understand or access, but that not being to didn't make it any less real. There was so much of life beyond my limited mental grasp - most of life, in fact. Breathing, for example. The impossible expanse of the ocean and the underworld it contains. Quantum physics. Animals. My daughter. So when I got really scared and thought a proud, dignified, peaceful sober life was beyond the pale of what was possible for me, I would say to myself, I can't do this, but something inside me can. I can't tell you how many times I've whispered those words in the dark.”Siting there, with just a few physical feet between us, I thought, I have an entire world inside me that you know nothing about. We know we're lonely...but we don't really know why...I felt a nagging ache of separateness I could not name. Despite being surrounded by people, having a big social life, more plans than I had time for, and a solid group of people I considered friends, I still felt very much alone. I felt alone in my marriage. I felt alone in my friendships, And actually being alone by myself? Forget it - that was intolerable...