Anne Lamott to the Rescue (Again)

Over the years, the words of Anne Lamott have helped me through some very difficult and challenging times in my life: my son’s addiction, my father’s death, an extended period of unemployment, and a cancerous tumor on my kidney, to name just a few. So, it came as no surprise whatsoever that Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage found its way into my hands the same week my father-in-law had a massive stroke and lay in a hospital bed with a very uncertain future. (Cue Twilight Zone theme song here.)

I am incredibly grateful for Anne Lamott and her writings. (So much so that I started the Anne Lamott Quotes account on Twitter, which you should definitely go follow!) To be honest, I’ve pretty much fallen in love with every book she’s ever written. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read any of her novels!) That’s why my brand new love affair with Dusk Night Dawn was entirely predictable. But, even though I may be a bit biased, please trust me: This one’s another winner.

Annie tells it like it is and, quite often, tells it like she wishes it was. After all, she admits to us that “most of my life force goes into trying to self-will life and me into cooperating with how I think things should be.” On the other hand, though, she seems to be making some progress in her “third third” (love that term!) of life. “I am slowly making my way from a hypnotized engine of delusion and self-obsession to being a bit more real, a smidge more alive more often. I’ll take it. I am learning to live more often in reckless love.”

 

Speaking of love, that’s covered in Dusk Night Dawn, too, as Annie frequently talks about her still-relatively-new marriage to her soulmate, Neal. Sure, she loves and adores him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a target at times. “When I’m watching him, I observe what a tall, nice-looking, thoughtful focused know-it-all he is. He comes from a family of know-it-alls. His brothers are just like him. I love them, but at our family vacations it is like Wikipedia with PMS.” 

My favorite essays in Dusk Night Dawn are probably “Lunch-Money Faith” and “Light Breezes.” In “Lunch-Money Faith,” Annie talks about her friend Terri who, one day at church, told her, “I have made a life and career out of being a good sport…And I am worn out.” Annie concurs. “Me too. I am sick and tired of being such a good sport and worker bee, chin up and adorably ironic, while we notice how much worse things have grown.” Amen to that. Aren’t we all just a little tired at this point?

 

Meanwhile, in “Light Breezes” Annie explores one of my favorite “D” words: Dread. As a lifelong catastrophizer, I can easily relate to what Lamott calls “my most reliable companion, always there for me, like God in a bad mood,” sharing with us that “Dread was my governess growing up.” She adds, “If Dread is not still right there at my side, she’s there in the wings, humming her hymns, drumming her fingers, knowing there is always a place for her in my heart. Life will push her call button.”

 

In true Anne Lamott fashion, though, there is lots of positivity in Dusk Night Dawn, too. “Yes, these are times of great illness and distress,” Annie writes. “Yet the center may just hold.” She also posits that “Hope springs from realizing we are loved, can love, and are love with skin on. Then we are unstoppable.”

 

Dusk Night Dawn is classic Anne Lamott, full of observation, honesty, sarcasm, positivity, self-deprecating humor (“I have a doctorate in morbid reflection.”), and the occasional eff bomb (“Never disobey Sunday school teachers. They will fuck with you.”). If you need a little bit of hope and courage, do yourself a favor and read this book. And remember: “The kitten isn’t dead. The kitten is in the living room.” (You’ll have to read the book to understand the meaning of that!)

"In the third third of life, you may become just as miserable and prickly as ever, but you cycle through more quickly. You remember other dark nights of the soul and how by dawn they always broke. You discover that everything helps you learn who you are, and that this is why we are here. You roll your eyes at yourself more gently. You sigh and go make yourself a cup of tea." --Anne Lamott

Book Review: Once More We Saw Stars

Once More We Saw Stars: A Memoir is a book that is at once heartbreaking and inspirational. Jayson Greene wastes no time getting to the accident that took the life of his 2-year-old daughter, Greta, much too soon; we learn about the tragedy on the second page of the book. From there, Greene takes us on a journey that includes loss, heartbreak, anger, grief, guilt, and just about every other emotion you can imagine. Just how does a young couple deal with such a devastating loss? Greene's brutally honest and beautiful writing makes the reader feel like they are right there with him, his wife Stacy, and his mother-in-law Susan ("Grandma Suz," who was with Greta when the accident occurred) as they navigate their way through the unthinkable. Learning how each one of them manages to live through such a horrible event and come out relatively okay on the other side is an inspiration.

I found myself getting teary-eyed more times than I can remember while reading Once More We Saw Stars. Some of the things that are said by Jayson and Stacy are just gut-wrenching. For example, not long after Greta's death, Stacy says, "Haven't we done this long enough? Can't we have her back now?" And at one point, Jayson writes: "A pall of societal shame hovers over everyone in this club....Children who lose parents are orphans; bereaved spouses are widows. But what do you call parents who lose children? It seems telling to me there is no word in our language for our situation. It is unspeakable, and by extension, we are not supposed to exist."

This book also teaches us about the grieving process, and how no two people will go through it in the same way. "Grief is fluid, and it is always changing," a grief expert tells Jayson and Stacy during a retreat. "Above all, 'grief is unique as a fingerprint. We can show you the stages, but they are not a linear journey. In the end, nothing and no one can hand you the map to your own grief.'"

Yes, this is a sad book. But it is also a book that reinforces the idea that people can--and do--find the strength to deal with unfathomable loss and learn to live again. Is it easy? Hell, no. But if you work hard at it, you can overcome even the worst things in life. I've never been able to imagine what losing a child would be like--until now. Kudos to Jayson Greene for his courageous memoir. Once More We Saw Stars will make you cry, but it will also make you smile. Especially after the birth of the couple's new son, Harrison, of whom Jayson writes: "Under his tutelage, I can feel a frankly ludicrous conviction growing inside of me. We--myself and my wife, the growing child in front of us and the one we never see--are going to be all right."

Take it from me: This one's a must-read.

Jayson Greene and his late daughter, Greta. 

Finalist Essay: Charlie Lockyer

Charlie Lockyer's entry for the My Life as 3D Scholarship Essay Contest was unique among the 10 finalists. Why is that? Because not only has she has been affected by her older brother's addiction and her mother's addiction, she has faced addiction herself.

Charlie is a brave young woman who is studying psychology at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I am thrilled to share her incredibly brave and honest essay with you.


Breaking the Circle

By Charlie Lockyer

Andrew has always been THAT guy. The one you want to be with. Good looking, funny and surrounded by friends. Pushing everything to the limit and rarely getting caught. He is six years older than me, and when I was growing up he was my hero. I wanted to be just like him. He was also my protector from life with an alcoholic mother. She was verbally, physically and mentally abusive and he was the buffer between real harm and the quiet of my family's own dysfunctional kind of normal.

In the final years of our Mom's drinking, Andrew began to steal her booze. I learned that he would sell the booze, and use that money to buy weed. In my eyes this impressed me even more. It was a cunning business venture and the adults had absolutely no idea. When our Mom finally entered recovery, our world began to change. My parents' eyes were opened to the three of us wild children, and a budding business died. Even though he was put out of business, Andrew continued to be wildly popular and continued to use a variety of drugs. I grew up to be almost exactly the opposite, even though I desperately wanted to be like him. My idolization of him eventually led me to my own downfall.

In every branch of my family tree, and perhaps even down into the roots, there is addiction. It is simply how our brains seem to be wired, so to speak. When the concept that my siblings and I might have a greater likelihood of having addiction issues, we all reacted in different ways to that knowledge. My younger brother completely accepted it, and has the foresight, even at 16, to want a life free from mind-altering substances. I was neutral, and while I had an intellectual understanding of what I was being told about my chances of developing a problem with substance misuse, it wasn't resonating emotionally. I was working on my anger and PTSD in therapy, but was still too confused to really listen or care, and the need to feel connected to my peers was so strong. Andrew, however, denied the possibility that addiction could be genetic flat out. In order to repair our familial connections, we all went to therapy as a family, but Andrew refused to participate, driving himself away from us rather than forgive and learn to move on from our broken pasts. He seemed to let it fester.

Andrew's thirst for adventure and need for excitement led to him join the military by the time I was in high school, and I was desperate to follow. There, too, he was still Mr. Popularity. I struggled in high school and was not so well liked. I was awkward because I was trying to be someone I wasn't. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I had few friends, and I couldn't figure out why I just didn't fit anywhere. I looked at the differences between my older brother and I, and found a key. I didn't touch drugs. I didn't go out of my way to avoid them; I just never took up people's offers. Andrew would come home and tell us all about his adventures on and off base. More and more often, these adventures became centered on his bar crawls, his drunken antics and sneaking drugs that would be undetectable on drug screens. I feared for his job and his life. He flew planes, shot guns and was in uniform. I was also enchanted by it all. It became glamorous, death defying and he was always the center of it everything. The drugs and alcohol were main characters--a central theme. None of it would be possible without that fuel. It was the adventure and glamour I wanted--but also the way he fit in anywhere, with anyone. After Andrew left the service, he continued, this time on the rave and festival circuit, with X--sometimes real and sometimes synthetic. The raves look incredibly fun, and the different music festivals he posts about on Facebook and Instagram look like such a great time. He presents as happy, like he is living life however he wants it--as if he is in control of it all. I wanted that more than anything! But it’s an illusion, like all of those pictures. I only saw what I wanted to see.

My Mom received a phone call one day. My siblings and I had a very complicated relationship with my Mom--she was an active alcoholic during most of our childhood, and has now been in recovery and has been sober for more than eight years. It was Andrew, admitting that he had a drinking problem and that it was out of control. He was going to start going to meetings and getting help. I didn't really think too much about it, until a month later, when he was back to raving and bar hopping. I asked him about it, and he told me that he isn't an addict--it isn't possible for him to be an alcoholic. He told me that addiction is in no way genetic, he had overreacted, it was under control and he had taken a break and it was all good. No problem. Looking back on my own experiences, he is wrong.

My life was great--I had gotten into a college I believe to be prestigious, and that was a perfect fit for me. The school was heaven, and I loved it. I was away from my family for the first time, and I wanted the kind of friends my brother had. Andrew's voice got louder than what I learned from my Mom's recovery. After years of being on the sidelines and winning dodge ball games in gym simply because nobody noticed me, I found somewhere I could start over and be just like him--be popular and cool. So when my friends partied, I partied too. I began drinking socially and smoking pot. For a month or so, my life was well balanced. My studies and my partying didn't impact each other. As the semester ground on, my drinking became uncontrollable. In a very short time, I was beginning to lose control over my life. Alcohol became my higher power--when I felt any negative emotion, my automatic thought was that I needed a drink. When I was happy, I wanted to celebrate by drinking. My older brother made it all seem normal, that I was just being a college student, that it wasn’t a problem at all. But the path that I was on led me into a dark place--I nearly lost my place in the freshman class, as well as the few friends I made. My grades slipped, and I was losing everything I loved. Within four months of me first raising a bottle to my mouth, I was drinking every day, smoking weed any time I could get my hands on it, and it was escalating fast and destroying my life. The smallest tension became a huge argument and lead to explosive confrontation. Who was I? Many members of our family struggle with addiction, but nothing impacted me like my brother's use. He continues to make that life look glamorous, but now I know better. Alcohol and drugs are not going to win me friends or fill up any empty spaces in my life. It took nearly ruining my own life to realize that Andrew isn't right about a family connection and substance abuse disorder, and I had to nearly destroy my life to see just how the four generations before me prove us both wrong.

I still love and adore my older brother. He is brilliant, funny and THAT guy--even clean. Especially when clean. He was my hero, my protector, and he was exactly who I wanted to be. I no longer idolize him, or want to follow in his footsteps. I am so afraid that he will use some combination of booze and synthetic drug and he will react badly to it and die. That is one of my worst fears. He still has not let go of his anger from our pasts, and refuses to seek treatment for his PTSD. He uses to mask his feelings with others but with his family he rages. He drinks to the point of blackout every time. He has driven wedges between himself and all of us, even though we love and accept him for who he is. He has separated himself from us, much like our Mom often tried to separate from the family in our younger years. This brings back awful memories for me, my own PTSD. He and I no longer have a relationship, because I cannot build a bridge without a foundation. I miss him, and love him dearly, but his addiction and his refusal to get help has created a chasm between us. He seems to walk down the path our Mom took, and that is the circle of addiction that I want to help people break free from.

Today, I have found myself again. I am in early recovery, and am working on bettering myself as well as my life. I am coming to terms with the consequences of my downward spiral, and accepting them with as much grace as I possibly can. I am still attending my dream college, however my major has changed, and my life plan has as well. I began to form a new plan with a new dream. I am now majoring in Psychology, with plans to work with addicts, and the families of addicts. I want to help families like mine, ravaged by addiction issues, because I understand them personally. I know what it is like to be the child of an addict, and to be the sibling of an addict. I want to work with people with substance use disorders because I know what it is like live with one. While in college I will be advocating for sober living environments. My dream is to help people who are affected by the disease of addiction, fight stigma and get on with the business of living. I want to be THAT woman but for all the right reasons. The first president of the school that I attend said in his final commencement speech, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." I am not going to be ashamed. Not of who I am, of my addiction, of my family--as long as I am present in my life and do my best I will have won.