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

      Q and A with author Laura McKowen

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

      Tell us how the title of your book We Are the Luckiest came to be.

      Like most people, I thought sobriety was a death sentence. I thought it would be the end of all fun, excitement, joy, sex, travel, relationships, socializing — all the things that made life worth living. I thought the ones who could drink “normally” were so lucky.

      Then one night in 2014, thirty or so days sober, I was lying next to my sleeping daughter, crying. About what, I don’t know — everything was at the surface then. But I was there, with her, in our clean bed with soft sheets and the cool air on my face. Sober. Awake. Not running. Not hiding. I was in pain, but I knew it was the pain of being alive and that this meant something. I was living, not dying. I was expanding, not destroying. I knew it was pain with purpose and that — if I stayed with it — it would take me to the place I’d been trying to go all along, which was closer to life, not further away. I knew it was a gift — that it was the gift.

      I thought, this is the hardest, but it is better. The magic is in here, not out there. They’re not the lucky ones, I am. We are. We are the luckiest.

      I posted something to that effect on Instagram with the hashtag #wearetheluckiest and it caught on. It’s now frequently used as a way to come out sober online and express gratitude for this life. It was the obvious choice for the book title.

      While drinking was your thing, you encourage your readers to recognize their things that are standing between them and their biggest lives. Tell us more.

      We all have something. It can be big like death, divorce, addiction, illness, or it can be something more socially acceptable like perfectionism or working too much or people-pleasing. The point is, we all have some thing — often many things — that push us to our limits and call us to change.

      Addiction was my thing. It brought me to my knees. I thought it was the problem, the flaw—the thing that had gone wrong in my life. But it was actually the doorway to a much bigger, more beautiful and rich existence. This is always the case with our things — they are invitations — even though we don’t usually see them that way.

      You encourage people to drop the labels addict and alcoholic if they want. Why?

      Because they are mostly punitive. Very few people hear those labels and think something positive or even neutral. They carry a big stigma, a big story, and who wants that? You don’t need to call yourself something in order to address it.

      You give your readers permission to forget forever. Please explain.

      Forever was a concept that just seemed so overwhelming in sobriety. Never having another glass of wine, never sharing a cocktail, etc. It overwhelmed me with grief and frustration and it also felt impossible.

      The thing is, the only thing that’s happening is right now. We can always do right now. So I just kept it as that until forever didn’t seem so daunting.

      What advice do you have to offer those who are choosing the sober life that are triggered by other people’s drinking?

      Don’t be around it. You have permission to check out of those things for a while (or forever if you want). I didn’t spend time with people who were drinking for a long time because I tried to do that and it just made me suffer. If I had to for something like a work event, I just kept it really brief. I always had an exit plan and I always let people know beforehand that I wasn’t drinking so there was less anxiety when the time came.

      It can be lonely and hard at first, but you will be forced to find new people and seek out new things, which is necessary. Eventually the drinking won’t matter anymore, but so long as it does, you have permission to opt out.

      Tell us about the “Bigger Yes” that you write about in the book.

      Our unused potential is not benign. When we don’t use what’s inside of us, something dark grows in its place and we get bitter, resentful, depressed. I knew that addiction was killing me in the sense that it was actually killing me, but it was also so painful because I was wasting my potential. We often think of stopping a behavior in terms of what we are giving up, but there’s also something bigger we are moving toward, on the other side — that’s what I mean by the bigger yes.

      Laura McKowen is the author of We Are the Luckiest. She is a former public relations executive who has become recognized as a fresh voice in the recovery movement. Beloved for her soulful and irreverent writing, she leads sold-out yoga-based retreats and other courses that teach people how to say yes to a bigger life. Visit her online at www.lauramckowen.com.

      Excerpted from the book We Are the Luckiest. Copyright ©2020 by Laura McKowen. Printed with permission from New World Library.

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    • Double Vision: Does Everything have a Spirit?
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      Is there really such a thing as an inanimate object? Since God’s spirit lives in everything, wouldn’t that make things like a desk or a car or a favorite quilt alive on some level? If so, then is everything in the Universe equally divine? Namaste!

      Kinya

      Dreamchaser:

      Everything that you are asking in this question is based on individual belief systems. Some people believe that God lives inside their hearts, but that a chair is just a chair. Some people believe that every single thing has God-ness in it.

      It all depends on what you personally believe, and because of that, I can’t speak for what is correct or incorrect here – I can only offer my own views.

      It is my personal opinion that every living thing has life-force energy, and that energy will travel to and from other living things. So if you are talking about a metal desk, I don’t believe that desk is a living thing. However, if you are talking about a wooden desk made of real wood and not pressboard or something, well that wood was at one time a tree. (I personally feel more affinity towards natural products than towards man-made articles.)

      In fact, I can feel life in most wooden or natural products that I touch. If you take me into a museum, it will be very hard for me to follow those DO NOT TOUCH rules. I want to touch everything to feel its life force energy. I think that comes from a primal need to stay in contact with other living things.

      You mentioned a car. I think a car is a completely different thing. Some of us name our cars; some of us baby our cars; some of us talk to our cars like they can hear us and will respond when we rub the dash and say something like, Please start. Come on baby, please start.

      Though I don’t believe that our cars are alive on any level, it’s natural for us to personify some inanimate objects, especially if we interact with them all the time. Just this past weekend, I was driving through the cemetery by my house and one of the gates blew in the wind, slammed into the side of my vehicle, and tore up the door pretty good. I was just sick about this for about three hours until I realized there was nothing to get so upset about, since my car is not a living thing.

      Some people give money a whole lot of power, and money is not only inanimate – it’s merely symbolic! Despite this, it’s given as much power as anything else in the Universe.

      Everything has the propensity to be divine, so everything has the potential to be equal to anything else in the universe. That is my personal opinion. The Pope is no greater than the big pecan tree I have out in the back yard. The bottom line is the importance we put on something. Catholics obviously think the pope is more divine than my pecan tree.

      It all depends on one’s perspective, doesn’t it? I think the best answer here is a question: what do YOU believe?

      I wish you an even more inquisitive mind!

      *****

      Astrea:

      While all objects can carry the energy of the person who made them, not all possess a Divine spirit. Everything God-made begins with the God-force. God-made Objects are created by the Divine, and are animate in that they have living cells.

      Things made by man are inanimate – the cells don’t grow or reproduce. As long as something is LIVING or ALIVE, it possesses its Divine spirit.

      Once it’s been mined, cut down, created or eaten by man, the spirit moves into the person who consumed or used the inanimate object, whether it’s a plate of sliced tomatoes or a pair of leather shoes. The people who create man-made objects also infuse them with their energy, but that doesn’t mean they have a spirit.

      Does the Sun combine with water and chlorophyll to create a tomato? Yes, and the tomato has Divine energy. Sliced and eaten, the chain continues to the person who eats it. Does the desk where we sit possess Divine spirit? No, because people created the desk.

      The spirit of the tree or the tomato lives within the consumer, and thus is kept divine in that way. People use energy to create objects, and their ENERGY is Divine. While their energy may live on in a painting or a dance, it is just energy – not spirit.

      Are the coins thrown in the I Ching Divine? Are the sticks? They certainly represent a Divine spirit, but the objects aren’t divine in and of themselves.

      Is the cross Jesus was murdered on Divine? It was when it was a tree. Does it POSSESS part of Him in it? There are churches all over the world in death battles for splinters of the True Cross, and in the 12th to 14th century, Europe was ruined by a war over the cup Jesus drank from at The Last Supper.

      Surely those things are Divine, right? Well, the cup can conduct heat and carry water, but it only becomes animated in the hands of someone else. On its own, the cup is just metal (and jewels, to hear some tell!) that a person made into something useful. They are like the statues of Baal in Egypt and other statues and representations of the God Force.

      While these things can be used in worship, whether they have Divine energy or not is largely determined by cultural beliefs. Objects can be infused with divine energy and meaning by religious worshipers, but then they are conductors of Divine energy as opposed to a source of Divine energy.

      I feel it’s up to each person to decide what is Divine for them, and what carries a Divine spirit. Whether they carry Divine spirit or not, I would love to see a table Jesus made or sit in a chair He built. I am sure they are really something!

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