Don't Quit Before The Miracle

Some of the best advice I ever got; a breakthrough from a friend; the before bed routine that's been changing my life; some covertalk, and April book talk.

First of all, HELLO! We have a number of new subscribers since my last post, and I am so thrilled to see you all here! It was so heartening to see that my thoughts a few weeks ago connected with you, and I am dying to know if anyone has carried out my experiment, and if so, how is it going??? Please do tell. I will be offering more posts like that with experiments attached for you to try, so please consider subscribing so you don’t miss a beat! xo, C

Alright, down to today’s business:

For a long time, my sobriety wasn’t something I talked about on public forums. It seemed too personal, something to keep to myself, conceal even in the hopes of avoiding the stereotypes that can come along with it. I was still influenced by the stigma around addiction, that at the time (16 years ago), felt extremely binary: you were either someone who could “handle” alcohol, or, like me, you weren’t. Sober curiosity or sobriety for health’s sake hadn’t made it into the mainstream like it seems to be today, and from what I could see at only twenty years old, sobriety was synonymous with being ass-in-the-chair at a twelve step meeting in a basement of a church or, the only alternative I’d encountered, Celebrate Recovery, a Christian based support program. Now there is much discourse around it and many varying approaches and resources, but at the time, again, not so much.

For me, I got my start in a beige stucco Alano Club building near a train station in San Luis Obispo, California on January 12th, 2008, swearing up and down that my foray there would be a short one—I was almost twenty-one after all, and I was definitely going to drink on my twenty-first birthday. I mean, how could I not? Never mind that the years and months preceding had proven over and over that A. My attempts to live differently on my own weren’t working, and B. That a middle ground attempt just wasn’t going to cut it. I needed a big change. I needed a miracle.

I ended up staying sober on my twenty-first birthday, something that a few months prior I would have never imagined to be possible. This was curious for me at the time and felt like a spark—I had figured I would fail, that I would surely drink again, but somehow, I hadn’t. How had I done it? I’ve often thought back to the me of then, and wondered, marveled really, that it took. But yet, here I am.

I love AA as a program of recovery overall, even though I see its limitations and its potential problems. It has all the same problems as most institutions, and it’s not a perfect place—what is? But the older I get, and the further along in my spiritual journey (because yes, the problem was never about the alcohol itself, it was in fact a spiritual malady like they said), the more I look back and appreciate that its teachings formed the bedrock of who I am today, and further, the writer I am—it’s sort of true that the parts of me I like the best, I learned in those rooms.

I went to meetings long before I ever needed them, attending as a toddler with my mom in Hawaii. I have distinct memories of a man allowing me to braid his very long hair into tiny snarled braids while the meeting commenced, my mother shooting him many apologetic and thankful glances. I remember her chips, the heaviness of them in my palms, To Thine Own Self Be True. Maybe that’s why, later, it all felt familiar to me in a base way. Why I can say that AA raised me, and why once I arrived there myself, I was beaten down enough to take its lessons and run with them.

There are a lot worse things to be raised by. The novel I’m writing now, in its fledgling form, has me thinking about the slogans of the program in deeper ways. How can such simple but brilliant slogans have kept me on track more than once, and now, even in my daily life which is entirely removed in almost every way from when I first got sober, I still hear them echoing in my ears.

Kim and I were teaching our novel class a few weeks ago and at the end someone asked us to talk about “grit”—as in, how do you develop the grit necessary to write a novel, to see it through? I was shot back in time to those first meetings by the train tracks, how desperate I was for a different life than I’d known. How willing I was to accept new rules to live by, and how wonderfully AA provided them. I took them in as such: rules. And when taken that way and adhered to, I started to become a different person.

What I told this writer was that you don’t quit before the miracle.

You will become a different person if you don’t quit before the miracle, if you take the body and allow the mind to follow (a great way to show up to a commitment you made but now don’t feel like doing—and to push through discomfort in general.) Because that’s what AA taught me, and maybe what gymnastics taught me even before that—that we can sit through discomfort. We can do difficult things. And we can choose to not quit until the miracle.

What’s the miracle? For our purposes today the miracle is the art making, whatever that means to you. Maybe it’s a novel. Maybe it’s finishing that collection, or memoir. We stay the course no matter what because we know if we do, we will change and evolve in the course of having done so. On the other side, we will have become the person who was able to accomplish the task that before we never could have dreamed of. The person who will continue to better show up and make more right choices toward your specific brand of freedom. The requirement is only that you keep showing up. The showing up is the grit. You show up when it’s hard and when its easy, and you keep coming back to it. We trust that if we take care of that, then the outcome will unfurl on its own. We can really only control our own showing up.

If I approach the page like this, I know discovery will be made. And beyond my trust that through discovery pages will amass and my capabilities will deepen and expand, I know I will be tapping into a higher purpose, because my writing is not just about me. Let me explain.

In 2014 I was pregnant with my daughter and found myself at a very prestigious writing residency in New Hampshire. There I met a woman who would go on to be very close friend forevermore. You probably know who she is if you’re reading this—in fact it’s highly likely that you found my work because she unabashedly lifts up and supports other writers—her name is T Kira Madden. I went to visit her studio and we had a deep conversation where I do believe we connected on a soul level. During our conversation I expressed that I didn’t see why I would ever write about my personal experience directly—what good could it really do? After all, I said. So many people have had it worse than me.

I smile now remembering this because what young Kira knew then and I did not yet, was that A. my story was worthy of being told—all of ours are—because we are human and on this earth at this exact time for a reason, and I needn’t worry that my story wasn’t dramatic or xyz enough (indeed, though it is a pretty fucking nuts story in general!) and B. the most important thing, which she told me, was that, Well, whether that’s true or not, no one will tell it the way YOU can. That’s the gift, not what it is, but your ability to tell it.

Oh. That was the gift? But then, at 26, about to become a mother for the first time, and subscribing to some sort of suffering Olympics rhetoric, I had decided that my story wasn’t crazy enough, or something, to be told. Funny I would say that considering I was writing story after story about my very beating heart all day every day, but was clearly still operating on some sort of funky belief system that Kira quickly cut right through.

Because she was saying something else, something more elevated to me that I would never forget: If you’ve been given this gift, then you’re supposed to use it. Someone out there needs it. And only you will do it the exact way that you can.

Something in me shifted then. It was crucial moment to me as an artist and something I will forever be grateful to her for. I felt that if she saw things that way then I could continue to show up and share. To connect. Knowing that my gift was about more than just me. It’s the way I’m meant to show up in the world, to serve, and to be. That’s the miracle. So I really don’t want to quit before I get there. That would, on a basic level, be pretty selfish. And if about now you’re wondering about the status of your own “gift”—trust that if you have the impulse to write, you have it. And that impulse should be listened to.

So back to grit—how do you cultivate it? What is it? And how does a phrase that I’m sure if heard on a bad day—don’t quit before the miracle—might feel trite or annoying to hear, too simple or something. But I promise you the second you start adopting it as a personal belief system, something really miraculous does happen: We move out of the hyper self-focused place of belaboring all the ways our art practice isn’t enough or going the way we want it to, all the ways we can glorify stuckness, and we move into a much more generous dynamic, not only with ourselves but with others.

I want to note that it doesn’t matter if you do not have a big audience. It doesn’t matter if the writing or art you make is something you just do for yourself. The making of it alters you and the way you show up in every other aspect of life. It bleeds out from the page in beautiful, unexpected ways. Or, maybe millions of people read what you create. What a gift in this, too. But we will never experience these gifts unless we turn toward our own gifts and commit to showing up for them.

And here I want to get a little old school, if I may.

This is what I really learned in those early days of AA, when the weathered old men (all seemingly named Mark or John S.) signed me up for coffee duty, or the women who I wanted to be my mother figures collected their fifteen year chips and I looked at them like they’d hung the stars, possessed some top secret information on how to live. And when I worked up the courage to hang back after the meetings were over, to ask how they did it, all of them had a very clear message to tell me: Sit down, shut up, and hold on, (or sometimes: take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth) and while I have many many deeply layered thoughts about potential problematic aspects to AA’s approach (nuance!), I will say that sometimes if you’re desperate enough, then a simple solution will suffice. In fact, it’s the most simple solutions that often move mountains.

But sometimes these simple solutions require us to be a little tough on ourselves. You want to write? Then fucking do it. Sit down and don’t get up again for awhile. Do this a lot of days in a row. Commit to yourself that you will show up for yourself—out of self respect if nothing else—and take your body to that seat even when your mind is screaming no.

Don’t have self-respect yet? That’s alright. Use the respect I have for you until you cultivate your own. Seriously. If showing up feels tricky, just think, well, Chelsea respects me enough for me to show up for myself and that is enough for today.

I think in those early meetings, in the pain of my emotions that I was not able to numb anymore, it took an immense amount of grit to keep showing up and keep not drinking. But then the days added up. Then the months. Each milestone proved that I was more than what I thought I could be. I developed a perspective that would go on to serve me well for the rest of my life, which is what I keep rediscovering now, as I work with other writers and these simple slogans come back to me.

In the class with Kim, I shared directly that I learned this from AA. That I was lucky enough to have landed there at a very young age and have half a chance at life. I know in the past maybe I would have felt hesitant to be so direct, but I feel we are coming into a new time where not only are we able to share more openly, more honestly and without shame, but also, like, why wouldn’t I sing from the rooftops the things that actually help me the most? And back then the stakes were life and death. I am grateful I understood clearly that for me to drink was for me to die. I didn’t want to die. In those rooms I learned I really, really want to live.

And now, I can’t help but compare the despairing sense I get from writers who so desperately want to create but cannot get out of their own way, and I think the stakes may be just as high. Because to not live into your artistic desire in the way you are being called, is a kind of death. And if you want to live, really live, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. Again and again. You have to sit down, say (perhaps out loud) “I’m surrendering to this process” over and over. And just when you want to quit. Well, that’s the moment you stay. That’s the exact moment you don’t move. Sit with yourself, and see what’s on the other side.

It might just be miraculous.

IN OTHER NEWS:

1. Okay, so I do want to share a little sleep hack I’ve been loving, and maybe you will too. It’s called fascia combing and I do it before bed. It’s so quick, and something about it makes me sleepy and my nervous system is just like thank you. I got the idea from Lo Roxburgh who I’ve followed for a long time and she’s allll about the fascia. You can see her sort of doing it here and that’s really it. You can also tap on your lymph nodes beforehand to encourage lymphatic drainage. Use a light pressure and just go up and down the limbs using a little oil, or just over your clothes even in a pinch. This is the one I got. My kids love it too.

2. We released the UK cover design for Madwoman designed by Hayley Warnham. I love how bright and bold it is, the huge typeface, and the girl’s determined stare (grit in action!) and that the art is by a female dutch painter, Martine Johanna. Also, swoon, those blurbs. It really conveys that this is a book about women and women stepping into truth and strength together.

We also have came to the final hardcover design for the US version of Madwoman here. Personally, I think it’s spellbinding. That fonttttttt. It feels fresh while still calling back to those amazing 80s and 90s thriller vibes with a touch of Squandering the Blue. Let me know what you think! I love how different they are from each other, and my mind is spinning with the fashion possibilities for each. Please consider preordering the book—it really means so much for a book’s success. I know preordering can feel like a drag, like I’m spending money but I’m not getting anything immediate! This is when I consider it as part of building my literary karma. Or something. : )

READING:

I have not been reading much fiction other than my pal Allie Rowbottom’s latest novel in manuscript form which JFC you are not ready. It’s one of the most beautiful, heart shattering, and entertaining books I’ve read in my life. You heard it here first, folks. We will be talking about this one nonstop for a long time.

Mainly I’ve been reading books for the new book I’m writing which exist more in the esoteric new age spirituality realms. Perhaps a deep dive there soon, but I can say that I am very fascinated by the book Co-Creating at It’s best: A Conversation Between Master Teachers. I’d say don’t knock it till you try it. There’s some great nuggets in here, one that brought me to tears. Not that that’s a hard thing to do, honestly.

I would love any recs you have for a multi-POV neighborhood domestic suspense novel ala Little Children, The Whispers, Big Little Lies, etc. Drop the recs below! I’m in the mood to get all wrapped up—Gone Girl type feels please.

Okay, that’s all for now. I will be back soon with another writing experiment for paid subscribers only so be sure to hit that button baby!

In gratitude,

C