"Carry On Warrior" by Glennon Doyle Melton
Today I am grateful for the painful experiences in my life that have taught me valuable lessons. I am also grateful for working heat in our house.
It's time to focus on another writer I mentioned in this recent post. Glennon Doyle Melton is the author of Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed (copyright 2013). She blogs at Momastery. You can listen to her TEDx talk "Lessons from the Mental Hospital" from May, 2013 here.
Melton calls herself a truth-teller and uses many catch phrases like "living outloud" and "we can do hard things." There is much insight and food for thought in what she says. She talks about taking off the various masks of shame that surrounded her bulimia and alcoholism. I try to be a truth-teller with my writing too. Some of it is my own personal truth that I need to hear, but much of it is also the simple truth of our human experience. We are flawed and imperfect and doing the best we can each day. It's nice to share that triumph-struggle stuff with fellow humans.
I like her writing style. She's witty at times, painfully blunt with herself and us at others. These words from p. 25 of her book definitely struck a chord with me:
The night I first danced sober was one of the most important nights of my life. "Dancing sober" is what I try to do every day. Dancing sober is what I do when I write. I just try to be myself-messy, clumsy, crutchless. Dancing sober is just honest, passionate living.
I remember my first sober dancing too. Not that I was much of a dancer when I drank, and I'm still not much of a dancer, but to dance sober was so freeing. I had been stuck inside myself and my inhibited and painful emotions for so long. Alcohol had been the only thing able to loosen me up really. When I got sober and learned to loosen up in other ways, when I learned to just be okay in the moment and the current feelings I was having, I knew that a sober life could also be a fun and passionate life too.
And let's face it, life is messy and clumsy. But that is where the joy and gratitude resides as well.
I am grateful to be "dancing sober" today, appreciating recovery, sobriety, and the fact that I have learned to not take myself and life so darn seriously all of the time.
It's time to focus on another writer I mentioned in this recent post. Glennon Doyle Melton is the author of Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed (copyright 2013). She blogs at Momastery. You can listen to her TEDx talk "Lessons from the Mental Hospital" from May, 2013 here.
Melton calls herself a truth-teller and uses many catch phrases like "living outloud" and "we can do hard things." There is much insight and food for thought in what she says. She talks about taking off the various masks of shame that surrounded her bulimia and alcoholism. I try to be a truth-teller with my writing too. Some of it is my own personal truth that I need to hear, but much of it is also the simple truth of our human experience. We are flawed and imperfect and doing the best we can each day. It's nice to share that triumph-struggle stuff with fellow humans.
I like her writing style. She's witty at times, painfully blunt with herself and us at others. These words from p. 25 of her book definitely struck a chord with me:
The night I first danced sober was one of the most important nights of my life. "Dancing sober" is what I try to do every day. Dancing sober is what I do when I write. I just try to be myself-messy, clumsy, crutchless. Dancing sober is just honest, passionate living.
I remember my first sober dancing too. Not that I was much of a dancer when I drank, and I'm still not much of a dancer, but to dance sober was so freeing. I had been stuck inside myself and my inhibited and painful emotions for so long. Alcohol had been the only thing able to loosen me up really. When I got sober and learned to loosen up in other ways, when I learned to just be okay in the moment and the current feelings I was having, I knew that a sober life could also be a fun and passionate life too.
And let's face it, life is messy and clumsy. But that is where the joy and gratitude resides as well.
I am grateful to be "dancing sober" today, appreciating recovery, sobriety, and the fact that I have learned to not take myself and life so darn seriously all of the time.
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