Laura McKowen

“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.”
― Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling the who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at
the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“One stranger who understands your experience exactly will do for you what hundreds of close friends and family who don't understand cannot. It is the necessary palliative for the pain or stretching into change. It is the cool glass of water in hell.”
― Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

“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.”
― Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life