Quit Like A Woman, by Holly Whitaker
Quit Like a Woman
Written by Holly Whitaker, the book is equal parts research into alcohol as big business, strong political views and memoir about Holly’s journey to sobriety. While I was not able to fully relate to her method of sobriety (kundalini yoga for one!) or her relationship with alcohol to begin with, that’s not the point of reading memoir or a book like Holly’s. The beautiful lesson in my experience with this book was to first hold space for the incredible amount of research that went into this book. Page upon page upon page of a deep dive into the industry of alcohol and the “bill of goods” that women (especially) are sold when it comes to alcohol consumption. Covering topics such as cigarettes and the war on drugs, Holly leaves no stone unturned when it comes to examining the role that our policy and legislature have to play in alcohol consumption in the United States, as well as the conscious decision many well-known lifestyle brands and influencers have to play in the perpetuation of alcohol culture as well.
Key takeaways (ie: highlighted, underlined and dog-eared) from Holly’s book, Quit Like a Woman, and my relevant or relatable segments:
I was drinking by myself after going out; I was hungover more days than not; keeping it to a bottle of wine at night felt like a win. I was hurtling so quickly toward total dissolution that I couldn’t pretend to have the strength to stave off what was happening to me.
Drinking has become so ingrained in the female code, we don’t even recognize the nearly endless ways it’s pierced our every experience, or even stop to think about the cost of that infiltration.
Alcohol is addictive to everyone. Yet we’ve created a separate disease called alcoholism and forced it upon the minority of the population who are willing to admit they can’t control their drinking, and because of that, we’ve focused on what’s wrong with those few humans, rather than on what’s wrong with our alcohol-centric culture or the substance itself.
We wait until people bottom out. We fail to address those who are not addicted but simply struggle, which is akin to waiting for a heart attack to check cholesterol, and then treat it.
Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, says we have to learn to be both big and small at the same time. Big, as in we are worthy because we exist. Small, as in we exist to serve humanity. We must learn to be big in a way we’ve never been big – we must claim our right to take up space, to say our words, to claim our desires. We must also learn to be small in a way we’ve never been small – to be in service; led not by our egos or desire for material goods or by our fears and aversions, but by our desire to be liberated by these things. And we must do both at the same time. Perhaps before we can learn to be both big and small at the same time, we first have to learn to be big.
Agency = the technical term for the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing that you have a say in what happens to you, knowing that you have some ability to shape your circumstances.
Commitment calls us “Sweetie” and beckons us forward; discipline calls us “lazy” and kicks us in the vagina. Commitment has intention and doesn’t worry about the result so much as the action and the journey; discipline has one goal in mind and will achieve it no matter the cost.
BUILD A TOOLBOX
This is TOO rich to summarize here … you can find it on pages 202-204 and the concept of a toolbox can apply to all hard things in life. LOVE this.
Staying with ourselves is a skill most of us severely lack, because we’ve learned through others and ourselves that our own bodies are the least safe place to be. This practice gives you the chance to stay with the parts of yourself that are hurting, the parts that need you not to go somewhere else, like down the neck of a bottle.
You are allowed to be whatever you want to be, at any moment you want to be it. There are no social pacts. There are no rules. Nothing is set in stone, ever. You get to be exactly who you want and need to be. No matter what. And the right people will always be on board with it.
You are not on a mission to save the princess, you’re on a mission to save yourself – you don’t go with a team, you go with yourself. Loneliness isn’t some block on the path, it’s the whole damn path, and if you’re feeling it, that means you’re doing it right.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. Me sharing my story changed the map, created new mountains, and those mountains are the ground on which so many connections, relationships and love affairs have bloomed.
There is so so so much more I want to say about this book from Holly. The book came at a time in my life when I needed some specific encouragement, and was a crucial part of my sobriety (since March 2020). Thank you Holly for being a mountain.
