Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

by Holly Whitaker

the thing about truth is once you know it, you can never un-know it.

There is the life that most of us live, and then there is the life we have buried deep inside us, the life we know we’re supposed to be living.

You don’t need to be told not to trust yourself, because you’ve always been told not to trust yourself. You don’t need to be told how to apologize, because you’ve already been apologizing for everything you are and everything you do to everyone forever. You aren’t coming in too big and too proud, you’re coming in cratered, and you don’t need to be broken the fuck down because you’re already broken the fuck down. In other words, the Twelve Steps aren’t some radical new way of being; they are your daily lot.

What healed me wasn’t obliterating my sense of self, silencing myself, or denying my desires or body, or closing myself off more from the world—it was the opposite that saved

feminine-centric recovery paradigm assumes that you are already whole and perfect; it is not you who is broken but the system; you are the expert on your own life, and therefore you make the template, and you make the rules. It is a bottom-up approach, which means that whatever systems exist are there to support your healing, decision making, and process.