What is The Small Bow?

The Small Bow was created in 2018 as a recovery website for long-form articles and essays about addiction, mental health, and everything in between. 

In every year of its existence, I have had to correct people about the name. Some have called it “The Strong Bow," and then someone else told me recently how much they enjoyed "The Long Bow" I've also gotten "The Little Bow," "Small Arrow," and, my personal favorite, "The Small Bow," but pronounced "bau" like "take a bow." I can’t get too bent about it since this is what I get for committing to such a confusing and pretentious-sounding name. 

For even deeper reference, it comes from a 2013 New York Times book review titled “The Lost Novelist” by Donna Rifkind, and this specific sentence: 

“For all his ambition he remained a one-book man, a literary almost-hero who bore too great a wound and too small a bow.”

That part of the phrase – “too great a wound and too small a bow” – stuck with me and has since become a sacred, pivotal part of my early sobriety.

In the first year of day-counting and relapsing and depression, I felt like I was not worth saving – that my wound was far too great.  But it’s not, and neither is yours. Maybe this is the place to help you figure that out. 

READ MORE ABOUT TSB’S ORIGIN STORY

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A.J. Daulerio, Founder

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