Recovery Go-Bag: Mary H.K. Choi

“When I put earplugs in, the feeling and thought is: ‘ah, there I am.’ It’s like a massive hug.”

Jul 18, 2025

Thanks for your continued support of The Small Bow. If you love what we do and believe we have provided some value to you or people you love, please try out a paid subscription and access our complete archive and the Sunday newsletter.

Upgrade to Paid

But if the cost is prohibitive or you wish to send TSB to someone you love, contact us. We’ll happily pass along a free annual subscription to those who need it most.

I kicked around an idea for “Desert Island Discs” for recovery for a couple of years. However, instead of your top-five favorite music albums you’d take with you to a desert island, it’d be the recovery books or comfort items you’d bring.

I had this experience when, out of an abundance of precaution, we left our home and neighborhood semi-urgently during the recent LA fires. What did I throw in my bag? Well, two physical copies of my marked-up version of “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön and “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. I took those two because I feel like I’ve studied them and used them enough during various crises, both existential and familial, that I know how beneficial they are and how essential they’d be had we been away from our home for an extended period or, God forbid, lost everything. We were fine. And I was fine, and I knew if I stuck to my books, I would be fine even if something terrible did happen.

It gave me the idea to ask other writers, artists, and musicians about what they’d bring with them if shit went down and they were forced to only bring a few items with them to help keep their recovery intact, well — what would those items be?

Today, our guest is writer Mary H.K. Choi

1. My book. As in the very late one that I am still working on. It’s my fourth book and it’s three years behind schedule. It’s the one I was inside of when my dad got sick and died. And the one where I found out I had ADHD. And am autistic. It’s the one I was working on during the roughest patch of my marriage and for so long I resented it. It felt like punishment. Or detention. It was rough. But then I got to thinking what this book actually is. For so much of the past five years I’d seen it as proof that “everyone was mad at me,” when actually it was my constant companion. (The footsteps in the sand was the book carrying me! Lol) On some of the roughest mornings, I’d minimally know what I wanted to accomplish that day. I had a pursuit. And when I can shift my thinking to be grateful for this work is when the entire rest of my gratitude practice can open up.

2. If you can’t tell by my self-obsession that everyone is mad at me, I am an Adult Child. Basically, I end up being in fantasy a lot where I’m reenacting various traumatic scenarios from childhood in my adult life and forget that I am a middle-aged woman with a credit card. The Loving Parent Guidebook is the workbook that we do as part of the 12 step program that deals with this, and it literally tells you what feelings feel like inside your body and what good parenting looks like in actual verbs. In my life it functions as a manual for my knee-jerk responses in times of manufactured crises and even looking at the illustrations of a flower taking care of another flower makes me feel fondness for myself.

3. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. Being inside a very specific, familiar world is settling to me. This book also reminds me of how small and contained joy actually feels when it’s present in my life.

4. Fistful of earplugs. If I can’t get wi-fi bars to a higher power, chances are it’s because I’m dissociated. I get easily overstimulated, and most sounds cause me to short-circuit and ejector-seat out of my body. When I put earplugs in, the feeling and thought is: “ah, there I am.” It’s like a massive hug. I don’t leave my house without them.

*****

Mary H.K. Choi is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record and Yolk. She lives in New York. Has ADHD. And Autism. Plus a history of disordered eating and body dysmorphia. She is currently developing her books for film and TV and working on her fourth novel. Follow her on all social media at choitotheworld as well as the choitotheworld newsletter covering culture, fashion and vibes.

Previously: