The Speed at Which We Move
It’s never too late! Catch up to stories and podcasts you may have missed from May.
Good grief it’s almost June. As a person of hates-summer-experience — forgive me if I am not thrilled about spending the next three-plus months bathed in my own sweat — this is bad news. Then again: What isn’t! Alas my brain is forever finding a way to turn others might would call “information” and/or “perception” and/or “normal ass phenomenology” into what I experience as “a big and constant yikes” for reasons that remain mysterious (original sin?).
Anyway! What are you looking forward to? Dreading? Writing about in rueful notes-to-self that contain more truth than you’d like to admit? Tell us in your June Check-In.
The perfect length is 150-300 words. Here’s a great one from last month’s round-up to give you an idea of what we’re looking for:
I reached 200 days without booze over Easter Weekend and I quickly told my dad in passing, as if it were a curiosity or piece of trivia. He gave me a fist bump and said he was proud of me and I immediately felt embarrassed that I am keeping track of how many days I’ve gone without drinking.
I tell my family and friends that I am “not drinking” and that I “don’t really have much interest in it anymore.” I do not tell them that I had been planning my days around my next drink for years and occasionally poured tequila into cans of sparkling water during family visits. I don’t tell them that one of the hardest parts of quitting was how simple it became to use binge drinking to “accidentally” compliment a nasty string of bulimia dotted over many years, or that my relationship with food had gotten so bad that I couldn’t really eat without being buzzed.
I was always the “easy one,” which is the most well-meaning albatross that parents hang around your adolescent neck. Those aren’t the types of things that the easy one burdens anyone else with. But I am proud of myself, even if nobody else knows.
EMAIL US HERE: tsbcheckins@thesmallbow.com SUBJECT: JUNE CHECK-IN
It will be published next TUESDAY, June 3.
Anyone who contributes gets a FREE month of TSB’s Sunday edition.
Remember: If the cost of a subscription is prohibitive, or if 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.
We can offer free subscriptions as long as we continue to grow. Grab a paid subscription today if you’d like to be a part of that growth — spiritually and otherwise. —TSB Editor
MOST POPULAR STORIES FROM MAY:
Recovery Go-Bag: Erin Khar
“Water: This may seem obvious, but I’ve found that 95% of the time, drinking water improves whatever is ailing me (physically or mentally). Hydration for the win (and still, I forget this all the time).”
*****
Recovery Go-Bag: J Wortham
“As a bonus Jonas item, I’d probably include a copy of “When Things Fall Apart” which has resurfaced in my life in an interesting way (aka you and Holly keep talking about it!) and the idea at the core is so profound — Lean into the pain. Don’t turn away. It is our greatest teacher. And then to soothe the afterburn of THAT, I’d follow it up with a violet tincture I just made in North Carolina that is reminding me of a life bigger than I can even imagine for myself.”
*****
Interview With A 56-Year-Old Sober Person: Nadia Bolz-Weber
by TSB/Oldster
“My first reaction to almost everything is ‘fuck you.’ I almost never stay there but I almost always start there. That hasn’t changed, which for a long time I found really disappointing. Like, how in the world do I still think such consistently horrible things after all these years of WORKING ON MYSELF. But in my case, progress doesn’t look like receiving a personality transplant. It looks like the fact that yeah, I still start with ‘fuck you,’ I just very seldom STAY there. The time between my reaction (which is still pretty shitty) to my response has gotten real short. Progress is seen in the speed at which I move out of ‘fuck you.’”
*****
The Elements of David Foster Wallace
by Ben Gaffaney
“This spring marks 20 years since David Foster Wallace debuted “This Is Water,” his 2005 commencement speech to Kenyon College. Wallace was, it seems, in a good mental place, sober since 1989, and two years away from trying to get off Nardil, a blunt instrument of an antidepressant he’d taken since the 1980s.”
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
RECENT TSB PODCASTS
W/Amanda Petrusich
W/Joe Lynskey
ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
Monday: 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 ET
Tuesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Wednesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Thursday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET (Women and non-binary meeting.)
Friday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET
Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET
Sunday: (Mental Health and Sobriety Support Group.) 1:00 p.m PT/4 p.m. ET
*****
If you don’t feel comfortable calling yourself an “alcoholic,” that’s fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, codependency, love, loneliness, and/or depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.
FORMAT: CROSSTALK, TOPIC MEETING
We’re there for an hour, sometimes more. We’d love to have you.
Meeting ID: 874 2568 6609
PASSWORD TO ZOOM: nickfoles
Need more info?: ajd@thesmallbow.com
This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
You can also get a Sunday issue for $9 monthly or $60 annually. The Sunday issue is a recovery bonanza full of gratitude lists, a study guide to my daily recovery routines, a poem I like, the TSB Spotify playlist, and more exclusive essays. You also get commenting privileges!
Other ways you can help:
You can support Edith directly!
Demon With Watering Can Greeting Cards [Edith’s Store]
Or…
or you can give a
that goes toward the production of the podcast.
Everything helps.
A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
For Once, Then, Something
by Robert Frost
*****
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
—Via Poets.org
*****
Is this title a reference to a Nada Surf song? I can't not hear it in my head! Love it.