“Recovery is the resistance”

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For some women, not drinking in pregnancy is about making a very profound change: it means finding recovery from a serious alcohol problem and all the health and social issues that accompany having a serious alcohol problem. No small task.

Books about recovery from women’s perspectives can be incredibly helpful to those embarking on this journey, as an adjunct or alternative to finding treatment and other supports.

Writing on women and recovery

Beginning in the 1970s, through writings, trailblazing women have helped us see recovery from the perspective of women, and to take a critical view of how addiction-related groups, programs and systems have failed to take women’s lived experience into account. In the New Life booklet and the Women for Sobriety program, Jean Kirkpatrick catalysed women to see themselves as capable and competent as women, connected to other women in collective recovery. Stephanie Covington, in the initial and subsequent A Woman’s Way through the 12 Steps books, has done the invaluable service of helping many women find within AA, what can work for them as women. Charlotte Kasl wrote the Many Roads One Journey book and designed the 16 Steps for Discovery and Empowerment program as an alternative recovery model for women that links the experience of trauma and substance use. In the book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, Canadian journalist Ann Dowsett Johnston provided both personal reflections on recovery, but also a solid critique of how alcohol is marketed to women, nesting the recovery journey within a soup of societal forces that make the journey uphill.

More recent empowering guidance on women’s recovery

There are recent writings from women in recovery which are inspiring in their descriptions of the complexities of the recovery process, their critique of the gendered challenges women face, and their very practical advice on self directed recovery practice for women. One such book is Dawn Nickel’s She Recovers Every Day book of meditations for women. Dawn and her daughter founded the SheRecovers movement “dedicated to redefining recovery, inspiring hope, ending stigma and empowering women in or seeking recovery to increase their recovery capital, heal themselves and help other women to do the same.”  This book, while small in size, packs powerful wisdom and critique in short daily readings that conclude with a daily affirmation statement. It is helpful to every woman on a recovery path, and as SheRecovers asserts:

“we are all recovering from something, and you don’t have to recover alone.”

-SheRecovers

Quit Like a Woman!

Another fine example of the new wave of writings on women and stopping drinking is Holly Whitaker’s book entitled Quit Like a Woman. She picks up on Johnston’s thesis about the challenges of not drinking, within a culture obsessed with alcohol. The book is funny, clever, fearless, insightful and candid. See for example “seven things I wish I’d known about relationships before I got sober” – the “act like a log” advice alone, is worth reading the book for. It is a great, readable guide for women who want to take steps to quit drinking, providing solid analysis of what women face in recovery, what her own trial and error process involved, and what might work as other women put together a recovery journey. In the final chapter Whitaker says “If recovery is anything, it’s the first step on the path to radical self awareness.” She sums up by taking up the points of the pioneering women mentioned above, about seeing sexism and other forms of oppression that we need to shed and resist, discovering our power, and finding collective growth in recovery. She ends with the statement:

“Recovery is the resistance. Here is where you start”

-Holly Whitaker