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Laura McKowen Quotes

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Famous Laura McKowen Quotes

“We think it is the aloneness we fear, but I believe what we actually fear is not having a home within ourselves. For so long, I did not trust my own landscape. I had believed the stories I learned about it, and I had taken every chance to avoid living there and learning her. Sobriety forced a closeness to myself and to life that was at first excruciating. It burned, and it burned, and it burned. But in the ashes from burning all the things I was not, I found her. I found me. And then I could finally be found by others.”

SelfLonelinessBeing Found
Book:We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
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“Because sober or not, until you start to tell the truth, you're going to be desperately lonely. Perhaps this is obvious, but I'm pretty sure it escapes most of us. We know we're lonely...but we don't really know why...I felt a nagging ache of separateness I could not name. Despite being surrounded by people, having a big social life, more plans than I had time for, and a solid group of people I considered friends, I still felt very much alone. I felt alone in my marriage. I felt alone in my friendships, And actually being alone by myself? Forget it - that was intolerable... Loneliness started to abate only when I began to really let people in and tell them the truth, and that took a long, long time. The antidote to loneliness wasn't just being around others or sharing common ground. It was intimacy. My friend Meadow's definition of intimacy...she says, "Intimacy is having a kind, compassionate witness to your truest thoughts and feelings." Having a witness also means being seen. Really seen. In all our humanity - flaws and ugly bits and all. Even the most courageous of us are willing to go about 90 percent of the way there, but we hold on to that last 10 percent, the part that could allow us to be really known. Sobriety hasn't so much been about revealing the 90 percent but that last 10. The little bit I always want to keep to myself. The problem is, 10 percent of withholding, or secretiveness, will still eventually contaminate the whole...And keeping 10 percent of yourself from your partner, or whomever you could trust with your heart, will make you 100 percent lonely.”

LonelinessIntimacy
Book:We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
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“This is the 10 percent withholding. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but right then they agreed it was okay to lie to each other - even if only a little...But they were always operating just left of center, hovering around the truth of who they were, unwilling to life the film from their eyes. It was a lot safer this way, but it was also extraordinarily lonely... It would have been a risk to call him out on the little fudging of the truth...she would have had to withstand a moment of discomfort...it might have allowed then to actually fins an honest ground zero from which to build something.”

TruthLonelinessHonesty Quotes
Book:We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
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