I have been grasping at straws looking for inspiration to slow down my drinking. I have the daily wine drinking habit. I love all books by Marianne Williamson and when I opened this one, I said a silent prayer for words to help me respect myself and not drink to a stupor most nights. I found it in this passage from "A Woman's Worth". It has changed my life as I could not figure out WHY I drank but now I know. I am posting this passage so it might resonate with other people to help them find their way out of the bottle:
"When I was a child there was a woman who lived across the street named Betty-Lynn. She was sort of a cross between Auntie Mame and Jayne Mansfield. I thought she was the most beautiful, most fascinating, most wonderful woman in the world. Betty Lynn was wild and gorgeous and drove a Cadillac. I thought it was beige, but she called it the colour of champagne. She wanted a thatched roof on her guest house. She obviously had sex with her husband. She always told me I was wonderful.
Years later I remembered the scotch and water that was usually in her hand and many things began to make sense that hadn't made sense when I was young. But at the time she was a model of sorts, a glamorous woman who made me see magic when all I found on my side of the street was a lid placed on my emotions and disapproval of my more outrageous passions.
Why, in the thirty-odd years since I knew this woman, have I never forgotten her? What did she represent that struck me as so real, so passionate, so enchanted?
Whatever it was, the alcohol helped her let it out, but the alcohol enslaved her, and then it killed her. That's clear. But why do people who have the most ardor, the most enchantment, the most power so often feel the need for drugs and alcohol? They do not drink just to dull their pain; they drink to dull their ecstasy. Betty-Lynn lived in a world that didn't know ecstatic women, or want to know, or even allow them to exist. In former times, she would have had her own temple and people from all around would have gathered to sit at her feet and hear her pronounce them marvelous. She would have mixed herbs and oils. But an enlightened world began to burn these women and the world burns them still. Betty-Ann crucified herself before anyone else had a chance to. Many of us are a little like her, choosing to implode rather than take on society's punishment. Those of us who don't must bear society's wrath. But we live through it, bruised and battered though we might be. An more and more of us are now living to tell the tale, surviving the fire, surviving sober, and hopefully altered in such a way that our daughters and grand-daughters will have an easier time."
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"When I was a child there was a woman who lived across the street named Betty-Lynn. She was sort of a cross between Auntie Mame and Jayne Mansfield. I thought she was the most beautiful, most fascinating, most wonderful woman in the world. Betty Lynn was wild and gorgeous and drove a Cadillac. I thought it was beige, but she called it the colour of champagne. She wanted a thatched roof on her guest house. She obviously had sex with her husband. She always told me I was wonderful.
Years later I remembered the scotch and water that was usually in her hand and many things began to make sense that hadn't made sense when I was young. But at the time she was a model of sorts, a glamorous woman who made me see magic when all I found on my side of the street was a lid placed on my emotions and disapproval of my more outrageous passions.
Why, in the thirty-odd years since I knew this woman, have I never forgotten her? What did she represent that struck me as so real, so passionate, so enchanted?
Whatever it was, the alcohol helped her let it out, but the alcohol enslaved her, and then it killed her. That's clear. But why do people who have the most ardor, the most enchantment, the most power so often feel the need for drugs and alcohol? They do not drink just to dull their pain; they drink to dull their ecstasy. Betty-Lynn lived in a world that didn't know ecstatic women, or want to know, or even allow them to exist. In former times, she would have had her own temple and people from all around would have gathered to sit at her feet and hear her pronounce them marvelous. She would have mixed herbs and oils. But an enlightened world began to burn these women and the world burns them still. Betty-Ann crucified herself before anyone else had a chance to. Many of us are a little like her, choosing to implode rather than take on society's punishment. Those of us who don't must bear society's wrath. But we live through it, bruised and battered though we might be. An more and more of us are now living to tell the tale, surviving the fire, surviving sober, and hopefully altered in such a way that our daughters and grand-daughters will have an easier time."
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