I randomly picked up Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher, at Goodwill one day last year.
“Women Rowing North” caught my attention for two reasons. First, Mary Pipher’s book Reviving Ophelia was very important to me when it came out in the 1990s. It is all about the experiences of adolescent girls in their search for selves. When it came out in 1994, I was 16 years old. I spent 13 years of my life teaching adolescents, and now I am the mother to a 16 year old and a 10 year old. In many ways, I feel like I know Mary Pipher personally since “Reviving Ophelia” saturated so many parts of who I am, what I did, and how I parent. Second was this book’s subtitle – “Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age.” We had a conversation on Boom recently about an article that argues we experience aging’s effects most profoundly at 44 and 60. For me, it has been 46. Physically, mentally, and emotionally, the past six months have felt transitional for me. Exercising, stretching, and eating well are necessities rather than luxuries. I feel slower to catch on to things at work and the right word or name is no longer “on the tip of my tongue” but somewhere much less attainable. And while I am very much still in the throes of parenting, I can feel my girls cleaving. I feel like I am rowing and rowing and the current is pushing harder and harder against me.
I feel on the verge of something, but I don’t know yet what it is. The last time I felt like this was when I quit drinking. And since there really isn’t anything left in my life to quit, I am looking forward to Pipher’s wisdom to help guide me on this path.
You might be saying, good for you, but how does a book about aging women relate to our diverse community of folks here at Boom? What does this have to do with getting and staying alcohol-free? And it’s a good question – one I’ve been debating for the past week or so. So much so that I thought several times about shifting gears and changing books.
But then I read the introduction to “Women Rowing North”. And while nearly every sentence could be related to our AF journeys, it is this phrase that stands out the most to me:
“To be happy at this junction, we cannot just settle for being a diminished version of our [younger] selves. We must change the ways we think and behave. This book focuses on the attitudes and skills we need in order to let go of the past, embrace the new, cope with loss, and experience wisdom, authenticity, and bliss.”
If we replace “younger” with “former,” this section summarizes precisely why so many of us are here. We want to be free from alcohol, but we are so scared of being that “diminished version.” To successfully quit drinking, we have to change how we think and behave. And most of us aren’t here just to quit drinking. If we were, we would likely leave after 30 or 90 days. Certainly after a year or three. But many of us are still here. And the reason I am is because an AF life allows me the capacity to learn new attitudes and skills to do all of these things Pipher lists; something I just couldn’t manage when all of my efforts went into keeping my buzz and fixing all of the problems my drinking created.
I hope the title doesn’t alienate any of our wonderful men here or anyone who doesn’t consider themselves moving into “old age.” (Which, at 46, I realize I am not entering “old age,” but I also don’t want to wait until I am in my 60s or 70s to develop the heart-centered living that often evades us younger folks. I want to know what Mary Pipher has learned about aging, and I want to know it NOW!) I will do my best to write my posts from a perspective that takes the book’s lessons and relates them to all of us here and our experiences quitting drinking. And maybe we will find that the book doesn’t really relate to our AF journeys, and that’s okay, too. I haven’t read it beyond the introduction, so I can’t make any promises.
If you are interested in participating in this conversation on Mary Pipher’s book Women Rowing North, you’ll find the posts and comments in our Boom Community Book Club through the linked titles below. And, as always, there is no obligation to read the book in this Book Club. You are free to read and comment on our posts from your perspective regardless of whether or not you are following the text.
Get your oars ready!
Open the discussion posts in our Boom Community with the links below
- Women Rowing North – 1.1 “A New Stretch of the River”
- WRN – 1.2 “The Lay of the Land”
- WRN 1.3 – “The Worn Body”
- Hello Book Club!
- WRN 1.4 – “Intensity and Poignancy”
- WRN 1.5 & 1.6 – “Caregiving” & “Swept Away”
- Understanding Ourselves
- WRN 1.7 – “Loneliness & Solitude”
- WRN 2.10 – “Building a Good Day”
- WRN 2.11 – “Creating Community”
- WRN 2.12 – “Crafting Resplendent Narratives”
- WRN 2.13 – “Anchoring in Gratitude”
- WRN 3 – “The People in the Boat”
JOIN US ! IN A BOOK CLUB ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN QUIT LIT
You can access our Boom Community Book Club archive with the titles below.
- The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Sober Diaries – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Blackout – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Chasing the Scream – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Untamed – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Push Off From Here – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- Staying Sober Without AA – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
- In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts – A Boorts m Community Book Club Discussion
- Dry by Augusten Burroughs – A Boom Community Book Club Discussion
- A Million Little Pieces – A Boom Community Book Club Discussion
- Drinking a Love Story– A Boom Community Book Club Discussion
- The Shining – A Boom Community Book Club Discussion
- The Artists Way – A Boom Community Book Club Discussion
- No Bad Parts – A Boom Community Book Club Selection
Books to Help you Stop Drinking and Fuel Your Sober Momentum
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