a natural drift

For those of you who know me, you know that I am neither a woman nor a Christian in the devout Christian sort of way.  But enough about me.  I want to share my thoughts on a forthcoming book, Sober Mercies, by my friend Heather Kopp.  Despite our differences, her book moved me and, despite our differences, she made me consider my own relationship with a Higher Power, my own addictions, and my own path of recovery.

Heather’s book traces her own recovery … and, yes, I have read many of “those kind” of memoirs.  The recovery-story memoir.  Heather’s exploration, though, was new for me.  I’ll put to the side her experience of being a recovering woman;  I think men and women have distinctly different issues in both active addiction and in recovery.  That is not to say we don’t have similarities — self-loathing, deception, secrecy, feeling alone, desperate for help while isolating and distancing ourselves from that very help — but gender does make a difference.  I did get greater insights into the challenges of a woman’s path to recovery, though, so I am grateful for Heather sharing her experience.

What moved me, though, was Heather’s experience as a Christian woman moving toward her path of recovery and her subsequent journey on that path.  With the very foundational competing definitions of alcoholism — is it weak-willed, immoral, sinful behavior or is alcoholism a disease of mind, body, spirit? — Heather confronts conflicting belief systems.  A committed Christian woman entering recovery, Heather not only battles the nature of addiction but also the nature of conviction.  And her path unfolds as a sober Christian woman — or as her sub-title expresses:  How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk.

I think Sober Mercies is a moving and valuable read in the genre of recovery memoirs.  Heather’s story is moving, graceful, and meaningful not only for women who may be entering (or well into) recovery from alcoholism, and not only for Christian women, but for anybody walking the path of recovery and developing a relationship with a Higher Power, a God, of their own understanding.

This entry was posted on January 18, 2013 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Observations, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.