Okay, I had to have very minor eye surgery, which required that I be awake. After talking over the risks/rewards with my doc of taking Valium (given that I am a drunk and a junky who’s–hallelujah–in recovery) I decided to risk 2 milligrams in the interests of having my best shot at avoiding permanent eye damage.

Since I’m sworn to tell the truth, I must admit that a very high percentage of my pre-operation thoughts were fixated on taking that pill. I was both appalled and amused to realize that I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!!!! I beamed right back twenty…

This is a hopeful country, right now. Perhaps a hopeful world.

After a decade of what felt like partisan bickering for bickering’s sake, it feels to me as though we’re abruptly willing to slow down, chill out, and start looking for each other’s  good qualities again. All around me, I’m aware of people reaching out to one another, finding  areas of agreement instead of dispute, open  to working together addressing  the world’s formidable problems.

Boy howdy, does it feel good.

Of course, many credit our president-elect for the resurrection of hope in this country. I saw Senator Obama speak and would be hard-pressed…

Okay, it was bound to happen. Everybody who rides a motorized bike is going to drop it at some point.

Perhaps its just that I wasn’t expect to have trouble leaving my own driveway. But there I was caught in the drainage ditch on the other side of the dirt road I live on and going down.

I was going about five miles and hour so there was plenty of time to jump clear. Charlie had gone on ahead on his bike, so I was on my own with a two-wheeled vehicle that weighs considerable more than I do. Plus, I was…

Yes, I’m tired. Something we all learn early in sobriety to guard against. I can feel that my whole being is stretched a little thin. But the deal is, there’s not a lot I can do about it till the weekend. I’m deep in public radio fundraising, on deadline for NPR, and have a book proposal that just won’t come to heel nicely. So, tired or not, I gotta keep on keeping on.

The thing is, I’ve got enough sense to recognize fatigue as being a non-desirable state. When I was still drinking and using, I pushed myself to the edge…

Sorry, I’ve been away. No reason, except too, too much to do. But, you know, I missed blogging, so, you know, I’m just going to find the time.

I spent Friday fretting our world economic crisis and the disturbing appearance of blatant racism in the American presidential campaign.

Saturday and Sunday, I spent a good part of the day scooting.

On a scooter.

A 151 blue teal blue scooter that allows me to travel curvy country roads at speeds that don’t annoy whoever’s behind me and reacquaint me with what it feels like to just be having fun.

Both days were beautiful. Warm and…

to go so long between posts. I had another piece in the Chicago Tribune and have been spending my spare moments responding to the many, many interesting e-mails it generated.

Here ’tis. This is part of a larger piece that I’m working on about being in partnership with God. I’d be grateful for any and all feedback. Really, really, really. . .

Knowing that voice within

An atheist father teaches his daughter to do the right thing, and from there she finds God

By Martha Woodroof

July 27, 2008

Ashley Bryan, 85 last Sunday.

The Warm Springs Gallery in Warm Springs, Virginia (population around 900) had an opening for a rare exhibition of his paintings. Bryan is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He was one of the first persons of color to present images of children of color in picture books that were not stereotypical. He was, as Poet Nikki Giovanni put it at the opening, a real pioneer.

I was working, of course. On assignment. Yet I can’t remember when I’ve had a better time hanging out with anyone. I think I was not alone…

Multi-tasking.

I’d like to suggest it’s the antithesis of sobriety–at least of the all-important part of sobriety that’s manifested by a calm mind.

I re-decided this (for the 89th time!)  a couple of days ago while  talking on the phone while e-mailing someone else while simultaneously doing a web-search while trying to block out a too-loud hall conversation among my colleagues. My mind felt as though it were being–as a wonderful editor friend of mine likes to put it–as though it were being pecked to death by ducks.

I’ve often resolved to just do one thing at a time, but I can never…

God and I can only partner in any useful way in the real world, and the reality is that the real world often makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve certainly done my share of damage by shying away from my own discomfort. Back in the early nineties when I was first climbing out of addiction, I ran a railroad crew hotel for about a year. It was the last remaining business in a once-thriving town. At the time, I was filled with the desire to save people as I, myself, had been saved—filled with it to the point of omnipotence. I was certain…

and decided that I sound just too-too spiritual and perfect sounding. In fact, I thought I sounded like the kind of person I wouldn’t enjoy lunching with at all.

So I feel a burning desire to make one thing clear about my personal code of conduct (that’s the title of my last post). It’s very much about the way I act, not about the way I necessarily feel.

In other words, sobriety hasn’t turned me into a saint who always feels kindly toward everyone else on the planet. I’m still annoyed with people about 50 percent of the time. What sobriety has…

I have a code of conduct, but it’s far less specific than it used to be back in the days when I used such a code mainly as a Richter scale for measuring the strength my current rebellion.

These days I try to be kind, thoughtful, completely honest with myself (an ever-evolving process) and as honest with others as kindness allows.

I try to approach people who are different than I, or who don’t seem to be behaving as I think they should, with curiosity and compassion, and without judgment — which is still a huge struggle for me, particularly…

I make my living reporting for public radio, which means that I spend my days having conversations with folks I don’t know well. And as I do a lot of feature work–as opposed to hard news, a lot of those conversations go on for quite some time.  A successful in-depth interview requires me to help the person I’m talking to relax and just talk to me about what they think or feel or have experienced.

I used to think that to be successful, this kind of interview had to be done in person. But then, as I began to do more…

This appeared in 81–a regional publication that I love. Like most of what I write, it’s about issues that are relevant to sobriety.

lastwords

June 2008

Crossing the Jordan River
So What About God?

by Martha Woodroof

I began school in the Southern Bible Belt before the Supreme Court removed prayer from the classroom in 1962 with Engel v. Vitale. I was the daughter of an agnostic and an atheist. Jesus was every child’s friend but mine.

On some Monday mornings, my teacher—Southern sweet and impenetrably groomed— would purse her lips and ask any student who hadn’t been in Sunday school to stand up. When I…

Our Head Cat, Mr. Lewis, is old, has feline HIV and has been on his dignified way out enough times to qualify as the definitive proof that cats have nine lives.

Lewis’ latest flirtation was death involved a bad reaction to a new medicine for joint pain. He stopped eating–and I mean stopped. We began syringe feeding (we’d been through that before), but as Head Cat’s baseline weight hovers at about 7.5 pounds, there wasn’t much wiggle room. Charlie and I were soon calling for help.

Our wonderful house-calling vet galloped to the rescue, bringing medicine to heal Lewis’ stomach. I was…

Had this essay come out in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, and I was amazed at the response. So, I thought I’d post it here and see if any of you had anything to say about what I had to say.

Age before beauty is true view

By Martha Woodroof

May 25, 2008

For me, 60 need not be the new 30. I’ve already been 30, and I prefer adventure to repetition.

I do still dance uncontrollably in grocery store aisles, but I’ve moved way beyond the person I was at 30. And I have no desire for anyone to take me as anything other than what…

I really believe that sobriety is about living and let-living, forgiveness, tolerance, and getting along with others–and this certainly includes our neighbors.

That’s one of my neighbors in the picture. I just discovered that she took a recent stroll through my gardens, leaving huge holes where flowers used to be.

Sometimes, sobriety is a real challenge. . .

Here’s the deal. I just finished the second draft of my second book, which has the working title, God Is. Now What? It’s basically about having a working faith in God outside of the confines of organized religion. The manuscript is up at my agents, but I’m frankly hungry for feedback. Below is a piece of the “Note,” which opens things up. I’d love to hear reactions just to this tiny portion. What I’m trying to do is be part of what I see as a change in our conversation about faith.

“One bright May morning my husband Charlie, who’d just read the…

It’s 4 o’clock Friday afternoon. I’ve been on deadline all week and, man, am I pooped. I spent the day (after filing my story) cleaning up my e-mail and trying to clean up the inside of my head. I think, you know, that I must be really, really tired. I have a tendency to push myself to keep going. The more I get done, the more there seems to be that I want to do or try.

My office at work has a window. I sit facing it. with my back to the door and, as I have a very friendly…

“Underneath the fume and fuss, Life is just asparagus.”

I wrote it years ago, but don’t you think it soooooo describes a sober attitude???

. . . even though I thought it was just a great game–everything, that is, except the outcome. I did want the New England Patriots to achieve perfection since that is denied to the rest of us humans.

What I want to write about is the novel experience of stability. Before I got sober my life was tumult on two feet. Without drugs and alcohol, I’ve managed to live with the same guy for fifteen years, have the same job for 8, the same cats for over a decade, and live in the same house for 5 years. And I have…