Here it is:
your personal invitation to carve five days out of your calendar,
just for you.

Beginning September 23, under the auspices of SHE RECOVERS®,
Payton Kennedy and I will host a rare women’s writing retreat:
From Memory to Memoir.

Think of this as a gentle beckoning—
an invitation to join 20 women
for a deeply immersive wilderness experience
in an enchanting setting.

👉 Reserve your spot

Over five days and four nights,
you’ll settle into Le Manoir de la Forêt
in Cantley, Quebec.

Just an hour from the Ottawa airport,
the Manoir rests in a maple forest
along the edge of the Canadian Shield—
a place that invites both stillness
and creative awakening.

👉 View retreat details & accommodations

I’ll guide you through your personal writing journey
with a blend of group sessions
and one-on-one support.

Together, we’ll explore the terrain
of memory and story.

Payton will lead somatic movement practices—
yoga, and yes, her well-known Bone Dance.

Evenings will bring us together
in intimate sharing circles.

You’ll return to your life renewed and inspired—
more connected to your rhythm,
your voice,
your sense of belonging.

This retreat is inspired by my long-running memoir course,
From Memory to Memoir (formerly Writing Your Recovery).

Here’s what participants have shared:

Wendy McCallum (Halifax, NS)

“Working with Ann has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in years.
I began unsure I had anything worth writing, but curious.
Now, I’m in my second round and have a book underway.

Ann’s steady guidance helped me rediscover my love of writing.
I am officially a writer again.”

—

Vicky Ballantyne (Victoria, BC)

“I joined From Memory to Memoir in 2025.
I’m continually struck by how deeply Ann listens
and reflects back what she hears with clarity and honesty.

Her feedback is both constructive and affirming.
She brings a rare level of skill and care to this work.”

These in-person retreats are rare—
offered at most once a year.

Previous gatherings have taken place
in the Western Cape, South Africa, and Minneapolis.

If this speaks to you,
consider it your moment.

👉 Secure your seat

We can hardly wait to meet you.

SHE RECOVERS® Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity and a global grassroots movement serving more than 325,000 women, and non-binary individuals who identify with women’s communities, who are in or seeking recovery from mental health issues, trauma, substance use and related life challenges. SHE RECOVERS believes we’re all recovering from something—no one should have to recover alone.

I remember a long train ride, colouring pencils in hand, designing—visually—my first characters. How old was I? Six? Seven? I knew with certainty: this was my path. I was working with what were then flat-profiled people, using a heavy dose of violet—my favourite colour.

When does that creative permission arise? And when does it shut down?

Last month, I witnessed the perfect expression of creative abandon.

My four-year-old granddaughter climbed onto a tabletop and frugged her heart out to Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club, to an audience of twenty. Complete confidence. Utter joy on her face. I found myself thinking, Never let this go, girl.

Frances takes the stage with sister Pearl

In her words: “I don’t want to get squished.” She means by passing cars. I have deeper wishes for her—to live large, and to express that beautiful being throughout her lifetime.

So often, we shut that part down—at 10, 20, or later—and our worlds become a little paler.

At 72, I ask this question daily: how do we not get squished?
Our big hearts, our belief in ourselves, our willingness to take risks—these are precious, critical, essential to our time on this planet.

Like many of you, I have just read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, a novel-in-letters that has become a word-of-mouth blockbuster. Bookstores, large and small, cannot keep this deliciously brilliant, brave book on their shelves.

Runaway bestseller by Virginia Evans

As it happens, Evans and I share the same agent, the remarkable Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists, and it has been a treat to hear the backstory of Evans’ success. This is not her first novel—far from it. But she persisted, and now she is everyone’s darling.

In morning notes to friends, Sybil Van Antwerp has become a touchstone—a character we relate to as we would a close companion. Evans is under our ribcages—no mean feat.

And the big news? After a bidding war, it’s been announced that Jane Fonda will play Sybil in the film adaptation.

So I return to my primary question: where is your version of this story? What’s under your ribcage, waiting to emerge?

For me, it’s a curiosity about writing fiction—something I haven’t pursued seriously since 1992, when I held a Southam Fellowship at the University of Toronto and took a night course.

It was a total joy: burrowing away on the fourth floor on Sunday afternoons while my toddler slept, imagining the lives of a couple whose marriage was frayed and on the verge of collapse. At night, I would put my son to bed in his fuzzy yellow sleepers and steal another two or three hours to finish my stories for class.

I was alive.

And then? Life happened. The fiction was back-burnered—forgotten.

Has this happened to you?

How do we bring our life dreams to the front burner before it’s too late?

That is the question on my mind. Luckily, I have Hilary to coach me. I am digging in, deep.

And you?

Within weeks, I will be launching sessions of my new course:
From Memory to Memoir (daytime and evening options available)
👉 From Memory to Memoir — learn more & register

Why not join me for the adventure—and discover what’s buried under your own ribcage?

I teach small groups of women, live on Zoom: eight two-hour classes designed to get your creative juices flowing. You’ll learn how to find your voice and your story, how to shape a book, and how to move toward publication—whether it’s an essay or a full manuscript you’re dreaming of.

And yes, you’ll meet my agent, the exceptional Hilary McMahon.

If you’re craving something more kinetic, an in-person experience:

Five-Day Memoir Intensive (September)
Near Ottawa, just across the Quebec border
With Payton Kennedy

👉 Reserve your spot here

Join us for a feast of self-expression: writing, dancing, yoga.
It promises to be memorable—if not life-changing.

You can also explore everything here:
👉 anndowsettjohnston.com

I’ll leave you with these words from Victoria, B.C. writer Vicky Ballantyne:

“I joined From Memory to Memoir (formerly Writing Your Recovery) in 2025. I am in awe of how deeply Ann listens and synthesizes what people have read, offering helpful and honest feedback. She builds people up while being constructive and authentic. She is immensely skillful at what she does.”

Come join me—and awaken your inner Frances.

Truly, none of us wants to get squished.

Years ago, I remember my mother-in-law looking dumbfounded when she, having masterminded yet another picture-book Christmas and prepped a magnificent turkey dinner, received a pair of curling boots from my father-in-law. Even worse: when my mother received a high-end paring knife in a paper bag from my father for their 50th wedding anniversary.

I’m here to tell you: if you find yourself on the wrong end of the seasonal exchange, do as Marjorie would. My witty mother-in-law made such a joke out of those curling boots, the laugh was on anyone but herself. She knew how to get what she needed in life, with her ready grin and wise ways. Her life was a triumph, and it was a joy to be in her company. One trip to Joan Rigby’s on Cumberland in Toronto, and this Winnipegger had exactly what she wanted in the way of cashmere.

If you find yourself shortchanged under the Christmas tree, do as Marjorie would: fix it yourself.

What most women want, at least in the circles I know, is something meaningful. An experience, for instance. For me, this past year, it meant a contribution to a visit to Kripalu, or to my recent trek to South Africa.

You can’t take it with you, and an experience is the ultimate present.

In South Africa, where I hosted an in-person writing retreat called From Memory to Memoir, more than one of the 26 female participants had been gifted the tuition from a friend or relative. What a present: to be given five days to focus on your own story and how to frame it. Is there anything better? Some women were writing for publication, some for their friends and family and others for themselves. Didn’t matter: all bonded around the bonfire each night, sharing the luxury of storytelling.

On January 21^st, I am launching my in-person Zoom class called Writing Your Recovery, with both daytime and evening options.

For women only, this eight-session memoir-writing course is geared to writers of all levels, novice and experienced. It will give you the tools to tell your story, whether yours is one of recovery from grief or alcohol, heartbreak or otherwise. As the author of the bestselling book Drink—part memoir, part journalistic exploration—I can tell you there is no better gift than finding your voice, giving space in your life to develop a narrative structure for all that lies under your rib cage.

This winter, join me in the class, from the comfort of your own home, and revel in the experience of storytelling. And while you’re at it: make some new friends. For the record, there is ample evidence that isolation and loneliness have serious health implications.

Come and join a wonderful group of women. Truly, there is no better present.

Learn more about Writing Your Recovery

We lived in a little teacup of a village, in the remote Transkei region, Nelson Mandela country.

I was only 10 when we left, but this chapter of my life left an indelible mark on my heart, my body, my soul. This is where I “hatched” as a writer, an observer, a vigilant child. This was the home of my story. For many reasons, I always knew I needed to go back.

Last month, I went “home” for the first time since 1963.

Immediately, my shoulders came down from my earlobes. Taking a walk around the sea-side promenade in Cape Town, I slowed my breath and soaked in the lullaby of the sea and the South African accent, jarring to some, so calming to me. Families, black and white, strolled together in groups as night fell by the sea.

After one night in the city, my host ferried me to the hills, the farms, the familiar.

And for one month, I traveled from one luscious location to another, hanging out with childhood friends on a large farm, swimming in ponds and rivers, just as I had as a girl. I took field notes, photographed the light, and wrote.

But most of all, I perched, gratefully, at a farmhouse full of books in the Western Cape. Each morning, a beautiful woman named Thandiwe would appear, the little dog of the house at her feet, and make her vegetable and fruit juice. After that ritual, I was free to read and write and roam, and so I did, much as I had as a child.

Not that all was peaceful.

There were out-of-control fires in the surrounding hills, fires the staff were battling. Helicopters buzzed overhead. The Wifi was sketchy and then disappeared, as did the electricity. As I write, those fires are still burning.

In the last week of my visit, I hosted 26 women for a five-day writing retreat at the beautiful Bodhi Khaya retreat.

The course: From Memory to Memoir, was intense, and deeply transformative.

We bonded as a group, swimming and doing yoga, and reading our writing to one another by the bonfire. There were women from across North America, Holland, Zimbabwe and across South Africa. The best endorsement? We are committed to continuing, going forward online. Saying goodbye was not an option.

Truly, I don’t remember a more profound teaching experience, and I made a vow as I left Cape Town last week: I will run three more retreats this coming year, in Canada and beyond.

Stay tuned for more news and dates. Meanwhile, there is space in both the daytime and evening classes of Writing Your Recovery, my online memoir writing course, starting January 21^st. Just go on my website: www.anndowsettjohnston.com/workshops and sign up. I can’t wait to help you shape your story.

Here’s to an exciting, fulfilling and utterly transformative 2026.

All good things,

ADJ

Like many others, I write first thing on waking, coffee in hand.

I clear my throat with three different gratitude lists: one to a beloved friend, the second to a sober sister who lives in the country and another to a fellow writer in California. I’m thankful for the positive and, more importantly, the negative, a la Melody Beattie’s Making Miracles in Forty Days - a title she once told me she hated. No matter, it works. As in: I am grateful that my former lover taught me how the forests go silent on August 15th—at least in this neck of the woods.

This is how I begin to metabolize what’s in my heart. But the real work? This is saved for my little red journal, the first intimate draft of life as I am living it.

This is where I share the discomfort of the past six months, since I downsized from a three-bedroom home to a small condo, and weathered the death of my beloved 14-year-old dog. Here is where I explore the highlights of the deepening connection with my sister, fostered this summer over a three-day visit to the family cottage, where we parsed my parents’ personalities over fresh corn.

Here too, I harvest memories of sitting on the steps of the Ojibway Club in Pointe Au Baril, holding a picture of my mother, grinning in the late 1940s. And of course, memories of my two tiny granddaughters, grinning at water’s edge, now returned to California. (The older one, visiting the summer playhouse, suggested we add a sign: “No Trump Allowed.”)

Here too is where I write of my upcoming return to South Africa, where I spent time as a child, of my anticipation, fears, excitement.

I have never thrown out a journal, including my first one written at nine in the rural Transkei, Nelson Mandela country. Over the years, there is the occasional watercolour, or ink drawing—all of which I treasure, especially for reminding me of a conversation I once had with great poet Sharon Olds about her illustrated journals. But for the most part, these are my heartfelt reflections on aging, memory, love and more. (Is there more?)

There was a time—several years, in fact—when my little red journals reflected little more than my wrestle with getting sober: “Tonight, I will just have two,” followed by “Had four.” I thought of those years this week when I read Pixie Lighthorse on “Addressing Our Discomfort.” She writes:

“Our culture worships comfort and requires us to deny what is uncomfortable—to manipulate, medicate, and numb in order to avoid discomfort and keep moving. It is much easier to sell products to people who are willing to ease discomfort with pseudo comforts.” She continues: “Staying with our heartache is an act of radical resistance.”

I agree. Staying with our heartache is an act of radical resistance—and staying with our joy as well. Which is why I wonder how it could be that life became too busy for my red journal practice at times this summer? Somehow, in that season of swimming and counting loon chicks, of charting the osprey’s divebombing ways across the lake, of poet Andrea Gibson’s passing and my grandchildren’s precious visits, I missed days of my journalling habit. I was so busy living, soaking up the season, I jumped into the lake instead of pausing to write. In my world, so much was lost.

So here’s to September. And when I am stuck? Recording that too.

Why don’t you join me in this daily indulgence—or better yet, enroll in my eight-week Writing Your Recovery memoir course, being offered starting September 17th—and live in South Africa late November. It’s a life-changing creative experience—and no, it is not just for those recovering from substance use. Let’s face it: we’re all recovering from something.

In that spirit, in closing, let me share the perennial gift of Martha Postlethwaite’s Clearing, a piece which comforts me when my heart is heavy.

CLEARING

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself to this world

so worthy of rescue.

Writing Your Recovery begins Wednesday, September 17th at 11:00 am - live on Zoom.

Learn More or Sign Up

Writing Your Recovery - Live and in person in South Africa begins November 25th-30th at the stunning Bodhi Khaya Retreat.

Learn More or Sign Up

A pioneer who introduced Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing practice to legions of Canadians, she taught a generation how to be in the body, to listen, to make change.

The ripple effect of her knowing, her teaching and her wisdom is hard to overstate. It lives in me as a therapist, in the work of fellow therapist Jan Winhall, in the world around us. Humble and self-effacing, Mary shaped so much in terms of the somatic.

So why the past tense? We were gathered in her son Frank’s home because Mary had opted for MAID—medically assisted death.

The onset of dementia had helped her determine it was time to go.

In her late eighties, she was anxious to embrace the unknown. And in fact, one day later, she exited this world at 4 pm, transitioning to the light, as she described it. Many of us sat alone, with our lit candles, ushering her onwards. Our hearts are full.

Mary was a maverick, in the life she chose and her exit too.

A former yoga teacher, she became a trauma therapist while raising a young son. I first went to see her in the late 1980s, with my former husband, in an effort to heal our marriage. I will never forget her calm presence as she asked us this simple question: if we were given six months off, what would we do? My husband, a film producer, described what seemed to be an endless series of exotic travels and adventures. I listened, feeling betrayed. We had a two-year-old. When it was my turn, I wept. What would I do with six months off? I had no idea, so rooted was I as a mother.

That was the last time my husband saw Mary. But for me, it was the beginning of a multi-year relationship, as I healed from deep childhood trauma, and developed a voice as a writer, a feminist. As a woman working in a male-dominated world, I was eventually able to hold my own, honouring boundaries that protected me, allowed me to flourish.

For decades, Mary was my person, holding weekly space for my evolution, with tenderness and deep knowing.

She taught me Focusing, how to drop down into my centre, to access my gut knowing, to find a way forward. For years, I owed her my life.

When I sat holding Mary’s hand on Monday—during her last 24 hours on earth—she focused her blue eyes on my face and asked how my son was doing. How was my dog? For the two of us, the moment was tight, tender, deeply human. I told her I loved her. She squeezed my hand.

It’s a phrase I use as a therapist frequently—never forgetting the source.

At the end of the afternoon gathering, someone asked her how she felt about what was to come: a needle to put her to sleep. She smiled and said: “Delicious.” It was clear this was her choice, and had been for more than two years. A pioneer in life, a maverick in death, she was at peace.

Rocketing home on the train afterwards, I wrestled with Mary’s decision to exit.

On a visceral level, it reminded me of my decision—just 10 days earlier--to help my beloved dog Woolfey transition out of this world. Again, a first needle for sedation, then the final exit.

Before we entered the vet’s office, Woolfey and I said our long goodbyes, closing with an extended walk for sniffing, hydrant marking and tail wagging. At 14, Woolfey had a huge growth on his middle that was touching the ground, a growth getting bigger by the month. The choice was clear.

When we arrived at the vet’s, a table was laid with a black cloth, and I was told I could take all the time in the world to say goodbye. We’ve said our goodbyes, I told the vet--out where the spring bulbs were poking through the earth. The vet look surprised, but agreed to administer the first needle, the sedative.

In peace, Woolfey made his transition. “I have never seen an owner so calm,” said the vet. At which point, she dissolved into tears and hugged me.

Today, I woke up in a world without Woolfey beside me, without Mary’s hand to hold.

But for me, they are here, in my heart. And as I drink my coffee, and absorb that truth, their absence is a presence. Mary lives in her legacy, Woolfey lives within me. Each, I believe, got their fondest wish, and for that I am deeply grateful.

ADJ

Here's my presentation:

At 71, I have come to accept that I have a public persona: as the bestselling author of Drink, as the woman who bares her soul on drinking in a TEDx Talk (1.5 million views), as the former VP of McGill, as a psychotherapist, an award-winning journalist, recipient of many public awards. My resume is long—and maybe it should be: I’m long in the tooth.

At 71, I have significant love lines.

But at heart? I'm just a teenager. Eternally 17, a child of the Sixties, I’m still wearing my  rose-lensed aviator glasses and a matching tie-dyed shirt. Or in my heart I am—a lover of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, bisexual and eternally seeking.

Yes, I am 71, and 17. I am the girl who had hand painted cards back in the early 70s, who thought she could make her living sewing three-dimensional quilts for children.

I am also the girl who gave her parents their own inscribed copy of Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask when it became apparent there was no action in their marriage.

I am the girl who wrote President Nixon after the My Lai massacre, who dyed herself green to meet Todd Rundgren on Halloween, and who turned down a chance to sleep with the great banjo artist John Hartford. All these years later, he’s still gentle on my mind. 

I am shaped by the Sixties, and I always will be. No surprise.

 I am also the one who, when seven months pregnant, told her boss not to point a gun at her belly—and didn’t call the cops.

I am the one who blew the whistle on the pinking of the alcohol market —and did so in a bestselling book, calling the alcohol industry to task.

And I am the person who at 64, watched her son convocate at Smith College as a social worker, and decided to follow in his footsteps, age be damned. In the end, I went in a wheel chair, having smashed my ankle to smithereens stepping off a curb in New York City.

Everything I am today—bestselling writer, psychotherapist—I owe to that feisty, determined teenaged girl, the one who sped down the highway at 150 km an hour in search of a boy. I am that girl, inside.

Truth is: I am long in the tooth. I do have wrinkles. And yes, I have two beloved granddaughters. And here’s the twist: my new best friend is Frances, turning three—a spunky old soul in a toddler’s body.

Because at 17 going on 72, this teenager knows the runway is shorter than she would like it to be. Last month, I put my beloved home on the market, a nest I have nurtured and loved. Off to a new adventure, I am barrelling down the highway of life, in search of my soul, in search of my future. I am not scared: I know the universe has a better imagination than I do.

And when I get wobbly, I turn to Pablo Neruda’s words—an anthem, really— tattooed on my heart.

I will be in Vancouver on Saturday, November 23, giving a keynote address at The New Social’s Happier Hour event. Tickets available in Eventbrite (find them here). And there is also a breakfast pre-event. Would love to see you there.

-ADJ

Here’s why. In mid June, my granddaughter Frances and I checked into a sweet little hilltop hotel—or “hotelo,” in her words. Our mountain-view room featured a small balcony—perfect for picnic dinners--plus a large four-poster bed, ideal for jumping. In the bathroom stood a massive clawfoot tub, designed for nightly “swimming.” But the real hit was the stash of chocolate chip cookies in the hotel lobby. When she woke with a nightmare at 2 a.m., we tiptoed downstairs and fetched two for comfort. In other words, bliss.

All went smoothly, with the birth at least. Within hours of our checking in, Pearl Luisa made her speedy entrance into the world. The next morning, Frances and I clinked glasses, toasting “the new baby.” She tucked into her blueberry French toast, completely unaware of how much her young life was about to change.

For the two-and-a-half-year-old Frances, there will be no memory of that lovely breakfast. Frances’ parents and I will remember that baby Pearl “gave” her a bike later that day--but Frances will only know the moment from photographs. Present, not present.

In fact, she will have no memory of this remarkable interlude: all the stories, the jokes, the endless tea parties for her toys, the days of our wearing red, our shared favourite colour. Which makes me wonder: if my own mother’s mother was my favourite person growing up, when did I lay down my first meaningful memories of that remarkably tender woman? I wonder. I often think my first memory is of hanging my dolly dresses on the line at the cottage, beside my mother clothes-pinning my sister’s diapers—but maybe it’s just from a black-and-white photo album. I can’t be sure.

At 71, my time with Frances ferries me back to my childhood and to my son’s as well.

A kaleidoscope of memories unfolds each day-- I time travel on a regular basis. And more often than I like to admit, I wonder how long I will keep all my marbles, my own parents and my aunt having suffered severe memory loss. I try not to worry. For the moment, I’m just enjoying the daily pleasures: the car rides to and from daycare, singing at the top of our lungs; the nightly story time when Frances recites whole books to me; my son’s savoury meals; and of course, Pearl’s first smiles.

As my son, his wife and I nurture these two, I think of my own Nanna and mother and aunts looking after me and my siblings and cousins all summer long. It seems the most natural way: an intergenerational mix, sharing the load, sharing the pleasure. Those were magical times. Long, generous summers were spent at the cottage, all of us intertwined.

For me, the abiding question is: how do I sustain such an intimate connection to this little LA family: present on a regular basis, for the quotidian joys and responsibilities, as they grow and mature? How do we close the geographical gap? That’s the puzzle so many of us wrestle with, we baby boomers with the adventurous offspring, settled elsewhere.

Will their elsewhere become my home? Who knows. For the moment, I’m focused on the present. It seems to take all three of us to manage what’s needed. On our kitchen wall we’ve hung a white board where we divvy up duties: cooking dinner, daycare runs, grocery shopping. “N” for my son Nicholas, “C” for his wife Ciara, “A” for me. 

Midsummer, I flew home in Canada, nursing a bad case of laryngitis. Two weeks later, I headed back to LA. Good thing, said my son. “There are not enough A’s on the board!” 

Amen, I thought. Amen.

Of course, not all was blissful. There were many moments when Frances had her melt-downs, when her “No, I can do it” meant a time delay of insufferable proportions. There was the moment when my son posed the million-dollar question: “Does it really take four adults to raise two children?” 

Tonight, I will sleep in my all-too-silent house, no rogue toys sharing my bed, no white board determining the day to come. The sweet little family in their temporary home on Gay St.—did I mention there is also a home renovation unfolding?—will choose paint colours for their future. As for me? I will re-embrace a life I love, with close friends and extended family, work and writing. And this precious season will begin to fade: present, not present.

-ADJ

New Season of Writing Your Recovery Launches Oct 16^th

Do you have a story to tell, a chapter of your life you ache to get on paper, a memoir unfolding? Please join me for the ultimate memoir workshop: Writing Your Recovery, with mid-day and evening options. Eight sessions of intimate learning and sharing with other women, opportunities to create and workshop your writing. 

Whether you’ve never written or are deeply experienced, this offering is for you. With 40 years of editing experience, I am uniquely called to help you.

Learn more

Unsure? I am happy to discuss the program with you. Reach out to me at adjohnston@summerhill.tv

Subscribe to my Substack below.

Subscribe now

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Six months ago, in the last few days of 2023, I chose a word to live by for the next 12 months. Corny, perhaps, but necessary.  I turned 70 last August, and I was determined to pursue my dreams, without delay.

There were three totemic words on my shortlist, but there was no contest: “intrepid” was the only true contender. When I rolled it around in my mouth, listened with my heart, it was the one — just right. 

And so it began, my year of intrepid: a time when I would take some big leaps into the unknown, aiming to make my fondest wishes come true. I shared the word with my California friend Peggi, with whom I exchange a daily gratitude list. She asked if she could use “intrepid” too. Of course, I said. Let’s share it, make it our motto. Peggi is one breath older than I am, and both of us live with gusto. We take chances: zestful, life-affirming chances. 

First, I planned a long-awaited trip to South Africa, to launch into my next memoir: a return to the country where I spent my most transformative years as a young girl. It was searing, both beautiful and violent, the height of Apartheid, the early Sixties. I wanted to go back, to bring my writerly self to the scene of my memories.

I began to shape my five-week trip, choosing my itinerary, my travel companions. I arranged to teach a five-day version of my Writing Your Recovery course at the beautiful retreat space known as Bodhi Khaya (dates are May 13 to 18, 2025, in case you’re interested). It’s still a work in progress. Am I nervous? A little. Excited, too.

Next, I took my dream of moving to LA and made it reality. Why Los Angeles? My son Nicholas and his wife Ciara just had their second child, a sibling for two-year-old Frances. This, plus they are managing a renovation of their sweet picture-book home. I offered to move to LA for several months, to help with the children. Together, we have rented a bright three-bedroom home in which to welcome the new baby, to live as a multi-generational five-some, plus Grandpa, their prince of a Mexican street dog.

These days, I watch my capable daughter-in-law in awe—she of the green hair and the gorgeous sea creature tattoos. To me, she is a mermaid, otherworldly in her resolve, her sure-footedness. My son is a natural and gifted parent, and so is she: their moves, unchoreographed, make for a peaceful, nurturing home.  

And so I take their lead, playing my favourite role of Nanna. For them, I am cooking vegetarian meals, walking Grandpa up into the beautiful Mt. Washington neighbourhood. I am reading nightly to Frances, picture books of my youth, and my son’s, and more. Two nights ago, she recited every page of Margaret Wise Brown’s The Little Island, to the letter. Nothing defines intrepid so much as a two-year-old: sallying off her change table, leaping onto her bed, tackling the big-kid slide at the park. I learn from her every day. 

All the while, I am gently enfolded into my favourite family's world. Here, my time with my granddaughter is limitless—pure joy. As it happens, we share the same sense of humour, a love of good books and a rich appreciation of painting and imagination. In other words, a dream come true.

There is more. Three weeks ago, I delivered a memorable in-person version of my beloved writing course at The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota.

For four intense days, 21 women dug deep, mining their memories, producing remarkable writing. Invigorating, inspiring, intrepid women, all bonding in the woods, sharing laughter and tears and yes, dreams: to be published, to be heard, to be whole. 

The course—From Memory to Memoir—was hosted by She Recovers, and as such, we did restorative yoga, bone danced, shaking to incessant drums (you had to be there). We made new friends, confiding our secrets, our challenges. On the last night, the irrepressible Sally Murphy from Donegal, Ireland paid me the ultimate compliment: “You are a lighthouse.” To which I replied: “If I am a lighthouse, you are the boats, steering yourselves towards the light.”

We parted with hugs, determined to make room for more writing—all, including me. More writing, less stalling. This is my plan: to write every morning from rising to 11:00, while my battery is full. My morning focus is strong: I wake bolt upright, grounded and ready. It’s a habit that began when I was writing Drink. I cherish the early uninterrupted hours.

Intrepid. I still love the word as much as I did on January 1st. It’s a promise, a gauntlet slapped down. Perhaps I’ll have it tattooed on my heart. I invite you to do the same. Listen to Marquez’s words: pursue your dreams, now, without delay. Make a shortlist of what matters. Remember that each week has 168 hours: budget them well, use them wisely. 

 Six months into this year, I have one prediction: come New Year’s, I just might choose intrepid all over again. I welcome you to do the same. Let it shape-shift your hours, your years, your life. 

As Anaïs Nin said: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Let yours expand like an accordion, ample as your dreams. - ADJ 

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If you were to crack one open, you’d be transported to one of the many chapters of my 70 years: 1989, with my tumultuous marriage breakdown and the decision to keep my family while losing my role of wife; 1996, when I scribbled all I wanted in a lover on a piece of paper and met him three days later; 2007, when I almost took my life over my drinking; 2021, when I found true love with a woman and later, met seven pounds of joy named Frances. And it goes on.

Truth be told one: I’m not fussed if my clothes are hung up from the night before. But if I miss a day of writing, life can get wobbly. Unmetabolized thoughts linger like a hangover. Once expressed, I can move on with my day. This is how I was able to write Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol: mining those journals for history, dialogue and fresh emotion.

 Those red journals have also inspired a major part of my teaching career.

Several years ago, I launched Writing Your Recovery, my popular eight-week memoir-writing course for women.

In this course, I use my four decades of editing experience, creating a nurturing environment in which you can share and shine. 

The next offering of Writing Your Recovery-- the only one I’m presenting this year-- kicks off April 24th with both mid-day and evening sessions.

Are you ready to join a group of like-minded women and see what happens when you put pen to paper? This is the big adventure—and it is open to writers at all levels. 

The details: Writing Your Recovery meets weekly, on Wednesdays, for eight weeks. In our two-hour classes, I will teach you how to:

• Establish a daily writing practice

• Enrich your writing using your senses

• Silence your inner critic

• Find and establish your voice

• Transform your personal story into writing you love

• Navigate the publishing industry

"Ann’s careful stewardship and encouragement were exactly what I needed to rediscover my love of writing. I am officially a writer again, and I owe that in large part to Ann,” says McCallum.

To date, Writing Your Recovery has graduated more than 150 women—many of whom go on to the next level—Writing Your Discovery—which meets bi-weekly and offers the perfect companionship for workshopping your project as it unfolds. We read, we bond, we meet on retreats. This is a vibrant community. 

What is exciting: watching the writers evolve, find their way into their voices, their stories, their craft. McCallum, for instance, finished one memoir project and then moved on, writing two books of fiction. Others have shifted to poetry, many to essays. All aim to publish. 

This community is one with heart. Please know:  you don’t need to be an experienced writer to join. Bring your curiosity, and all will unfold as it’s meant to. More info + registration here.

Spring is a wonderful time to start something new. Why not show up for yourself this April? As I always say: the universe has a wilder imagination than we do. Our job is to take it all down.

I will close by sharing the words of Maya Angelou:

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Come join me. 

Two events stand out:  honouring my closest childhood friend at her memorial service in Sechelt, B.C. last week, and a visit over tea with the brilliant Gabor Maté, speaking about intergenerational trauma for my next book. Both, incredibly profound—and both relevant for the writing ahead.  

If you’re looking for a creative and restorative adventure, consider the upcoming Return To Self: From Memory to Memoir Writing Retreat I’m leading in Wayzata, Minnesota (May 29 - June 2), at the McIver Centre for Family & Spiritual Recovery.

Once again, I’ve partnered with She Recovers, but this time it’s different: we’re going deeper.

Over five days and four nights, you’ll engage in a transformational process, learning the magic of narrative, the healing power of sharing your words, and the alchemy of connection.

Sink into writing, recovery, community, and wellness. This immersive retreat has been carefully curated to ignite the senses and spark inspiration.

You will learn how to:

• Find your authentic voice in writing

• Create your story structure

• Use your five senses to write your story

• Quiet your inner critic

• Find an agent, get published…and more!

Before and after writing sessions, there will be opportunities to stretch your body, including SHE RECOVERS trauma-informed yoga & mindful movement.

During free time, meander beautiful paths that surround the woods.

In the evenings, after a healthy meal, we will come together for SHE RECOVERS Sharing Circles.

The Memory to Memoir retreat is an absolute gift for the mind and body, and we’re going to laugh and have fun too.

Spots are filling up fast, and every woman who attends will have their own private room. I’m delighted to also share that Dawn Nickel, founder of She Recovers, will be joining us too—as a student.

Dawn, who published her remarkable She Recovers Every Day last year, is excited to begin work on her memoir. But you don’t need to be a published or experienced writer to join us; you simply need to be curious. Everyone has a story, and writing has the power to transform your pain and passion into purpose.

I hope you’ll join us at Return To Self: From Memory to Memoir.

In anticipation,

Ann

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Good thing: we both have big plans for the year ahead. As she says regularly, “It’s my turn.” And yes, it is: come June, she will be taking on the role of big sister. 

In my case? Well, it’s my turn too. I am keen to launch into a number of exciting and unique adventures, which I share below. Later this year, I’ll be heading to South Africa to research my next book. For that reason, I have chosen the word “intrepid” for the unfolding year: I want to thrive, and more—and I wish the same for you. As my beloved John O’Donohue warns:

“Beware the seduction of safety and the gray promises of sameness… Awaken your spirit to adventure, Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home to a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.” 

So, what awaits? Is it your turn? What are your fondest wishes for the coming year? Let me offer some suggestions:

Freedom from alcohol 

For me, my full transformation was not possible until I quit drinking in 2008. Sobriety afforded me the clarity to live my dreams: to write and publish Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol; to enroll in the Smith School of Social Work at age 64; to launch my practice as a trauma-informed psychotherapist.

And it definitely allowed me to create my international memoir-writing courses: Writing Your Recovery and Writing Your Discovery (by invitation only).

If sobriety is something you want to explore or achieve this year, I invite you to join the Freedom from Alcohol Masterclass: a free five-day offering, hosted by the dynamic Veronica Valli and myself.

Between us, we have more than 40 years of sobriety, and we want to share our wisdom with you all. To sign up, go here. Our goal is to help women transform their lives—I hope you’ll join us, and be part of this supportive community.

Nurture your writing talent

I will be teaching several writing workshops for women in the coming months: one you can experience from the comfort of your home; three others you can enjoy in retreat settings. All opportunities offer a warm and tight-knit community, as well as a safe place in which to explore your creative voice.

1. Writing Your Recovery

This is my popular eight-week memoir-writing course. In these weekly two-hour classes, I will teach you how to get started; how to deal with structure; how to use your five senses; how to silence the inner critic; and how to get published. I will help you transform your personal story into writing you love. The next one kicks off April 24th, and runs until June 19th. More info here, to register, please reach out to my assistant at admin@anndowsettjohnston.com. 

2. She Recovers Return To Self: From Memory to Memoir, A Writing Retreat

Hosted by She Recovers, the Return To Self writing retreat is a fully immersive experience at the McIver Centre in Wayzata Minnesota. Over five days, I will lead a small group of women, and help them transform memories into memoirs. 

• Mornings will begin with trauma-informed yoga and mindful movement with co-facilitator Payton Kennedy. You’re free to enjoy outdoor time, with access to the Wayzata Big Woods and nature trails.

• She Recovers Sharing Circles will complete the days of creativity and magic. I’m thrilled to partner with She Recovers yet again. So who’s in?

3. Sober In The City

I will be presenting a writing workshop in Tampa, Florida next month, as part of the Sober in the City event: a transformative weekend experience designed for individuals seeing a vibrant, alcohol-free journey. Feel like escaping winter? Learn more here.

Let today be the start of something new. Wrap your big, beautiful, intrepid spirit around your wishes, and make them all come true. Like Frances, just say: “It’s my turn.”

Wishing you a rich and rewarding 2024.

Love, ADJ

It feels good. It feels so much better than I ever expected. When I headed into Day One on Nov. 3, 2008, I was on my knees in the bathroom, wanting to die. I have had so many failed Day Ones. Tears streamed down my face. I also had a serious case of FOMO. How could I get married without drinking champagne with my groom. (I was engaged to be married at the time.) How would I socialize? Relax? Unwind? Celebrate Friday night? Toast the sunset? My birthday, New Year’s? It went on, and on, and on, as I teetered on the edge of abstinence.

My drinking escalated in my early fifties, with peri-menopause and full-blown menopause to boot.

It escalated with the introduction of anti-depressants to my system. While my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol explores many aspects of my story and that of many other women, it failed to fully examine these two truths. Why? I was too shy to share more than the facts. Now, it’s time to connect the dots to those two realities, provocative truths for many women. I called alcohol the “modern women’s steroid, enabling her to do the heavy lifting in a complex world.” Never was my life more complex than in menopause or when I first went on those anti-depressants.

I have written—I hope compellingly—about the woman who saved my life that November 3^rd, how a river of alcoholism runs through my family. But only now have I begun to speak about the connection to menopause, to the surge of hormones, the anger and teariness of that time: how a glass or three of white wine would tamp down the feelings, soothe my weary soul. 

When I was 50, I was at the apex of my career: at the top of my game in journalism, being courted by two universities for a VP role. I was also adjusting to an empty nest, a fact I found deeply sad. And I was in a 12-year relationship with a beautiful man whom I deeply loved. I was also a mess: triggered easily, weepy, I had lost my firm footing in life. Sleepless, uncharacteristically uncertain. Wine was my consolation, my friend at the end of the day, my companion in crime.

When I moved to Montreal to become a vice-principal of McGill University, I knew it was the wrong place for me as I rode in from the airport. Amy Winehouse blared from the front seat: “No, no, no!” And my whole body screamed along: “Turn around, turn around.” Instead, I stayed, in a city where I knew no-one, two provinces away from my Jake, who was having hip surgery, working in a sector so different from the high-octane world of journalism. It was a terrible turn of events for me. I worked around the clock, and soothed my lonely heart with wine, knowing all the while that I was on a runaway freight train to hell. 

As many of you know, my change of heart came with the death of my dear cousin Dougie, killed on Father’s Day weekend by a driver under the influence.

His death caused me to pause and realize: I had lost my childhood to alcohol, I had lost Dougie, and now I was losing me. 

Which isn’t to say I quit. On the contrary, as I confronted my addiction, my addiction dug in. That was June, 2007. It would take another 17 months for me to stop losing myself down the neck of a wine bottle. Alcohol is a trickster, in the words of my addiction doctor. When I turned and faced it, it morphed into a prize fighter, determine to take me down. Over those 17 months, I was able to string together 10 days of sobriety, or more, but alcohol always won the arm wrestle. 

So, what happened on Nov. 3, 2008? Bluntly put, I wanted to die. So defeated, so depleted was I, I had no interest in going on. I knew alcohol was going to kill me: a sad little death of tripping on a coffee table or tumbling down the stairs. When I decided to get off my knees and wander to the noon-hour meeting of my local 12-step group, it was a last-ditch effort to save my life. My spirits were in the basement, but the room was cozy and plush. We sat in a circle, in love seats and chairs, in a welcoming main-floor church reception room.

On closing, a woman came to comfort me, and ask me for coffee. I said yes. Over coffee, she asked: another meeting tonight? I said yes. Her only condition: I was to write a daily gratitude list and send it to her. I said yes. And with that, I began to string together days, weeks, months, and years. 

Not that the road hasn’t been bumpy. Readers of my book will know that I went through living hell 18 months into my sober life. As well, I was not welcomed back by many after my book was published, some AA members taking offence with my declarative story. I have had to cobble together a different community, first attending online AA meetings in Ireland, where no-one knew me, then hosting meetings on Hola Sober. Finally, I have landed exactly where I belong: The Luckiest Club, where I host a Sunday morning women’s meeting. 

Framed on my wall, as I write this newsletter, is the homemade Mother’s Day card my son sent me when I was still drinking. Called “Happy Mother,” it features a drawing of me at a typewriter. The fine print reads: “Perrier, not wine” and “No bloodshot eyes.” It also says: “Writing.” And this is me today: drinking Perrier, not wine; clear-eyed, writing this morning, celebrating 15 years of serenity, happy in my skin, and forever grateful to the many who supported me on this journey, above all Nicholas, my son. Forever, my son.

This has been a busy fall. In October, I gave three keynote addresses on Stigma and Addiction and presented at the She Recovers Chicago conference: a Writing Your Recovery workshop, to a packed room. I dined with the magnificent Elizabeth Gilbert, who gave an extraordinarily personal evening address, and also caught up with the remarkable Stephanie Covington, author of A Woman’s Guide to the Twelve Steps. This week, I appeared on national TV, on The Social (watch here), and in the Globe and Mail (read here). I hope you have a look and a read. 

WRITING YOUR RECOVERY: 2024

Thrilled to announce the new dates for the popular Writing Your Recovery course: April 24^th to June 19^th.  My eight-week memoir-writing course for women has graduated more than 100 writers, many of whom go onward to the Writing Your Discovery course.

As always, there are two offerings: 11:00 to 1:00 and 6:30 to 8:30 EST. Please note: there will also be a fall class, starting mid-September.

Stay tuned here, and follow me on social media to learn when registration for Writing Your Recovery opens.

The split-second moment when you try to catch yourself, before you crash headlong exactly where you hoped not to, humbled—perhaps bloodied and bruised. The thud, the lying on the ground, the painful tallying of the damage. Sometimes there are strangers to witness, offer help. Other times, there is no-one.  

This time, there were no grownups—just a beloved toddler.

One happy morning in mid-May, I dressed my granddaughter in her leopard-print best, drove her to the theatre, and walked her across the street, arriving early for a 90-minute pantomime. Unquestionably, she was too young. Never mind, I thought. What could go wrong? The youthful infusion of joy, theatre, magic: life at its best.

Entering the theatre, we encountered our first obstacle: the stage was not elevated. No barriers: my granddaughter was free to wander on and off the so-called performance area—and she did.

This bothered others. I struggled to hold her on my lap, to hug her close. But she is a curious, independent little girl, twenty-five pounds of pure will.  When the lights went down and the puppets arrived, she wiggled and squirmed, struggling to get closer to the action. 

When her favourite puppet took the stage—a small dog--she rushed straight to it. I whisked her away, distracting her with a sticker.

She reached her hand to hold mine as we headed to the car, sticker squished in the other.

We were both content, and exhausted. It was time for her nap. I craved some quiet.

But stepping back, I forgot. I lost my balance: a slow-motion tumble, trying to grab something, anything. No such luck. I crashed face first into the car door, shattering my chic new wooden eye glasses. Flat on my nose, I reviewed the situation: a frightened granddaughter, a pounding knee, throbbing in my temples.

Was my nose broken? I hoped not. In my mouth, I tasted blood. Gingerly, I got up, hobbled to the driver’s seat and surveyed the damage in the car mirror. A red-faced, battered woman stared back at me, glasses askew, little lacerations across her face. I had aged 10 years. 

Far from it: I was born with a bum eye, and my depth perception has been pooched for as long as I can remember. As a baby, I had eye surgery, and was prescribed glasses.

In grade school, I wore a patch over one eye, a dubious distinction. My mother said I looked like a pirate; the bullies in the schoolyard thought otherwise. Catching a ball was impossible—still is.

Today, my glasses have a prism, and I navigate daily life relatively well—I’m just more cautious than others, especially since my fall five years ago.

One minute I was sauntering down a sunny street in Tribeca, fresh latte in hand, all right with the world. Next, I was flat on my back, my toe having caught in a grate: three broken ankle bones, my foot facing sideways.

As the ambulance folks trundled my gurney into the hospital, I realized that my upcoming return to university--at age 64--would be done from a wheelchair.

I hired a fellow student, a 23-year-old, to hold my tray at meal times, to set up my residence room for the wheelchair turning radius—hell, for just about everything but the toilet and the shower.

Weathering three months of daily challenges, we became close friends. “You’ve got this,” she would tell me, whether it referred to an awkward bathroom entrance or passing stats. And with her by my side, she was right.

Poof, life changes in an instant. This is what I have learned. One summer night, a tornado hit the cottage. The top of a tree flew off and punctured the bedroom ceiling, the trunk protruding like a dagger in a Tarot card. 

Two Junes ago, I was courted over coffee by a beautiful woman—a cross between Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. Day One, I said no: I don’t date women. Day Two, I said maybe. Day Three, I said yes. She intrigued me.

It was Valentine’s Day when she told me it was over. You can’t make this stuff up. My friend tells me the love will turn into a lesson, and I know she is right. L always does. The closest I’ve come is Mary Oliver’s “The Uses of Sorrow”: 

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Yes, life changes in an instant. As I teeter on the big tree root of my August birthday, my friends and I joke: 70 is the new 50. Most of us are avid walkers, or strength trainers, hikers or swimmers: we aim to thrive. But privately, we share stories of those with early dementia, cancer, Parkinson’s. We are not fools. 

We just want to avoid a tumble, literally and metaphorically. So far, the script has been straightforward: go to college, fall in love, excel at something, raise your children, climb the ladder, shift to the empty nest, survive menopause.

Of course, none of it is neat and tidy--but that’s the script. And for each stage, there has been a manual or two, rule books. 

None of this applies to me. On my 65^th birthday, I was sitting in a wood-panelled Ivy League classroom in Northampton, Mass, halfway through my second year of grad school. On my 66^th, I was preparing for convocation, launching my fourth career, this time as a psychotherapist.

I was shopping for office space. Five minutes later, Covid struck and the world moved to Zoom. Life changes in an instant. 

Or rather, it does and it doesn’t. Way back in the last century, I broke up with the kind man I was married to, the father of my five-year-old son. It was New Year’s, 1990, and I was determined to usher in major change with the new decade.

For 17 days, my broken-hearted husband sat in his car, outside the house, determine to change my mind.

My mind was firm.  But I made a proposal: why don’t we keep our family as we lose our marriage?

And as the years unspooled, we did just that. Thirty-three years later, we are a family intact, travelling together, entwined. Neither of us has missed a Christmas with our son. We are best friends, confidantes. I can count on him and he can count on me.

We make room for each other’s quirks, our differences. For instance, my ex-husband is determined to see 100, cheered by the fact that there are more centenarians than ever before.

My heart sinks: I cannot afford to live to 100. Meanwhile, my therapist, who encourages me to date again, warns me not to become a “nurse with a purse.” This sounds ominous too. 

In other words, but for the late-stage career—and perhaps even then—I am average. My marriage was an average length—12.5 years. I am of average height. And indeed, when I developed a drinking problem, that was average too: in terms of risky drinking, women had begun to catch up to men.

In my fifteenth year of sobriety, I see grocery shelves full of non-alcoholic options. No accident. If I am weathering it, odds are my peers are as well. 

Today, I am turning my periscope on what it means to age. Two weeks ago, I Zoomed with a spry woman in her nineties, whip smart, who had sought me out, wanting to know how to intervene on her best friend’s chronic drinking problem.

Sitting in her crisp blue shirt, this woman confided that her friend’s drinking was more than she could handle. Made sense to me. She was worried her friend would drink and drive, killing herself and possibly others.

“Should I pour her wine?” The woman wanted to know.

We agreed it was problematic. It was risky, especially if her friend was driving, heading home alone. “She could trip and fall on the stairs,” I added. “Hit her head and die. Others have.” Life changes in an instant. 

As I offered her advice, I found myself wanting to turn the tables.

I wanted to ask her: Could I spend just one afternoon, sitting on your flowered couch, under the massive abstract painting, listening to your unblinkered advice? Life changes in an instant, yes, and then what?

Is it like sailing: you tug on one rope and adjust to the breeze? How do you wean off working? How do you survive the loss of a grown child? The loss of your friends. So many questions. And so I have am sending a series of emails to all the 90-year-olds I know. Stay tuned. 

For the moment, left to my own devices, up at dawn with coffee and my beloved dog as ballast against my hip, I will presume this: we persist. Of course, we do.

We prevail. Time accordions out, and we find the courage to go on: with infirmities, with wrinkles, with metal in our ankles.

Children die, lovers leave or forget our names, and still we move forward. Every ending is ripe with new beginnings. This week, that ending means saying farewell to my sixties, a decade of change, and love and joy.

For the moment, especially this week as I celebrate with family and friends, I will remember the wisdom of Emily Dickinson:

Sylvia Plath too:

“Remember, remember: 

this is now, and now, 

And now. 

Live it, cling to it.

I want to become

acutely aware 

of all I’ve taken for granted.”

As I go forward, the subversive Charles Bukowski says it best:

“We are here 

to laugh at the odds

and live our lives so well

that death will tremble

to take us.”

Amen, I say. Amen.

Do you know an exceptional woman who is aged 85 to 95, who would be willing to to be interviewed for my next book? If so, please email me at adjohnston@summerhill.tv

Join Ann’s memoir writing course, beginning Wednesday, October 4th.

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Holly and Laura and I decided to save a little money in New York City one weekend and share a hotel room. We were all attending the “She Recovers New York” conference.

The year was 2017, and I remember our squeezing into that room, Holly with her trademark red nails, Laura with her short skirts, me sleeping in one queen bed, and the other two sharing the second. 

I had been asked to present a workshop for the 500 sober women in attendance. Title? Writing Your Recovery. It was a hit.

My pal Holly sat in the front row, and I remember delivering the session to a packed room. Holly and Laura and I went out to dinner that night with our mutual friend, Lisa Smith (Girl Walks Out of a Bar), and the four of us took the long walk home in the soft air, grabbing some selfies by the water.

So, here we are in the summer of 2023: Writing Your Recovery is a well-established entity, having graduated more than 100 women from around the globe. Holly is a regular guest, and there have been many more.

This past month we welcomed the brilliant essayist Debra Gwartney (Siri Tells a Joke) to teach a two-hour Master Class on voice and dialogue in memoirs. It was pure magic. 

Many WYR enrollees have carried on with Writing Your Discovery, the graduate-level offering that runs year-round.

Close friendships and connections have formed over long distances. Just last month a group of us gathered in Nova Scotia by the ocean, at the home of the gifted writer Wendy McCallum (featured in my first newsletter).

Wendy is now writing fiction, by the way, as are others, sharing it with her Writing Your Discovery group—hers is a brilliantly wise and insightful novel with the working title of Undoing Alice.

Writing Your Recovery is currently on a summer break, restarting in early October. But the Writing Your Discovery classes—all four of them—are year-round and full up. Many members are also private writing clients of mine, working on books.

Who knew that those 30-plus years of editing would evolve into this labour of love for me: working with dozens of talented women, all in recovery from something, be it grief, alcohol, eating issues, or just life.

It is a source of immense joy, and I look forward to sharing the work of some stellar women this summer. 

This month, I am featuring the talented UK writer Philippa Kay, who lives with her husband and three children in St Agnes, on the north Cornish coast.

Last year, her young son Wilf was diagnosed with cancer, and much of her writing centers on that difficult passage. At Writing Your Discovery, we have a front-row seat as she unspools her story. If you enjoy her work, please share Philippa’s journey. 

Ann: You are a busy mother. What inspired you to enroll in Writing Your Recovery, and continue with Writing Your Discovery?

Philippa: Timings just lined up. I was struggling to recover mentally from my child’s cancer diagnosis six months earlier, searching for anything I thought might help me feel better, to function better.  

Writing Your Recovery caught my eye in an Instagram post from someone I follow. As it happened a new class started the same day.  

I never thought I’d be any good at the sharing element; I’m a terrible scaredy-cat at speaking out loud, let alone reading my own material, but the group is so inclusive and supportive – I look forward to every session. 

Continuing onto WYD was a treat – although I’m separated from most of the rest of our class by thousands of miles, as a group, we have a very close connection. 

 It’s a safe space to share, be brave, try out ideas, learn, and listen.  As our classes are live, our meetings feel very real-time, there’s no online disconnect: real connections, real learnings, and real friends.  

Ann: What was the biggest surprise about making room for writing in your life?

Philippa: Just how much I love to write!  By making a bit of space, and giving writing some scheduled time, it’s opened up the floodgates.  I’ve started to really see life in all its bright and glorious reality.  

The excitement of a new idea is a real buzz. By getting my thoughts onto a page, I’ve found not only do I free up the space for fresh thinking to fill, but it also helps to calm my very busy head.  Writing is the most beautiful therapy.

Ann: Can you tell us about your writing habits, dreams, and aspirations?

Philippa: Right now I am furiously trying to make sense of, collect, and curate everything I’ve learned, seen, and lived over this past year, since his diagnosis and during our recovery.  

This story, his and ours, is pulsing through me; desperate to get onto a page and be organized into chapters. My dream is that I’m able to unjumble these words into a book that someone else might want to read.  I wish there’d been something similar when our journey started; it would have helped me hold onto hope.   

I never want to stop jotting them down, writing for me is taking a big, deep breath of fresh air. Writing, I’ve discovered, unsticks my soul.  

Ping - When life sends you a text message

By Philippa Kay

We started out as two. My small boy, not quite three, hearing the front door, came downstairs sleepy-eyed, his white-blonde curls already bed-ruffled, wearing green frog print pajamas.

Their eyes met with matching surprise. My boy, on finding a stranger had dropped in way past bedtime, and the man I had been seeing quietly for a few months coming face to face with the reality of my child we’d only talked about. I’d taken great care to ensure their paths were not yet crossing.  Neither, I felt, were quite ready to meet the other—ping. 

My boyfriend of just a few months became his stepfather three years before becoming my husband.

Swerving the stigma, he slipped with gentle ease into the paternal role, filling the empty father-shaped shoes with kindness, effervescence, and affection.

Together, they learned to be father and son: catching mackerel, riding bikes, building fires, consuming sickly-sweet bakery treats in secret, sticky buns with pink icing that I’d never agree to as an after-school snack. They fell in love. 

The fear of becoming a biological father hit him hard and quite by surprise.

My new husband struggled at the first scan, so I carried on quietly by myself in preparing for our second boy’s arrival. It was OK, I told him: take your time. 

I lay on the gurney, paralyzed from my breastbone and beyond in a busy delivery suite, watching with anticipation as the midwife passed the towelling-wrapped parcel of our pink-faced baby over to his father in blue hospital scrubs.

His love poured in free flow and without hesitation, spilling and sploshing all over our tiny new boy. The two of them conjoined. It became hard to establish where one stopped and the other started, our plump little boy perma-wedged into the hip of my husband who’d taken to babies as beautifully as he’d stepped into step fathering three years earlier. Three became four. 

My tears and his splashing happily onto her new, naked skin. Our precious girl curled quietly into the crook of my arm as the doctors stitched me together again inches away behind a blue stretch of hospital screen. Ping – four became five. Her brothers took turns holding their tiny sister.

Their huge-hearted father chases tides, waves and rainbows; fearful of his own capacities, but fearless of nature’s playground.  He’s a beautiful visionary with the ability to catch hold of the big dreams he believes in: the ones he weaves with love for his children.

He says yes to ice creams and flapjacks at the beach cafe, to dog walks in pajamas, to bike rides after bedtime. He loves them tirelessly; it’s never just the one story, its board games played properly, dens built so carefully, wetsuits rolled on and peeled off gently, there’s sandy toes, soothing sunburn and time taken to go rock-pooling at low tides.  It’s their favourite songs he sings out of key and with his own, made up, muddled-up words. 

There are all sorts of fathers out there. Our children are lucky enough to have one of the very best kinds: the ones that most children only read about in bedtime books. Ours is for real life. 

I understood when he couldn’t bear to look at our six-year-old boy as he lay in his recovery cot, medical drains and tubes leaking yellow blood-stewed gloop from the fresh incisions cut into the four corners of his small torso.

I knew he couldn’t hide his heartbreak, so I sent him home.

I stayed stroking our boy’s face as he began to rouse from the appendectomy that wasn’t. 

I didn’t know how to break the news, and his father’s heart. I couldn’t handle his despair as well as my own. 

When you’ve held your limp and lifeless child, dead weight in your arms under general anaesthesia, you get a taste of what the very worst might feel like.

When you watch your small boy stand in front of the towering, adult-sized x-ray machine, or slide in screaming to scanning tubes, you feel real fear.

When you lie awake next to him, night after night, the silent drip, drip, drip of a poison infusion into his tiny veins, machines beeping, fevers raging, appetites failing, you get to taste the darkest times.

The five of us were dispersed, our children displaced by many hundreds of miles during his treatment.  Sometimes we’d almost be together, separated only by the glass panel of the door to his ward. 

He’d wave brightly through this window at them; smiling and shouting playground-level loudly at each other through the thickness of the fire door, his siblings unfazed by his IV lines or the funny wisps of blonde hair he’d yet to lose.     

Learning to bravely face the fear of maybe losing your child is immeasurably hard. 

A year ago last night, I saw a double rainbow. My boy was just well enough to get out of bed, wheeling his chemo lines across to the window where we both watched the double arcs curve over the scorching city skyline, a magnificent midsummer sunset of pinks; both of us silently holding onto the hope of something. I took a photo. It was the day before handfuls of his hair started coming away.

Last night, a year later, we danced in a field flanked by the Atlantic, singing shanty songs as the sun set once more, this time falling into the horizon line and sinking into the sea. Strings of festoon lighting danced like fireflies across the darkening blue sky as the warm evening rolled into a warm night.

Our daughter squeals in delight as he throws her up and into the air, again and again, catching her bare legs, her little pink sandals dusty from dancing.

Our boy, strong once more, sings with all of his huge heart; a homecoming, a celebration of life, of survival, of love, of the five of us again.

For our family every day together is now an occasion to celebrate, to relish, to enjoy, to nurture, to treasure. Ping.

The next round of Writing Your Recovery starts this October, and spots are limited - so if you are interested, sign up soon.

If you have any questions for me about Writing Your Recovery, the eight-session memoir-writing course, please don’t hesitate to reach out at adjohnston@summerhill.tv

Have a delicious summer and happy writing. - ADJ

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I loved the so-called glamour, the crystal, the sparkle as the light refracted in the gold fluid in my glass.

In public, I drank what others drank, keeping pace at my book club or a dinner party. But once home, in private, all bets were off. Whatever promises I had made to myself that morning—just one, perhaps two—were out the window. More often than not, I fell into bed, uncertain whether I had opened the second bottle or not.

And while my drinking diary sat on my nightstand, faithfully filled in each morning, I rarely kept the promises I recorded: only one, maybe two. “Drank again,” it would read. “Day One,” I would vow. And every vow was broken, over, and over, and over.

Until one frosty December, I pressed repeat on this pattern, with no seeming ability to change.

As it happened, December 18, 2007 was a particularly festive evening. My dance card was full: I had invitations to an annual family Christmas party, followed by a Hannukah celebration, topped off by a gala birthday event at a fancy Toronto museum, hosted by my closest friend. I said yes to all three: I would start with my family at 5:00, witness the lighting of the Hannukah candles at 7:00 and hit the museum by 9:00, just in time for cocktails and dancing.

I chose a perfect Hugo Boss black dress for the three disparate outings, spritzed myself with Issy Miyake, and ventured out into the snowy twilight, armed with hostess gifts and my alpha determination to celebrate the season. What could go wrong?

My brother confronted me at the bar: “How’s this working for you, Ann?” He mimed me guzzling a glass of wine. Caught off guard, I chose my typical monosyllabic answer: “Fine.” I was in no mood to discuss my drinking.

My beloved ex-husband, also on the guest list at Party One and Two, cautioned me not to go to Party Three. “I wouldn’t miss it,” I argued.

I danced. I drank some more. I laughed. I danced. I fell. And just as I did, I saw my ex-husband—not invited to Party Three-making his way across the museum floor in his winter coat, determined to take me home. “I am fine,” I insisted. “You should leave,” he insisted. I refused. I still see this as one of the more loving acts in my life. But I digress.

Much later, I found myself lying on the bathroom floor of the museum, crying in my little black dress. Clearly, I was not fine. And this is where my best friend found me, where she persuaded me to head home and have a life-changing talk over tea. By the time the kettle was on, it was two in the morning, and my university-aged son was also returning home, fresh from a night with friends. He insisted on joining the conversation.

“You know you have to go to rehab, don’t you?” These were my friend’s words.

I looked at her loving face. I looked at my son’s angry one. And I said the words that saved my life: “Yes. I will. I promise.” Hearing my vow, my friend took off her bracelet—engraved with the Churchill motto “Never, Never, Never Give Up”—and placed it on my wrist, where it remains to this day: my sobriety talisman.

Not overnight: I would slip and slide until January 1, when I stopped drinking. It would be another 60 days before rehab would accept me. And another eight months until I landed on a sobriety date I could really call my own. But that December marathon was my rock bottom.

The morning after the three-party smashup, my friend reached out to see if I was okay. I refused to answer her calls. I was beyond shamed. I lay on the couch, drinking coffee, her bracelet on my wrist, devastated. My Hugo Boss dress lay on my bedroom floor. For three days, my friend reached out. For three days, I hid, too embarrassed to speak. Finally, on Day Four, her husband drove by with a gift. “Call Gill. She needs to hear from you.”

I can’t remember when I picked up the phone, but I know it was then I chose to be unshamed. I chose to own my affliction—what I sometimes call my Celtic blood disorder-- and I chose to put it in my rearview mirror. This meant putting the shame behind me.

Shame is a toxin. It will keep us stuck. I chose to move on. And I still do, each and every day.

Clearly, my 14 years of sobriety marks a break from my family’s history of alcoholic ruin. My childhood was drenched in alcohol, my mother cross-addicted to both booze and pills. My high-achieving father died of Korsakoff’s syndrome. When my own drinking rendered my life precarious, it felt like I was in an echo chamber. Since I could remember, alcohol had been the demon in my life, and then t became my demon lover—just as it had for both my parents.

I wrote a gratitude list every day, working my biceps to appreciate the present. I went to meetings, surrounding myself with others who lived in the day, working the muscularity of sobriety. I developed a strong and reliable serenity sisterhood. But most of all? I stopped the shame. I took the backpack of rocks—the blackouts, the alcoholic missteps—and set it down, knowing it would keep me stuck as I moved forward. And in doing so, I have been able to move on, embracing what is and what will be. For me, it’s the key to my sanity, sobriety, and equilibrium. In other words, it’s everything.

Making room for joy means, as Woolf says, feasting on the moment. We ditch the rear-view mirror; we put the binoculars down. For me, that means spending time writing and indulging in the bliss of my new-found role as Nanna to my remarkable granddaughter, the 16-month-old Frankie. For one delicious week next month, Frankie and I will explore her hometown of Los Angeles home as her parents drive up the coast of California. Bluntly put, this is a privilege that would have been off-limits, had I still been drinking. I can hardly wait. Unburdened, unshackled, unshamed, all things are possible.

Here’s to the fresh green shoots of spring. - ADJ

This growth—and what contributes to it: this is the essence of my recent writing. What is essential, and what falls away? For a long time, we live in the liminal space of learning how we choose to shape our lives: not quite Point A, certainly not Point B.

On this journey, nothing has helped me so much as my own journaling, adding to my library of red-covered diaries. On more than one occasion, writing has saved me. As Joan Didion wrote: 

Join me on Wednesday, April 12. I promise: your life will shift.

On April 12, at 11:00 am or 6:30 pm ET (your choice)—we will launch the next sessions of Writing Your Recovery, my eight-week memoir-writing class. WYR distills everything I have learned about recovery and writing, after 45 years of editing and almost 15 years living alcohol-free.

This is a life-transforming class. To get the most out of the experience, you needn’t have your own history of alcohol use. We are all in recovery from something—be it grief or sadness, an eating disorder, or a toxic work environment. The list goes on. We all have a story to tell. Mine your life for the story you are meant to share. Find your authentic voice, and begin metabolizing, through writing, your past. Join with the button below.

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Now For The News We All Saw Coming

So: it finally happened—the saddest news in ages, and exactly what I predicted in my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the U.S. reports that women are binge drinking more than men for the first time in history. 

I am not surprised: this has been building for years. Women outpacing men in terms of emergency room presentations, ones related to alcohol intake. With the pinking of the alcohol market since the mid-1990s, the messaging has been blaring: you deserve a drink today.

Take the mummy drinking culture. Take the pressured woman with children at home, who has weathered the tough years of COVID, juggling work and the emotional labour of running a family, or dealing with trauma, grief, and the wish to numb. For her, alcohol is often the Number One stress reliever—and a socially acceptable one at that.Alcohol consumption, already a top decompression tool before the pandemic, turned epidemic for women in those difficult years.

Now we have the news, and the news is not pretty. As a woman who grew up with a severely alcoholic mother, and who has had her own alcohol issues, I find this announcement beyond sad: for women, for their children and families, and for the world.And this news comes as we are absorbing the message science has delivered: no amount of alcohol is “good for you.”

Recently, the World Health Organization stated that when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount. Period.

Recently, Canada released its new low-risk drinking guidelines. The message was stark: the only safe consumption is two measured drinks per week—five ounces of wine, for instance. Any more, and you run the risk of cancer or cardiovascular issues, and violence. The list continues. All this in the spirit of: you have a right to know.

This news landed hard in a country of enthusiastic drinkers—fully 80 percent of Canadians aged 15 and over consume alcohol. What is interesting is that the news echoed right around the world, with more than 2,500 original articles about the new guidelines, reaching more than six billion internationally.

Canada’s low-risk drinking guidelines offer a major—and I would say long overdue—wakeup call: alcohol is a carcinogen, and more.

In 2013, I reported this truth in Drink, underscoring the link between alcohol and breast cancer. But I also reported that while 15 percent of breast cancer cases are attributable to alcohol consumption, only five percent of women appreciated this reality. Typically, the public—including many healthcare professionals—have absorbed the false news that red wine is good for your health—a fact I also debunked in my book. These myths die hard.

Will Canada’s new guidelines change our public misconceptions about our favourite drug? Not in the short term.  For many, it’s a big pill: the announcement that three to six drinks a week represents a moderate risk for cancer and heart issues. Beyond that? Your risks increase for developing one of seven types of cancer (including breast and colon), most types of cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and being involved in a violent incident.

These guidelines, deeply informed by recent science, are revolutionary.

Without a doubt, there is going to be incredible pushback in the wake of this health news.

It flies in the face of all that people have wanted to believe: that our Number One decompression tool is good for our health. Now, that’s all down the drain. Having done 70-plus interviews on the subject, I think it’s safe to say the public response is cognitive dissonance.

Of course, the overarching questions remain. Will the new guidelines affect behaviour? Is there a parallel with tobacco? In 1964, a definitive report linked tobacco smoking to lung cancer. Although the science was sturdy, it took 35 years for Canada to ban smoking in workplaces and restaurants. The truth is: it may take a generation to see a total shift in how we consume alcohol too.

In recent weeks, the general response has been “I work hard, I pay my taxes, I’m a responsible parent; what I do on a Friday night is nobody’s business.”

Meanwhile, the alcohol industry will be at the ready to fight back: the lobby is robust and has deep pockets. Consider this: in the United States, the industry employs one lobbyist for every two members of Congress. The industry gives generously, and across party lines.

The good news? For those who take their science seriously, the menu of alcohol-free options has never been richer. And for those with a drinking problem? Modern recovery offers a banquet of choices.

And for me, ever the nerd on all things alcohol-related? The world has heard Canada’s clarion call, and the future looks fascinating. For the first time in decades, the ground is shifting.

I will close with this: we live in a culture where we stigmatize those who choose not to drink. “Why not?” asks the well-meaning stranger. “Surely, just one,” says the welcoming host. “It can’t hurt you,” says the other.

Now in my 15^th year of living alcohol-free, I am watching this landscape with interest. The story is unfolding, and the future is here. Stay tuned. - ADJ

As I surveyed the room, I decided to pay tribute to my beautiful mother, who would have loved this celebration, this buoyant community. As it was, my mother lost more than four decades of her life to the oblivion and friendless isolation of binge drinking. Raised in a family where secrets were kept, my mother would have struggled with the candor of the group. But she, who died virtually friendless, would have loved the warmth, the hugs, the epiphanic and radiant joy.

And so, in honour of International Women’s Day, and in honour of those brave women in Palm Springs, I am going to share a piece I have written on my unique mother, on her decline and her death. And I share it to pay tribute to the brilliant young woman she once was, tap-tap-tapping at her typewriter every evening, writing letters home to her family from the small Northern mining town where she was transplanted in early marriage. A cultured woman, a hungry reader, who lost herself to drink. 

Like many, she became more radical with age, especially after the death of my father. Her hard liquor habit softened to her nightly spritzers. She became my enthusiastic travel companion. And most memorably, she gave me permission to share her drinking history in my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol. “If you can share your story, darling, so can I.” 

It was a decision she might have come to regret: when I emptied her bedroom after her death, the bookmark in her copy of Drink marked the page detailing her worst offenses. In the end, I believe it proved too much for her, reading of her own intimate relationship with booze. 

While she never overcame the shame of her heavy drinking years, she reclaimed herself in her closing years, a triumphant ending. And as Steinem has said, she became more radical with age. This included the decision to spell “fuck” in Scrabble, placed on a triple, to win a game with my son and me. When we look shocked, she shrugged, “I had been saving that K for a long time.” To this day, I have a photo of that board on my fridge—a reminder that this relentlessly proper woman exited with a bang, her radical and unique self to the end. This month, I have attached my piece on her ending: The Long Goodbye.

Recently, I also travelled to the writers’ festival in San Miguel De Allende, making new writerly friends in that colorful Mexican hill town, and collecting nuggets for my upcoming sessions of Writing Your Recovery. Join me for the next round of this popular online memoir-writing workshop, an eight-session intimate learning experience, starting on March 29^th. Please go to my website to register. Find your voice, your story, your book--and savour the community of other female writers. It’s a radical joy to lead this rich and creative community.

The Long Goodbye

 “I know. It can be tough.” I pause. “I just eat standing in the kitchen,” I tell her. “It makes me feel less alone, not sitting down.” I know this will provoke her, but I might as well tell the truth. “Darling, that’s terrible! Standing? In the kitchen? That’s not good for you, dear.” I know, I know. What should I tell her? You get used to it, this being alone? Over time, it becomes the new normal. (It does.)  This is not what she wants to hear.

She is in the early stage of grief, when everything is an affront. Her friend Mary has told her she will never stop missing her husband, my father. Mary misses her Arthur every day, and Mum now believes she’s in for never-ending pain. My mother is sitting on the left side of her pretty chintz couch with the William Morris fabric, sipping her first Diet Coke spritzer of the evening, the second already poured and chilling in the fridge. Both drinks are mixed just to her liking: one part sugar-free soda, two parts cheap white South African plonk because she likes to honor South Africa, the country where she spent the happiest years of her marriage. Her dog is at her feet, a pack of Benson and Hedges perched by her side, along with her Venetian glass ashtray from the ‘60s. The Scrabble board is prepped on the coffee table, and there are two tiny red-boxed chicken pot pies ready for heating. In other words, her idea of a perfect Friday night. I’m a poor stand-in for my father, but a close second, being her compatriot in this single life. It’s my way of being her witness, now that she’s been escorted off the Noah’s Ark of life, where everyone travels two by two.

I want to be here for the rough stuff, especially her initiation into loneliness. Which is what lies ahead: we both know it.     

“You never know, Mum. You could meet someone.” “Don’t be ridiculous! An old bat like me? Besides, I’ve already had the best.” This is her version of the truth, and she’s sticking to it. There are four framed photos of my father in her sightlines: my favourite from the ‘50s, where he’s standing by his bush plane in jeans and Ray Bans, a young geophysicist in the Arctic. And the one I loathe: a corporate photo, where he looks grim, strained. Okay, embalmed. “Doesn’t he look distinguished?” my mother asks, sipping her spritzer. She chose this photo for his obituary. I was appalled. Doesn’t she remember the year it was taken, the year all hell broke loose? She, unhinged by menopause and her own parents’ early deaths from cancer, careening through the halls wild-eyed with rage and grief, drink in hand, ice cubes tinkling, delivering her monologues, night after night. A kamikaze warrior, fuelled by endless vats of rum. And my father—if he was home—pretending to sleep (as we all did), only to wake exhausted in the morning.

These were their middle years: a nasty waking nightmare fuelled by her booze and benzos, while the Sixties exploded all around us. Her life was ruled by booze--plus unmetabolized grief, loneliness, and fury. She roamed the house, spouting her litany: “This isn’t living, it’s existing!” Only in her final decade did my mother give up hard liquor, restricting her drinking to the evening. She weathered my father’s late alcoholism, his extended depression, his illness, and his death. Chastened by her own history and his, she emerged softer and more generous, supportive and kind. It was a never-ending surprise: the whirling dervish of rage disappeared, and in her place was the mother of my earliest years, nurturing and loving to those she had terrorized. For the first time in decades, she was newly resilient, optimistic, and wise.  

 No one could have predicted her transformation. No one expected it. The mother I loathed became my friend.

Released by age and widowhood, she emerged as her own person, sturdy in her outlook, vocally grateful for all she had been given: a sustaining marriage to a man she treasured, three children she adored, exotic travel, and a wealth of experience. And she apologized, regularly, for all she had put us through. In short, she was much easier to love. Many of us scratched our heads. Couldn’t she have done this decades earlier? But no, here she was, screeching to the finish line of life, a woman with significant health challenges, limited mobility, short-term memory loss of which she was keenly aware, and virtually no friends, expressing profound gratitude. It was, for the most part, a happy ending.  

 Not that she couldn’t, still, drive me crazy. “Wait, just a second, I’ve got Indian pants!” “Indian pants?” “Yes, you know: they’re creeping up on me.” She flashes a grin. “Mum! You have to stop saying that.” “Why? I think it’s funny. Your dad used to say it too.” I do the invisible eye roll. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” “Actually I do. Not in the car. And Mum, please put on your seatbelt.” Silence. “We’re not going that far.” “Mum, it’s the law.” Together, with much straining, we manage to buckle her up. “How about I just roll down my window.”  “No, Mum. You can’t smoke in cars.” “Well, then, let’s pull over?” She opens her door, extends one khaki-covered leg out of the car, and flicks the ashes into the ditch. It’s her concession to modern life.  

Over time, my mother lost all her filters. Here we are in a restaurant, she removing her dentures for a little rinse in her water glass, ramming them back into place. “Mum! You can’t do that here!” “Why not? I had something caught in my teeth.” She takes a long drink of water. “Mum, you can’t drink from that!” “Why not?  It’s my water glass.” Day by day, my mother as I knew her was disappearing. Gone was the whiz at bridge, the drill sergeant on table manners, and my fiercest opponent at Scrabble. And within months, gone was her independence. 

On a bitter, blustery November night, my mother is admitted to the hospital. Since the doctors are certain she is about to die, they place her in a double room, offering us some privacy to say goodbye. My mother refuses to go, chats, and dozes, holding my hand tight. “You know what I wish? I want to live long enough to see you happily married again..” “Me too, Mum.” Pause. “Do you think I’ll get to see your father again? I hope so.” Pause.  “I believe yes,” I lie. “I think so too.” Long pause. At 2 a.m., a drunken young woman is escorted to her room, and placed in the second bed. She is accompanied by her equally disinhibited father, who pitches forward on a chair. “I love martinis! What an epic night!” The young woman is doubled over in hysterics, smudging what’s left of her streaked mascara. “Did I have six or seven, Dad? Martinis.” She erupts in more laughter. “I think it was SEVEN!” snorts the father. This cracks her up. She tosses her head in disbelief, sits bolt upright, and tries trying to take a selfie with her smart phone. “How many did you have?” she screeches. The father gazes foolishly, lurching forward to utter an inarticulate slur. They both collapse in laughter. 

And so it goes: two drunks regaling each other as my mother fades in and out. It’s all surreal: alcohol having the last laugh on both of us, spoiling our ending as it spoiled so many years.   

In the end, she lives two more nights. On Sunday, I bring her a last supper of carrot cake, ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies. Above all, my mother always believed in the healing power of sugar. Frail and diminished in her hospital gown, hooked up to tubes and monitors, she leans forward to take a tiny bite of cake. She falls back, exhausted. I feed her a morsel of cookie. Again, a taste, a smile, followed by a collapse. I place a straw in a bottle of Caribbean lemonade, and she manages a sip. “Ambrosia, darling. Let’s get some of that when I get home.” “For sure, Mum.” “I think I’d better close my eyes, darling. I’m very tired.” “I love you, Mum.” “I love you too, darling. Just let me close my eyes for a bit.” She winces. “Maybe I could get something for this pain?” I call the nurse, and she agrees: my mother shouldn’t suffer. I wait for Mum to settle before slipping off my black boots, crawling in at the end of her bed, tucking myself under the covers beside her. I can see her tiny chest rising and falling, at times haltingly.  This scares me. I know she is about to die. I feel like a figure in a Chagall painting, looking down from the ceiling above. I need to stay grounded, to see her through until morning. And, I realize, I need someone to help me shepherd her onward. I call for a chaplain. Within the hour, a friendly black face appears, a minister with a beatific smile, who holds my hands and asks about her faith. He discloses his own—Pentecostal. It does not matter. We stand together, he reciting the 23^rd Psalm, me wrestling with what is about to transpire. Then, with undeniable gusto, he launches into a soulful rendition of Jesus Loves Me. I pray she doesn’t wake. Raised a Christian Scientist, my mother has fashioned a faith all her own: she worships the altar of Westminster Abbey, home of royal weddings and state funerals. Given her druthers, there would be strains of Handel, perhaps a little Elgar. Jesus Loves Me? God forbid.  She never stirs, not once. The chaplain’s manly voice rises above her sleeping body: Yes, Jesus Loves Me! The Bible Tells Me So! We pray together. He asks me if I want him to stay. I thank him but no, I am ready to be alone, to say goodbye.

 I lie back down by her feet, slipping under the covers, settling in for her last night on earth.

As the eldest of her children, I have spent so many evenings nestled close to her: when Kennedy was shot, we seemed to stay up all night long. For years, I kept my mother company when my father was away. It feels like home. She looks impossibly lovely, tired, and small. There is a perfect symmetry to this night: it feels like a birth in reverse. By the time her breakfast arrives, she is gone. I lost my mother in so many stages; then I got her back, just to lose her completely. When your first parent dies, it leaves a huge hole in your life—but much of your time is spent looking after the one left behind. Your job is to soften the blow. But when your second parent dies, there’s no escaping it: you’re at the front of the conveyor belt. And you’re next. Over and over, she had warned us: for her, there were no seasons left. She was right. Come spring, when we cracked open the creaky cottage door, there was her blue bathing suit, hanging just where she left it. There was her reminder note for her hair appointment, etched carefully in her shaky handwriting, pinned to the fridge. And there was her favorite striped chair by the fireplace, softly indented. Her absence a presence, forever.

Do you have a radical woman in your life? Hold her close. This is especially true if that radical woman is you.

-Ann Dowsett Johnston

I tackled the project by writing what I called quilt squares: chunks of my memories—often pulled wholesale from my journals—interwoven with reporting on the pinking of the alcohol market and the darker health implications of drinking for women.

I remember these 11 months as among the most fulfilling of my adult life: bracing, invigorating, and deeply charged. 

Fast forward to 2023, and I will tell you that the Drink experience informs how I teach my course: Writing Your Recovery. In Class One, I have each participant start by writing a quilt square of their own, with prompts. No matter how talented, each student arrives with some trepidation about writing. Creating a small quilt square is an excellent way to address those fears, and to get writers launched on their personal path of confidence and creativity.

On that note, I am sharing a sneak preview into the work I am doing right now on the themes of grief, and love—a piece called Solitude, made up of a series of quilt squares. 

As we tip into a new year, I always search my calendar for the totemic moment of the past year, scanning the months for the signature image. For me, now approaching 70, this captures it all.

Twilight comes early in late August, the end of an unseasonably hot day. Perched at the end of a weathered grey dock, reclining in a lipstick-red wooden chair, feet up on a matching ottoman, I am considering the curious circumstances of my solitude. 

Curious—at least—to me. 

I am alone, but for the dog at my feet, peering out as I do: past the loon swimming solo in the silky black water, across to a single white pine standing resolute, cresting a warm hulk of pre-Cambrian granite. I love the tree and its bonsai beauty. I love the gray rock that grounds it. I love it here. 

We are waiting—or at least I am--for the sleek blue heron to make its end-of-day appearance. Any minute now, it will swoop in slow motion from the opposite shore to mine, skimming low over the water with one prehistoric squawk, signaling that day is done. For more than 40 years, I have made the sunset trek to the far end of this dock. Tonight, the sky is merled: purple, pink, mauve. If my son were here, he might be painting it. But he’s long gone, nesting with his wife and baby daughter in L.A. 

Sitting here alone: this is brand new. 

In other years, there was no time. Then, there were bright orange life jackets to buckle up over skinny boy bodies, sharp young voices yelling, “Hit it!” Wakeboards rising triumphantly in golden light behind the ancient boat. Laughter. Flannel pajamas. Popcorn, marshmallows, movies. 

Later, there were sunset cruises with boatloads of tall boys and their girlfriends, bottles of beer nestling in the cooler. More popcorn, loud music, more laughter. 

Still later, there was a man who held my hand on another dock two thousand miles away, who poured me wine at sunset and took me fishing for pickerel, kissing me when I caught a big one. And even more recently, there was a woman, lean and muscular, who led me by the hand into a moonlit pool to skinnydip under a Western sky. 

Now, they’re all gone: the little boys, the big boys, the man, and yes, the woman. 

Tonight, it’s just me and my dog, waiting in silence for the heron to emerge. Wondering in this liminal moment: what comes next? 

If my dad were here, he’d tell me I am sitting on the exposed basement of the continent, remnants of an ancient mountain chain-- a rock that has weathered more than 450 million years of erosion. 

My dad talked like that, math being his first language: it put him at ease. With little or no prodding, he’d pull out his blue pencil, whittled sharp with his trusty pen knife, and launch into a short history of the world. 

Seas, he’d tell me, once flooded where I now sit. At the bottom of those seas, sediment gathered, morphing into rock—rock older than the stars above. Eventually, glaciers—two miles thick—exposed that bedrock, our beloved pre-Cambrian shield. Glacier melt waters stabilized and formed lakes like this one, a place I call home. 

For him, it was easier to talk of evolution than of love—or damn near anything else. Certainly easier than addressing my mother’s chronic drinking, or his own, for that matter. Or why my youthful marriage to a fine man had failed, a fact that deeply puzzled him. Or why I had fallen in love with another man. Or why that second man had left me. For my dad, rocks were just easier. 

And now he is gone. His arthritic, freckled, knuckled hand, with the slim metal engineering ring, gripping a pencil mid-diagram, his gray-blue eyes alight: disappeared.

My mother is gone too: her beautiful brow no longer furrowed, wrestling for the right word in Scrabble, struggling to land her “k” on a triple. (At 80, she–ever proper, settled on “Fuck.”) 

Tonight, I remember them. He, racing his sailboat into a headwind, his whole body thrust backward over the side, legs slim, one fist grabbing the main sheet, the other steering the tiller. She, kneading pastry, her arms dusty with flour, her whole being fragrant with apples. 

And of course, I remember the boy, the man, and the woman—all who have made their exits. 

For years, I was so busy with the granular details of boy-raising and career-making, too absorbed with the fullness of life to worry what would happen when the script changed, when the exits came. For decades, my generation crammed each hour the way my mother stuffed cherries in her Christmas cake: jammed to the max. Life zoomed by. We were all that busy, juggling the double agendas of work and home, the first shift, the second shift, and yes, the third. 

But here I am, someone who has always found her voice and exercised her choice, considering what it means to be a woman of a certain age in an uncertain age. I am considering what it means to be alone. 

Twelve years ago, the ground began to shift. Major players began to disappear. 

First, my son, off to study in Chicago. This was expected. Then, my lover of 14 years took flight, the man I was to marry. This was not. 

Six months later, my father, my so-called sober parent, died of end-stage alcoholism. Again, unexpected. 

Then my wayward and hermetic aunt, the one handcuffed by police and tossed into a psych ward exited as well, barely weeks after we rescued her from the hospital. We bundled her up for a better life. She died three weeks later. 

A year later, my beloved mother failed: my longtime nemesis turned confidante, travel partner, and intimate friend. Gone. 

Then, a close cousin, not yet 55; a favourite aunt to Alzheimer’s, and then another one too. A whole generation cleared out, but for one elegant uncle. 

Grief is the great leveler. We’re told it comes in stages, but that’s too tidy. We’re told that time will work its magic. But no, that’s a myth: time, on its own, won’t heal anything. Patti Smith says that when her husband Fred died, her father told her that time does not heal all wounds, but it gives us the tools to endure them. I hope he’s right. 

Grief is the price of a full heart. It can take you to your knees, and upend you. When I think of grief, I think of the black-suited surfers trying to ride the waves at sunset in Santa Monica: tumbled and tossed head over heels, into the roiling water, stumbling to find their footing. When the waves roll in, all we can do is aim for grace. 

And when the script changes, there is no manual. This, we do alone. Of course, loss can come at any stage. I have three dear friends whose brothers died of childhood cancer, another whose sibling died on 9/11; three more whose sons died by suicide. A brilliant friend had a bad bicycle accident when she was 30, a stroke the next day, altering the course of her life forever. I know of a young family of boys who lost their mother on a September afternoon. The mother, who had been walking her dog while her winter tires were being installed, was killed by a driver whose van mounted the sidewalk. The mother had intended to be home when school got out, when her three young boys returned. 

We all know these stories. The fates can swoop in at any time. 

But for most of us, mid-life is the juncture when the ground begins to shift. Between the ages of 49 and 56, I mourned my son’s departure, weathered menopause, fell under the dark spell of suicidal depression, took a high-profile job in a French-speaking city, and developed a serious alcohol addiction, wrestling my way to the other side—only to be hijacked by grief. 

I am not unusual. For so many of us, mid-life delivers a major reckoning. In a heartbeat, the landscape shifts. Just when we least expect it—in our 50s or 60s—a sturdy, well-shaped life comes to an end, opening the portal for what? Who expected this? Adolescence, yes. Motherhood, yes. Menopause, yes. But a wallop to the solar plexus? I didn’t see it coming. 

And so tonight, I find myself at the far end of the dock, focused on the horizon, waiting for a blue heron, measuring the depth and breadth of my solitude, haunted by ghosts. Fingering for the first time a question for the ages: what comes next?

- Ann Dowsett Johnston

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Thank you for taking the time to read my newsletter and my essay.

Finally, I want to mention: there is still room in the two sessions of Writing Your Recovery, launching this week on Wednesday, January 18th—a mid-day offering and an evening offering. Join us on this excellent adventure of self-discovery and creativity.

Do you have questions, I’m happy to talk! Just reach out to admin@anndowsettjohnston.com.

Learn more about Writing Your Recovery

For me, it happened this way: five years ago, I decided to break up with writing, and the breakup failed. More specifically: at 64, I put down the tools with which I had been struggling to write, and enrolled in a Master of Social Work degree program at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

I became a psychotherapist and started a new career, leaving writing in my rearview mirror. I decided it was no way to make a living. I would move on.

  What I wasn’t prepared for is how much psychotherapy reminded me of writing: as Didion says, “the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.” The breakup was a lost cause.

Two months into starting my practice, I also launched an online weekly writing course named Writing Your Recovery, with an enrollment of 14. For them, I shaped the course I had always wanted to take: how to get started; how to impose a narrative arc; how to write a proposal; how to meet an agent and take the pulse of the market. I invited bestselling writers Holly Whitaker and Laura McKowen and Gail Caldwell as guest speakers.

To date, more than 65 student writers have enrolled in Writing Your Recovery: participants from Berlin, the United Kingdom, Mexico, New Zealand, across North America and beyond. This fall, we held our first in-person writers’ retreat in Los Angeles. Friendships have evolved, and writing partnerships. Next year, we will hold our first larger retreat, and there are international plans in the works.

Along with sharing updates about my life and the course, this newsletter will showcase the work of the more seasoned writers within my community. Bear in mind: the next Writing Your Recovery courses launch January 18th.

When it came to choosing the writer for this inaugural issue, Haligonian Wendy McCallum was the obvious choice: a deeply intuitive talent, with a profound take on what it means to be a woman in mid-life. www.wendymccallum.com

Ann) You are a busy professional. What inspired you to join a writing community?

Wendy) I had been through a lot in recent years, including the slow death of my father, menopause, becoming alcohol-free, and getting ready for my two teens to leave the nest.

Those changes left me in a stripped-down state that highlighted the fact that something important was missing from my life. Other than my coaching business, I had nothing that was just mine.

Almost four years after my last glass of wine, just when I was ready to give up, a friend shared that you were running a memoir-writing class online. Impulsively, I decided to sign up.

The first session was terrifying and magical. I was sure I didn’t belong (so much so that I immediately announced I likely wouldn’t be writing or sharing anything), but when you talked about starting with ‘quilt squares’ – tiny memories and stories –that sounded manageable. The next week, I came to class with a short piece – a love letter to my newborn son – for the first time in 30 years, I read something I’d written out loud.

It came out of me in one long shaky breath. It was awkward and agonizing, but also oddly exciting. And when you clapped and smiled, I was hooked. I’d found my thing (again). And it felt like home. 

Ann) What was the biggest surprise about making room for writing in your life?

Wendy) I’m surprised by how much time I make for it, how easy it is to “lose time” when I’m writing, and how much I’ve already written in just a year. I’ve also been amazed by how helpful a tool it has become to organize my thoughts and experiences and make sense of where I ended up, in terms of both my gray-area drinking and my midlife burnout.

Ann) Can you tell us about your writing habits, dreams, and aspirations?

Wendy) I don’t have a routine. I write when I feel like it, and when that happens, I tend to write until the piece is finished. I’ll edit it relentlessly until it feels “done.” I keep notes in my phone organized by topics and characters and am constantly adding observations and little details. I have a friend who’s also writing, and we read each other’s pieces and sometimes even write fiction together.

In terms of my dreams, I just hope this rediscovered joy continues and that I never run out of things to write about.

While it would feel great to be published, mostly I’d love it if my writing helped to make other women feel less alone and more hopeful as they navigate the stresses of modern motherhood and midlife.

Ann) What else would you like us to know about your life as a writer?

Wendy) My life is so much more than writing. I think it’s important to find your own groove, and not get too caught up in the “requirements” of life as a serious writer.

I prefer not to have to dip into willpower and force myself to do anything. Instead, I try to keep it joyful with my own writing rituals (which usually include the removal of my bra, extremely good dark roast, and a pair of very thick fleece reading socks, but occasionally also involve writing a 2000-word piece on my phone with my thumbs while sandwiched between sweaty strangers on a long airplane ride.)

How To Have It All

By Wendy McCallum

At first, the doing seems manageable. You get the degree and then the job. You rent your first apartment alone and fill the cupboards with pasta and tomato sauce, an upgrade from college ramen. You buy your first unused car (with standard transmission because it’s $1000 cheaper than automatic) and learn to drive stick on the way home from the lot.

After years of dating rebels and narcissists, you finally find “the one” and settle down. You put in the hours, get the raise, and buy a tiny (but perfect) one-and-a-half-story wartime home across the river from your office. You start putting $100 a month in a savings account and adopt a dog. After seven years (and right on schedule), you get the coveted promotion. You have the baby. Maybe you have another. You close on a three-bedroom stucco bungalow in the suburbs. It needs work and it’s a longer commute, but the elementary school is just around the corner, so it’s worth it.

Somewhere along the way, without you noticing, the cumulative load of modern motherhood settles in, and your freedom slips out the back door.

 Now you’re juggling deadlines and schedules and conflicts. You are a businesswoman, mother, chauffeur, chef, teacher, personal assistant and organizer. You are a cleaner, meal planner and cake decorator. You are equal parts drill sergeant and a soft place to land. You make lists, check off lists, and make more lists. At any given time, you know the shoe size of each of your children, which of them has a bathing suit that fits and when their next school project is due. You know which of your colleagues is pregnant, depressed, or has a parent with Alzheimer’s. You know which report needs editing and which client needs lunching. You know when the next bake sale, meal train and bottle drive is. You keep carpoolers, math tutors and the vet on mental speed-dial. There’s a stack of permission slips, birthday invitations and orthodontist reminders on the kitchen counter. There’s a bigger-than-life dry-erase family calendar on the wall, and an identical, travel-size version in your head. And there’s an unspoken competition between women that makes everything so much worse.

You don’t just have to do it all; you have to do it all best. You dress your family in matching white sweaters and blue jeans for a beautiful bare-footed photo shoot that ends up nowhere but online because you’re too busy to send the prints to anyone. One photo shows your two-year-old, arms wrapped around his sister, kissing her with ferocity. What they can’t see are the years of heartbreak and loss you went through to have them.

You post pictures of your sun-kissed family near a turquoise ocean, snorkeling gear in hand. What they can’t see are the stitches across your palm from last night’s broken wine glass.

You post photos of school lunches with fruit cut into heart shapes and love notes tucked under thermoses. What they can’t see is the rage you felt when he left that morning without a thought as to what his children would be eating come lunchtime. You post about your recent promotion. What they can’t see are the years of late nights after bath time you put in to make it happen. You post a photo of yourself on the beach, in a cute nautical two-piece. What they can’t see are all the days you went hungry to wear it.

There’s no time to slow down. You tell yourself that you have a “high capacity for stress,” that this will pass, that you can get “get through” it, that you just need to get to the next vacation. You put your head down and soldier on, rarely coming up for air. Busyness gives you bragging rights. It’s your currency – your value. It feels good to say you’ve been on the road all day or haven’t slept in a week. You get a little jolt from sharing that you worked all weekend.

 You barely rest, and when you do, it’s uncomfortable. You don’t know what to do with yourself. You’ve forgotten what you enjoy. You have no idea what you need. You pace, you switch rooms, you check your phone, you open and close cupboard doors, looking for chocolate. You do everything you can do to ease the social anxiety of being with yourself. 

You didn’t mean to get here. You were sold a false bill of goods, that somehow success looked like all this busyness. And that this success would bring happiness. But you’re not happy, and you don’t feel successful. You forget dentist appointments, competition fees and parent-teacher night. You take your six-year-old (in her favourite dress, French braids, and fancy buckle shoes) to the class birthday party a day late (it was yesterday, same time, same place). You have nightmares about missed deadlines on files, and resent the selfish juniors who refuse to work over Christmas. (Years later, you realize they had it all figured out.) Something is missing, but you don’t have the time (or the capacity) to figure out what. You guess, and buy yourself lattes, self-help books and scented candles. Desperate to fill the hole, you start another diet and sign up for yoga classes you’ll never attend. Unable to be with the emptiness, you fill that hole to the brim with boxed wine and ice cream.

Then your mother gets sick. Just a few months later your dad is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and you hear how much worse it will get in seven years, and even worse after that, and you realize you’re in this caregiving business for the long haul.
And that is how you find yourself chasing two bowls of cereal with a sleeve of Oreos and a can of ginger ale in the back corner of the kitchen, where they won’t see you if they come home early.

That is how you find yourself hovering over the “buy now” button with 14 items in your cart after 90 minutes trolling the clearance section of Nordstrom Rack.
And that is how you find yourself alone on a worn polyester bedspread, in a dark hotel room on a Wednesday afternoon, drinking warm Sauvignon Blanc from a plastic cup, wondering what the hell is the matter with you. 

You can’t be still. You don’t know who you are if you’re not producing. You don’t like who you’ve become, but you don’t know how to be anyone else. You crave an escape from this perfect life you thought you always wanted. And you learned early that the quickest way out is through a wine glass, a bag of chocolate chips, or a stranger’s life on Instagram.

And if you’ve lost dreams along the way, you park the grief in the overflow lot and walk away. You tuck the keys somewhere and hope you’ll never find them.
But this life is exhausting. And at some point, it starts to get old. That habit that once served you no longer does the trick. You’re deeper and deeper into self-destructive patterns that are costing you more and more every year. It’s a daily game of whack-a-mole, and you can’t keep up.

So, you get up the courage to do the hard thing. You sit still. You feel the grief. You reckon with the truth you’ve been avoiding. It’s heavy and it’s uncomfortable and you hang on by your fingernails. But you get through it. You make the tough decisions. You leave one-sided relationships, let go of the bottle, hand in your resignation, ask for help. You download a meditation app, find a therapist, and start a gratitude practice.

Over time, you learn how to be with yourself again. And when you do, you start asking the right questions: What matters to me now? What do I need more of? What do I need less of? What would happen if I cared less? Did less? Put myself first every once in a while? 

You start an experiment. You learn that the sky doesn’t fall if you say no to the grad committee, quietly leave the board of that non-profit, or pass a project on to your co-worker.

You discover the kids are old enough to take over the laundry and no one cares if you throw a frozen pizza in the oven a couple of times a week. You realize they lied to you when they told you that booze makes motherhood easier. That you’re perfectly capable of unwinding without alcohol. That it feels good to leave the party early and curl up with a book in bed. That you’re happier if you take an hour to walk at lunch with a friend, or to hop on your bike before dinner. That your favourite thing is waking up before everyone else and sitting in the dark with your first cup of coffee. That you feel better if you eat more vegetables and less sugar. That you’re nicer when you’re not starving. That self-care isn’t an indulgence: it’s a basic human need.
You learn that life is better when you slow down and show up for it. That “having it all” isn’t all it’s chalked up to be, and that doing less is the secret to having more.

Writing Your Recovery, begins January 18th, 2023.

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