Everything worth learning, I learned in recovery. The second best place of learning was through the deep connection that I developed with the horse I used to have. The horse people had written Sham off as ruined, but I didn’t see a wild, unbroke and battered horse—what I saw was a best friend. Little did I know until much later that the childhood horse that I loved so much, in many ways, had saved me as well.
Prior to getting sober, rather than muck stalls, I mucked up my life. The drinking got out of hand, and like in so many alcoholics’ lives, chaos ensued. It was only when I stepped into recovery that I started to wade out of the lake of confusion.
It’s hard to summarize all the bits up wisdom that I gobbled up from probably thousands of people that I’ve heard speak, share, and whisper in my ear over the past twenty-nine years. We never know what we’ll take away from someone when they speak, but those nuggets find their way into the crevices of our minds where if we allow them to root, in time, they reshape the landscapes of our minds. We can never predict all the things that we’ll learn from the women we help, and in turn, those women help us just as much.
What I now call, Cowgirl Wisdom started as a little book I put together for my sons after I came back from a riding trip. I slightly revised a few of the thoughts to free them of any mommy-ness, but it’s a summation of the lessons I’ve learned that have helped change me; it’s the things that come to mind after you live a while and realize that life doesn’t have to be hard, but sometimes we make it that way by the thoughts we entertain. Now that I’m on the other side of many of my struggles, I think I can say I’ve learned a few things, like we all do when we plow on; it’s funny to me now that over the twenty-nine years in recovery; twenty-eight years of being a mother to my twin sons, thirty-three years of being a wife to my husband, and twenty-five years as working as a registered nurse where I see more than my fair share of broken lives, poor choices, and repressed anger and grief that manifests as any number of physical and mental maladies—I can whittle what I gleaned important in life down to seventeen points of Cowgirl Wisdom, and again it occurred to me that life isn’t complicated—we are.
Cowgirl Wisdom tells us that no matter what, we have to get up and put one foot in front of the other; somedays if the best we can do is to hang on or burrow under a blanket and spend the next five hours binge-watching Netflix, so be it. I’d rather binge watch than binge drink. If we can plod through the hard stuff and not run, then we’ve had a good day. This to shall pass, right?
Cowgirl Wisdom
1.) Be true to yourself.
2.) The hardest person to be honest with is ourselves
3.) Don’t get caught in your own web
4.) Find your happy place and go there often
5.) Nature is the best medicine
6.) Life can be hard, but we can do hard. Get yourself out of the way. Find a God that’s bigger than you, and bigger than your problems. Adversity breeds character, IF we can have the courage to face what it is we need to face. Learn to feel and deal. Don’t run. Don’t self-medicate. Don’t lie, especially to kids—you’ll lose their respect, forever. God will give you all the strength you need, but you must ask.
7.) There’s always something we can do to lend a helping hand
8.) In life, we need the right gear. Your gear: prayer, humility, acceptance. That’s the sort of gear that will pull you through.
9.) Sometimes you just gotta ride that shit out.
10.) Don’t be afraid to be alone. If you have God, you’re never alone anyway.
11.) Can you be comfortable in your own skin without adjuncts or accolades?
12.) You are loved. I love each and every one of you. We are all cowgirls who drifted until we found the courage to build a new life in recovery. To those still struggling, I pray we will all be here for you when you’re ready to give up the ride.
13.) The only way to get to the other side is to walk through it.
14.) If you follow the herd, you never get to lead. Be your own person. To hell with what everyone else thinks!
15.) We each have a path, but it’s up to us to ask God to show us what that path is.
16.) To die to our neediness; to die to our wants and desires. To die to our resentments, fear and greed; to die to our selfishness; to die to ourselves is when we learn how to live.
17.) Those things that scare you are as impermanent and fleeting as shadows. Step out in faith.
Lisa is the author of the multi-award winning book, Raising the Bottom: Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture. After short stints where she trained polo horses, worked as a flight attendant, hairdresser, and bartender, she revamped her life and settled in as a registered nurse. For the past twenty-nine years has worked with hundreds of women to overcome alcoholism, live better lives and become better parents. She was prompted to write Raising the Bottom when she realized after twenty plus years of working in hospitals, that doctors and traditional healthcare offer few solutions to women with addiction issues. You can start reading for free on Amazon. Follow her on Twitter @LBoucherAuthor and Instagram