where have you been?
stillness, surgery, sobriety: my january of gorgeous nothing
1 February 2023
Why hello. It's been a while, so let me catch you up.
For those who don't know, since January 6, I've been (mostly) home recovering from rhinoplasty. Ongoing collateral damage sustained from my 2021 car accident.
After a period of intense hibernation, I'm slowly emerging on the other side of the month, experiencing time as something suspended between a physical presence and coming to terms with a past that had once been as true.
In many ways, I have already published this newletter. It's been stuck in my notes app, penciled into my morning pages, scribbled between the margins of the books I am reading, or onto any scrap I might find. My words have been fractured, disorganized, and thus exceedingly slow to piece together in the same way my body has been mending, which is to say I have written (and rewritten) this in my mind, but it has taken time to find its final form.
So allow me to indulge you in a few fragmented stories of finding myself in stillness and meander through the January of my gorgeous nothings.
I didn't go into this surgery without significant trepidation, knowing there would be considerable downtime and discomfort. I was aware the four-hour procedure would involve rebreaking my nose and repairing the nasal cavity that had collapsed upon itself and then the subsequent splints and stitches, stuffiness, and swelling.
In conversation with others, the question would invariably arise.
"Are you getting a new nose?"
I wasn't sure, was I?
And what did that even mean?
It was this unknown that I, too, fixated. What would I look like? Not the superficial bruising but the beneath-skin physical reshaping of flesh and bone. Would I be able to reconcile the face staring back at me in the mirror with the face I knew from years of family photographs? Would I still see traces of my ancestors and the imprint of experience, all that had brought me here?
And.
If I'm being honest, I will admit there was a time when a real “nose job” would have been precisely what I thought I wanted–a time when I used to pick apart my appearance, focusing on every seeming flaw.
A time when I wanted to look different, feel different, be different, be anyone but myself. A time when the possibility of a new nose might be the cure, erasing the woman I saw staring back at me in the mirror. These were the reasons I drank: to escape or to feel nothing at all.
This is why January is always complicated. Because before Dry January was a thing, there was only drinking, my drinking, and each day of the month marks the running up and running into the darkness and the shame of my past towards a moment of reckoning, and the subsequent willingness to learn and do everything anew.
I have spoken publicly about my drinking and recovery, so I won't go into my drunkalogue here. Suffice it to say January 26, 2011 became the first of a series of surrenders beginning with the admittance I was powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable, and that pretending to be anyone else only kept me drunk.
I've come to understand there is power in naming ourselves:
My name is Sarah, and I'm an alcoholic.
They say no one ever wakes up on the wings of glory thinking gosh it might be fun to check out an AA meeting today. Instead, we crawl into the rooms in personal defeat. If we are lucky, if we do the work, we stay.
And rather than being accused or shamed in naming ourselves, we know who we are. We can suffer from the disease of alcoholism, and we can choose not to drink. We can recover.
To have this surgery in January did not feel like a coincidence but more another form of healing. How many times does one find the willingness to sit with one's bruised self and see beneath the surface to ask what else is true? To be patient with what arises, and to know there is always more. I've learned recovery in any form is not for the faint of heart, but to sit with one's wounds and all that is wound within is to know it is the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking each end, where have you been.
Where have I been?
I have been drunk, I have been someone's wife, and I have found my way back along the way. I've made mistakes, and I'm sure I'll make more, but I'm teachable and on the other side.
I decided to have the surgery because I deserve to breathe fully into the life I have created.
We all do.
A few days before the procedure I told my mother I wasn't looking forward to the bruising as I recalled last Thanksgiving (and another surgery) when I sat at the dining room table in oversized dark glasses and a white turtleneck channeling Jackie O.
"Oh, I don't even remember that," she said.
At first, I was incensed.
How could she not remember?
Didn't she see me?
Or maybe, just maybe
My mother saw only me.
Not the superficial, but all that lay beneath.
My mother saw what matters–she saw me as more.
I won't go into detail but suffice it to say rhinoplasty is not for the weak. The first few days were the worst as the anesthesia slowly wore off, yet sleep did not set in since I had to remain propped upright. I could only breathe through my mouth, and drink through a straw. The bruising began underneath my eyes, then seeped into my laugh lines tracing down beneath my chin; my entire upper lip seemed to curl under and disappear.
But by day three, I had stopped taking any pain meds.
On day four, my sense of smell began to return.
Violet notes from my perfume. The sweetness of honey from a cup of tea.
On day six, I returned to have the cast removed.
"This is going to hurt you," the Chief Resident said.
I kept my eyes closed but could hear the crisp snip of the scissors cutting through the nylon thread inside my nose. When the cast came off, it was like a cocoon of Bioré strips was being ripped away. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. I had no idea how much packing was stuffed inside my head until I glanced into the metal kidney dish filled with stained, encrusted strips of bloody bandaging. Tears dripped from the outer corners of my eyes, silently trailing down my cheeks.
"I'm so sorry," he said again. "I didn't mean to make you cry."
The pain was real, but all I was aware of was for the first time in many months, I could breathe. I could breathe.
I didn't take many photographs documenting the progression of my bruising. Somehow it feels like there are more important things to remember because to be bruised is not the same as to be broken.
we leave marks
we carry scars
and we are capable of repair
one day at a time
It'll be a few months before all the swelling subsides, and while my nose will never be deemed Instagram-perfect/supermodel sensational, it's mine and I wouldn't want it any other way. I'm grateful to have had an amazing surgeon who saw me as who I am, too, rather than as something/someone upon which he could improve.
It's taken me a lifetime, but there is exquisite beauty in embracing my flaws, honoring their fullness as my wisdom, rather than believing there is something to fix and knowing my face is proof of past generations and of loving myself into existence. I can't sweep away my past, nor would I want to.
new year
new nose
new nos
new knows
This year I've been supremely grateful for the long days of January, for the rest and the recovery I have received, and always for the permission to keep going.
Thanks for reading.
two retreats • always on island
REGISTRATION IS OPEN
When Women Were Birds: solstice, story, sea.
June 18 - June 22, 2023
When Women Were Birds: murmuration, memoir, meditation
September 22 - 26, 2023
Monhegan, ME
early bird pricing in effect until February 28 • all the details • 2022 retreat highlights here
Sarah has an amazing talent of weaving so many things together and listening. It was a truly inspiring few days together on retreat...I am going to continue to write every day ... Jeanne, Philadelphia
have you ever wished for a taste of retreat closer to home?
join me on SUNDAY for a heart opening practice of restorative backbends and writing letters of love to ourselves
February 5 in person at tru yoga, rochester, ny
four spaces remain • register online or in studio • $40 • scholarships available
from breath to pen, mat to page
this workshop is for anyone ready to explore how yoga & writing complement the other to become their own embodied practice.
come dressed in comfortable clothes, bring your mat, a journal & pen
February 5
3:00 - 4:45 pm
current contemplations
(there’s been a lot of) reading:
Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Negative Space, The Crane Wife, The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem, Patti Smith’s Book of Days (in relation to my own), and The Chronology of Water.
If you are obsessed with finding the perfect notebook or paper planner, may I also recommend twelve ways to use a diary and pretty much everything else Jillian Hess writes. If you don’t know her work, subscribe to her newsletter and support her work, Noted.
Pamela Anderson Doesn’t Need Redemption, She’s Just Fine
Joan Didion’s papers are going to the New York Public Library and I’m going to see What She Means in two weeks!
listening
Articles of Interest: American Ivy and Death of an Artist
watching
Stutz (and waiting for the return of Outer Banks on February 23)
making
move over mac and cheese, chile crisp fettuccine (with spinach) is my new go
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I appreciated your writing about sobriety and naming what it true. I became sober in October 2020 and your words really resonated with me. Thank you, Sarah
Mmmmmmm...pompoms for sobriety and no. Recovery of any type is not for the feint of heart. Well, usually I'm a three-tries girl for subscribing. Bah. That was easy. Smash!