Compass Counseling

11/21/2025

Was reminded of this a few weeks ago - boundaries are necessary w those that are hurtful & unkind - you do NOT continue to submit yourself to unhealthy treatment

10/11/2025

10/01/2025

Looks like a good read for anyone struggling w rationalizing their choices w bevs

I almost turned it off. Holly Whitaker's voice had been in my headphones for maybe ten minutes when she said something that made my stomach drop: "You already know."

Those three words hung in the air of my empty apartment like an accusation I wasn't ready to face. She wasn't talking about drinking problems or rock bottoms or any of the dramatic scenarios I'd convinced myself didn't apply to me. She was talking about the quiet knowing that lives in every woman who has ever reached for wine to survive another Tuesday, who has ever calculated how many drinks she could have and still function, who has ever lain awake at 3 AM promising herself tomorrow would be different.

I wanted to hate her for seeing me so clearly. For naming the thing I'd spent years pretending wasn't there.

Her voice carries the exhaustion of someone who spent years trying to be the perfect drunk before she learned to be an imperfect human. When she speaks, you hear your own midnight promises to cut back, your own careful justifications, your own desperate bargaining with a substance that never kept its end of the deal. You hear the lie you tell yourself every morning: that you're fine, that everyone drinks like this, that you'll stop when it becomes a problem, as if it hasn't already become the thing you organize your entire life around.

This isn't a book about recovery. It's a book about remembering who you were before you needed liquid courage to survive being yourself.

1. We've Been Sold a Lie About What Makes Us Fun
Whitaker comes for the throat of "wine mom" culture, the way we've been taught that alcohol equals relaxation, that sobriety means becoming boring. She describes her terror of going to parties sober, of having to be herself without chemical assistance. But then she discovered she was funnier, more present, more genuinely herself without alcohol. The lie wasn't that alcohol made her fun. The lie was that she wasn't enough without it.

2. Your Body Has Been Keeping Score
Whitaker connects her drinking to her anxiety, depression, and waking up every morning feeling demolished. She doesn't sugarcoat what alcohol does to women's bodies—disrupting sleep, hormones, mental health. When she describes waking up clear-eyed and calm for the first time in years, you realize you can't remember the last time you felt that way. We're not anxious messes who need alcohol. We're women whose anxiety is being created by the very thing we're using to treat it.

3. Sobriety Isn't Punishment, It's Permission
Whitaker talks about what opened up when she stopped: remembering conversations, feeling proud in the morning, having energy that belonged to her instead of being borrowed from tomorrow. She describes sobriety as radical self-love. Maybe the punishment isn't giving up alcohol. Maybe it's what we've been doing to ourselves all along.

4. You Don't Have to Hit Rock Bottom to Choose Different
Whitaker refuses the narrative that you have to lose everything before wanting something different. She's not interested in diagnostic criteria. She's interested in whether you want to stop needing something outside yourself to survive being alive. You can choose yourself right now, exactly as you are.

By the time Whitaker's voice finally goes quiet, you're left sitting with the most dangerous question of all: What if you tried? Not forever, not with grand proclamations, but just to see what happens when you stop medicating the very feelings that might be trying to tell you something important.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4gNspWd
You can find and listen to the audiobook narration using the link above.

09/26/2025

He is reaching in & relating in a way that impacts- so good!

09/23/2025

My name is Kevin. I am 66 years old and I live alone on the third floor of a brick apartment building in Seattle. The rain has been falling for weeks without stopping, just gray skies and dripping water as if the world forgot how to be sunny.

Before I retired from fixing printers, my days were filled with noise, machines humming and people chatting. Now it is just the radiator clicking and my own thoughts. After my divorce ten years ago I kept to myself. Neighbors said hello in the hall but their eyes stayed distant. We were all just passing through.

In the lobby there was this old bulletin board with yellowed flyers about lost cats, garage sales and eviction notices. It felt like a graveyard for sad things. One Tuesday, drenched from the rain, I stared at it and thought nobody puts up happy news. I pulled out an index card from my pocket, scribbled in shaky letters, “Write one good thing that happened today. No names. Just one sentence.” I taped it to the board and walked away, my heart racing. I told myself people will think I am lonely or maybe even crazy.

For three days nothing happened. My card just flapped in the draft from the front door. Then on Thursday a new note appeared. Written in blue pen with rushed handwriting it said, “My son called. He is staying sober.” I read it five times. My throat got tight. Someone else was hurting but also hoping.

The next morning there were two more. “Found twenty dollars in my coat pocket. Feels like a gift.” “My neighbor brought me soup. I did not ask.” Slowly the board began to change. People paused to read. Some added their own. A nurse wrote, “Patient held my hand. Said thank you like she meant it.” A teenager wrote, “Mom did not yell when I burned dinner.” One rainy Friday there was a single line, “I did not cry in the shower today.”

These were not grand gestures. They were small lights in the gray. But something shifted. In the elevator people did not just stare at the floor numbers. Mrs Gable from 2B nodded at me. The young couple said “rough weather” instead of nothing. I even brought her a spare umbrella when I saw her struggling with her groceries.

Then Mr Henderson, the building manager, tore my card down. He said kindly, “Rules, Kevin. No postings without permission.” The board went back to lost cats and eviction notices. The light faded. People stopped pausing. The hallway felt colder.

But then something happened. I came back from putting my recycling out and saw a sticky note taped to my door. “Your umbrella saved me. -5C” Below it another, “My chemo was not so bad today.” Soon notes were everywhere. On mailbox doors, taped to elevator buttons, slipped under car wipers. Someone even wrote on the back of an eviction notice, “Got a job interview tomorrow. Fingers crossed.”

Mr Henderson found me again. “Kevin, this is against the rules,” he said. But his eyes were reading a note stuck to his clipboard. “Thanks for fixing my sink, Mr H. It meant a lot.” His eyes got shiny and he cleared his throat. “Landlord says as long as it is not damaging, maybe just this board. But only this board. And no names.”

Now the board is alive. Rain or shine people add their line. “My plants survived.” “I made it through the grocery line without panic.” “I saw a robin. Spring is coming.”

I do not feel alone in the hallways anymore. We do not hug or throw parties. But when it is pouring and Mrs Gable’s cane slips, three hands reach out at once. When the young couple argues, someone leaves cookies at their door. We are not fixing the whole world. Just this building. Just today.

Last week a new note appeared in shaky handwriting like mine. “I was going to end it today. Then I read this board. Thank you.” We never found out who wrote it. But the next day two more appeared. “You matter.” “We are here.”

Sometimes all it takes are simple words on paper. Sometimes the bravest thing is admitting you are not fine and trusting someone else who is also not fine. You do not need a stage or a big project. Just a little space to say, “This was good today.”

And maybe that is how we rebuild the world. One honest sentence at a time.

09/22/2025

09/21/2025

09/21/2025

09/17/2025

Such an accurate depiction of what occurs when in a relationship with someone emotionally injures instead of talking it out healthy - then tries to repair & is so clever & smooth.

08/17/2025

💯💯💯 Yeap