Ask a Sober Oldster #32: Cara Benson
"The slightest slight used to wreck me for days when the person may just have been in a bad mood that had nothing to do with me. I was hostage to the whims of the world. Now, much less so."
This monthly interview series is a collaboration between Oldster Magazine and The Small Bow, A.J. Daulerio’s excellent newsletter about recovery and mental health, and appears in both newsletters. Learn more about this collaboration in this Oldster podcast/videocast episode.
Cara Benson is author of the memoir An Armsfull of Birds: A Personal Field Guide to Love, Loss, and Commitment. Other writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Orion, Sierra Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and selected for Best American Poetry. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and lives in a former church in the ancestral homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans in upstate NY.
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How old are you, and how long have you been in recovery?
I’m 58. I’ve been in recovery since I was 26—over half my life!
How did you get there?
I got there by way of subway tunnels, blackouts, black eyes, and concussions. A geographical change that kept me alive, followed by a few gentle interventions that did not present as interventions. Then people from recovery started coming into Friendly’s, where I’d begun waitressing, and filling up the smoking section after meetings. They were loud! About everything. There’s that saying: “If you hang around a barbershop long enough, you’re gonna get your hair cut.” It’s often used to encourage those in recovery not to spend a lot of time in bars, particularly early on. Well, the reverse happened for me. I became surrounded by people in recovery. They got me.
What are the best things about being in recovery?
I am so goddamned proud of being a sober woman. I’d always wanted to behave with integrity, not to subject myself and my loved ones to the kind of behavior that caused me to feel like a contagious plague on a daily basis. But I just couldn’t do it. And then, miraculously, I could.
I remember being astonished that I’d signed up for a free yoga class at a continuing ed program at the high school in my new town. I wasn’t (and still am not) a yoga person. Nor was I one to join in or sign up for things. And I especially sucked at following through. But there I was, week after week, hoofing it across town or riding my bike in the rain, doing all the poses to then lie on a towel and stare up in the dark, my body vibrating from all the stretching, for two months straight. That changed my perception of myself from fuck-up to someone who could show up. That was in my first year, so you can extrapolate from there to being in my 32nd year how much better I am at showing up to myself, to others, to life, and to the planet—who needs us so desperately.
People from recovery started coming into Friendly’s, where I’d begun waitressing, and filling up the smoking section after meetings. They were loud! About everything. There’s that saying: “If you hang around a barbershop long enough, you’re gonna get your hair cut.” It’s often used to encourage those in recovery not to spend a lot of time in bars, particularly early on. Well, the reverse happened for me. I became surrounded by people in recovery. They got me.
What’s hard about being in recovery?
One of the things that’s hard about being in recovery is also something that’s amazing about it: the emphasis on taking one’s own inventory. I really want to blame other people much of the time for things that upset me. When I take a closer look, I usually find that in some way I have deferred responsibility to take care of myself. This is also what’s wonderful, though. It is liberating to discover that others don’t hold the power that I think they do to make me happy or sane or solvent.
This is not to deny the very real socio-cultural-political systems in place that enact horrific acts on both micro and macro levels daily. Nor to say that I do any of this in a vacuum (much to my chagrin some days). Which actually leads me to another thing that can be challenging about being in recovery: I have to admit I need other people. Ugh! I’d so much rather show up all put together and tell everyone else how to get better. Instead, I have learned the art of public sobbing.
How has your character changed? What’s better about you?
I have much better boundaries with people, both protective and containment. Protective in that I say no to things that aren’t right for me, which is actually how I am able to get close to people. If I don’t ever tell others no when I mean it, then the only way I can protect myself is to eventually leave the relationship or to withhold myself even though my body may be present.
My containment boundaries are also crucial. These help me not to leak all over the place—my whirling mind, my anxiety, my neediness, my woundedness. I can wrap myself in a big warm hug and tell myself, “I got you.” That way others don’t have to do that for me. I don’t do any of that perfectly, of course. I can still slobber or go silent when the opposite would be more productive.
One of the biggest changes that I appreciate is that I have learned how not to take things so dang personally. What a gift! Oh my gosh, the slightest slight used to wreck me for days when the person may just have been in a bad mood that had nothing to do with me. I was hostage to the whims of the world. Now, much less so.
One of the things that’s hard about being in recovery is also something that’s amazing about it: the emphasis on taking one’s own inventory. I really want to blame other people much of the time for things that upset me. When I take a closer look, I usually find that in some way I have deferred responsibility to take care of myself. This is also what’s wonderful, though. It is liberating to discover that others don’t hold the power that I think they do to make me happy or sane or solvent.
What do you still need to work on? What “character defects” do you still wrestle with?
Setting boundaries and not taking it all so personally.
What’s the best recovery memoir you’ve ever read? Tell us what you liked about it.
I’ll never forget Caroline Knapp’s descriptions of her behavior around food that she then subjugated into alcohol use in Drinking: A Love Story. I must have read that when it first came out thirty years ago, and I still remember those slices or tiny cubes of cheese she’d cut up in an act of exerting extreme control over herself that itself was an addiction. Oooof. That zinged right into me.
What are some memorable sober moments?
I used to be in a comedy improv group—I’d joined at about 10 months sober. I was quite vocal with everyone in the group about the fact that I was not drinking. I needed people to know as insurance. One night my comrade Peter Marino and I were driving to rehearsal. Well, he was driving as I’d lost my license and hadn’t cleaned it up yet. I had a cup of coffee with one of those flip tabs on the lids. I couldn’t get it to stay open and wound up spilling coffee down the front of me. And he said, “Oh, is that what you meant by drinking problem?” Oh my god, we laughed. I consider that a memorable sober moment if ever there was one.
Another that comes to mind as counterbalance is when my late partner was missing and there was a police search on to find him. He’d been gone for three days when my 24th sobriety anniversary meeting was set to happen. Despite the whirlwind of activity that was underway and the excruciating anxiety and terror I was experiencing, I showed up to that meeting and told my story right up to and including the search for my missing beloved.
Are you in therapy? On meds? Tell us about that.
I’m currently working on connecting with a new therapist. I go in and out of using therapy as a tool. Early on I went through a ton of group therapy and individual, then finally added psychiatry into the mix when I was eight years sober and wanted to die. I had resisted medication for years, but I was desperate. It truly saved my life. I have a number of diagnoses: depression, anxiety, PTSD, and BDD (body dysmorphic disorder). Any one of them, but particularly that last, could take me out of the game for good. Well, not today Satan.
My late partner was missing and there was a police search on to find him. He’d been gone for three days when my 24th sobriety anniversary meeting was set to happen. Despite the whirlwind of activity that was underway and the excruciating anxiety and terror I was experiencing, I showed up to that meeting and told my story right up to and including the search for my missing beloved.
What sort of activities or groups do you participate in to help your recovery? (i.e. swimming, 12-step, meditation, et cetera)
I go to recovery meetings of many stripes. I have a non-negotiable daily spiritual practice of prayer, contemplative journaling, reading, and meditation. I need at least an hour-and-a-half to get myself sorted for the day. Also, walking and hiking are key for me. I am grateful to have an able body at this time so that I can get out of my head and onto my moving feet on the regular. Roads, woods, mountains, creekside, dirt paths, municipal parks, bushwhacking backcountry, rocky cliffs, bouldering, scrambling, hoofing and hauling, solo or with others. I need this activity to keep me this side of sane.
Are there any questions we haven’t asked you that you think we should add to this? And would you like to answer it?
What is a guilty pleasure I allow myself to indulge in?
I am a sucker for reading about mountaineering stories that go wrong. I am obsessed with the particulars of what happens on these trips. I read every book and watched all the movies on the 1996 Everest disaster and got hooked. It’s a whole genre I can’t get enough of.
What a self-aware and honest Q&A. Thanks for being so forthright.
As a sober person myself, gosh, coming up on 10 years this year, I’m always happy to read this stories of sobriety—how they got and stayed there. It’s affirming for me (I wasn’t the only FUp!) and so heartening to know the light continues and grows.
Love everything about this