#119: Rosemary Keevil (The gift of desperation)

Reinvent Yourself

“I had two little girls and my husband had cancer and my brother had AIDS. They died in the same year.” So says writer Rosemary Keevil, who spent the next six years as a “high functioning alcoholic.” Unable to understand her own pain and to manage her high-powered career as a TV news reporter, she turned to alcohol—and, after a night with “Mr. Wrong”, a dip into cocaine. “It was shameful,” she says. “I was driving the kids while high.” One day she blacked out in behind the wheel. “I got a letter from the police that I was seen driving erratically,” she says and that sent her to a friend’s spiritual retreat where she learned about rehab. “I knew this was the next step.” That’s where she began to understand that the “only way to get past [grieving] is accepting it….It was the same with addiction: I had to accept my abominable behavior as a mother.” Today, her memoir, “The Art of Losing it; A Memoir of Grief and Addiction” (https://amzn.to/387UFS1) shares her struggle in the hopes that others will realize they are not alone—and that they can change the outcome. “Acceptance…doesn’t let you off the hook,” she says. But it “allows me to move forward. It’s what I do today that is important.”