Humble Pie : Sober Menopause, Sugar Addiction, and the Sweetness of Recovery

Lemon pie, if done right, should hurt just a little. When you eat lemon pie, the tartness should make your tongue and your brain do a tiny wince, but then the cloud of meringue melts it away. The slice needs to be ice cold and paired with a cup of very hot black coffee, which is served in a thick white mug. This is the pie I had in a small diner in North Carolina, and it made me want to cry...Humble Pie is about my long-term sobriety. It's also about middle age and food and menopause and marriage and parenting. All of these things trampled right on through my recovery, and then they helped transform it. And my recovery is everything. It is the music in my life; my soundtrack that keeps me marching forward, no matter the chaos around me. It's what wakes me up, and it's what lays me down. But at that diner with my slice of lemon pie, I could no longer hear the music. The pie was so good. But I devoured it in seconds. I stared at the crumbs on my plate, and I was still so hungry. I wanted more. But also, I knew

invisible, or at least it felt that way. Months later, the isolation and fear of a global pandemic entered the mix, and I succumbed to even more unhealthy issues with comparison, scrolling, and frenetic over-exercising. Finally, my higher power finally threw up her hands and said, "Ok. It's time to deal.\u0022 As is my way, there was a lot of whining about cupcakes, but eventually I got better.So of course, I had to write about it. [Publisher's text]

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