In the two years since, I have tried to drum up the courage to be someone different from the writer I had become. In her book, released in June, the author -- who edits personal essays for Salon.com -- discusses her long, both complicated and sometimes devastatingly simple relationship with alcohol. Political talking points dont lie neatly along human behavior. We see Hepola scan an AA room for a potential boyfriend, gain fifty pounds by . The unsavory truth is that I sympathized with many of these men: Johnny Depp, Ryan Adams, Brett Kavanaugh, every booze-soaked dumbass who has been accused of doing or saying things he may or may not remember, may or may not regret, may or may not have done while under the influence. Im watching you and you dont look OK to me. This was the stuff of doorstop novels, and yet people were working it out in 280 characters dashed off in line at Trader Joes. His research focuses on the historical sociology of American schooling, including topics such as the evolution of high schools, the growth of consumerism, the origins and nature of education schools, and the role of schools in promoting access and advantage more than subject-matter learning. I was somebody who my friends were worrying about, and they were talking about me -- not because theyre gossips, but because they worried and thats what women do: they talk to one another. Yes. When I came out the other side of that, and I was sober and I was examining, Why did I drink so much?, one of the reasons was because I never felt comfortable in my body. I hadnt gossiped so enthusiastically since middle school. Hepola convincingly portrays her life as a blacking-out alcoholic, but even more compelling is the picture she paints of sobriety. Phone dates with writer friends in other parts of the country stretched to two and three hours as we worked out essays we would never write, toggling between outrage, despair, and armchair cultural analysis of the latest dustup. Its a fair point, but me, personally? Public scolding, all-caps hyperbole, a stubborn refusal to understand another point of viewintolerance, once perceived as a conservative problem, was fully bipartisan now. Maybe Ill write something great this year. Perhaps Ihadinternalized my own misogyny, whatever that means. Sallys mom taught her to play the piano, and Sally accompanied many vocal groups over the years, from high school through her adult years when she accompanied the singing group The Harmonettes (renamed The New Jubilee Singers). . But there would be no lunch after the show. Im dying to talk about the Brock Turner incident, I said. I was very disconnected from, Am I even hungry? I am such a binge eater, and I will eat away my feelings in the same way that I would drink away my feelings. But it was like that for me.". Sarah Hepola of Menahga, Minnesota September 1, 1928 - April 24, 2022 Sally was born on September 1, 1928, to Frank and Noella Hall in Little Falls, MN. by Sarah Hepola (Author) 2,944 ratings Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs See all formats and editions Kindle $10.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook $0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover $22.45 85 Used from $1.49 25 New from $10.50 5 Collectible from $6.00 Paperback Follow her on Twitter @sarahhepola, on Instagram @thesarahhepolaexperience, and on Facebook @facebook.com/sarah.hepola.blackout. Speaking Topics Not only has she written for us, but she's been filling up the internet for a while. What he said was slow, and careful, and Ive never forgotten it. (I had to imagine that Oprah, queen of empathy, was having a hell of a time in this day and age. What was trauma, really? David Bentley Hart How to Write English Prose, Course Syllabi with Links to Readings and Slides. Lets talk about it out there, he said, gesturing to the corridor that led to a packed audience, and I gave him that look, the same look Id given the younger man who asked why I didnt write about these things. The next day, your brain will have no imprint of [your] activities, almost as if they didn't happen." Well, those are pretty high BACs, but what I kind of wish Id emphasized more in the book is that its different for everybody, and some people have a lower threshold. I surrounded myself with people who reminded me I was loved, no matter what the firing squads on Twitter said. Not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career Ive chosen, and if Im not doing that, then what are we doing here? Make a life-giving gesture But in 2015 Id written a memoir that introduced some controversial ideas about women and drinking, and I badly wanted to be a part of their rogue outfit, even as I clung to the more doctrinaire one Id long considered my own. But such was the fierce community forged by booze that I feared exile. And in a way, youre telling that person something. Its a shame the Internet hates him, I messaged. All my friends drank -- why were they telling me its not OK, when their drinking was OK? Id choose a lot of gnarly punishments before Id choose to lose the status and career Ive built over more than two decades. I suspect I will lose followers (I dont have that many), but perhaps I will gain self-respect, which Ive been sorely lacking lately. I carved out a journalism career during an era when that was not so hard to do. One of the common arguments made, at least about #MeToo scandals, is that the men (and women) behaving badly rarely face legal punishment. Deeply uncomfortable. Id choose a lot of gnarly punishments before Id choose to lose the status and career Ive built over more than two decades. What gets lost when a writer mutes herself? A human life is morally complex, filled with ambivalence and uncertainty, and accepting the quickly assembled dogma of social-media feeds lets us bypass messier realities that we ignore at our own peril. Can you actually support yourself as an Uber driver? Let's start with the most recent piece: Texas writer Sarah Hepola's Atlantic article, a rambling, illogical screed that was full of fallacious arguments. How long does it take to become a therapist? That she sympathizes with accused rapists, for one thing . He could take the hits. Artists were the weirdos and the scoundrels, the square pegs who never fit the round hole of society, and the result was typically a bucket of addictions, perversions, and bizarre predilections born of life on the outskirts. Maybe Ill write something lousy. Yeah. Me too. There was a lot about blackouts I didnt know before I read your book. By Sarah Hepola H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty; Gabriela Pesqueira / The Atlantic March 12, 2022 One evening, I sat on the brown-leather couch of a younger man who admired me for. I stayed on apodcast about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleadersthat I feared everyone would hate, and I braced myself to be unpopular, to take the hits, which never really came. Im not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting in a lather because the topics were so rich. Her place was filled with hardback books and writers who had been invited because they danced on the precarious edge of what was considered appropriate. But in a blackout, a person is anything but silent and immobile. Perhaps he was disappointed in me, or in an environment where writers saved the best and juiciest controversies for private conversations. Id long considered myself a liberal and a feminist, but Id grown terrified of being banished for views I considered reasonable, or at least worth discussingbut maybe,but what about,but actually. It was also, as Miller acknowledged and like every story ever told, incomplete. Louis C.K. If youve never experienced a blackout, it might be hard to understand the icy wrongness of waking up to find a blank space where three hours should be. Sarah Hepola The Things I'm Afraid to Write About by David Labaree March 24, 2022 Leave a Comment This post is a remarkable essay by Sarah Hepola, which appeared recently online at Atlantic. My friends and I at the alternative paper in Austin, Texas, sat around long communal tables at dive bars arguing about pop culture, trying to one-up one another with off-color jokes as we downed pint after pint. This is about every corner of human life. The tragic result is a disturbed public forum where it often seems like no adults are in the room. In the two years since, I have tried to drum up the courage to be someone different from the writer I had become. Silent, fearful, aching to be heard, petrified of being misunderstood. Lets get blackout has been a college rallying cry for many years. She was one of those people who rarely had a bad day. Ive been waiting for someone to confront me on my drinking! They will feel defensive, hurt. In the pandemic madness of 2021, a journalist friend who enjoyed sounding off on science and homeopathy decided to stay the hell away from COVID. Perhaps I had internalized my own misogyny, whatever that means. They were married in Little Falls and moved to Eden Prairie, MN in 1962. That shook me. by Sarah Hepola. | Funeral Home Website by Batesville Home | Its a fair point, but me, personally? Every one of my friendships got stronger when I quit drinking -- because when you dare to tell the truth to the people who are close to you, and you dare to show your heart to them, that is an act of trust, and people, if theyre good friends -- and mine were -- they respond to that. To plant Memorial Trees in memory of Sarah Hepola, please click here to visit our Sympathy Store. Jones-Pearson Funeral Home. Cloud Teachers College and became a 4th Grade Teacher in Sebeka, MN where she met her future husband, Donald Hepola. Oh, absolutely! If youve never experienced a blackout, it might be hard to understand the icy wrongness of waking up to find a blank space where three hours should be. Burial service for victims of the SS Atlantic shipwreck, April 1873. If so, can they please tell me, so I can choose my stance accordingly? Hepola, a personal essays editor at Salon who experienced blackouts during her 25 years of drinking, assumed everyone knew what they were. A couple of years ago, I was asked to conduct an interview at the Texas Book Festival with Malcolm Gladwell. They targeted lyrics by Prince, Madonna, Cyndi Lauperin short, every artist I lovedand their public blacklist even turned me into a fan of the questionable heavy-metal band W.A.S.P., whose name was thought to be an acronym for We Are Sexual Perverts. (I had no idea!). Funeral Planning and Grief Resources | Is this you? Shes the co-conspirator of Smoke Em if You Got Em, a weekly podcast on whats burning through the culture that she hosts with friend and fellow scribe Nancy Rommelmann. Im worried about you. We spoke about her newly released first book Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget, which is about a lifetime of drinking and the initial years of recovery. She and Don raised six children there. Follow her on Twitter (@sarahhepola) and Instagram . My book opens with an episode in Paris where I came out of a blackout in the middle of having sex with a man I did not recognize. Possible humiliation, almost-certain ridicule, and excused overindulgence: Never one to flee from a challenge, our writer goes to her high-school reunion. One of the great mistakes of our moment is being deemed on the wrong side of history. But has anyone read ahead in the book so they know how future generations will see this stuff? But in my professional life, I wrote about apolitical subjects such as dating and travel, and on Instagram, I mostly posted about my cat and whatever seltzer I was currently enjoying. Yes, I Am a Dallas Girl. If you do, that is sexual assault. For press inquiries or to contact the author, click here. Like me, the younger man had fallen in love with art because it was the place where people told the truth. Not gonna die in that ditch today. I dont know. Course Syllabus School, What Is It Good For? Is there anything that would have been helpful for you to hear, or that you would say to people who are in that stage right now? At my core, I was a people pleaser, and the culture had reached a moment when any opinion worthy of expression ran the risk of losing half your audience. Every once in a while, Id get a head of steam about some scandal, and Id start a big-swing essay only to bench myself a few days later. Yes, exactly! Or I would pause the recording to offer my own opposing view, like I was part of this conversation, and not the passive listener. He came from a different generation, but I was pleased to discover that he shared many of my unconventional opinions and favorite authors, that taste and perspective werent necessarily a matter of the year you were born. What the unlikely matchup means for one writer's family. There had been more grievous allegations, of courserape, pedophilia, physical abuse. Sarah Hepola, the author of Blackout, is a writer at large for Texas Monthly. Were missing the chance to learn. I felt betrayed. Millers account is searing. Going against the online outrage machine could be career suicide. And the writing community changed. And though the area of expertise Id staked out as a writer was the complications of womens independence and the nuances of sex, and my own personal brand was blunt honesty, I could not bring myself to say word one about these episodes in public. I actually have a friend whose husband is in AA, and she doesn't have a drinking problem, but she goes to the . One of the reasons that I drank so much when I was drinking and involved with men is that I felt deeply uncomfortable with my own body. Not to engage in callouts, or scolding, or eye rolls, which are not my style, but to express my own deep ambivalence, my own point of view on subjects that matter to me. Blackout by Sarah Hepola | Summary & Analysis Preview: In her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, Sarah Hepola examines how she drank, why she drank, how others responded to her, and the misfortunes that occurred during her journey to sobriety. There are some crucial details missing from Sarah Hepola's new memoir, Blackout -- but that's the whole point. Sarah grew up in Dallas, Texas, and was brought up in a household of modest chaos. As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work. What Sarah Hepola taught me about blackout drinking and sobriety's thrill I wrote private messages to writers whose work captured my particular agony, but I never tweeted about those stories, which felt like the equivalent of dating an unpopular guy in secret because your friends might not approve. And a lot of us are trapped in that sorry place. on Sarah Hepola The Things Im Afraid to Write About. She lives in Dallas. You cant predict these things; its all guesswork. Well, has the Internet read The Corrections?. to John "Vernor" and Signe Porkkonen. Every day, I scrolled the endless river of outrage and all-caps, watching people express similar views to mine only to be pounced upon. My friends and I at thealternative paper inAustin, Texas,sat around long communal tables at dive bars arguing about pop culture, trying to one-up one another with off-color jokes as we downed pint after pint. Given your experience, do you think there is a better way to educate people about these issues? husband and son, that ultimately create the life she needs to survive. To listen. So this is my resolution as I trudge from this dark place: to speak out more. I had no husband and no qualms about that. Early in our correspondence, hed expressed great affection for Jonathan Franzen. But being sympathetic to these fallen creaturesa trait instilled by literature, my mother, and Oprahhad been declared a sin. And so it came as an unwelcome surprise to watch the intolerance that my liberal friends once decried on the censorious right flood to our side of the street. Id think those would be the most interesting things to write about., I gave him an exasperated look. Your size might be different than my size. But I thought thats what writers do.. So theres a little bit of TBD on that answer. Required fields are marked *. I surrounded myself with people who reminded me I was loved, no matter what the firing squads on Twitter said. His books include: The Making of an American High School (Yale, 1988); How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education (Yale, 1997); The Trouble with Ed Schools (Yale University Press, 2004); Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling (Harvard, 2010); and A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education (Chicago, 2017).View all posts by David Labaree, Your email address will not be published. I thought that my dating life was over, because there was no way in hell that I was gonna be able to be intimate with somebody without drinking. What was I, a rape apologist? A single womans life, also precarious. I understood such moral panics to be the product of generational hand-wringing and the religious right, which was then gaining ground. There are some crucial details missing from Sarah Hepola's new memoir, Blackout -- but that's the whole point. I applied to pick up groceries for Instacart, and each time I scrolled through the latest batch (seven items, two miles away), I was seized with the fear that Id fail at that too. I was not writing much about this stuff, except in the journals where I always stowed my secrets. I still wanted it both ways: the respect and admiration of strangers without the hard work of earning that respect. Sarah Hepola is a journalist and editor who lives in Texas. And when my friends stopped laughing because, you know, laughter is a complicity; its Im in this with you. When my friends stopped laughing, I was like, Oh wow, OK, this isnt so cool anymore., Each of my friends reacted differently to what was going on. Movies and books became a refuge, along with the Top 40 radio I listened to at night in my pink-and-red bedroom to drown out arguments between my parents, who were going through a rough patch. She was preceded in death by: her husband, Don; her son, Mark; and her daughter in law Twyla (Paul). The stories that youre telling me arent funny anymore., That was something that was big for me. Im not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting in a lather because the topics were so rich. What if I had to substitute strawberries for raspberries and the customer didnt like strawberries? Because I wanted to talk to other writers about the things you cant write about anymore., His eyes narrowed. I just thought this was how it was donewe said one thing in public, and backstage we said what we really thought. If women wanted equality in the bedroom, why did so many confess to being turned on by domination and rough sex? Id spent the past five or so years watching celebrities, pundits, friends, and internet randos fall from grace for reasons as varied as sharing dumb jokes, making clumsy writing errors, accidentally showing their dong, and expressing controversial (though often widely held) opinions in the public execution chambers of social media. 1928 - 2022 Sally was born on September 1, 1928, to Frank and Noella Hall in Little Falls, MN. Part of HuffPost Women. See, the body acceptance movement, I think, in its most pure form, is not, You have to be this way and accept it; its that you can love your body at any size. During a blackout, the alcohol user may behave normally, yet have no recollection of events upon sobriety. But the social and moral and criminal consequences can be grave. Not that project, not that story, not that controversy. Its very unusual for sexual assaults involving a blackout to get a conviction, partly for this reason. Some of them just never spoke about it and silently worried. The book is an intimate education, not only in her personal history, but also about the dangers of alcohol-induced blackouts, or "periods of memory loss for events that transpired while a person was drinking," which Hepola calls a "menace hiding in plain sight. A hell of a time in this day and age outrage machine could career... Funny anymore., that ultimately create the life she needs to survive work... The book so they know how future generations will see this stuff, except in the room to plant Trees! Eyes narrowed future generations will see this stuff Prose, Course Syllabi with Links to Readings and Slides Batesville. Things you cant predict these things ; its all guesswork rapists, for one &! Generational hand-wringing and the religious right, which was then gaining ground there... Domination and rough sex the tragic result is a writer at large for Texas Monthly forged by that... 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