The Journal. · Sunday, August 2, 2026
Laura Mair describes her childhood efforts to manage her mother's alcoholism as her 'first job,' involving detailed tracking and charting of her mother's drinking habits. This early experience, described as making the uncontrollable feel controllable, may have contributed to her later work obsession, which she likens to an addiction cycle.
“And so for me, as a kid, so much of my life was focused on tracking my mom, what she was drinking, taking the temperature of the room emotionally and otherwise, depending on what that consumption was.”
“I would decide at the end of the day, okay, so my mom seems to have be at like a one, meaning maybe she hadn't been drinking that much or hadn't drunk at all was a zero, all the way up to like a five, which would have been destructive.”
“But that chart was like really a way for me to make something that was totally not concrete or controllable, feel like it was in my hands.”