I’m not talking about gentleness with my daughter or with the people I love. I’m talking about the way people will say, “be gentle with yourself” when you are depressed or struggling. Because for me, for a long time, I had one framework for gentleness, and it was a quick drop down into permissiveness and overindulgence.

I remember the first time someone told me to be gentle with myself — I had just cancelled plans, citing anxiety or depression (or, probably, both!) and a close friend said something along the lines of, “I totally get it, don’t worry about it at all. Please be gentle with yourself right now.” It was a revelation. I could be gentle with myself? Soon this language was everywhere. I have a vague idea that Glennon Doyle popularized it, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, it’s become a kind of shorthand, a way people, especially millennial women, tell each other to take care of themselves. Use care, use kindness, go easy on yourself.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t really interrogate what it might mean, specifically. I heard the words and went immediately to “do what feels good right now,” and for me, especially before I got sober, that was a treacherous interpretation. “Be gentle with yourself” became my permission structure to stay in bed all day, getting high at the drop of a hat, numbing to the point of oblivion, eating whatever I wanted without regard for what my body needed, and doing literally hours of nothing.

None of it made me feel better. Most of it made me feel worse. When the evening rolled around, “be gentle with yourself” meant “pour yourself the extra glass of wine — you deserve it when things are this hard.” It meant, “get so stoned you can’t follow an episode of Veep.” It meant, “lose yourself in a whole pint of ice cream or a bucket of chicken fingers the size of your head.” I had confused being gentle with myself with doing whatever I wanted, and since I was frequently depressed, doing whatever I wanted was just a maze of looking for the next high, the next dopamine rush, the next ticket to numbness. For years I continued on this way, without taking an interest in what gentle could mean beyond that.

Recently I’ve been dealing with what feels like real depression for the first time since I got sober and had my daughter. It’s been over three years since I’ve felt like this for an extended period of time (and don’t think for a second that I don’t know how lucky that makes me, as a person diagnosed with bipolar II). I had forgotten, almost, how bad it feels, but with the fatigue, the aches and pains, the intrusive thoughts, and the low mood has come a new sort of revelation: I’m a different person than the one who faced all this a few years ago. I’m someone with newfound resilience, better coping skills, and a different way of thinking to support me when I’m at my lowest.

The past week has been fraught. It involved a lot of trying to get work done from bed, hiding from family, and a teary conversation with my therapist as we made a game plan to adjust my meds and figure out what support I needed to get through this. I’ve also done more writing and journaling than I’ve ever done when I’ve felt this way, and I’ve been able to access a more introspective lens than the ones I’ve used in years past when depression crept in.

Yesterday, after napping while my daughter napped and facing down the afternoon and evening — one in which we were committed to making dinner for my in-laws, who we’re living with while our home is renovated — I found myself asking some questions.

Is staying in bed, looking at my phone, actually making me feel better? What would make me feel better? What would distract me from the nasty thoughts that keep surfacing in my mind? What does being gentle with myself look like in this moment, beyond just staying immobilized and acting like I’m incapable of doing anything? Is babying myself to the point of incapability actually accomplishing anything?

My answer surprised even me: As my husband prepared to take e to the grocery store and shoulder the dinner burden on his own, I said, “Can I come?” We made a game plan. I decided I would try to get a little interested in dinner and found a simple recipe I’d saved for a corn and tomato salad. I’d cook zucchini with basil the way my mother-in-law mentioned she’d liked before. I’d act like someone who had a task to be interested in, because I did, and because staying in bed with nothing to do was fodder for my unwell brain to make up rude, disheartening stories about my self-worth. Maybe the kind of gentle I needed was to calmly remind myself of my own value, to make myself useful to people I love, to take on a small, quiet project in the kitchen so I could feel a sense of ownership and control over my own mind and body.

As I think I made clear, this is not the kind of gentleness I’ve ever practiced with myself before when depression has made itself known.

I was tired. It felt a little overwhelming. The farm market was packed and overstimulating, and we still had to go to the regular grocery store after that. We started cooking late. I had intrusive thoughts while I was cooking. And yet, I found myself humming a little, finding solace in the mechanical slicing of the zucchini and the crumbling of the feta. The salad was a hit, which made me feel good about myself in a small, but not insignificant, way.

I had found a new way to be gentle with myself. It involved taking stock of what I actually needed in the moment — how I wanted and needed to feel, in particular — and taking calculated, quiet action to meet those needs, rather than ignoring them in favor of an overly permissive afternoon of doomscrolling in bed with the shades drawn. It involved believing I could do something of value even while tiredness radiated in my bones, even while I felt incapable of showing up, even while my brain fought against me. It was harder, for sure, than my old version of gentleness. It took more intention and more decisive action than I was used to executing in a depressed state. It also allowed me to feel more agency and more control than I’m used to feeling, and that made a difference. My mood lifted. I felt like myself again, for awhile. That mattered. It still matters the next day. The whole thing has reframed the way I think about making a supportive decision in the moment — one that will tangibly shift the mood, not encourage me to succumb to it.

An invitation

If someone told you to be gentle with yourself, how would you interpret that? Do you envision bubble baths and massages, a reality TV marathon, a ridiculous amount of sushi? (Note: There is nothing wrong with any of these options; they are often necessary.) Could you envision ways in which caring for yourself gently meant making harder decisions, but ones that ultimately served you better? What’s one actually supportive decision you can make when this week hands you a difficult moment?

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• glimmers on a bad day: a new, comfy outfit that made me feel like me (red satin track pants! who knew?), my favorite breakfast sandwich (it contains hot pepper jelly and boursin), and a good coffee, consumed while driving around to our favorite scenic spots overlooking the ocean. not much went right last saturday, but these were gentle comforts while my mental health was flagging.

• I got a new water bottle and I’m obsessed with it. I drink a lot of water, so this is bringing me joy frequently throughout the day. it’s spill-proof AND has a straw! it has a nice pad on the bottom so I’m not slamming it down all the time! the straw is actually nice to drink out of! plus, it’s lavender, and unintentionally matches my tablet case, my phone case, e’s crocs, and my favorite hand lotion (apparently I have a tendency). sometimes it really is the little things.

• e is in a very affectionate phase, which I am eating up with a spoon. she is always running around kissing everyone and offering “a squeeze” and in the mornings when I get her out of her crib she just melts onto my shoulder, draping her arms around me and nuzzling into my neck. if there are words for how good that feels, I don’t know them.

• another toddler phase, this one bringing me less joy: e seems determined not to eat any skins of any fruits. it started with peaches and nectarines, and now she’s eating bites out of apple slices, leaving the peel intact, and even has tried peeling the skin off her grapes (which just a few days ago she was devouring). this is really such a tiny bonk, but I’m always thrown for a loop when a food that she’d easily eat one week is suddenly out of favor the next.

• a less tiny bonk is my mental health, which is wavering as we head into our third month living away from home. this is coinciding with the beginning of fall (I know, I know, it’s summer for three more weeks, but the sun is setting earlier and I have seasonal affective disorder so it matters that the sun is setting earlier! I have to pay attention!). I’m having a rough go, and struggling to think of how I’m going to handle the inevitable overwhelm of moving our lives back into our newly renovated space and figuring out how to use it. (and yet, I’m dying to get in there!!) it will all come with time, I know, and when we’re back I’ll feel better, but right now I’m fighting the depression that’s trying its damnedest to creep into my bones and settle in there.

• watching: we discovered trash truck on netflix for e, which has been a cozy little show we sometimes put on after her nap, when our workdays are wrapped up. it follows a little boy, hank, and his best friends, who are a trash truck, a bear, and a raccoon. it’s very gentle, e likes it, and it’s a welcome break from ms. rachel.

• reading: a friend suggested our book club read Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana and wow, is it good. I’m about three-quarters of the way through, and while it’s not an easy read, it’s a completely gripping one. it’s made up of interconnected short stories of people who live in and around one apartment building in new york, battling gentrification and hustling to make rent and navigating relationships, jobs, and the pressures of living under the poverty line. it’s gritty and uncomfortable for me, a privileged suburban white woman, and it’s stretching me in the best way. fans of Friday Black should pick this up.

• listening: a fall spotify playlist led me to this old norah jones album, which I very much enjoyed working to, and that led me down an olivia dean rabbit hole which I also deeply enjoyed. I haven’t paid much attention to olivia dean despite my instagram feed’s insistence upon her, and I was pleased to find that the hype is real!

• enjoying: a quick, simple, lettuce-free salad. cannellini beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and mint. that’s it! dress it in white balsamic and good olive oil, add some sea salt and pepper, and you’re good to go. fresh and easy.

• anticipating: the cozy vibes of fall, despite the seasonal sadness that accompanies it for me. it’s still plenty warm in new england, but I’m eager for sweaters and flannel and jeans! otherland’s cardamom milk candle! sitting next to a roaring fire pit in a hoodie with a NA shipyard pumpkin head (new this season, after I have been complaining about its absence in the market for years) in hand. it all sounds pretty good to me.

This week I’m thinking about how I want to show up for myself when my mental health takes a turn. I’ve been good, really good, for a few years now, and fighting off depression and anxiety as they try to take hold is more draining than I remembered. I’m doing okay, and I think it’s because I’m paying a lot more gentle attention to what I need when I feel this way. A shower instead of a nap. Protein instead of sugar (or at least, protein before sugar). Connection instead of isolation. Writing instead of scrolling. Making these choices day-in and day-out isn’t always easy for me on a good day, let alone when I’m not well, but it does seem to be helping keep the darkness from coming over me completely. I’m trying to do that trick where you talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend who’s going through what you’re going through. What words would you use? What tone? How would you convince them to take care of themselves when it’s the last thing on their mind? So far, it’s working — with the empathetic and practical help of my husband. It’s not his first rodeo, and I’m finding glimmers of gratitude that we’ve been through this before, because he knows how to help and when. That’s no small thing.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can receive my weekly posts? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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Note: I’m not a medical professional, and these ideas should not be taken as medical advice. I’m just a person with a couple decades’ worth of unfortunate experience in this area.

Your attention to hygiene changes

Maybe your daily shower starts happening every other day. Maybe you struggle to brush your teeth before bed, or you suddenly lose interest or motivation to do your beloved skincare routine.

One way to address it: Set up basic rules for yourself. A couple of mine: I can only skip one day before I have to shower again. I have to at least use a face wipe and slather on some moisturizer. If my hair needs washing and it’s not happening, I need to brush it and use some dry shampoo. These are your bare minimum, so that you have something to fall back on when things get hard and none of it seems worth doing.

Your sleep changes

You go to bed at your normal time but stay up too late, scrolling or just lying awake, anxious. Or you fall asleep fine and wake up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. Or maybe you sleep too early and too late, reaching for naps in the middle of the day beyond what’s normal for you, sleeping as much as possible. Sometimes all three of these can happen in the course of a week. Sometimes you may not sleep at all, especially if mania or hypomania are part of your experience. It’s different for everyone, but a change in your rhythm is something to watch out for.

One way to address it: Pay attention to what’s enough for you. Enough caffeine without overdoing it, or consider a cutoff point so it doesn’t interfere with your nighttime sleep. Enough sleep to feel functional, without overtaking your day. Depression in particular can make it easy to default to bed, so I try to figure out what length of nap will help me quiet the sleepies and make headway at work, and give myself that time to rest. If you’re not sleeping well, you can try prioritizing some gentle exercise or cutting caffeine altogether, but now’s not the time to overhaul your whole routine.

Your screen time creeps higher

You start looking for something — comfort, entertainment, distraction, motivation — inside your phone, and before you know it the hours are stacking up and you’ve spent whole days staring at other people’s lives in a desperate attempt to escape your own. I don’t know what about Instagram makes me think that someone’s brilliant sheet-pan dinner or perfectly organized playroom is going to cure my depression, but it’s a dangerous, slippery slope into a comparison game that will only make us feel worse.

One way to address it: Get proactive about finding replacement activities. Reading might be too much of a mental lift, but maybe you can watch a comfort movie and color to keep your hands busy. Maybe you can go for a slow walk and leave your phone at home, or keep it in your pocket. Cook a real meal from a real cookbook so you’re not checking your phone for the recipe every five minutes. Find a way to do some living rather than watch other people live, and you might find your mood lifting. (People also swear by the Brick, which I’m interested in but haven’t tried yet myself.)

Your eating habits change (and your nutrition suffers)

Your well-balanced morning yogurt bowl turns into a granola bar or a handful of cereal. Lunch becomes nonexistent, or you’re eating pretzels out of the bag and calling it a meal. Maybe at dinner you’re overindulging in something greasy, just to take the edge off, or maybe you’re like me and you’re seeking dopamine at the bottom of a pint of ice cream or a bag of gummy bears. My sugar cravings skyrocket when I start to not do well, and while it feels good to indulge them in the moment, I find they exacerbate my anxiety and ultimately make me feel crappier.

One way to address it: Your appetite may not be normal, and that’s okay, but try to meet yourself with the same energy you would a friend who’s struggling to fuel their body well. Aim for small snacks with protein and fiber in them. Try to actually eat a nourishing meal at least once a day (two or three times would be better, but I’m talking about bare minimums here). Encourage yourself the way you would that friend — ask if what you’re about to eat is going to make you feel better or worse. Notice what your body is asking for in the moment. Make room for treats but try not to binge, because that’s likely to bring on a whole other set of issues. (I say this lovingly and gently, as someone who’s been putting away an alarming amount of gummy bears lately.)

Your typical load starts to feel like too much

When what you do in a normal day or week suddenly feels astronomically difficult, that’s a big sign that your mental health is trending downward. A typical work week feels insurmountable. Getting your kids out the door in the morning feels like it takes Herculean effort. Making dinner? Who has the energy? You start to wonder how you ever do these things, let alone do them all the time. It’s a big red flag that your bandwidth is compromised.

One way to address it: This is the time to start taking things off your plate. There’s no award for being the martyr here — you’re getting sick, literally, and you need help. Can a coworker pitch in to get that project done? Can your spouse take over the breakfast or dinner duties for the day or week? Can someone else help with pickup or drop-off? Now is the time to call on your village and deprioritize absolutely everything that isn’t urgent. In the free time you create by asking for help, you must rest and do things that are restorative for your brain. Listen to a very easy audiobook or a lighthearted podcast. Take slow walks around the block, looking at flowers along the way. Journal, even if all you do is write in big letters “I FEEL SAD.” Doodle or listen to a comforting song. Give your brain a break and watch some bad reality TV, or a movie you’ve seen 800 times that you never get sick of. This is not the time to disappear into your phone, but it is time to give your body and brain the break that it needs. Sleep if you need it, but not too much (this one is so hard for me). Stretch. Drink water or tea. Sit quietly and allow yourself to feel however you feel. You’ve created space to tend to yourself. Do it wisely and gently.

That’s it — five warning signs that your mental health might be in need of some tending, and some practical things to try in the face of them. I’m trying to start thinking of these signals as invitations to slow down and really think about what my mind and body need from me. For me, the inclination to hide away and do nothing is very real; but getting intentional about what will actually move the needle in a positive direction does help, even when it feels impossibly difficult.

I’m curious to know: What’s your particular canary in the coal mine? What’s one change in habit or rhythm that lets you know you need to start using a little more care with yourself? Share in the comments below — I read and respond to them all.

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all images courtesy of dupe

• I’ve pulled together some pretty delicious meals over the past week, if I do say so myself, including this Boursin orzo bake (so easy! SO yummy!) and these lemon-thyme chicken thighs, a go-to that I pull out when I want to feel impressive. sometimes I forget how much I like to cook, and have to force myself to do it, but then I remember how nice it feels to feed someone else something delicious. it’s a true pleasure, even when e decides she’d rather eat grapes and watermelon than orzo and chicken.

• e is cracking me up with her language these days. stringing together long sentences, asking very conversational questions (“do you want a paper towel??”) and pretending things she asked for are really my idea, not hers (e: “I want to read a book!” me: “ok, you want to read a book?” e: “um, sure.”). it’s a genuine delight to hear her try out new questions and phrases and see our response. (this morning, as I pulled on a pair of shorts: “look at that booty!”)

• a spark of weekday motivation yesterday: in between work tasks, I cleaned our shower, did some yoga (!), and washed my hair. small windows of time are hard for me — I feel like I want to and should be doing 67 different things, when all I ever really want to do is take a nap. but the stars aligned yesterday and I felt a little buzz of productivity in a way that felt calm and happy, not rushed and forced. I’ll take it whenever I can get it.

• it’s more than a tiny bonk, but my anxiety has reared its head in a big way over the past couple of weeks, and it’s like greeting a familiar but unwelcome houseguest. I’ve said repeatedly to my husband this week, “I forgot how bad this feels.” I often talk about anxiety as if getting sober completely solved the problem for me (and for three years, it honestly did), but this is a humbling time of learning that I do still need an active lorazepam prescription and I do need help quieting my mind and body. I think it mostly has to do with heading into our third month living outside of our home during our renovation — I’m just feeling like I need to be back in my own space. I was running on 3 hours of sleep the day I learned it would likely be four weeks, not two, before we get back home, and I nearly had a panic attack. I’m trying to be realllllly gentle with myself and do all the things I know help me feel more grounded in my mind and body (hence this week’s yoga).

• I’m just getting back from taking e for her two-year check-up, and oh boy, I was not prepared for the tears! as soon as I started undressing her she started bawling, which was only made worse by the fingerprick she needed. the staff were wonderful with her, and she’s growing well and doing great, but I’m not used to seeing her in distress (gratefully, she’s not easily upset), and had to work hard to co-regulate. thank goodness for the books I stashed in my purse! by the time she warmed up to the nurse practitioner, we were done, and she was pretending to be a butterfly, and it was all fine.

• watching: nothing of note except more Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and you don’t need to hear about that again. however, I WILL tell you that I’m getting pretty pumped for the new US season of Traitors, which premieres in less than a month!!

• reading: I decided to hit pause on Flashlight so I could get in a couple more summery reads (romances, to be exact). I’m about three-quarters of the way through my very first Annabel Monaghan book, Nora Goes Off Script, and let me tell you, it is a delight. it’s so refreshing to have a protagonist in her late thirties with kids (hi, it’s me, kind of) and while I’m in the part of the book where I’m not thrilled with the male main character, I’m sure I’m going to see that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and Leo is actually a perfect man, or something. I love it. I want more of it. good thing my hold on Dolly All the Time just came through!!!

• listening: too much Crime Junkie while trying and failing to sleep. you’d almost think listening to stories of people getting murdered was like… not relaxing??

• enjoying: the gorgeous flowers on my desk, courtesy of my sister-in-law, who runs a cutting garden on her family’s farm in central Massachusetts. ranunculus are some of my faves.

• anticipating: feeling some eager, excited back-to-school energy for fall. some more protected reading and writing time, carving out a creative desk space after our renovation (separate from my 9-5 desk space, because there’s only so much time you can spend at one desk, in my opinion), and embracing early mornings again. I’m a notorious alarm-snoozer, so we’ll see how that goes, but I’m looking forward to giving it a shot!

I’m thinking hard about the way I’ve often framed sobriety as the key to beating anxiety. it’s true that I saw a lot of relief, almost right away, from quitting drinking, but the past week has reminded me that even though there’s a lot we can do to mitigate our symptoms of mental illness, there’s still so much of it that’s beyond our control. and in those moments of feeling absolutely helpless in the face of what feels like ants crawling under my skin and my body wanting to turn itself inside out, it’s more important than ever to remember that the alcohol and weed never helped me out of this. it might have delayed the sensations, but the anxiety would come rushing back as soon as the buzz wore off. I felt more of a pull toward getting high in the last week than I have in probably over a year, but thankfully I’m solid in my awareness that it will only make me feel worse in the end. I can’t control the anxiety, especially when I’m in circumstances beyond my control (like a big home renovation!) but I can control how I respond, and that’s with gentleness and care and prescribed meds and reading for fun and yoga and gummy bears and not with too much caffeine and addictive psychoactives and longing for a life of substance abuse that I will never romanticize again. sobriety may not be the key to it all, but it’s a tool, and it’s one I’m going to use until I’m dead in the grave.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can receive my weekly posts? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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My nonfiction reading plan for the summer was:

May/June: We Need Your Art by Amie McNee

June: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray

July: The Recovering by Leslie Jamison

August: Lifeform by Jenny Slate

September: Lit by Mary Karr

Friends, we are all the way into the second half of August and the only book I’ve ticked off on this list is We Need Your Art. It was a massively inspiring read and I found I needed time between sessions to digest what Amie was saying: Make art frequently! Make it badly! A lot of it will be bad and that’s a good thing! (My perfectionist self shudders at this thought, and Amie digs into that, too.) You can crown yourself artist and thereby give yourself the authority to make art! It’s all really, really good, and my copy is all marked up and full of sticky tabs on pages I want to remember.

But since finishing that book in July, I haven’t picked up the others on my list. Not because I don’t want to read them — I really, really do — but because I was feeling pulled toward other sorts of reading, and I think that’s important to listen to. In past iterations of my life, I’ve been a little less considerate of my tendency toward mood reading, picking up books I think I should read over books I feel pulled to read. Part of taking a renewed interest in life, for me, has a lot to do with reading what I want, when I want: It’s something I have always loved, but I wasn’t as capable of it back when I was smoking tons of weed and drinking a lot. One of the great joys of sobriety has been my ability to pick a book up at any hour of the day and understand and remember what I read.

I tend to go through phases with my reading: The summer my daughter was born, I devoured thrillers as if no other type of book existed. I went through a time where all I wanted to do was listen to memoirs read by their authors. Lately, I’ve been on a long streak of picking up some unfathomably good literary fiction, and although no one asked, I’m going to share it with you now because this is what it looks like to be interested in your own life: listening to what you’re already being pulled toward, pouring yourself into something because you love it, and finding takeaways for good living tucked into the little pockets of how you spend your time.

Here’s what I read this summer.

A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews: I am still, when I listen to audiobooks, on a memoir kick. Toews is an acclaimed writer, but this is my first work by her, and it won’t be my last. She grapples with the question “Why do you write?” as she processes the suicides of her father and sister and recounts formative experiences in her life. An incredibly thoughtful, moving, gut-punch of a book.

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: You may know Adjei-Brenyah for Chain Gang All-Stars, a smash hit from 2023 that I think everyone should read. This was his debut, a short story collection that is absolutely brutal in its violence and gut-wrenching in its takedowns of racism and American culture. It’s satire that will make most readers, especially those with white privilege like myself, deeply uncomfortable in an important way. The first story in the book had my heart racing for an hour after I finished it. This, this is why reading fiction matters.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki: A book club pick that’s also been on my TBR for ages. Billed as a thriller but really more of a literary character study, this Japanese bestseller follows the story of journalist Rika as she develops a relationship with Kajii, a woman who’s been convicted of killing multiple men that she lured in with gourmet meals and dated before staging their deaths as accidents. This novel asks probing questions about gender norms, identity and belonging, and self-knowledge, and I absolutely loved it.

Whistler by Anne Patchett: At this point I fully believe that Ann Patchett can do no wrong. Narrator Daphne reconnects with her ex-stepfather, Eddie, when they meet coincidentally at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Patchett asks a lot of thoughtful questions about who gets to be called a father and what their roles are in our lives, all while crafting lovable characters who will steal your heart. Don’t miss this.

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash: What a debut! Cash delivers a total romp about a dysfunctional family navigating the parents’ (initially one-sided) open marriage, three teen daughters’ questionable decisions, and a conspiracy that leads them straight into the den of a malicious billionaire. It’s funny, sometimes dark, and concludes with some truly heartwarming found family vibes that I adored.

The Living and the Dead by Cristoffer Carlsson: I picked up this Scandinavian work of crime fiction from my library’s bookmobile, which conveniently parks outside my in-laws’ house every three weeks. It was the perfect way to give my brain a rest when I took a weekend away to focus on writing and building this newsletter — something completely unrelated to what I was working on. The mystery was solid, the writing was excellent, and it felt more literary than I expected, which is not always what I’m looking for in crime fiction but in this case felt like a bonus.

Go Gentle by Maria Semple: My most recent five-star read! This quirky book is spiritually similar to Lost Lambs in that it deals with some ordinary people who end up at the center of a wealthy person’s no-good plot. Adora Hazzard is a character (and a name!) for the ages, and I really enjoyed her interweaving of Stoic philosophy into a caper-filled jaunt around New York and Paris. I laughed, I gasped, I learned some things. I love when a book manages to balance light-heartedness with substance. Semple did it perfectly.

And so, while I wasn’t reading according to plan, the point of it all is that I was reading, and I was and having fun doing it, even if it wasn’t the informative, eye-opening nonfiction I thought I needed to read in order to become somehow more qualified to write this newsletter. While I thought I needed to read up on how other people are living as sober people or creative people or parents — or living at the intersection of all three — I’m realizing that what qualifies me to write about all this is that I’m living it how I’m living it. That’s just as valid as reading about how someone else lived it. And how I chose to live it this summer was to read what sounded good and stretched me in ways only fiction can.

Maybe you found a new read to add to your list today. Maybe you found inspiration to read, period. Maybe, instead, you’re thinking about that other hobby you have, the one you sometimes abandon in favor of what you think you should be doing. I encourage you to pick it up. Follow the thread of what piques your interest, what pulls at you, and give yourself some time to do it. At the very least, you’ll have some fun. At the most, you might learn something or have a moment of growth. But it’s pulling at you for a reason — my invitation for this week is that you listen to it.

Let me know in the comments if this resonated with you — and tell me what’s pulling at you to pay more attention or to take action this week.

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• last weekend we attended a beautiful “sip and see” event to meet a good friend’s adorable new little girl. she is precious! I have feelings about babies! her big brother is e’s age and they had a blast getting to play together and split a cupcake (though, of course, e would rather have had one to herself). since she’s mostly with her grandparents during the week, she doesn’t get a ton of time with kids her own age, so it’s extra fun to see how she interacts and figures out how to play with a fellow two-year-old.

• the look of delight on e’s face when, after a nice family dinner out at our favorite spot, we asked her, “do you want to go get some ice cream?” pure, unadulterated joy. her little mouth formed a perfect “o” as she gasped with surprise. she genuinely thought this was the best thing ever, especially when she got to have sips of her dad’s frappe in between bites of her chocolate ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.

• gap factory is always having sales, and I need clothes that fit for fall, so mama did a little shopping! my haul came this week and now I’m excited for cooler weather — my favorites were these red satin track pants, this oversized shirt in a blue and red stripe (I love a good button-down), and these super comfy black barrel jeans. as a spill-prone toddler mom, I’m not in a season of spending a lot on clothes, and these feel like high-quality basics at a good value.

• being out of our home while we renovate is starting to take its toll (only on me, the rest of my family is doing just fine!), even though we’re in the home stretch. in my excitement to be done, I lined up work coverage for some vacation time for the week we were thinking we’d be able to move back in, only to find out we’re a little behind schedule now and I might have to rearrange everything again. a tiny bonk, truly, since this project has gone so smoothly, but a bonk nonetheless! I have flexible, accommodating coworkers who will no doubt be willing to help out the following week instead, but I do feel a little silly asking.

• an ongoing bonk: I am way out of rhythm with any kind of workout routine, and I can feel it. I haven’t been prioritizing movement since we’ve been out of our house, and my body is mad about it! tight shoulders, an unhappy ankle whose PT I’ve neglected, and a general pent-up feeling that I need to dispense with immediately. I simply haven’t been making the time (or, to be more truthful, when I have the time, I’m doing things like reading or napping) and the cumulative effect is tension, stiffness, and lethargy. I tend to get unmotivated when I’m out of my routine, so this isn’t unexpected, but finding the wherewithal to fix it will be a whole thing. get me back in my house!!!

• watching: e is now sometimes amenable to sesame street over ms. rachel, so I’m getting some elmo time in. it’s still overstimulating, but it’s a nice break. when we grown-ups are on our own, we’ve been putting on House of Stassi, but I’m finding it hard to root for this woman who is so out of touch with her husband’s needs. I’m all for a girlboss, but girl, your husband is struggling! let him go back to work!

• reading: I’ve put myself in the uncomfortable position of putting my kindle on airplane mode so my expired library loans don’t disappear, but also letting new holds come through that I can’t access until I go off of airplane mode to download them, at which point my current read will disappear. I have like five days to finish Flashlight by Susan Choi before I’ll lose access to Our Perfect Storm by Carly Fortune and Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan. Flashlight is very long (but also very good so far). wish me luck! I have a feeling I’ll need something lighter afterwards, so these two romances sound perfect.

• listening: I just renewed Men Have Called Her Crazy on audiobook for the second time, which is not a reflection of the book but rather of how little time I have to listen. it’s very, very good. Anna Marie Tendler is an astute narrator of her own life, and an excellent writer and narrator. I’m ashamed to admit I only came to know of her when news of her divorce from John Mulaney broke — she deserves her own recognition as a writer and artist!

• enjoying: getting ready in the mornings. I’ve long been on a no-makeup streak, which felt empowering for a while but now has started to feel like just not trying. I also often find myself getting out of bed just minutes before I need to get e up for the day, which does not allow for much time for skincare, teeth-brushing, makeup, etc. this week I’ve been trying to give myself an extra 15 minutes to make myself feel human (unfortunately mascara does help with this) before I wake her, and it’s really helping me feel more ready to face the day.

• anticipating: can you guess? I’m looking forward to moving back in to my house, darn it!! we’re starting to develop an idea of what furniture might go where, and my instagram stories are basically all adds for swivel chairs at this point, and it’s kind of fun and stressful at the same time. I’m just so excited to make the space feel like ours, but fresh and new.

I’m thinking a lot about what it means to be interested in one’s own life. for me, this comes in the wake of spending a lot of years being only particularly interested in numbing my feelings and creating artificial highs with alcohol and THC. now that I’m sober, and a mother, I’m chasing actual feelings: joy. belonging. warmth. excitement. anticipation. satisfaction. closeness. the specific, unique pleasure that comes from finishing a book that found you at the exact right time in your life. the peace that comes from understanding yourself a little bit better after you write everything down. the delight that comes when you make a delicious, nourishing meal for someone else. the nervousness that comes from taking a next step before you feel ready, because you know it’s the right one. that’s what I mean by taking an interest. it can be an interest in small, simple pleasures just as much as an interest in big, extravagant events. the point is the interest itself, the desire to engage with what’s going on around you and come away changed, or comforted, or emboldened. letting life impact you rather than running way from it. that’s what I’m here for.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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It’s me — or rather, you, from the future, and I have to tell you something you will never believe. We’re sober. From alcohol and weed. It’s August 2026, and in April of this year we celebrated three years. I know to you this probably seems like bad news, like we must not have any fun anymore, like part of our identity just disappeared. What do we even do with ourselves?! You are probably screaming, pulling your hair out and gnashing your teeth. Well, I’m going to tell you.

The truth is, we feel free. Sober life is good. I feel better mentally than we have in decades, probably since we started drinking to begin with. I’m almost never anxious anymore. I trust myself in a way you probably can’t begin to imagine. But some days, all I can think is: we could have gotten here sooner. And with that in mind, here are some things I want to say to you.

By now, you’ve gotten your bipolar II diagnosis — the shocking news that all this time your irritable streaks and agitation had a name! hypomania! — and at the moment, you’re riding the relentless waves of violent intrusive thoughts and deep, deafening depression. None of this, and I mean this: none of this is your fault.

But I’m worried about you. I’m worried about the dark places your mind goes, and I’m especially worried that you’re always chasing your next drink or your next hit even as you’re downing an antipsychotic, two types of antidepressants, and at least one benzo every day. Typing that out was wild. How can you possibly expect all those meds to work when you keep adding so much interference? (It’s called denial; I remember it well. Forgive me for telling you that right now you’re in the thick of it.)

Life is a roller coaster, and it’s a long one. You don’t get to get off when things get uncomfortable. Instead of riding through the peaks and valleys in your day-to-day, you’re using weed to try to beat the whole thing into submission — to flatten the rising and falling scaffolding into a straight, level path so you don’t have to feel any of the ups and downs. When you decide you want to feel something good, you drink, manufacturing a sense of fun, a peak, ignoring the fact that it’s going to send you careening down into an automatic low the next day. A valley that’s haunted by feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing, punctuated by anxiety and shame.

You may as well be parked at the gate before the ride even starts.

You’re living in such a state of artificial numbness that you can barely perceive, let alone experience, the real joy and wonder that comes from riding life’s ride as it’s laid out before you, from giving yourself over to it whether it’s achingly beautiful or riotously difficult or stunning in its mundanity. There’s meaning in making your way through all of that, day by day, and in learning the practices and rituals that make you feel alive for it, capable of living it. Those practices and rituals, your daily habits and methods for coping, cannot be the ones keeping you numb. They have to be things that wake you up.

Really, I want you to know this: Your sneaking suspicion that there has to be more to life than staring vacantly at a television, wine glass and vape pen in hand, is right.

Your vision is clouded; by your illness, yes, but also by the way you’re choosing to self-medicate your way through it. You’ve done some amazing things in recent years: you started learning yoga, got healthier physically, got a shiny new job that feels so much better than your soul-sucking old one, bought a house with the love of your life. And still, still, through all of that, you are rushing to the end of the day, to the martini you’re going to shake up at 4:55pm and the first hit off your vape pen and the oblivion you think will resolve your internal pain if you just keep reaching for it.

Since you can’t see your way clear of any of it right now, I want to paint a picture for you. One day, you’re going to have a mediocre cocktail at lunch and just decide: eh, that’s it. I’ll be done for a while. And when you get home later you realize, eh, I might as well give the weed a break too. This very haphazard intention you set, with no particular amount of time in mind for said break, is the best thing you’re going to do for yourself in a very long time. Maybe (probably) ever.

You will decide to stay sober for your birthday two weeks later, and play hooky with your husband, browsing the quaint shops lining leafy brick streets in a nearby seaside town. You will drink a spicy strawberry mocktail created just for you at dinner and it will be perfect. You spot a boat in the harbor named Lorraine, one of your nicknames, and it feels like a sign. You will stop on the way home and get your nose pierced (your body hates it and it will eventually have to be removed, but for a few days, you get to feel like a cool girl).

You start to get excited about very small things, like a fresh, cold tumbler of ice water, or making a simple meal, or being the one to clean up because you’re not catatonic on the couch at 8pm. You make elaborate mocktails with homemade syrups and salted rims. It will be the summer of perfecting a non-alc spicy margarita and you will find you don’t miss the alcohol as much as you might have expected. You will decide to keep going.

You will notice you haven’t needed your anxiety med in a few weeks. The one you were taking at least once, usually twice a day.

You will notice that you remember the TV shows you watch with your husband in the evenings, and find that he’s surprised you’re following the story night after night.

You will notice that you look forward to reading in bed again, because your brain hasn’t been shut all the way off before you can even so much as glance at your Kindle.

You bake ciabatta. You drink espresso tonics. You go on a friend group vacation to Acadia and eat blueberry swirl soft serve ice cream. You eat lobster rolls and do not wish for white wine to accompany them. You throw a party for your husband’s birthday and, while you do need introvert breaks, you do okay not drinking even though the alcohol is flowing. You attend your first sober wedding and are shocked to find yourself on the dance floor, inhibitions and all. You make s’mores and chase sunsets and celebrate more birthdays where you are not the drunkest girl at the party and through it all you are not chasing any kind of high but the one you get from simply existing in this life.

You notice that your mood is lifting, the intrusive thoughts are receding, the anxiety has dwindled down to nothing. You notice that you feel cared for — by yourself — for the first time in years, maybe in a decade. You notice an interest in life that you haven’t felt in years and years and years.

In the midst of all this, you will take a deep breath and go see a doctor, who will tell you that you actually can stay on those meds that saved your life if and when you get pregnant. That, while postpartum may be “a perilous time,” you can expect to have a healthy pregnancy. Though you can’t breastfeed because of those meds, that’s probably wise anyway considering your need for sleep and your risk for postpartum depression. You leave feeling empowered to make the biggest decision of your life. You leave knowing you can make the biggest decision of your life, and that you can do it because you are no longer beholden to two substances that drove the vast majority of your decisions over the past decade.

And despite your fear, despite your expectation that it will take a long time, despite, despite, despite, one November morning you will find yourself staring at two pink lines on a stick you just peed on and saying only, “oh, wow.” Your husband will ugly cry. You will go about your day wondering how newly expectant parents are just supposed to do life without shouting from the rooftops about their impending baby.

There’s so much more I could tell you — about what it felt like to bring our beautiful baby girl into the world (that’s right, we have a girl!), about how grounded we felt in early motherhood, how for the first time, we actually, absolutely knew we were in the right place and doing the right things. I could tell you about the euphoria of contact napping, how we get to be the one she takes her first steps towards, the one whose name is her first word — mama, said clearly for the first time on Mother’s Day — the one who gets her up in the mornings while now, at age two, she pops up in her crib yelling, “peekaboo!”

I could tell you about how we started writing again. About how we feel alive creatively in motherhood more than at any other time in our life. About how our little girl takes us for walks and teaches us to slow down and really notice things, and how we’re learning that sobriety and motherhood make for wonderful creative partners, life partners.

None of it happens, though, until you put down the things you think are giving your life joy and relief and pick up the habit of actually living it. Once you take a real interest, that’s when things get interesting.

I love you. Get sober and start trying, just like the notes app in your phone says. You know you need to do it. Now you know what’s waiting on the other side.

Love,

If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can receive my weekly posts? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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• a delicious slice of sunny one-on-one pool time with my girl, from her dipping her toes in and shrieking, “it’s too cold,” to happily collapsing off the steps into my arms and the water over and over again, dunking her face, showing me how she’s learned to blow bubbles in swim class. the way her eyes roll up toward her forehead when she surfaces and uses two hands to rub the hair out of her face, shaking her head as she goes. her (terrifying to me) fearlessness of the water and her eagerness to fully embrace it.

• a long-overdue catchup with family last weekend — seeing e run around with her older cousins, watching them roughhouse with fascination and confusion, trying to co-opt their toys for her own, their generosity with her. nerding out over books with my brother. my husband watching all of the kids so the rest of us could chat with my dad. a good day.

• also last weekend: a neighborhood birthday party, complete with petting zoo! e loved the bunnies the most, and I got to pick up a baby goat. she also tried to throw a baby chick into the duckling enclosure, but that’s neither here nor there. I rescued it, and let’s just say I’m less enthusiastic about holding birds than I am goats.

• the aforementioned pool session coming to an abrupt close when someone decided to throw pebbles in the pool repeatedly, not heeding her mother’s warnings. having to learn to take the really good moments with the ones that don’t shine as bright — isn’t that parenthood for you?

• waking up this morning, on day 29 of my cycle, after a terrible night’s sleep, with a stye. why is the universe testing me?

Currently I’m…

• watching: we just started House of Stassi, being dorks who loved Vanderpump Rules before it all went to hell. I don’t know if I can ride as hard for Stassi as she seems to think everyone is going to with this show, but I’m willing to see what kinds of messes she gets herself into in the name of science.

• reading: yesterday I finished Go Gentle and let me tell you, not for one minute did I know where that story was taking me. maybe you don’t know if you need a book about a TV writer turned Stoic philosopher who finds herself at the center of some wealthy people’s international intrigue, but apparently I did, and I laughed out loud on multiple occasions. book talk with lauren comped this with Lost Lambs in terms of vibes and I 100% agree — I’ll be picking up Lauren’s rec for a spiritually similar read, The Obsessed, very soon.

• listening: I’m sorry to tell you it’s not an erudite podcast, it’s just Dateline: Missing in America. like most of your run-of-the-mill white millennial women, I’m a sucker for a good true crime story, and mysterious vanishings are my favorite. Zelig Williams’s case creeps me right out. I wish they could find him.

• enjoying: Albanese World’s Best gummy bears. I have lost the plot with these. they are the best gummy bears and I have known this for some time, but lately I quite literally can’t stop eating them. the other night I ran out and intentionally didn’t buy more at the store and then when I was sad about it my husband revealed that he had already bought and hidden a second bag the last time he went out to get them for me. what a man, what a man.

• anticipating: tomorrow we get to meet the tiny new little baby of some dear friends! I am over the moon to welcome another little girl to the fold and am trying to prepare for the inevitable should I, shouldn’t I questions that result from holding a tiny baby again.

This week I’m thinking a lot about what it means to show up for yourself when it feels like the stakes are so low they might not matter. What does it mean that I return to the page every week, twice a week, to write for you here, when no one has actually asked me to do this? What does it mean to wash your face and brush your teeth before bed when all you want to do is crawl under the sheets and succumb to the end of another day? What does it mean to eat a nourishing meal when a bag of chips is all you feel like having? Taken in one-offs, making the suboptimal choice in instances like these may not have big repercussions. But how we show up (or don’t) once or twice informs how we show up the next few times, and soon we’re creating systems and patterns that carry us further from our intended destinations, whether that’s a consistent writing practice or healthy teeth and clear skin. Maybe no one would care if this week’s gentle joys didn’t go out until tomorrow, but I’m trying to care about showing up here consistently. I want to be the kind of writer you can depend on seeing in your inbox when I say I’m going to be there. And by doing that, I’m showing myself that what I set out to do matters, that moving in the direction I want to go in, every single little time, counts for something. Even when it feels like no one reads. Even if no one will know you didn’t wash your face. Even when you’re not hungry for anything more than a bag of chips.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can receive my weekly posts? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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It’s a curious thing, then, that motherhood is showing me how much I am in a self-imposed rush in all the moments that it doesn’t matter.

My two-year-old daughter, e, likes to be the one to turn her sound machine on at night and turn it off in the morning. Sunday morning, holding her considerable weight in my arms, I asked her if she wanted to turn it off and handed it to her. She held it, considered it, put it up to her ear and remarked, smiling, “It’s very noisy.” Then she held it up to my ear. “Come on,” I found myself saying to her, “turn it off now, let’s go.”

But go where? All we were doing was walking down the hall to our bedroom, where we’d snuggle in bed and entertain her for a while without actually having to start our day yet. It was hours before she had anywhere to be. And yet, in this tiny moment, I was rushing her through a task simply because it was taking longer than I thought it should take. Because I wanted to cozy up in bed. Because I wanted to be more comfortable.

I am learning that I do this constantly. My husband sometimes catches me, calls me out. “There’s no rush,” he’ll point out as I hurry her along the path to the beach or up the stairs when we’re getting home. “We don’t have anywhere else to be.” Something about her toddler inclination to dawdle, to do things inefficiently, surfaces my need to be done and moving on to the next task. This is ironic because I’m not exactly an exemplar of efficiency, and I’m not at all the type A mom who’s booked and busy (I’m busy, yes, but with quiet things like writing and reading and parenting, not a million activities and deadlines and places to be).

What I have known deep down for awhile, and what motherhood is making all too clear, is that I have a strange need to be done with certain tasks when I think they should be done. I struggle with letting things take the amount of time they’re going to take, to enjoy doing things that take a bit of time if I think they should be done quickly, if I think I’ll be more comfortable when the task is complete. I rush through my evening showers because I’d rather be horizontal, reading or watching TV. I rush my daughter up and down the stairs because I don’t want going up and down the stairs to be something that takes all day — I’d rather already be doing the thing we’re going up or downstairs to do. But really, since I don’t have a million places to be and neither does my kid, what is the damn rush?

Even before I got sober and became a mom, I was rushing through tasks like this all the time, and I think usually it had to do with getting the things done that needed to be done so I could fully check out. Living itself felt fraught, and I wanted to be high on the couch with a glass of wine (or five) so I could do nothing. I would race through work to this end, rush home from dinners out to get to my vape pen, hurry through all the actual parts of life that make up living just so I could slump on the couch and stare vacantly at the TV.

As a sober mom with dreams and ambitions, it’s different — I’m rarely racing through things to get to a chance to do nothing. Now that I’m clocked back into living my life, I’m racing through my shower to get to my book, or contemplating rushing e down for her nap early to have a chance to write a few extra words. My end goal now is the opposite of what it was before: I’m trying to fit in more life, rather than less, and yet the MO remains the same. I’m in a rush, and I’m rushing my daughter along with me.

Letting things take the amount of time they need to take, especially with a toddler, comes down to patience, and it’s something I’m learning I don’t have a lot of, particularly in certain parenting contexts. I find myself wanting e to do everything I say to do exactly when I say to do it, and in that there’s a catch: I’m denying her the opportunity to explore her world and experience how things feel and look to her at the pace that feels good in her little mind and body. And I’m denying myself the chance to observe her doing this. Everything, everything is brand-new to this sweet, independent little girl, and man, what a blessing to get to watch her do life for the very first time. What a waste it would be to look back and think, I missed it because I was in a hurry to get nowhere.

I’d do well to remember this the next time it takes her five full minutes to choose which shoes to wear to the grocery store or which book to read at bedtime. Allowing her the agency to do things at her own pace is going to nurture her independence, help her to know in her soul that she can make decisions herself, and grow her confidence in the way I so desperately want for her. And sure, sometimes we actually are late and need to move things along as parents, and that’s fine too, as long as I’m being careful to not rush the tiny moments that make up her small, but ever-expanding, life, for no reason other than my own comfort. If being rushed makes me feel scattered and out of control and uneasy, why would I ever do that to her? Only so I could feel a little better, a little more in control, and as her parent this isn’t exactly my job.

My job is to let her grow, and to let her experience the world around her in the ways that will foster that growth. Rushing her through each experience, whether it’s a new one or something we do every day, is not the way to go about it. My comfort over hers isn’t the goal here. Her growth over my comfort is. I’m trying to treat patience as something I can practice, as a gift she is giving me by offering me a hundred opportunities each day to take a deep breath, remind myself that I have nowhere in particular to be, and let her do her thing. She and I will both be better off for it.

an invitation

This week, notice where you find yourself rushing — whether it’s yourself or a loved one — and pause to ask why. Where do you need to be, or what do you need to be doing, instead of what you’re doing in this moment? Can you practice being patient and present instead of hurrying on toward the next thing?

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• last weekend I got away — not far from home, but to a lakeside rental where I could read, write, journal, brainstorm, and daydream in peace without context switching into mom mode every hour. the weather was stunning and I got to sit in the shady outdoor space, breeze in my hair, sunlight freckling the table, and put ideas into words and dreams onto paper as I thought about what I want reinterested to become and how I want to show up here. I also read an entire mystery novel (a solid read, four stars), because I can’t write constantly and my brain needs lots of breaks!!

• e is growing her language skills a mile a minute, and it’s so fun to watch and listen to. some standouts from the past few days: pronouncing the Ls in “yellow” (I am a little devastated it’s not “yeyyow” anymore); telling our cat “jezzy, you’re fine” when she’s meowing outside of her designated feeding times (she picked this up from me, I’m afraid); and, digging into my purse and pulling out my wallet, “let me have a credit card.” she also told me she was going “shopping for bunglemugum,” by which she means bubblegum.

• our home renovation is speeding along quite well, which I almost dare not say because what if I JINX it?! our bathroom is almost fully tiled and is looking real cute. they’ve been cleaning up so painting and flooring can happen next. our roof is being… roofed. (that part’s boring but also important I guess). and our front doors just got a fresh coat of FUN paint! it’s so fun to see everything coming together and to be getting ready to think about the best part… moving back in and decorating.

• well, this is the tiniest of tiny bonks, but today I had a free hour for a break before a meeting. it was sunny and I had the house and pool to myself. after the considerable slathering of sunscreen that needs to happen in this day and age, I hopped in to float and read, and not only did I get sunscreen IN MY EYE, but the sky clouded over after about 15 minutes and I was left floating with goosebumps and no sunshine. it took my eyeball a full hour to stop watering.

• if you’ve been reading, you know I had a bigger bonk this week with respect to how I’m feeling about sharing my writing on here. I’ve been worrying about how I’m finding my voice and asking bigger questions about how I’m showing up, what I have to offer, and whether or not I’m boring (UGH). I’m still feeling pretty raw from all of it, if we’re being honest (and I am), but I got a lot of wonderful support from all of you when I posted about my meltdown and that made it feel worth sharing, even though it was draining and difficult and I am still not totally over it! so, thank you for showing up for me. it means so much.

Currently I’m…

• watching: my husband and I are trying very hard to finish the finale of the most recent season of Traitors UK. we have been watching this season for months and last night we finally laid down in bed to watch the last episode. we made progress! but then we got sleepy. it’s such a good season but we are out of our TV-watching rhythm being at my in-laws during this reno. we’ll get there, someday.

• reading: Go Gentle by Maria Semple. so far it’s quirky and Adora Hazzard (what a name!) is endearing and I’m enjoying it. I’m entirely unsure of where it’s going to end up, which as far as I’m concerned is not an unpleasant way to read.

• listening: also a book, Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler. I love a memoir read aloud by the author, and this one starts out with a bang (Tendler opens with an account of checking herself into a psychiatric hospital). She writes evocatively but unsentimentally about what led her to that place and her experience of meeting the other women in her unit, and I’m fully invested in her story.

• enjoying: spending spare moments browsing pinterest for home decor inspo (search terms of note: cozy, eclectic, warm, colorful) and shopping online for furniture that will make our newly opened up living space feel functional and inviting and like us.

Sometimes, when I lose myself in my writing or even when I’m home alone during my 9-5 work day, and especially after a solo weekend away, I find myself wondering if I’m ever allowed to just be a person when, in fact, I am a mom now and always will be. Am I ever just Lauren, working and writing and living her own life as an individual? Or, since I am inextricably linked to my daughter and always thinking about her now, does that label of “mom” hold fast even in the tiny moments when I am alone? I guess another way of putting it is: Am I ever actually alone now? Sometimes, after I put my very low-maintenance little one to bed and know she is safely in her crib for the night, I forget to turn on the monitor, and for those few moments I am not thinking about her directly. Am I truly alone then? I don’t have an answer, and I think the answer might differ from mom to mom. It’s just something I’m thinking about. As parents, and especially as mothers, when are we really alone and allowed to only be ourselves? Or has that ship sailed? I’d love to hear your perspective.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can receive my weekly posts? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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It was preachy and pedantic. It sounded like a bad textbook. I was writing about how boredom makes us want to escape into numbness, which is not a topic I hate, but my god, it was boring (I am not amused by the irony of this). Nothing about the first few sentences made me want to read more, and if I felt that way, after having written it, how would you feel when I asked you to read it?

Friends, I spiraled. It turned my morning upside down. I felt panicky and embarrassed and like I could not possibly have a clue what I was doing calling myself a writer and trying to build a community on Substack. I unscheduled the post and texted my husband in a frenzy. Master catastrophizer that I am, I was turning this into an existential crisis. “I can’t find my voice on here. I want reading my stuff to be fun and this isn’t fun. It’s the opposite of fun. Everything I’ve written on Substack must also not be fun. Am I not fun?!” And so on.

Just the day before, I was wrapping up a weekend away on my own — a weekend I spent writing and reading and brainstorming and dreaming happily about what I wanted to turn reinterested into over time. I sat at an outdoor table at a coffee shop, turning the previous day’s brain dump into something readable, with a pistachio latte at hand and the breeze ruffling my hair, and I texted my husband, “I feel so alive.” We chatted a little about how I could bring that feeling home with me and make it something I could access without two days and nights away from our family and then I put my phone down, opened a notebook, kept dreaming. My brain was working, and it was my creative brain, my writer brain, my community-building brain — not just my mom brain and my 9-5 brain. It felt so good. Refreshing and stimulating and purposeful. I felt like myself, just myself, and for a toddler mom who works full-time, that’s huge.

All of that came crashing down on Monday morning. Self-doubt didn’t tiptoe into my mind; it came barging in, guns blazing, ready to cast doubt on everything I’ve done here on Substack in the past four months. I’m writing this on Monday night, and I’m still trying to tease out how much of it is a genuine epiphany (I want my writing to feel more like me, and also more fun and engaging), how much of it is fatigue from doing more writing and thinking over the past 48 hours than I’m used to, and how much of it is my luteal phase kicking my ass (IYKYK).

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle of all these potential realities. I’m writing long-form posts about what’s important to me — motherhood and creativity and sobriety and mental health — but I don’t know that I’ve been doing it in a way that captures my voice and makes readers feel connected to me, a pushing-40 sober mom of a sassy two-year-old who is figuring out what makes her feel alive again after over a decade of being fully checked out. That’s who I am. That’s what I want to write. And sure, in my sobriety story there is a big piece about boredom and lack of fulfillment that’s worth saying out loud. I’m sure I can write it, someday, in a way that won’t make me want to rip my eyeballs out of my head when I think about sending it to a bunch of people who know me in real life and a bunch of people who don’t.

And I think that’s really the piece that drove me to panic as a first response this morning. The idea that I almost did something so embarrassing as to send out a post that wasn’t just not ready, but wasn’t reflective of who I am and how I want to show up in this space. I just read Emma Gannon’s latest piece on The Hyphen (it’s paywalled, but I have a couple of gift subscriptions to offer — if you’re interested, shoot me a DM), and it speaks beautifully to the embarrassment creatives risk and experience by putting themselves out there.

Emma writes:

Being a writer or artist often means exposing yourself to some level of embarrassment, especially early on. But it is also rewarding: you feel connected to others when you share those parts of yourself… Over time, we must learn to stomach the embarrassment and show up anyway.

For me, yesterday, the potential embarrassment of sending out work I wasn’t proud of mingled with my embarrassment at allowing myself to be perceived at all, by any of you. I turned one flawed essay — one you haven’t even read — into a catastrophe of shame for being seen trying to do something well, trying to build something real, and not hitting every mark along the way.

It’s hard to try publicly at something new and learn all the ways you’re unprepared and unqualified and just, maybe, not as good as someone else who’s doing the same thing you are. It’s humbling to let people in your life know that you’re doing a thing, and to not know how it will turn out, and to hope that they don’t think less of you for being earnest on the internet.

But here’s what I know: I’d rather be caught trying, and do something that makes me feel alive — something that will teach me new things and strengthen my resilience and grow my skills and keep my spark lit — than to never try at all, even if those efforts come with a hefty dose of humiliation and discomfort, a little bit more visibility than I feel good about. Discomfort is how we stretch and grow, and it’s also part of being alive, which is something I’m embracing these days. So I’ll sit with it even when it feels really, really bad. And yesterday felt really, really bad.

But now? Now that I’ve written all this and laid bare my spiraling, catastrophizing soul to you, my readers? I feel a little better. I feel like maybe you can see me a little more clearly now. I feel like maybe we could have some fun.

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• A sunny, idyllic Saturday walk down the street with e, coffee cup in my hand and water bottle in hers, backwards hat on, a monarch butterfly following us from house to house.

• Cooking a simple meal for family on a Wednesday night and feeling the urge to create something of my own — picking out the best-looking tomatoes at the store and cooking them down into a bold, rich sauce full of lemon zest and anchovies and garlic, flying by the seat of my pants, doing something extra just for the sheer fun of it. Singing aloud in the kitchen while three other adults kept the toddler out from underfoot. A moment to feel a creative spark somewhere outside of my laptop.

• Celebrating my husband’s birthday with a full weekday off of work, a lazy morning and a hearty breakfast at a favorite local spot, complete with blueberry pancakes for the table. All three of us devouring them as if we’d never eaten a pancake before. Savory breakfast + table pancake = formula for brunch success.

• I didn’t sleep last night!! I could not relax my muscles. I could not shut off my brain. I tried my go-to (old episodes of Crime Junkie on sleep headphones) — no luck. I tried my other go-to (reading on my very dimly lit Kindle) — no luck. In light of this, I did not get up at five am to write, and in light of that, you are not receiving this newsletter at the hour at which I would have liked for you to receive it. bonk.

• Some birthday mishaps: a very loud tire blowout right in front of the coffee shop, our second (!) in a month (!!). (At least it was me once and my husband once, so we share the humiliation equally.) Buying some nice clothes for his gift and realizing they were all laughably large on him — oops. Planning on decent weather so we could hit up an evening concert in the park with friends and instead staying home in pouring rain.

Currently I’m…

• reading: Last night while I was not sleeping, I was finishing Lost Lambs, which is a truly fantastic read and nothing like what I expected. The characters are quirky and flawed and heartwarming and the climax of the book is wildly dark in an outrageous way. I don’t think this book is for everyone, but if you like bizarre plots with eccentric people finding their own eccentric people, it might be for you.

• listening: Jensen McRae’s album I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! She stole my heart with her debut album and I love this one, too. She’s such a thoughtful, earnest songwriter (Something twisted in my chest/Says I'm good but not the best/When I was young, that knocked me out/But nothing really shakes me now) and I can’t stop singing along when I have her music on.

• enjoying: Daydreaming about furnishing our new, open living space when our renovation is finished in early September. It’s going to be so different from the closed-off rooms we had before, and we don’t even know what kind of layout we’ll end up with, so for now I’m having fun browsing furniture online and pretending I’m going to be a different, more minimalist, tidier person when we move back in. Pinterest is calling my name…

• anticipating: I’m going away by myself this weekend, locally, to write and recharge and get some alone time and boy oh boy, I cannot WAIT. I have lots of daydreaming and planning and brainstorming I want to do with respect to my Substack space and a lot of journaling to catch up on… plus I’m planning to read a good book, paint my toenails, and make this dirty martini pickle salsa for dinner (sans vodka, obviously).

This week I’m thinking a lot about what it’s like being an introvert married to an extrovert. In the spirit of birthday week, my husband has gone out after work with different friend groups every day this week. Meanwhile, I’m plotting my escape from family life to go be alone for 48 hours by a lake. We each have very different needs when it comes to what fills our cups, and our marriage is 15 years old and counting because we’ve found ways to make space for that and respect each other’s social batteries. Just like it’s not optional for me to have alone time if I’m going to be a decent partner and parent, it’s not optional for him to have a social life that feels exciting and rejuvenating. Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different, and in a marriage, learning about how the other person moves through the world is an ongoing practice that reaps benefits if you tend to it and (over)communicate about it.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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why are you numbing?

reason 01: you’re in pain

This is probably the most obvious reason anyone numbs, and for that reason alone it’s worth examining.

What it looked like for me:

Deep, seemingly unending depressive episodes throughout my twenties and into my thirties that came so close together they practically overlapped. Trying medication after medication, finding things that helped but not enough. Mental and physical exhaustion and profound sadness. Brutal intrusive thoughts.

Self-medicating with alcohol, THC, and food offered a convenient way to check out when this was what my life looked like: They lifted my mood (temporarily). They gave me something (I thought) to look forward to when I wasn’t looking forward to much. They helped me act like I was engaged and having fun during social events, when I felt so depleted I couldn’t have behaved that way without them. They helped me feel nothing when that was the best I could hope for, and I was under the illusion that they helped me feel happiness when that seemed completely out of reach.

What it might look like for you:

Grief. Loneliness. A lack of belonging. A broken heart. The pain of estrangement or distance from a loved one. The knowledge that you’re not living the life you’re meant to live or meeting your potential in a way that honors your ambition. We all carry aches and deeper pains that make us want to seek relief. A lot of times that relief looks like numbness, even apathy, because when we’re suffering, it’s easier to see our way to not feeling anything than to feeling actual joy. Joy may feel unattainable, but numbness feels like neutral ground, achievable if only for a few moments or hours. That kind of detachment can feel infinitely preferable to the deep pain of depression or grief, and it’s no wonder we look for anything that can provide even a hint of freedom from it. Alcohol and weed blunt the edges, make us feel less, and even if we are still feeling sadness or loneliness or longing, they can make us feel like we no longer care that we’re feeling them.

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The flip side:

It’s not comfortable. In fact, sitting with and in your difficult emotions is downright miserable, most of the time, and I’m not saying to meet these feelings without attempts to ameliorate them, manage them, or make our circumstances better. But what I am saying is that a certain amount of tolerance for discomfort can lessen our need for artificial numbness. An awareness that grief takes time. The self-knowledge that we are limited and need rest and nourishment when depression strikes. Fighting the current of how we are actually feeling can add so much exhaustion to the pile of emotions, and while I don’t think complete surrender is the answer, I do think acceptance and self-awareness should be part of the picture. I do think there is growth to be gained by feeling the things rather than trying so hard to make them go away without acknowledging them, naming them, moving through them.

I’ve taken breaks from THC or alcohol — or both — and returned to them when life got hard, reaching for numbness to, as I always put it, “turn my brain off.” What I found, time and time again, was that the depression or grief or heartache was always waiting for me when I sobered up. I wasn’t avoiding it, I was just delaying it. Trying to numb my way out of it created a cycle: feel pain, drink or smoke to feel nothing, wake up with renewed pain, repeat. Every time my mind cleared, the hurt was still there. Seeking relief in this way prolonged my pain — it didn’t end it.

I don’t know how I’ll meet a depressive episode or a new heartbreak as a sober person, as a mother, as someone who uses writing to process life. My depressed self and the new version of myself — the one who doesn’t check out — haven’t met before. But I’ve strengthened the muscles that will allow me to try and meet the moment with a new awareness of what it means to move through pain without numbing it.

I think it’s worth asking: What are you using to numb? Is it alcohol or drugs, or is it hours in front of a blaring tv, phone in hand, stimulation at any cost so you don’t have to hear yourself think? Is it a bag of chips or a whole box of cookies? Is it sleeping the day away, staying in bed as long as you can, so you don’t have to face your life? We seek detachment in so many ways, and once you understand how you’re doing it, you can look for feelings that elicit that desire. What if you asked yourself to wait five or 10 minutes before you give in? What if you sit with that emotion, just for a little while, first? What might you learn about yourself and about what will actually nourish you or give you respite in the moment? How might you seek to be your own companion when things get hard, rather than escaping yourself altogether?

Thanks for taking an interest,

• A Sunday family treat day: We haven’t done much in the way of intentional family outings in the past few weeks, so over the weekend we set out to do just that. Our favorite pizza place started using their wood-fire oven to make bagels on weekend mornings, so we scooped up a few of those (that lox bagel changed my life). Then we made our way a few towns over, where we grabbed fun drinks from a mobile coffee cart run by an acquaintance from high school (a cornbread latte! a cherry vanilla latte!) and walked along the oceanfront boulevard there. We saw the drawbridge go up for the boats, e watching, rapt, as they motored their way through the narrow channel, cheering, “more boats!” Then we went home so she could nap, and my husband and I floated lazily in the pool, baby monitor on standby. Summertime bliss.

• Getting a text from a dear friend, who I’ve known and loved since my freshman year of college (20+ years!), with black and white film photos from our Folly Beach getaway in March — I love the one above of me, completely at peace, looking at the morning sun over the ocean, surrounded by women who know me well and love me better. A sweet reminder of an excellent, restorative weekend with my best girls.

• The home renovation is going… dare I say it… well?! The contractor and his team seem to be immaculate workers and are moving quickly and thoughtfully. We made a quick pivot to gut a closet and move our laundry up from the basement, and my excitement for this change is really a confirmation that midlife is, indeed, creeping up on me…

• Growth on Substack is feeling slow. I know I’m just riding the waves of building something new, but it feels frustrating not to see the numbers reflect my diligence and enthusiasm for this space! This is a boring, self-indulgent bonk, but it’s the one I’m feeling every day, so here it is, in all its mundanity.

• Realizing that no matter how emotionally regulated I feel most of the time, during the times it counts — when e is struggling to regulate herself — I still have a hard time. I posted about this on Monday, but as she grows into being a full-fledged two-year-old, with all that accompanies that age, I’m feeling it more and more. Trying, as I wrote, to stay curious about what helps and give myself grace when something doesn’t work.
  
  

Currently I’m…

• reading: Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. I only started last night, but already there’s a quirky, humorous vibe I’m enjoying. I hardly remember what this book is about, so I’m going in nearly blind, which excites me. (Sometimes I add books that sound good to my TBR and then purposely don’t read much more about them, so I can be surprised later when I finally pick them up. It works for me.) I flew through Whistler last week and loved it — the way Patchett writes the nuances of relationships in such a casual but incisive way makes my head spin. (“I started to get up, but Leda put her hand on my ankle. My feet had been resting in my sister’s lap.”) I could faint at how good this woman is at writing.

• listening: mainly to e singing “Wheels on the Bus,” “Old MacDonald,” and “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” Especially in the car. And at dinnertime. And at bedtime.

• watching: I haven’t been watching much lately, but between e’s penchant for Ms. Rachel and my own commitment to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, rest assured I’m getting my screen time in. I have so far found Kathy Hilton to be a delightful cast addition, but I don’t know what I don’t know!

• enjoying: evenings to myself. When we moved into my in-laws’ (see: the aforementioned home renovation), I knew I’d need to carve out some alone time in the evenings so we all felt like we had some space (it’s me, I’m the one who needs space). After we put e to bed, I shower and head upstairs to read or write or journal, and my husband watches a show with his folks. It’s been nice to do my own thing, and I credit my good attitude mainly to this ritual.

• anticipating: making Harrison Wallace’s summer tomato pasta for dinner tonight. This is one of those situations where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. I highly encourage you to try this one. In the summer. With farm stand tomatoes, if you please.

Whistler has me thinking about fathers. The ones we’re born with, and the ones who earn an honorific title by showing up, over and over again, with care and generosity and sheer presence. I’ve had a few really good dad figures in my life, and now I get to learn from one of the best in the business — my husband, whom my daughter is lucky to call “dada” and “daddy” and who delights in his role as her parent. My favorite observation? When e is being particularly trying, in a two-year-old way that makes me sigh and say her name tiredly, he puts extra love and enthusiasm and energy into his voice and says something like, “e, do you know I just love you?!” He completely flips the script, and usually she kind of resets herself, and they start over. That he can find the love and fortitude to respond to her this way — always in the exact moment that I find myself ready to tap out — astonishes me, and makes me daydream about how much calmer and reassured we could all feel if we were met in hard times with abundant, enthusiastic affirmation, rather than exhaustion and a grudging willingness to meet each other’s basic needs.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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If you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week, would you hit the subscribe button so you can follow along weekly? It means the world to me when my words land with the right people, so if that’s you, I’d be honored to add you to my list.

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My first instinct: put on Ms. Rachel, stat.

My husband’s first instinct: get her outside.

We don’t use screen time a lot, and I knew intellectually that racing to regulate her via TV was not the lesson I necessarily wanted to impart. But I’m not above a little treat in a moment of distress, and I found myself desperate to stop her tears. She was so sad, and I knew this would work, so I suggested it to my husband, speaking over her cries and hitching breaths even as I amended, “but I know we don’t have to rush to fix this.”

Did I know that, though? My heart was racing and she wanted her dad, which was fine, but instead of feeling a pull to walk through this with her and help her slowly regulate with my own calm, I wanted to throw her in front of a screen and let Ms. Rachel do the regulating for me. I wanted to check out and take the easy path.

My husband, meanwhile, stayed present. He walked her through the yard, pointing out flowers and asking her what color the swing was and showing her rocks. She kept crying. He asked her if she wanted to do a few things, and when she eked out a teary “yes” to magnatiles, he took her back inside and started building while she watched, still crying. He asked her what he should build and she said a frog, so he built a tower out of magnatiles and called it a frog. I scoffed — that’s not a frog! — but her crying slowed, her breathing evened out.

I was sitting off to the side, picking up a crossword puzzle to try to avoid being an audience to their co-regulation. I was not doing great and I didn’t want to spread it back around. I was sad and feeling inadequate, already letting guilt kick in, giving in to the internal narrative that I was a bad mom for jumping immediately to a solution that probably wouldn’t have allowed my daughter to process her feelings and help herself feel better organically. I made a comment to that effect when my husband checked in, and he immediately asked me why I was “being so mean” to myself (as he does, because I am somewhat regularly ungenerous with myself about my own emotions). He reminded me there was nothing wrong with a little TV.

I know now that what I missed in my own dysregulation, what I could have done to help myself and therefore help e, was to get curious about how we could both feel better. I leapt to the first thing that came to mind, the panacea of elusive screen time, and failed to just ask myself a couple of basic questions. What makes me feel better, actually better and not just distracted, when I’m upset? How can I ground myself and my daughter in this moment, make us present with ourselves, slow our breathing? What does an upset toddler need from her parents when she can’t calm down? Not: How do I make this stop immediately? Not: What do I need to feel better right away? Not:

Ohmygodshe’shurthowdoIfixitwhatdoIdowhywon’tshestopcrying.

Less panic, less urgency, less forcing quick distractions over presence and skill-building. More resilience, more curiosity, more creativity around what’s needed and what will help.

I’m a black-and-white thinker, so curiosity is hard for me. I either know the answer or I don’t. I either can do something or I can’t. I’m either chill or I’m not. The gray area, the one where I need to ask questions and try things out, even things that fail, and work to regulate alongside someone else — especially someone who depends on me — can feel like unsteady ground.

So, my girl and I will learn together. She will teach me what she needs, probably teaching me what I need along the way, when she’s upset. I will learn to be curious about what might work and to be less discouraged when an idea I have doesn’t help. We will both learn from her dad, who is wildly even-keeled (but how??), along the way.

Not every trick needs to work. Not every boo-boo will require intentional co-regulation and creative solutions. But over and over again, as her mom, I will have to be in the discomfort of life with her, and I will choose to stay there and allow her to be in it too, rather than racing to fix it artificially. I will get curious about the ways we can be in it and move forward. Right now it’s a cut foot, a bonk on the head, a push on the playground. Someday it will be not making the team or feeling left out by friends or getting her heart broken (and wow, did my heart start racing just writing those words). Part of being her mom is learning her heart, the way her mind works, the things that slow her breathing and bring her back to herself. I have to be open to learning these things about myself in the process.

But if I can keep asking questions, and measure success in how present I stay with her rather than in how quickly I can get her to stop crying — well, then, we’re gonna be okay.

(And yes, when she started feeling better, we did put on Ms. Rachel.)

Let me know in the comments: How can curiosity
help you handle discomfort more steadily?

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What a week it’s been! An unwelcome heat wave, some very welcome pool time with friends, a busy holiday weekend, continuing home renovations, and more — not to mention trying to stay balanced in the rhythms of the work week and life with a toddler. I hope the week has been kind to you and that you’re gearing up for just the kind of weekend you need, whether that’s a loud, busy one or a gentle, slow one, or one with bits and pieces of each. Cheers!

• keeping e up for fireworks on the beach in my hometown on July 3, and feeling surprisingly emotional while she snuggled up against me and looked up at the sky, trying to reach up and grab for the sparkles — something about her being so little and the sky being so big and getting to be the one who shows her cool stuff like this just felt so poignant, somehow gut-wrenching and fun all at the same time.

• feeling the pull toward a celebratory drink after work to kick off the long weekend — in the past this would have been more like six celebratory drinks, all containing alcohol — and deciding, to hell with it, I’m having a 6pm iced coffee!! there are rules in sobriety but they aren’t about caffeine, at least in my world!

• choosing, on a gloomy, PMS-y day, to hop outside with e and scurry through the rain into the library bookmobile that parks outside my in-laws’ place every couple of weeks. we saw some neighbors, e picked out some cute books (as did her mama, naturally), and delighted in the feeling of community that services like this evoke. I also learned that my father-in-law makes a point of checking books out every time it comes, even if he is not going to read them (spoiler: he is not going to read them), because he likes that the bookmobile exists and comes to his neighborhood and wants it to keep coming. sob.

• ah, the immense overstimulation of the Fourth of July. it’s a lot of celebrating over just one or two days, and in small-town New England, it adds up to a lot of options and obligations in a short period of time. fireworks, parades, stopping by multiple cookouts and gatherings, all in 95-degree heat. it’s too much for this sweaty introvert! I’m trying to see it through a fresh lens now that I have a little one (see above) but truth be told, I’m always a little relieved when it’s over.

• yesterday a migraine took. me. out. the head pain itself actually didn’t last as long as I expected, but the nausea that surfaced stayed put all day and into the night, which is not my usual experience, and it rendered me nearly nonfunctional. I missed work, but I felt too ill to read or enjoy any kind of rest, and then I missed a concert in the park on a perfect summer evening with my family. such is life, but it was a bonk for sure.

Currently I’m…

• watching: yesterday I needed a movie I could basically just listen to while I laid around feeing sick, and I found Miss Congeniality for free on Tubi. What a gem of a movie. Parts of it have not aged well (Y2K sexism and misogyny run rampant) but it didn’t give me too much ick, all things considered, and my nostalgia for this won out (I was in high school when it came out). Sandra Bullock is a national treasure, and this gave me some very comforting 2000s vibes while I wasn’t feeling well.

• reading: I’m still finishing up Butter, but my library hold on Whistler came through and if you don’t think I’ll be unsufferable about protecting my reading time until I finish it, you have another think coming.

• listening: Noah Kahan’s new album is always on repeat, especially this week while he’s playing at Fenway in Boston. Also frequently in rotation: old episodes of Crime Junkie when I can’t sleep (I am a dedicated part of the problem when it comes to millennial women who are comforted by murder) and this lo-fi playlist when I’m working.

• anticipating: local farms near me have just started picking their own corn, and peaches are soon to follow. I am about to be a menace at the farm stand, and I can’t even talk about how excited I am for tomatoes.

I’m thinking a lot about accepting help when it’s needed. Yesterday, just looking at my computer screen made me feel sick, and I took a couple of coworkers up on their offer to help so I could get something time-sensitive done. I hemmed and hawed about it and nearly felt guilty for saying “yes, please help!” but the reality was, I needed someone to step in, and they were happy to do it. It’s like this as a mom, too — saying yes when someone offers to take my daughter for an hour or two can be hard for so many reasons (mom guilt, daughter guilt, wife guilt) but I’m learning that people don’t typically offer a hand unless they genuinely mean it, and it’s nice to give someone an opportunity to get those mood-boosting endorphins that flood our brains when we help someone else. It’s a win-win, and we should all do it more. I should do it more — the helping and the saying yes.

Thanks for taking an interest in life’s endearing minutiae with me! What brought you joy, caught your eye, or stayed on your mind this week?

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If you enjoyed hearing these sweet, silly little details about how I’m taking an interest in being alive, would you drop a heart? It means so much to know you’re here with me, following along. Thank you!

Not because of the responsibilities parenthood would place on me, although of course that was not nothing. Not even because of all the things that could go wrong, although of course that’s on most hopeful mothers’ minds. But because, beyond anything else, I felt a certainty that I would be judged for deciding to get pregnant in a bigger body. And for daring to do it with a mind that required psych meds to stay stable and safe.

Getting pregnant in a body like mine, with a brain like mine, required a certain amount of audacity that for years I could not muster.

I worried because I knew that I couldn’t perform pregnancy perfectly. I worried that friends and family and strangers would judge me, silently or through expressions of concern, when they found out I was so bold as to attempt to carry a healthy baby in my big, unruly body, with a well-documented history (I had a blog!) of debilitating depression and anxiety.

Most of all, I feared the doctors. I had heard rumors of some practices refusing patients above a certain BMI. I extrapolated from this and began to build it up in my mind: real or imagined horror stories of scales that didn’t go high enough, ultrasounds that couldn’t detect heartbeats through abdominal fat, doctors who would chastise their patients and belittle them for gambling with the health of their babies and themselves, for getting pregnant without losing weight first.

I had a lot of work to do to get ready to get pregnant, and none of it had to do with optimizing my fertility or buying a house or hitting a certain number in a savings account to feel prepared. Instead, I had to work to fight back against the fear and perfectionism that ran deep down into my bones.

I had already done plenty of emotional labor to get to this point: I had finally gotten an accurate diagnosis of bipolar II, and after years of trying different medications for my recalcitrant depression, I had found a combination that worked. I was well. Once my mind had cleared, I found my way to sobriety, which quieted the rampant anxiety I’d been waking up with and bearing through most days. I felt calm, happy, present — except when I remembered that my biological clock was ticking.

Perfectionism, Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic, is “just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified.” I was aiming mine at my hypothetical pregnancy, and what I needed was to practice, with intention and a lot of gentleness, pushing back against it. My brand of perfectionism was a fear of judgment; maybe yours is a fear of doing something that’s less than your best effort, or of putting something out into the world that isn’t ready, or of being perceived a certain way by people who don’t know the real you. They’re all shades of the same color. Here are the four things I did to finally be done with my own fear and stop delaying my life in service of it. I recommend this as a gentle framework for pushing back against fear-based perfectionism.

1. Find out what you don’t know. A lot of my fear of judgment was rooted in inaccuracies and worst-case scenarios that I’d made up in my own head. I assumed I’d have to go off my psych meds. I assumed the doctors would be judgemental, dismissive, and rude. I assumed I would be treated poorly and told I should never have gotten pregnant, or that I might even be denied care. It turned out that none of this was true. When my therapist recommended I visit a maternal-fetal medicine specialist to find out about what risks I was carrying and which meds I could stay on, I did — and found out I could stay on almost all of them, that my age wasn’t a real factor, and that while my weight was a risk factor, I could still have a healthy pregnancy. (Although the doctor did, in a mostly nonjudgmental way, ask if I had considered bariatric surgery, and let me know it could lead to “a better outcome,” she also said the words “you can have a healthy pregnancy,” and so I left feeling assured and empowered to make my own decision). I also left with a recommendation for a practice that would be well-equipped to manage my care. Those doctors and nurses were the best, and I would never have found them if I hadn’t made this initial appointment to quell all of my what-ifs.

If you’re fighting perfectionism by way of fear of judgment, I encourage you to ask yourself: What am I assuming is true, without evidence or confirmation? Where am I predicting the worst without any foundation? Try to find out what you don’t know, instead of embarking on an enthusiastic spiral downward on your own. Seek out experts and people with experience. What you learn may surprise you, and even sustain you as you push back against your instinctive anxiety.

2. Practice normalizing the life you’re trying to live. For me, this was work that long preceded my decision to try for a baby. Trying to get out of the loop of feeling bad about my body → trying to lose weight → failing → feeling bad about my body, I worked diligently and determinedly to accept the body I was in. I took Lindy West’s advice from Shrill and followed people online who were doing cool stuff who also had bodies that looked like mine. I found fat liberation communities and people who were flouting societal expectations to live the lives they wanted to live. I was especially empowered by the work of Aubrey Gordon and Sonya Renee Taylor. When I started to flirt with the idea of conceiving, I followed accounts like Jen McLellan’s @plussizebirth on Instagram.

It helps to know you’re not alone. It helps to see people who look or feel or experience life the way you do and are still doing the thing, even when they’re afraid, even when it’s not accepted. I cannot overstress the importance of this step. Maybe you need to find more sober people who are still going out with friends. Maybe you need to find more mentally ill people who are, I don’t know, hiking and mountain biking. Find the people who deal with the things you deal with doing the things you want to be doing and follow their journeys. Normalize the life you want as possible and achievable. As desirable and doable. Your mindset will shift accordingly.

3. Ask yourself: what’s the best possible outcome? If fear is holding you back, whether it’s fear of judgment or fear of a bad outcome, you have to envision the best possibilities, not just the worst. My best possible outcome was a healthy pregnancy (which I didn’t fully get), a healthy baby (which I did), a growing family, no postpartum depression (I got hypomania instead). While the pregnancy didn’t look the way I had hoped, the life I lead now as a mom looks better and more fulfilling and more hysterical than I had ever dared to dream. I’m parenting a two-year-old who knows her boundaries, who can sing (almost) her entire ABCs, who makes me laugh every minute she’s awake. She’s sweet and hilarious and smart and feisty, a total ham who will split your heart open when she whispers, “I love you,” and getting to be her mom is how I know I’ve found favor with the universe. This, this is what was on the other side of my fear.

Are you afraid of sharing your art because it might feel too cringe, or too imperfect? Imagine how you’ll feel when it reaches the exact right person, the one who is meant to see it and champion it and love it and understand it. Are you afraid of trying for a job that’s outside your comfort zone? Imagine the hiring manager telling you you’re the perfect fit, that your specific life experience combined with your precise skills makes you just the person they need at this moment. The world is out there, waiting for you, and if you don’t try, you’ll never know what lies on the other side of the perfectionism and fear that’s holding you back.

4. Get honest — then get brave. I don’t mean that we should all be taking big leaps without a real, honest acknowledgement of what you’re risking and what you’re facing. Entering pregnancy as a person with bipolar II is no joke – I was risking postpartum depression and anxiety at a higher rate than most, and I knew going into it that I couldn’t breastfeed, or my meds would unsafely enter my child’s bloodstream. At my weight, I was risking gestational diabetes (which I got) and pre-eclampsia (which I also got) and my labor was touch-and-go for a while. None of this is nothing. It’s all, actually, a really big deal. But the things I was actually most afraid of — the judgment, the poor treatment, the stigma — almost none of it materialized. I was treated with respect and care and diligence. My doctor was one of my biggest cheerleaders. The nurses were, genuinely, a delight to be around and never said a word about my weight. No one tried to change my mind about breastfeeding or convince me to get off my meds. But here’s the thing: I would never have known it could all turn out this way if I hadn’t just, at a certain point, gone for it. If I hadn’t made an informed decision to try for what I wanted, societal expectations be damned, and choose my life over fear of what others would think or say.

Once you’ve gotten really honest with yourself, have you decided to actually get brave? Have you made a decision to just go for it? Maybe it’s time to start sharing your writing. Maybe it’s time to text that neighborhood mom for a coffee date. Maybe, maybe, maybe the fear of what someone else will say or do isn’t the most important thing anymore. Maybe it’s time to make a decision based on what you want, not what everyone else thinks you should want. Push back against the fear, the perfectionism that’s driving your avoidance.

From the other side, I want you to know: Now I get to tickle my daughter’s bare belly and watch her throw her head back and giggle. I get to take a big whiff of the top of her freshly combed head after a lavender-scented bath. I get to watch her belly flop into her dad’s arms in the pool and surface, cackling with glee. And from here, I gotta tell you: It’s worth pushing back.

Thanks for taking an interest. Let me know what resonated with you from this week’s post!

Cheers,

• a full, satisfying weekend: one day to completely do my own thing (read: work on substack and float in the pool with a book) and one day to adventure with my daughter (a trip to the park, a walk on the beach, a new-to-us bookstore where I managed to snag some goodies while she tried to put her hands on every item in the shop)

• a new phase that makes me laugh: e deciding she sometimes doesn’t want me to kiss her dad (“no kisses!”), and when I do, she reaches over and wipes off his mouth for him (!)

• home alone, standing in a sunlit kitchen, eating a sweet, tart golden kiwi straight from the peel with a spoon as the air conditioner chugs along doggedly in the background (hello, July.)

• experimenting with a little bit of TV for e and learning that when we turn it off at the end of her allotted time, she will, in fact, throw a tantrum and demand more Ms. Rachel, or pivot to convincing us to just “put Rachel on phone”

• an idyllic summer evening in the pool turning chaotic and distressing for e (and her parents!) when we discovered a diaper explosion… thank god for swim diapers (IYKYK)

Currently I’m…

• reading: Butter by Asako Yuzuki. This literary novel, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, follows Rika, a journalist who bonds with a convicted serial killer who lured her victims with her gourmet cooking. Rika earns credibility with the woman by cooking her recipes, eating at restaurants she recommends, and growing to appreciate good food. I’m about halfway through and loving the book’s easy pacing, incisive commentary on gender roles and self-awareness, and mouthwatering descriptions of food.

• watching: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, season 11. Crystal Minkoff joins (my take: mean girl to the max), Erika Jayne is in a whole heap of legal trouble, and Kyle tries to hold everyone together, as usual. I’ve been dipping in and out of this franchise for years and keep coming back because it’s good, and reality TV helps me turn my brain off. I’ll take that over the weed every time.

• listening: The audiobook The Fury by Alex Michaelides. I’m indifferent to this at about 50%, but I like a thriller in the summer and this one was available on Libby when I needed a new listen. I don’t necessarily think Michaelides has lived up to his hype after The Silent Patient, but there was a good twist in The Maidens, so I’ll finish this one out. (I also listened to Lizzo’s new album yesterday, but to be honest I just don’t have much to say about it. It’s ooookay.)

• enjoying: The simple pleasures of summer. A mocktail outside in the evening (I like this one). Figuring out how to keep a two-year-old awake for fireworks on the third of July. Taking advantage of my in-laws’ pool (much of Butter has been read floating on an inner tube). Ceiling fans and hydrangeas and sweating glasses of icy seltzer and sweet, fresh fruit (I cannot WAIT for local peaches and tomatoes).

I’m thinking a lot about the intention we put into creating rhythms that support us and anchor us to our days. I wrote here about wanting to create flexible routines while we stay with my in-laws during our home renovation, and it turns out they’re giving me a master class in doing just that. The same breakfast each morning over a crossword puzzle, which then sits on the kitchen island all day — serving as something to come back to when you pass through or find yourself with a spare moment. A cold drink around 5pm, preferably outside, before dinner prep starts. Cleaning up straightaway after dinner so the rest of the night is for relaxing. Such simple things, but the repetition day after day makes them feel comforting and reliable, like old standbys that will see you through another week. I’m tethering myself to these while I’m here and already thinking about how I can mimic their flexible structure when I’m back in my own home.

Ask yourself: What’s one practice I can use to anchor part of my day, turning it into a rhythm I can rely on and look forward to?

A Substack article for you to mull over: I said “yes!” so many times while reading this post by Elin Strong over at Bang Voyage. She writes about how showing up for herself in sobriety paved the way for following through on doing all kinds of things she says she’s going to do — in this case, writing every week for Substack in the midst of full-time parenting. I, too, have found that sobriety was the key to unlocking my ability to keep my word, and I loved Elin’s take on all of this. Worth your time, for sure.

Bang Voyage

Suit Up and Show Up

I used to be your worst nightmare…

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2 months ago · 101 likes · 53 comments · Elin Strong

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I always love hearing how other people are approaching life, whether they’re intention-setters or more apt to fly by the seat of their pants, so I thought I’d share my own plan of attack and offer the question back to you: How are you aiming to meet this time of year? Could you use a more considered, purposeful approach, or do you feel good about how you’re facing the next few months?

Here’s what’s top-of-mind for me.

Prepare for the season I’m actually facing, not the one I wish I was having

The season I wish was coming: slow, lazy weekend mornings in our own kitchen, my toddler darting in and out of a sprinkler in our perfectly furnished backyard, quiet time in bed and on my deck to read and write. The season that is actually coming: a big home renovation. A dumpster and a trailer parked in our yard. Our entire downstairs packed up and in storage. Living with my (wonderful!) in-laws for an indeterminate amount of time. All the stress that accompanies uncertainty and dislocation and parenting a toddler who is a little confused (but who, thankfully, delights in going with the flow and is obsessed with her grandparents). Instead of panicking, which I am prone to doing, I am trying to approach this season with a determined sense of equanimity. I can’t control the renovation or the timeline; I can control the energy my daughter senses coming off of me about it all. I can control how and where I spend my time outside of my home, and commit to making summer memories in new places and away from the construction chaos. I can celebrate summer in many of the little ways I always do: with tomatoes and peaches and corn and watermelon, with time in the sun, with good books and restorative time with friends and family, with moments spent by the water (I’m lucky enough to live in a New England beach town). It may not be the summer of my dreams; in fact, it will be strewn with inconveniences and difficult decisions and frustration and probably some tears. But I can meet that season for what it is, rather than wishing it were something different. I can feel the stress and keep moving through it, finding joy in creating a summer full of glimmers for my daughter. I’m going to let that be enough.

Build flexible routines

Now that we’re living in someone else’s home, and as we ultimately prepare to be back in our house while construction continues, I want to find rhythms that work for our family while keeping us flexible. Can we eat dinner at the beach most Friday nights? Can we have a weekly meal with my mom? Can we structure our mornings in a way that reduces friction? I think the more regular, semi-structured cadences we can add to our weeks, the more smoothly they will pass, with things to look forward to and a measure of certainty amid the displacement we’ll all be feeling. I want to do this for myself, too, not just for my daughter: building in a reliable half-hour to read in the evenings, finding touchpoints in my weeks for writing and journaling. I know I’ll be feeling out of control when it comes to my space and my actual home, so I want to anchor myself in the practices and habits that make me feel at home no matter where I am.

Embrace uncertainty and accept discomfort

I’m trying to move into this season with a very zen sense of acceptance about what’s outside of my control, and about my discomfort over that. Already, our renovation has been pushed back. Already, it’s going to take longer than we planned and cost more than we anticipated. Already, I don’t know what day-to-day life is going to look like at any given point in the summer. This makes me wildly uncomfortable! I like to know what’s going on and be able to predict how my days will look. But I’m aiming for acceptance here, in service of the bigger picture, and will try to channel my anxious energy into mood boards and shopping lists for our updated space and have some fun daydreaming about what it will be like to live and parent in a big, open living space instead of rooms that feel cramped, or at least like they don’t serve us well. This is all going to be very hard, and no one I’ve said that to has said “actually it’s not that big of a deal,” so I think I’m right that it’s going to be very hard, and I’m working on just accepting that as part of the massive privilege I have in working on our space in such a tangible way.

Don’t feel busy when I don’t need to feel busy

The bucket list I posted last week is a full one, but a lot of it is really about slowing down and enjoying the season, no matter how it looks like it’s shaping up. One thing about me is that I do not like feeling busy, and summer feels like a great time to take stock and ask: Why do I feel busy? Can I take something off my plate to feel… less busy? What would happen if I just slowed down this week? That’s a mindset, a practice I want to keep returning to. There are busy times, to be sure — as I drafted this, I was headed into a double-header weekend featuring both my daughter’s birthday and Father’s Day — but when I don’t actually need to be busy, what can I do to feel like I’m actually slowing down? For me, it’s about capturing that feeling and making it last, so summer feels languid and easy, a time to enjoy the slow-paced days we all dream about. (A lot of this involves surrendering to a toddler’s naturally slow pace and reminding myself that there’s usually nowhere we actually need to be in a hurry — it might just feel that way because her sense of urgency doesn’t align with mine. If I stop rushing her, I naturally feel less rushed myself.)

Read intentionally

If you saw my reinterested reading list from a couple of weeks ago, you know I’m a reader, and that I have a list a mile long of books I want to read just to support my thinking and writing here on Substack. Books about sobriety, creativity, motherhood, and more are calling my name. I have also learned, over the years, that I am a better person when I have at least one fiction book going at all times — if I don’t, I’m probably feeling pretty grumpy. I tend to read based on mood, so I’ve created a little menu of options and hopeful reads for the summer that I can pick and choose from according to what’s calling my name. (And, of course, all bets are off when my library holds come through.) I want to avoid feeling scattered in my reading and know that each book I pick up is on purpose — that comes back down to the flexible routines and rhythms I’m trying to build this summer to keep me feeling sane. (You can check out the post for my nonfiction picks, but for fiction, I’ve just started reading Butter for my book club, and some leading candidates for my next read include Whistler, Cursed Daughters, and a reread of Station Eleven, one of my very favorite books).

Journal imperfectly

I don’t know when, I don’t know how often, I don’t know if I’ll be doing it in bed or at my work desk or in a coffee shop, but the journal is coming with me this summer, and instead of always “catching up” or documenting events perfectly, I’m just going to scribble down lines about what I think and how I feel and what I’ve been up to and let it be what it is! Perfectionism is my enemy, especially when it comes to anything creative, so I’m going to try out shorter bursts of little notes and quickly printed photos with jotted down captions, rather than setting up a whole spread of supplies and making it A Thing. Writing even little things down feels good, and making that into something approachable instead of some perfect process to attain is the only way to keep it going, especially right now.

Six intentions, written somewhat accidentally. Six ways I’m trying to bring purpose and calm to a season that’s begging to be anything but. Six methods of interacting with my family, my routines, and myself that will support me during an unpredictable time.

Maybe your summer looks completely different from mine. (I certainly hope we’re not all tearing our houses apart.) Maybe you’re ferrying kids to different day camps or solo parenting all season while they’re home from school or continuing on in your normal routine. Regardless, finding time and space to create flexibility, rhythm, and practices that help you feel at home in your own skin are worthwhile endeavors. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to tend to yourself during a season that holds so much promise, but that can also carry with it a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability. Let me know in the comments what feels supportive to you right now, and how you’re weaving that into your approach to the months ahead.

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Hello, dear readers! I’m back with gentle joys after missing last week. Life has been a whirlwind lately — a 48-hour family road trip from Boston to Baltimore, my daughter’s second birthday (!), packing up our entire downstairs in preparation for a massive home renovation, and moving ourselves and our toddler into my in-laws’ place for the foreseeable future. Along the way, I’ve encountered many little (and big) moments of ease and joy as well as some tiny — and not-so-tiny — bonks on the head. As always, I’m here to share it all with you, in an effort to encourage you to seek out the joys of your own life and move on past the bonks we all come across in the process of being human. Hope you enjoy.

gentle joys

• a few hours into our road trip, e had been fussing a little as she tried to help herself get to sleep. she was repeating something I couldn’t quite make out, over and over again, until finally I registered it: “paw.” (sometimes in this family we say things like: “wash your paws.”) she was asking for me to hold her hand as she fell asleep, and as soon as I reached back for her, her eyes drifted closed and she was out. bliss for this mama.

• in our hotel on the first night, we had one of those balconies that looks out over the center of the hotel (in this case, a restaurant). e was so excited to people-watch and when we weren’t out on the balcony, she kept requesting to “go see everybody.” too soon to tell, but this girl may have inherited her dad’s extroversion…

• being welcomed so warmly by family in Maryland: tears from the aunt who was surprised by our visit for her 80th birthday, and e’s cousins — all girls in their teens and twenties — greeting us at the car and fawning over her, playing soccer with her, taking her to see their pet ducks, and more. Some of these girls were in our wedding 15 years ago as little ones themselves, and to see them running around with my own daughter so many years later is so special.

• coming home, after a long day in the car, and heading for the backyard so e could run around and get her wiggles out. she ran straight to her own little drivable car and yelled, “road trip!” as she hopped in and grabbed the steering wheel. some nice evidence that we didn’t traumatize her by driving nearly 1,000 miles in three days.

• celebrating our girl’s birthday: precious time with family, throwing a very haphazardly planned (read: barely planned at all) birthday party at the park, while our house was in disarray. watching her munch a rainbow bagel, run around with friends ranging from two to 12 years old, plow her face into a cupcake, and feel the love so many have for her. seeing our people come together to celebrate her is a top-tier feeling.

• carving out some time for my husband on father’s day, despite the busyness of the weekend, featuring a hot dog lunch with his parents and gifts from me and e, including the rocks she painted for him last week. he loves us so well, so completely and tangibly, and reflecting that back to him is important.

• arriving exhausted and stressed to my in-laws’ house, massive amounts of stuff in tow, and realizing they had cleared extra space for us and all our belongings, including a place for me to work. being made to feel like it’s okay that we’re here, that we’re even welcome here, is such a relief when we’ve made such a big ask of them. (“hey, can we bring our toddler to your house and live there for awhile?” is a wild thing to ask someone, even family.)

tiny bonks

• hitting traffic on both legs of our trip down to Baltimore, making what were supposed to be shorter days of driving feel just as long as if we had done the whole trip down in one go. feeling like I was “on” for the whole car ride, because entertaining a two-year-old in the backseat with minimal screen time and hours to go is no easy feat.

• returning home from our trip and realizing I had had exactly zero alone time over the course of the weekend, and wondering how I was going to recuperate even as we needed to pack up our house and juggle vague deadlines and timeframes from the contractor and the bank — wondering when this whole renovation would actually start (note: it has now started! here we go!!) and navigating all the uncertainty that comes with such a big project.

• watching a much older, bigger kid run toward e at the playground during her birthday party, see her, and continue to plow right over her without looking back, and dealing with her distress and fear at being knocked over (the kid’s dad brought him back over to check on her, but did not make him apologize, and then I had to deal with my own Feelings about that).

• some very late nights and very early mornings spent with my husband packing up our home, feeling underprepared and overwhelmed, waiting around for deadlines that came too quickly, and feeling some panic about where all our stuff was going to go and what was safe to leave in place — just feeling generally swamped with tasks and lists and competing priorities, and remembering we had to parent and work through all of it (do not recommend the working part! take the PTO for this!).

• settling into our new temporary home, going out to the street to move the car, and hitting a curb… and realizing when I got out of the car that the tire was hissing and I had, in fact, punctured it.

Thanks, as always, for being here for this week’s ups and downs!

What were your gentle joys or tiny bonks this week?
I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

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