It’s my birthday! This year, we celebrated with a trip to Joshua Tree – one of my favorite and most meaningful places – just Daniel, Jack Wilder, and me for the weekend. We got back late last night and planned to take the day off of work. As I was about to cancel our childcare for the day a few weeks ago, I realized: “wait. What?! Why would I cancel our childcare??” Instead, Daniel and I had a day date that included writing time at 11th hour, a west cliff walk, massages, and soaking and reading. It was glorious.
I told Daniel that, this year, I want two hours a month of “Jack off” time to write. I miss writing, a bunch, and it’s nearly impossible to do with Jack Wilder attached to my hip every minute that I’m at home. Hence why today included writing time.
I heard Elizabeth Gilbert on Glennon Doyle’s podcast a year or two ago, talking about her recovery, which included the spiritual practice of two-way prayer letters every day. I was deeply intrigued. Then, last week, she was back on the podcast – both of which I listened to on the drive home from Joshua Tree – diving more into the practice. I decided today, to give it a try. She suggests starting with a reading that makes you feel closer to whatever Higher Powers may exist. I chose Mary Oliver’s “Mornings at Blackwater,” because it’s been in my head for a few weeks and because all of her work makes me think more about my life.
Here’s what I got:
Dear Love,
What would you have me know today?
Dearest Emma,
Happy Birthday, Baby! You are 39 today – wow! I know that you are trying to figure out what that means to you, if anything. You have been joking for the past decade in a half that you can’t wait to be 40 because that is when the world stops caring about how women look and so then you wouldn’t have that pressure anymore. But then you went and stopped caring – mostly – what the world thinks about how you look when you were 28, and decided to ditch every part of mainstream culture – including your high heels, straightened hair, and daily makeup application – to live a couple of years as a drifter. Here’s to not waiting until 40 anymore!
Remember last week when you were talking to Bella about your astrology chart? Part of it said something about you being an experimenter with your life. She asked you if that sounded true and you laughed, inwardly. At 38 – almost 39, at the time – you already felt like you had lived a few dramatically different versions of a life. The straight A student with the brilliant boyfriend, both of you super successful by the age of 25, the epitome of “money doesn’t buy happiness”; the spontaneous, adventurous drifter, on a journey to find herself (or the woman in the bad relationship, running and hiding from “the real world,” depending on which version you tell); the partner, mother, friend, activist, person in recovery, community member, executive director living a life that you absolutely love with a(nother) brilliant (but this one more so, and also kind) partner and people that you adore. The people who know you only in one of these eras would barely recognize the other Emmas and yet, they are all you. All of it is you.
You want to know what is next. I know that you do. You keep resisting the question, resisting the answers, because you feel almost guilty for not being content enough with what is. You love your life now, are exceedingly grateful for it. You are even grateful for all of the hard parts of your life – you’ve owned the truest and least attractive parts of your story – because you know that they were an important part of your spiritual journey, of you getting to where you are now. And you love where you are now. You feel so very, very lucky (and privileged) to have what you have – the relationships, the resources, the love. You finally love yourself – finally understand what it actually means to love yourself – and you love the life that you have built. You are content. Happy. Grateful. And yet.
What’s next? You keep wondering.
Remember when you were 22 and found out that you had gotten accepted to your dream grad school? You cried. Not because you were happy, but because you were terrified. You were in the beginning of a new relationship, with a guy that you knew was going to be super successful, and you could see your life unfolding in a perfectly straight, neat line. Good jobs, good relationship, engagement, marriage, two kids, white picket fence. You were terrified that you’d wake up at 40 (next year!) and not know how you had gotten there, that you would not have made any conscious choices, just followed “the path” that all the good Jersey girls followed. You, my love, have never, ever been interested in a “status quo” life. In a complacent life. In a “good” life because this culture’s definition of “good” never seemed that “good” or real to you. You have always wanted something different, something that feels more real to you. You have always wanted to feel free.
And so, what I want you to know is that it is okay to keep wanting to experiment. It is okay to not feel content, to not want to “settle down,” to not want to stay in one place, in one version of your life, forever. Honey, you are not trying to run away or trying to escape or “pulling a geographic.” You do not want to change locations or jobs or lives because you are trying to fill a hole inside of yourself, or because you are unhappy, or because you think happiness is elsewhere. This is the thing: You are happy. You are in love with your life and your people. There is nothing wrong that you are trying to fix.
Love, what I am trying to say is that you are recovering. You are whole. Remember when you chose to live in Santa Cruz because you “thought it would be a good place to heal?” You were right, in ways that you couldn’t imagine at the time. You know yourself. You can trust yourself. And so, any decisions that you make from here on out are yours. They are not your trauma, or your discomfort, or your anxiety, or your people pleasing, or your fear. In fact, the only fear that you really have now is of not living your life. Of missing the next version of your life because you are too afraid to change something that is already so good. How could it get better than this?
Honestly, love, I don’t know that it can get better, but I know that it can get different. And, for you, different has always led to free-er. Which is exactly what you came here to do, my love: to get as free as you possibly can.
And, Emma, you are grateful. Exceedingly so. That is not just something that you say; it is something that is true. You literally cry tears of gratitude multiple times a day. You are so deeply in love with your life and your people, and you know, truly know, how precious that is. And what I need for you to understand now is that you can be really, really grateful and happy, and still want to keep going. Keep experimenting. Keep trying out new versions of how to live a life.
And you know what is pretty great about the next part? You do not have to “leave” your people to do it. My love, I want you to think of your people like a web – no, a net – not as something that traps you into staying where you are, but as something that catches you if you were ever to fall. (And, you will fall, darling. Everyone does. Human life is hard, for all of us.) Your net won’t go anywhere, even if you do. Your relationships will look different, but the love that you have used to weave this net – and the faith that you have instilled in its strength – will still be there. You are not alone. You have built a life where you will not be alone. One that includes the BEST partner, an adventure buddy that is just as much of a seeker as you are. One that also includes the most loving family – biological, in-laws, and chosen – the very best friends, and an inspiring community. You really are the luckiest.
And so. I do not know what is next for you, dear. But I do know that there is a next. The things that you dream about doing, the ways that you imagine living? You will pick one and you will do it. Living in Costa Rica? Reading and writing and camping in national parks around the country? Moving to Europe? You can and will do whatever you do decide you want to do next. You will keep experimenting with your life, with different ways of living a life, probably for as long as you are living. And, honey, it is a good thing. It is what you came here to do, love. To learn about love and truth and freedom, which you suspect might all be the same thing. You do not have to be afraid of this part of yourself, Emma. This is who you are. The astrology charts said so, and so do I.
So: Happy Birthday, Baby! To another year of laughter, joy, growth, seeking, experimenting, and so very much love. To being as wild as you want to be, as wild as you can be; “wild,” after all, is just another word for “free.” To living your life, darling, in whatever way you choose. To getting free-er, every year, for always.
Last night, I got to attend a conversation between Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone, promoting their new book, How to Be a Young Antiracist. The conversation was one of those that stays with you, that keeps you thinking after it’s ended, that expands your understanding, that reminds you why we are all doing this work. I am so freaking grateful that these opportunities exist in our little city, and that we live in a community that actively creates them.
During the conversation, Nic Stone said something that I’ve heard many times from Black and BIPOC peoples. She commented on how there has been a different intensity of response to Tyre Nichols murder compared to George Floyd’s, and how very, very (understandably!) tired the Black community is. She then said how important it was for the Black community to take care of themselves, and that they need white people to be having these conversations / doing the work / sharing the burden. White people need to be in this work too.
And so. I’ve been sitting on this post for about a week and it seems like it’s about time to share it.
I don’t know what to do about the mass shootings and police brutality that persist in our culture, or about how we are collectively becoming almost desensitized to it, or about endlessly exhausted and traumatized we all are by the systems and culture that we have created. I imagine that none of us know what to do and the helplessness just adds to the exhaustion and trauma.
I keep thinking about Mother Teresa’s famous quote, “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”
How do we create an anti-racist culture? Go home and practice with your family and friends.
Over the weekend, we were hanging out with our close friends. One of them – a white guy – told us a story in which he specified a person’s ethnicity – Puerto Rican – that had no relevance to the story. He said, “The guy with the knife – I’m sorry – was Puerto Rican,” at which point, his partner – a Latina lady (whose ethnicity does have some relevance to this story) – laughed and said, “Why are you sorry? It’s fine.”
Before his wife said that, I was prepared with a different answer to his comment; after she spoke, I was uncomfortably quiet as I listened to the rest of the story, hoping that the guy’s ethnicity would, in fact, have some relevance. It did not. Other than, perhaps, reinforcing a negative stereotype.
I still didn’t say anything.
The next day, I was still thinking about it, and felt a desire to apologize to the other friends of color that were there and may have also been feeling bad about this comment, but maybe were not in the mood to do the labor of educating our white friend. I thought about it more and realized that I mostly wanted to give it to let them know that I was one of the “good white people,” that I was different than the white guy that made the comment. I also realized that they didn’t need me to apologize. They need me to *do better.*
Why didn’t I say anything? I wish that there was a really good answer to this. This particular situation had the added layer of me always being uncomfortable about correcting people of color when they reinforce white supremacy, but mostly, it was the same reasons that white people always have for not saying things: it’s awkward. We don’t want to make things uncomfortable. We don’t want to make our friends feel bad. We don’t want to look like the white person that is “censoring” or “policing” other white people’s behavior. In short, we don’t want to break the “white people code” that we’ve all been conditioned into, in which we let each other say racist things and uphold white supremacy characteristics.
And so, I’m calling myself in. This work is too urgent for me to “let things go” or “not be in the mood for uncomfortable convos” or be “too tired and pregnant” to deal that day. The truth is, anti-racism work is like all spiritual work: it’s not easy or comfortable, but it is important and profound and transformative and worth it. And, let’s be clear: This is not “charity work.” This is not so that we can feel good about ourselves for “helping.” White supremacy and racism are hurting *all of us.* This is about us all getting free together.
I’m also asking my fellow white people and white friends: What would you do? What would you have done or said in that situation? What would you do or say now? Would you circle back to the white friend? What about to his Latina partner? (Black and BIPOC friends are obviously welcome to weigh in, too; just wanted to acknowledge that this is not your work to do.)
Also! If you like having these kinds of convos with other white people doing the work, join our Cultivating Care group on February 12th (and on the first Sunday of the following months) to join a community of allies / accomplices / co-conspirators who are deeply committed to racial justice work.
From the incredibly beautiful Baby Blessing party that our friends threw for us.
Yesterday, Daniel fulfilled my one birthday wish by getting me a prenatal massage. When the masseuse came in, he commented on the tattoo on my arm and asked what kinds of flowers they were. I thought about how much I love that tattoo, how much intention and thought and artistry went into it. Then, I thought about the tattoo on the back of my neck, which I was sure he could also see, and felt shame and embarrassment well up.
The tattoo on the back of my neck – which people don’t see when my hair is long and down – is two Japanese characters that mean “rare” and “wish,” and translate to “hope.” I got it when I was 19ish, after I had decided to major in social work. That’s what I tell people: that social work is all about “holding hope” and so, I wanted a symbol of that on my body. The truthier truth is that I actually got it because I wanted an excuse to hang out with a boy, and having him go with me to get it – and to have him see me doing something so “rebellious” – was an excellent way to get his attention.
I got this tattoo before I understood cultural appropriation. I liked calligraphy – I still do – and it was kind of popular to do things like this at the time (I think Britney Spears had done it?). I also liked sushi and, apparently, calligraphy and sushi were enough appreciation for another culture for me to feel okay about tattooing their characters on my body. I used to tell people that a family friend drew the tattoo for me, both so that people would know that it didn’t say “stupid American” and to make it seem more okay for me to have used another culture in this way. The truth is, I found the image on Google (though, I have had Japanese friends tell me – probably while thinking, “Stupid American” – that it is, in fact, correct).
I think about getting this tattoo removed sometimes, now that I know more about cultural appropriation, but I’ve never seriously looked into it. First, I’m not highly motivated about things that aren’t that important to me, and that sounds like a lot of work and money for something that only bothers me occasionally. And two, much like the Santa Cruz Equity Collab specifically opted to not immediately repair our BLM mural after it was damaged – so that we’d all have some time and space to acknowledge and reckon with the racism that persists in our county and our world – I don’t know that erasing my youthful racism and ignorance, that pretending it never happened, is the best way to make amends for this harm.
I also don’t know that I want to cover up the younger versions of myself, who I used to be, the parts that all mash together to make me who I am today. Bean is making his arrival into the world in 3 – 5 weeks (max), and I don’t want to teach him that we can just cover up and erase the parts of us that we don’t like as much, that we can – or should – just pretend that mistakes didn’t happen. I want him to know that it’s normal and human to want to do so and to have some feels about our behavior. And that it’s also normal and human to change and grow and learn, and that our “mistakes” – I don’t even know that I like that word – can actually be really beautiful and important moments and parts of us.
I am 38 years-old today, and this is the age that I will be when I give birth to Bean, when I begin the unimaginable task of teaching a teeny tiny little squish how to make decisions, how to be themselves, how to build and live a life that they love. While I have some qualms about a person’s identity suddenly becoming centered around pregnancy and motherhood the minute that they announce that they’re pregnant, I also understand that this will be one of the most significant – if not the most significant – shifts in my life.
Maybe it’s because this age feels imbued with more significance because of Bean’s impending arrival, or maybe it’s because I am entering midlife, or maybe it’s just because. Whatever the reason, I have been reflecting a lot lately on the importance of honesty, on owning all the parts of who I am, on letting go of shame about things that I did in the past, on letting the truth of who I am – all the parts and experiences that make up who I am – stand in the world.
I’ve lived in California since 2015, the year that I turned 30. When I moved here, I did not know a single person other than my boyfriend-at-the-time that I moved here with. Which means that not one single person in my community here knew me in my 20s. I occasionally reference the days when I used to spend an hour straightening my hair every single day (and how much I want alllllll of that time back), never left the house without a full face of makeup, and was nearly always wearing high heels and some amount of fast fashion. People laugh, shake their heads, and can’t imagine that version of me.
The parts that I don’t mention as often are the ways that I behaved in my 20s. Most people know that I partied kind of hard, that I “struggled” (whatever that vaguely means), that I left my professional job to “travel” around the country for 2.5 years. They know the glossed over version of past Emma that I let them know, and they know the version of me now: loving, light, compassionate, hardworking. And that has been enough for people to know for the past eight years. But, again, I want 38 to be a year in which I get more honest, when I tell more of the truth. And so.
I had affairs with married men. Yes, plural; let’s just get that one out of the way off the bat. I lied, a lot. So much that there were times when I lost track of what was actually true. Sometimes, I’m still not entirely sure what actually happened because I’ve told a different version so many times. I stole money from people; not, like, a *ton* of money, but also more than $5. Somewhere between $5 and a ton. I stole the most money from my future self. I used all of this stolen money to help fuel a lifestyle of “traveling” and “working on farms” – the palatable version that I give people now, which leaves out the drug-fueled partying, sleeping in my car and tent and hotels when I could afford them, and general need to always be moving, lest the growing awareness that I was not okay with my choices catch up to me. I made my world incredibly small – just me and my then-boyfriend – so that nobody could see how I was living, nobody could hold me accountable, nobody could worry. I broke the law, a lot. I don’t feel bad about breaking the law because the laws that I broke are racist and unnecessary; the part that I have some feels about is that Black men are suffering through decades-long sentences in prison for the same ish that I got away with because I was a cute, white female. I was in a bad, bad, bad relationship during the years that I was “traveling,” which continued into a couple of years of living in California. I was breaking out into hives regularly from the stress of pretending that I was “fine” all day long at my job at CPS – which, at that time, I considered to be the least stressful part of my life. When the hives prompted me to start therapy, the therapist suggested that I might need to stop smoking so much weed for therapy to be successful; back then, I had no other coping skills for the pressure cooker that was my life, and so, I just stopped seeing her. Fortunately, before I quit therapy, she had recommended Al-Anon to me, so when I stopped seeing her – and knew that I was still very much not okay – I started going there, a decision which ultimately led to me changing my life and becoming the person that we now all know and love.
Which is not to say that I’m perfect now. I still use single-use plastics. I still eat cheap meat. I still buy things on Amazon. I still overcommit, people please, act as a martyr and hesitate to say “no.” I then still self-sacrifice in order to deliver, and sometimes hit walls of self-sacrifice and then still flake instead. I still indulge in judgment and gossip and resentment. I am still stubbornly – and detrimentally – self-reliant, while preaching the importance of community and asking for help. I still don’t quite trust that people will love me if I’m not hustling really hard all the time to demonstrate my value to them. I still suck at gift giving; I will remember your birthday, for sure, but showing up with a thoughtful gift? Oof. I still try to control other people’s behavior when I am overwhelmed or anxious. I still start almost all sentences about my plans with, “I have to…” instead of “I get to…” – as in “I have to have dinner with so-and-so” – language that implies that nearly every single thing that I do is an obligation rather than a joy. I am still, sometimes, more concerned with how things look than how they actually are, still a little bit addicted to trying to control how people see me. I still doubt my own worth, sometimes wondering if I really deserve to be in a relationship with someone as kind and good as Daniel, if I deserve this community that loves me so unbelievably well.
Now, I could tell y’all about all of the important and profound lessons that I learned from behaving in these ways, about knowing that the goal is “progress, not perfection,” about how my deep well of compassion for other people’s human-ness comes – at least, in part – from my fucking up so many times in my own life. But I don’t think that this is about that.
So, what is this about? What am I seeking from sharing all of this stuff? (This stuff which, when Daniel read it, caused him to wince and ask, “You want to publish this? I mean, I totally support you. You just might get some backlash.” “But it’s my birthday. People can’t be too mean on my birthday, right?”) The answer is: I’m not entirely sure. Maybe it’s self-acceptance. Maybe it’s to test whether people will still love me if they really know me. Maybe it’s because I want us all to have permission to stop hiding the things that we’ve done that we aren’t proud of, and so I’m “letting it begin with me” and giving myself that same permission. Mostly, it’s that I just want the truth to get to be in the light, to be out in the world. I want the truth to exist somewhere outside of my body. That’s it. That’s all that I am seeking: to release, to lighten, to get a little bit freer.
I have three tattoos, in total: one is a little heart on my lower stomach that I got right around my 18th birthday. That one was purely a symbol of rebellion, a mark of independence that I could now make this decision for myself, a decision that I had been waiting to make for a few years. I forget this one exists (and haven’t even seen it in a few months, thanks to my pregnant belly; I actually asked Daniel the other day if it was still there). The second one is the one on the back of my neck that I talked about above, the impulsive, culturally appropriated, mark on my body that I got to attract a guy’s attention. Both of these – especially the second one – could be seen as cautionary tales about tattoos, the stereotypical reason to not permanently mark your body with something that you might not want on there forever. For me, though, even if I don’t particularly like them now, I like that they serve as reminders of my younger selves, of who I was and what I was doing at that time in my life, symbols of my evolution as a person.
I love my third tattoo. It is my first “grown-up” tattoo, a super intentional, thoughtful work of art that symbolizes so much of my healing. It includes the words “let go,” a sign of the faith that I found when I started doing healing / recovery work.
I realized a couple of years ago that I have ‘hope’ written on my neck; a heart, which generally symbolizes ‘love’; and a tattoo to symbolize ‘faith.’ “And now these three remain: Faith, hope, and love.” Without any intention – and without even knowing that Bible verse when I was 18 – I ended up with those three deeply spiritual principles tattooed on my body, which wouldn’t have coincidentally happened if I hadn’t been young and reckless and unconcerned with the future. Which, is actually kind of perfect to me.
“And the greatest of these is love.”
Daniel blew this up and framed it for me as a birthday gift. It is now one of my most treasured possessions.
My birthday wish: May we all love ourselves and each other so fully and in all of our messy, beautiful human-ness that we can all get freer together.
Content warning: This post is going to talk about my struggles with being pregnant, which I know can be painful for some people to read or hear about, particularly those that may be struggling to get pregnant themselves, and want nothing more than to trade struggles with me. If you are one of those people, I love you, and I am so, so sorry; I can imagine the pain that you feel and I know the longing for things to be different than they are, how unfair it is. Please, take care of yourself and skip this post.
A Note: Before I published my last post about mine and Daniel’s deep ambivalence about our planned pregnancy, Daniel said, “Alright, get ready for the judgment…” Neither of us knew how our truth would be received; we just knew that writing and sharing my truth is healing for me, and I was getting really lonely in my experience. So, we hit publish, and – as usual – our people surprised us in the best possible way. As each supportive comment, each DM’d “me too,” each text rolled in, we were reminded over and over again that people are just so good, and that sharing our truths never fails to make us feel less alone. We are both just the most grateful. 🙏🏻♥️
Over the last year or so, I started growing complacent about my recovery / healing. I had left my toxic relationship and my toxic work environment, was in a super healthy and happy relationship, and Life was generally humming along pretty smoothly. I still went to therapy and went to a meeting once a week or so, but I wasn’t doing much more than that. It wasn’t that I thought that I was “cured”; I had just lost the “gift of desperation” that had brought me into recovery.
Enter my pregnancy.
Y’all. I so badly want to be one of those Earth Mamas who just loves being pregnant and says things like, “My body was just meant to do this.” But I’m not. And, in reality, it’s not super clear that my particular body is, in fact, “meant to do this.” The truth is, because I’m diabetic, being pregnant is actually a super hard and risky thing that my body and I are doing. Had I done even a cursory Google search about Type 1 Diabetes and pregnancy before deciding to get pregnant, I might not have been as surprised when I learned of how many doctor (and dentist and eye doctor) appointments I would be attending, that I would be – without question – induced between weeks 37 and 39, or about all of the many, many (many) complications that could occur. I have been told not once, not twice, but three times – all by the same nurse who specializes in diabetes (and actually is a Type 1 Diabetic that has had children, which makes me appreciate her despite this one fact) – that if my blood sugar gets too high in my third trimester, the baby could randomly die. [For perspective, the first time that she told us this, my blood sugar had been super high the night before because of an insulin pump malfunction. Which is not, like, out of the ordinary.] It’s just…not super fun and is, instead, a lot of work and kinda stressful.
Which is how I have found myself in a state of great resistance to life on life’s terms. Because I am very much not a fan of the terms of my pregnancy. And being in this state of really, really wanting things to be different than they are generally makes me feel pretty spun out. I start trying to control everything and everyone around me. I become “irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.” I lose perspective. I lose gratitude. I become resentful, and kind of mean. In short, I am miserable. Just fucking miserable.
Flowers from Daniel after a particularly challenging pregnancy week.
The good (?) news is that – because I have a few years of recovery under my belt – I was able to recognize what was happening, and knew what to do. After telling Daniel several times that I knew that I needed help and to go to more meetings, I stopped telling him and started doing it. In therapy, I realized that I was having a lot of big, big feelings about the pregnancy and that my mind had decided that the best way to deal with those feelings was to try to contain them. Which, obviously, I was excelling at. After examining that belief a bit, I remembered that my job is not to contain my feelings or make them small or deny that they exist, out of fear of burdening others; my job is to take really gentle care of myself when I’m having these big feelings, to use all the tools that I have spent years learning and practicing, and to utilize the spaces that I have intentionally created for just such a time as this – therapy, my relationships with my besties and my sponsor, and meetings – to give my feelings some space outside of my body. All that vulnerability – all of that being truly seen – still makes me hella uncomfortable and, annoyingly, it’s the only thing that I really, really want. And so, I started talking in therapy and in meetings about what was happening for me. I started reading my daily readers and praying every morning. I am working Steps One through Three around my pregnancy and turning the whole thing over to my Higher Power on a daily basis (and sometimes multiple times per day). I’ve practiced doing what is suggested on our Just for Today bookmark, “Just for today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my ‘luck’ as it comes, and fit myself to it.” I have started doing a short gratitude list at the end of each day. [Speaking of: Quick shoutout to Daniel for being insanely loving and kind and patient and giving me so much grace through all of this. Seriously, y’all. I married so well.]
And you know what? It’s all helping. Go figure. The other day, I even realized that I could, like, feel joy again. I’m finding some perspective and starting to recognize the gifts in this pregnancy. For instance, it’s forcing me to get really clear about where and with whom I place my time and energy. I am pretty busy at the moment with a couple of community projects and another one at work, and I don’t have a ton of either time or energy left for much else. Most of it has been going to my own care and to spending time with Daniel because that’s what feels the most nourishing to me right now; socializing a bunch just isn’t making the cut, and I am actually okay with that. In fact, my introverted self is super celebrating that I’ve finally found the proper motivation to enforce these sorts of boundaries.
Along with that, I’ve also been giving myself permission to REST. Which, we all know that I absolutely suck at. “You’re growing a baby,” they say. “That’s a lot of work. Even when you think that you’re doing nothing, you’re working.” And my mind is like, yah, okay, sure, lying on the couch is so much work. But. I’ve been trying. Mostly because I have just been unable to not. You know how normally, you can be tired, but then you drink another cup of coffee, or you just power through anyway? Bean has made it so that I simply cannot do either of those things, and I have to just go to bed when I hit that wall around 10:30 (but actually 10, but now really 9:30) at night.
Daniel’s first gift for Bean.
Also. Despite what I said – and meant – above about my body maybe not being particularly well-suited for pregnancy, I am still a little bit in awe that I get to do this. When I was in my early 30s and dating a guy that I was certain that I would never have children with – perhaps the best decision past Emma ever made – I went through a period where I actually grieved getting to be pregnant and have a baby. At the time, I wasn’t getting out of the relationship and I knew that I wasn’t going to have kids with him, and so I just did not think that it would ever happen for me. In fact, not one of my decisions before age 34 would have led me to believe that I would one day get to do this. And so, it really is something of a miracle that this is happening for me, and with a partner that is so damn good to me through all of it.
I am also finding that this pregnancy is forcing inviting me to look at one of my biggest character “defects”: my self-reliance. Ironically, I used to think that this was an asset, that I was “fully self-supporting,” that I was not dependent on anyone or anything outside of myself to be okay. And, as is common, it is an asset, as long as it is boundaried. It stops being an asset, however, when I am pretending that I am fine all the time (read: lying) and refusing to ask for or receive help. Because I’m so fine. And because I’m so deeply afraid of being a burden to other people, of giving them the opportunity to reject my request for help, thus forever proving my deep (and incorrect) belief that I am unworthy of care. What I’m realizing, now that I’m being “invited” to examine this in the light, is that when people aren’t available, it is not a judgment or assessment of me or my worthiness; people are just busy, and my worth is not dependent on other’s availability. So, it’s okay for me to ask for and receive help, even without hustling really, really hard to “earn” it first. Yay growth.
Weekend at Silver Lake.
And finally, the biggest and best gift of this pregnancy is that somehow, my love and gratitude for my community has gotten bigger. I honestly did not think that was possible and, yet, here we are, with my heart bursting multiple times a week at people’s generosity, their warmth, their “me toos,” their compassion, their insistence on feeding me, and their endless love and support. I know that I say this all the time, but I seriously cannot imagine what I did in this life to get lucky enough to have this community full of incredible, kind, creative, fun, brilliant, authentic, loving humans. I am just the *most* grateful.
I love you all so very much; keep going. ♥️
Also. A couple of notes for people who will be wondering about the practical aspects of the whole pregnancy thing:
Our due date is 3/4/2023, but – because of the whole mandatory induction thing that I mentioned above – Bean will actually make their appearance some time in mid-February.
The doctor knows the baby’s sex, but. we have not found out yet. Daniel’s stepbrother and sister-in-law, who are due at the same time, managed to stage a whole photo shoot with their baby’s sex assignment announcement, while we have yet to find time in the past two weeks to go pick up the envelope with the information from the doctor’s office. We will, probably, and some of our friends can not believe that we are behaving in this lackadaisical way about this info, but… aI don’t know. I don’t think it’s that out of character for us. Obviously, we just don’t care that much. [I also have some feelings about how much a baby’s sex gets emphasized and how much gender conditioning is placed upon them literally as soon as they are born, and I’m just not in any hurry to start that hooplah. But we’ll save those thoughts for another post.]
Despite all of the risks, Bean and I are actually doing just fine. I’m 18 weeks now and have not yet felt them move, but I’m expecting it any day now. I’m also told that once that happens, I’ll start enjoying being pregnant more.
Daniel is still freaking out, occasionally. He also occasionally has moments where he gets kind of excited, so… balance. I am less freaked out because I have the gift of having to remain present and do all the things that I need to do each day to keep me and Bean healthy. Plus, we’ve both just been super busy, which has also kept us present enough to not be freaking out all the time.
By our third date, Daniel and I had talked about wanting children. When we started dating, I had a “Musts” and “Ideals” list, and “wants children” was on the “Must” list. It was last on the list – added after my own spiritual quest to answer for myself whether I wanted children, instead of continuing to outsource that decision to my future partner with a “if they want kids…” – but it was on there nonetheless. And I was not going to spend six months falling in love with someone and then find out that we wanted different things.
I was thirty-seven when we got married (still am), and have had Type 1 Diabetes since I was eleven, so we knew that if we wanted to do this, the sooner, the better for my body. We also figured it would take us at least a year of trying to get pregnant because I’m old (in terms of reproduction) and because Daniel has consumed a decent amount of marijuana in his life. And so, I made a doctor’s appointment to get my IUD removed the Monday after our wedding – and the day before we left on our trip – so we could start “trying.”
Newlywed chic.
And… it happened! On just our third try. Who would’ve thought?
No, but seriously: Who would’ve thought? Because we sure didn’t. In fact, we have since realized that neither of us thought that we would ever get pregnant. In fact, I’ve thought quite a bit about how I would gracefully navigate infertility, and we’d loosely talked about fostering or adoption in that case (but, not for, like, five more years because once the fertility clock stopped ticking, what’s the rush?). Meanwhile, I had given exactly zero headspace to our new reality: I’m actually pregnant.
Y’all. I have seen a *lot* of videos of people seeing the positive pregnancy test and instantly bursting into happy and excited and grateful tears. I’ve also heard a *lot* of stories about how happy and excited and grateful people are to be pregnant.
As you will learn, that is not our story.
Daniel started making videos of me taking pregnancy tests in May, when we spontaneously took our first one during a day trip to Carmel. It was our second month of “trying.” We locked ourselves inside of a public bathroom in the middle of a small park because we had to know right then whether our lives were changing, or whether I could enjoy an afternoon of wine tasting. We left the bathroom, with some side eye from the people waiting in line, and went back to our lives, unscathed.
A month later, on June 27th, he continued this “tradition,” when I took another pregnancy test, just three days after Roe v. Wade was overturned. (Which means that I had spent the previous two days consumed with learning about Plan C pills and trigger laws across the nation. I am still not quite sure what the significance of this timing is for me, but I also can’t stop mentioning it.) The night before, we’d had a game night with our squad, during which we’d all laughed about how improbable it was that we’d get pregnant – “There’s only one day a month that it can happen!”
When my period didn’t arrive the next morning, I texted Rooms and told her that my period was four days late. “Go take a test and tell me what happens.” “Okay, I will. I’ll get one as soon as I finish work,” which didn’t happen until about 7:30 that night. The checkout clerk at the Rite Aid wished me “good luck” as I walked out. “Thanks!” I replied, laughing internally.
Our “We’re Pregnant – Surprise!” Video.
I edited the video so that you don’t actually have to see me peeing, and – because of the way that I had to edit it – you miss me saying, “So far, it looks negative” right before this part of the video begins. As you can see, we did not burst into happy, excited, grateful tears. Instead, I burst into hysterical laughter, saying, “I don’t know what to do, what are we going to do?” over and over again, while Daniel’s face looks most akin to a terrified grimace. After this video, I drank a huge glass of water and we went for a walk, during which Daniel was – for the first time since I’ve known him – completely speechless, as I repeatedly asked, “What are we going to do?” and continued laughing in a borderline maniacal way. We took the second test when we got home, confirmed what we sort of already knew, and then sent the below voice memo to Rooms, as it was past 11PM on the east coast and she had already gone to sleep. As you can hear, our predominant feelings were “terror, grief, and surprise,” which I assumed would pass fairly quickly after the initial shock wore off, and we’d move into the socially appropriate and popular “happy, excited, grateful” phase.
Again, that is not our story.
Freaked out voice memo to Rooms.
In truth, our story is about three weeks of doubt. The night that we took the test, when we were initially freaking out, I actually said, “Well. We live in California. We can still change our minds if we really want to.” I initially chalked that up to shock – which would make that part of our story more palatable – but it’s a conversation that we did revisit, however briefly, a couple of times in the three weeks following. Because we remained pretty terrified and pretty ambivalent about this choice that we made.
I didn’t expect to keep feeling this way; neither of us did. We are happily married besties, financially stable, both gainfully employed and successful in our careers, with an incredible community of support, who actively made the decision that we wanted children and tried to get pregnant. This was our plan. And yet.
We both love our lives and our life together so disgustingly much. We love our alone time. We love our Yemma time. We love Super Snug Saturdays®, in which we stay in bed until 11, snugging and reading. We love spontaneous plans. We love devoting time and energy to our community. We love dance parties and game nights with our friends. We love the balance that we have of work and play. We love a good night’s sleep. We love our relationship exactly as it is. And when you feel terrified about change and grief about letting go of the way things were – and it’s a choice that you intentionally and actively made – that can start to feel very similar to regret.
Which is something else that we were definitely not “supposed to” be feeling. Maybe the teenager in a challenging relationship with unsupportive parents that accidentally got pregnant is allowed to feel regret, but not two people in our life positions. So let’s go ahead and layer some shame on top of the terror, grief, surprise, and possible regret. Oof.
Daniel’s “getting on an airplane” face. Which is similar enough to his “we’re pregnant” face.
This is where we were at when I started writing this, and I thought that all I had to offer at that point was some honesty and a narrative that I hadn’t heard often enough to combat the loneliness that I was feeling in this experience. But, mercifully, a few things have shifted in the past week and a half that have given me a glimmer of hope.
First, I remembered that zero faith is required to do things when we know exactly how they will turn out. And for those of us that care about practicing some amount of faith – which, I do; spiritual growth was actually one of the “practical” reasons that I wanted to have a kid – this is an opportunity to do so. Maybe we don’t need to know right this second exactly why we wanted to do this thing (that so many of our people do not want to do). Maybe our fear is not a sign that anything is wrong, is a normal part of change, and is actually “a natural reaction to moving closer to the Truth,” as Pema Chodron teaches. Maybe we can breathe, trust the process and know that more will be revealed.
Second. I remembered that I am stunned that I am here. Literally: there is no part of my decision-making in my 20s and early 30s that would have led anyone to believe that I would ever get this sort of opportunity. I spent months in my early 30s grieving the idea of ever having children because, at the time, I was choosing to remain in a relationship with a man that I knew I would never, ever, ever have children with. And now that I get to be in a deeply good relationship with a deeply good man, my body is old, by reproductive standards; as I mentioned above, neither of us actually thought that I would get pregnant. The fact that I am – and with Daniel – is actually kind of a miracle (and a testament to the years that I have spent in therapy and recovery rooms). And remembering all of that – remembering just how damn lucky I am and how unlikely it was that I’d ever get to do this – provided me with the gift of gratitude.
And finally: I got COVID. And when that test came back positive, I burst into tears – not because I was going to miss our float weekend on the Russian River (though that was a bummer) – but because I was so worried about what COVID could do to Bean. In that moment, it became clear to me – and everyone that I frantically reached out to – just how much I do want to be a mama to this little otter.
Despite my offering these glimmers of hope to make us all feel better, I know that there are going to be people who read this and think, “Damn. Maybe you shouldn’t be having kids. It’s super hard even when you really, really want it, and you seem pretty ambivalent.” And to that I say: You might be right. This might have been a terrible decision; we might hate parenting and resent our kid and regret our choice forever. It’s entirely possible. And. It is at least equally possible that this is our best decision ever. Maybe having a baby will grow and change our lives in ways we can’t quite imagine yet, and maybe – just maybe – we’ll like it. Maybe we’ll like it even more than we like our current lives. Who knows?
The thing is, we don’t get to know, and it also doesn’t really matter at this point because this is the path that we are on, wherever it may lead. When I was younger – and by that, I mean, like, a few years ago – I used to think that, at some point, adults just knew what to do with their lives, where they would live, what to eat for dinner**, whether they should buy a boat or move to Costa Rica or have children. I thought that there would be clear answers, clear directions. But it turns out, adult decisions are just people, going on walks, talking about all the different possibilities for their next step, and the pros and cons of each option, and then ultimately just doing the one that they want the most. At least, that’s how Daniel and I have made all of our decisions thus far, that have gotten us to this precious, fulfilling, beautiful life for which we have so very much deep love and gratitude. And so, I have faith that it will take us exactly where we need to go next.
We love yous, keep going. ❤
**That we have to find an answer to the question, “What’s for dinner?” every single damn day for all the days remains the single biggest surprise and struggle of my adult life.
I have a clear memory of being in second grade and feeling anxious. Though, I wouldn’t have been able to identify that that’s what I was feeling. Scared? Stressed? Worried? To comfort myself, I began going over my schedule for the week. On Tuesday night, I had soccer practice. Wednesday, I’d go bike riding with my dad. Thursday, the Simpsons – one of the two tv shows that I was allowed to watch each week – were on, and I’d watch with my brother and dad. (My mom didn’t watch TV through my entire childhood, save for Mia Farrow’s interview on Dateline and the day that we started bombing Iraq.) This is the first time that I remember feeling soothed by the illusion of control over time, by the comfort of organization, by the illusion of knowing what would happen with a degree of certainty. First this, then this.
A few weeks after I left CPS last year, Daniel looked over my shoulder at my still very full calendar, laughed, and said, ‘One day, I’m going to stop working, and I’m going to show you what that looks like.’ I will tell everyone, always, that all I want is some unscheduled free time, and yet: I never, ever create this for myself. Part of the reason for this is that our culture rewards and encourages busy-ness and I am a product of that culture, dutifully hustling away to earn my worth in the world. And part of the reason is that I rely on the order and rigidity of my very full schedule to keep me feeling safe, comfortable, in control. I long for free time, freedom, space, and yet, any time that I do actually get it, my first feeling is anxiety. What am I going to do with myself now?
Cut to now: I am on a five week vacation with Daniel. It’s a literal dream come true, one that we’ve been talking about and budgeting for since before we were even engaged. Many people – at least, in the US, where we have inexplicably decided that two weeks of vacation in a 52-week year is sufficient – will never get an opportunity like this. I am the luckiest, and am insanely grateful to get to spend this time with Daniel, in these gorgeous locations. There is no work, no chores, no scheduled outings or events. We are staring down the barrel of days upon days of empty calendar space. We are free.
What am I going to do with myself now?
Little Emma is always with me, always worrying. She’s afraid of stillness, afraid of space, afraid of freedom. They are unpredictable, unorganized, unexplored. It’s embarrassing to be so afraid, so seemingly ungrateful for the privilege that is this trip. Fortunately, therapy & healing have taught me – over and over and over – to orient towards Little Emma with compassion. She’s scared because her 7 year-old life was scary; and she does the very best that she can with what she has.
And so, I tell her the truth, which is: She is safe now. And she will never be alone in the darkness again. Because she has me, a competent and capable adult who has done the work and made the choices to make it so. And I will be here and I will take care of her, always and unconditionally.
And while I may not know what we are going to do with every moment of these next four weeks of spaciousness, I know that we can let it unfold and rest in the knowledge that we are loved and held. We can listen to Daniel read us sweet poems that he wrote about the life of pebbles, and finally read Foundation and Dune, and swim in the crystal blue ocean, and watch the beautiful purple sunsets, and be okay.
This week, despite how incredibly tired I still am, I was on fire about yet another person of color having their life – their LIFE – taken from them because of something as wildly random and insignificant as the color of their skin. I took to social media, ready to tell every white person that I know exactly what they should be doing and how outraged I am at them. If only every white person cared as much as I do and thought the same way that I do. This was their fault.
Then I remembered some things that I have learned in recovery:
When I’m pointing my finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at me.
When I’m feeling resentful, I need to ask what my part is, how I contributed to the dynamic.
When I want to rage and shame and judge someone else’s behavior, I need to put the focus back on myself. Stay in my lane. Make sure that my side of the street is clean. It’s not my job to police everyone else’s behavior; it’s my job to police my own.
I cannot control what other people do, I can only control what I do.
And so. I shifted the focus back to myself, and quickly realized an uncomfortable truth: I’m not really doing very much to stand up to racial injustice. I receive emails (that I never read) from Showing Up for Racial Justice; I follow POC activists and writers (and other people that don’t look like me) on social media; I share posts on social media; I have done some work around implicit racial biases; I have conversations about race with people that are comfortable having conversations about race. And… that’s it. That has been my entire contribution to the fight for racial justice thus far in my life. It occurred to me that getting on social media to scold other white people was nearly synonymous with saying, “Not all white people.” Because the purpose of my posts would be, this is your fault, not mine. “Not all white people” are racist; just those ones, over there. Not me. I am a good white person. I would also be centering myself, signaling my virtue to everyone that read it, while simultaneously doing nothing differently to enact change. Hmmm… perhaps I found “my part.”
As I watched the news of the protests in Minneapolis unfold, I couldn’t stop thinking about how we are still letting (mostly) black people fight these fights themselves. They are putting their own bodies on the line, while white people – myself included – mostly watch from the safety of our own home. Sure, I’m cheering them on, but would I be out there with them if that was happening in my city? Would I be putting my own body in danger to fight for the safety of theirs?
If I’m being real honest with myself, I don’t know the answer to the above question. I want to unequivocally say yes – of course I do – but saying yes is a lot easier than actually showing up to a protest and risking arrest, injury, and my life. I think that I would. I’m pretty sure that I would. And, I have doubts about my own commitment and my own willingness to put my life on the line. Admitting that doesn’t make me look or feel good, but it’s the truth. That’s where I’m at today.
And actually, it goes beyond that. Y’all, I am still so tired. The normal, appropriate human reaction to a global pandemic and the abrupt, radical change to all of our lifestyles is depression, anxiety, grief, overwhelm, fatigue; it would be really weird if we were all fine. Layer a social services job that is fairly demanding and stressful under normal circumstances on top of that, and I don’t have much time and energy left for this fight. I recently reached a point in my life in which I deeply understand and value caring for myself, and I am very much aware that I need rest right now in order to keep showing up for my life. And, I am also keenly aware that POC do not have the option to opt out of this fight; their lives are on the line. Mine – again – is not, and so I could ignore it, avoid it, go take a nap. I am struggling to find the balance between showing up for myself and showing up for the world and I don’t have the answer to that yet either.
Something else that I’ve learned in recovery: there often is no “right” or “wrong,” only what you can live with.
Here’s what I can’t live with right now: Doing nothing. Complacency. Outrage without action. Leading with ego. Leading with fear. Not knowing where to start, so not starting. Calling for things to change while being unwilling to change myself. Wanting things to be different without having to sacrifice any of my own comfort.
Here’s what I can live with right now: Doing something. Any behavior change is better than no behavior change. And there are some things that I can do while I wrestle with all of the above. I can donate money to a bunch of places doing good work. I can make phone calls. I can keep following and lifting up the voices and experiences of black activists and writers. I can educate myself (instead of just talking about educating myself, which I’ve already gotten really good at doing). I can encourage the education of other white people. I can start having conversations about race with people who are less comfortable talking about race. I can get really honest with myself and with others about my own racism. (Because, make no mistake: We are all racist. Yes, all white people.) I can pay attention, so that I at least know when protests and marches and events are happening, even if I’m not yet willing to participate. I can do as much as I can do, and then do a little bit more; there must be some amount of sacrifice.
With that, I’d like to announce the formation of the Virtual Reading for Racial Justice Book Club. We will meet every six to eight weeks (four seems like too much, particularly with all of the increased demands of the pandemic) on Zoom. We will read important books about racism, talk about what we learned, and have hard conversations about our part in this unjust system, culture, world we’ve created, and what we could do differently. The goal of this is not to show up and pat ourselves on the back for what we already know and how not racist we are. The goal of this is to learn – about our country’s history, about racism, about ourselves – and grow, which does not happen without getting uncomfortable. The goal is, actually, to get uncomfortable.
To do this, I’m committing to creating a “learning environment” for us. In our first meeting, we’ll talk a bit about some group agreements and what those mean; these will get us started:
Take space, make space
Anticipate discomfort
Build and maintain brave space (not safe; brave)
Own and honor your own emotions
What is said stays, what is learned leaves
Offer what you can, ask for what you need
Be brave enough to tell your own story, and kind enough to not tell anyone else’s
And then: We’ll share! We’ll discuss! We’ll get learn and grow and be uncomfortable together!
Our first book will be White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. While this book is written by a white woman – and the majority of the books that we will read will not be written by white people – she is a white woman who is very well-respected and recommended in the black activist community. This book is on all of the lists. And, my expectation is that this book will help to ground us in the difficult work that we will be engaging in. [Daniel and I are aware that people are financially suffering right now, and buying new books may be a stretch for some of you. If you are in this group, please let me know; we are happy to support these people’s work and our education by gifting you the books.]
So the only other thing that we need to talk about is scheduling. Based on the informal poll I did on social media, I know that people on both coasts are going to want to join in. I also know that people are probably not going to want to do this in the middle of the day – on either the week or weekend – and they will probably not want to do it in the morning either. That, combined with my schedule, leaves us with just a few plausible options:
Sunday at 4PM PST / 7PM EST
Monday at 5PM PST / 8PM EST
Wednesday at 5PM PST / 8PM EST
My ask is that anyone who wants to participate send me an email, text, or social media message to tell me which day & time works best for them. Whichever gets the most votes is the one that we’ll go with. Once we know, I’ll pick a date in the first two weeks of July, and that’ll be that. My plan is to keep the meeting to between one and 1.5 hours.
A few weeks ago, I was having a socially distant happy hour with three of my girl friends. While we were hanging out, one of my friends announced that she was contemplating a major life change. In response to her announcement, the other two friends began to weigh in with their opinions and advice. As I watched this unfold, I thought, ‘Did [the announcer] ask us for advice?’
I get it. I have a lot of opinions about how everyone else should be thinking and behaving. Before recovery, I shared this ‘advice’ freely, constantly, unsolicited. I thought that this was helpful, that it demonstrated how much I cared, and, also, how smart and competent I was. Thank goodness my friends all have me to tell them how to live.
Here’s what I know now: Everyone has an opinion, and most of them don’t matter. And actually, practicing discernment about whose opinion does matter to you is critical. We can’t not care what anyone thinks (we’ll be assholes), and we also can’t care what everyone thinks (we’ll be constant people-pleasers and have no sense of self). Brené [Brown] suggests writing the names of those whose opinion you do value on a 1-inch by 1-inch piece of paper, which is really small; people will have to earn their limited spots. Create criteria and choose wisely; the people on that paper will help shape your life.
Most people do not want – or need – my opinion. Most people want my compassion, my understanding, my empathy. Most people want affirmation that they are not alone in their experience. Most people just want space to be themselves and to be heard and to be loved whether they are doing the ‘right’ thing or not. They want the dignity of making their own choices for their one precious life, even if I think it’s a bad idea. Telling people how to live is not actually helpful or kind or an act of love; it’s control. And when I tell people how to live their lives, I tell them that I believe that I know best. Better than they do.
I don’t. I don’t know what’s best for others, even if I think I do, even if it seems really obvious to me what they should do, even if others agree with me. I still don’t actually know. I am not their Higher Power; I am not God. I am just a person with an opinion. And, most of the time, it’s none of my damn business what other people are doing with their lives, anyway. All of my spiritual work teaches me to keep the focus on myself, to stay in my lane, to live and let live.
Also. People will tell me if I’m on the list of opinions that matter to them. They tell me this by asking for my opinion or my advice. When this happens, I feel humbled; being asked to weigh in on another person’s life choices is both an honor and a responsibility. And even then, I’ve learned to rarely give advice; advice is just really tricky, and I’m not sure that it serves us. If I give it and they don’t follow it, I run the risk of them feeling embarrassed or judged around me, and that isn’t what I want for my relationships.
What do we really want for our people and our relationships? Do we want to be the one who is “right?” Do we want them to feel obligated to do what we think that they should, and ashamed if they don’t? Do we want them to hide their decisions and their hard stuff from us out of fear of being judged? Of course not. In recovery, we learn to share our experience, strength, and hope, rather than giving advice or sharing our opinion. We want our people to know that we are a safe person that they can bring their real, imperfect, struggling, whole selves to; that they will be met with love and compassion and understanding, no matter what; that they are not alone.
Here’s the truth: Every person has their own path in this Life, that is unique and precise and theirs. Every person also has their own light inside of them, guiding them forward. Some people call this light “intuition”; others call it “inner wisdom”; others call it “God” or “the holy spirit”; Glennon calls it “Knowing”; I call it “Truth,” or “Love” (which I think of as synonyms). What we call it does not matter; that we learn how to find it does. Deep down, every person already knows what to do; we all have Truth inside of us. Our jobs are not to offer each other opinions or advice; our jobs are to hold the mirror up to those that we love, so that they are able to better see their own light, to bear witness to their own journey towards Knowing. Our job is to ask curious questions and share our experiences – not to control the outcome or manipulate the other person to do what we think they should – but to help each other find our own inner Knowing, to love each other through the journey, and to remind each other that none of us is alone.
Remember when I said that I wanted to talk about things other than the quarantine / COVID? Well. That was true. It still is true. And yet.
Loves, I am so tired. I think that just about everyone that I know – even the people who were living their best life in quarantine for the first several weeks – is, at least, mildly depressed. The grief for our lives before. The inconvenience of everything. The anxiety about the future. The indefinite nature of everything. I have this endlessly nagging thought that we haven’t even started to see the real fallout from this – emotionally, economically, culturally. The difficulty falling asleep. The constant exhaustion. I miss hugging my friends. Like, deeply, achingly miss it. I sobbed this morning thinking about how long it will be until I can go to New Jersey and see my babies again. The suffering. The fear and desperation that comes with not being able to pay one’s bills or feed one’s family. The fear of getting sick, of losing loved ones, of our fragile human existence.
The leadership program that I started back in October had a check-in on Zoom last week. The first question was, “What have you lost during this crisis as a leader?” When it was my turn, I responded, “I’m not sure that this is appropriate to say in a leadership program, but my first thought was, ‘my motivation.’” So many heads – including our facilitator’s – nodded in agreement. I so badly want to be one of those people who sees crisis and runs in to help, and the truth is: I mostly want to take a nap and be woken up when this is over. I am showing up every day, and doing my job (and well), and I am exceedingly grateful to still have a job and to be able to serve the community right now. And, it’s a struggle. The world is burning down around us, and I’m still editing court reports. In some ways, it’s comforting to be doing “normal” things; in others, it’s completely incongruent, and hard to focus. And, discerning what matters right now is hard; projects that I cared so much about – and still do? Sort of? – have lost some amount of meaning. How do we balance our responsibility to protect public health with our responsibility to protect children (with our responsibility to address economic inequity and insecurity)?
Also. Working in social services is particularly heavy right now. The other day, I was telling my roommate about how much the need for subsidized or free food has increased in the community, and how intensely people are suffering right now. She somewhat sheepishly responded that she almost forgets about that piece, which makes sense: she works in tech; her job doesn’t require her to witness that reality every day. In normal times, my job necessitates a certain amount of recovery time outside of work; right now, I am exhausted, always.
I am completely overwhelmed. All the time. By everything. The news; social media; zoom; my phone; what remains of my social life. There is so much information. There is so much to process, and so many people needing to process, to share their experience. There are so many feelings. There are so many predictions about what will happen. There is so much loss and so much need. I have accepted that I cannot fix this for my people, but I still want to be available to everyone, all the time; I want to show up in meaningful ways for the people that I love; I want to do what I do best: make space for people to process without judgment or fear. And, I can’t. I’m too tired and too wrecked myself. In the midst of this crisis, I am being given the opportunity to practice taking care of myself, which, right now, looks like setting boundaries around my time and energy; resting; and not putting any pressure or shoulds on myself to do anything, other than survive. I’ve stopped reading most news. I savagely limit my time on social media. I silenced nearly all of my text messages. I am, simply put, not particularly available right now. [I felt really guilty about this, at first; and I also learned a few things in recovery: 1) Sacrificing my own care in order to care for others is not healthy. Overextending myself makes me feel depleted and run down, and nobody wants me to feel this way, especially not “for their sake.” 2) It’s also not kind. When I do this, I put myself in the position of martyr, and often end up feeling resentful, obligated, and/or put out. And again, nobody wants me to feel this way. I’m also so overtired or overwhelmed that I’m not really able to enjoy my time with my people, or be fully present for them. And 3) I’m not as important as I like to think. If I’m not available, my people are still okay. They aren’t going to crumble and die without me. I am not their savior.]
I told my therapist last week, “It’s not that I’m depressed. I still have a pretty good life, actually. I’m incredibly lucky. I have my job and a paycheck, as does my partner. I have a loving partner – and an exceptionally good relationship – with which to walk through this crisis. I have a therapist and a spiritual community. I am actually quite good at entertaining myself, and I’m getting to do a lot of reading, writing, and cooking. I find several moments of joy and laughter and gratitude in every day. I have a great life. And, there’s also this consistent feeling of loss and sadness and fear in the background of everything.”
Boomers on zoom! My extended family all got on for my cousin’s med school graduation.
The Unknown. From my time in this Life, I have learned that we – humans (and maybe especially Americans?) – do not want to feel uncomfortable. We have developed a billion ways to avoid any uncomfortable feelings, including my personal favorites: distraction / numbing (scrolling through our phones, eating, staying busy, Netflix, gaming, obsessing about other people’s behavior, alcohol); denial (“I’m fine”); shame (“Other people have it worse, I don’t deserve to feel this way,” “you have so much to be grateful for,” “you should be using this time to finish your novel / learn Spanish / pause and reflect, not feel sorry for yourself”); and certainty. We are so uncomfortable with not knowing what will happen, that we try to create certainty. “This is a hoax, there is nothing to worry about.” “This will be over soon.” “There isn’t actually anything to worry about.” Certainty – the belief that we know what will happen – is comforting, as it gives us a sense of control. Now that we “know” what will happen, we will not be surprised or unprepared. [To be abundantly clear: Literally nobody knows how this is going to play out. Nobody. Every single one of us has to live through this one day at a time.]
The Fear. I’ve heard this narrative that closing everything down was an overreaction, that people were panicking, that it was unnecessary or could have been done differently (like Sweden!). It’s at least partly true: We – and everyone making the decisions – was definitely afraid. And with good reason: Every expert / scientist was recommending severe restrictions based on the very real statistical data that was available and terrifying. Now – in large part because the extreme measures have worked so well – everyone wants to open everything back up. (“And maybe the virus will die in the heat!” Bargaining is another way to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty.) This decision is also based on fear; a different fear: Fear that the economy will suffer, that people can’t work and, therefore, cannot pay their bills or eat or spend money.
Which brings up something else that we need to talk about: We all agree that people not having money to meet their basic needs is a problem. Some people think that the cause of this problem is that they haven’t been able to work because of the severe restrictions created to address the pandemic; in that case, the solution to the problem is to lift the restrictions and send people back to work. This totally makes sense, if that’s the root cause of the existing problem. But I – and others – disagree. The root cause of this problem is not that people have been unable to work; the root cause of this problem is that the society that we have set up has no mechanism for taking care of people that are unable to work due to a global pandemic. Which means that all of the people who are not privileged enough to have jobs that allow them to work from home have to keep going into work, even if it’s not safe or recommended by public health experts to do so. The conversation that we need to be having is much larger and longer-term than is, perhaps, possible to have in the immediacy of the crisis: We need to decide as a society that we want to take care of each other, and then figure out a way to create a robust social safety net that does just that.
Visiting the sea lions at the wharf!
I am currently reading the third in a trilogy of sci-fi books that started with The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I don’t normally read sci-fi, but Daniel really loves it, and a few of our friends read it, and I was curious. I started this trilogy before the current crisis, and it has, coincidentally, turned out to be super relevant, as the main plot line is humanity’s fight against an existential threat (aliens in the book, coronavirus in real life). A couple of lines have stuck out in the third book, both said to humanity by its alien conquerors. The first is, “Mere existence is already the result of incredible luck. Such as the case on Earth in the past, and such has always been the case in this cruel universe. But at some point, humanity began to develop the illusion that they’re entitled to life, that life can be taken for granted…” So much of our collective suffering right now stems from our desire for things to be different than they are; in fact, we believe that things should be different than they are now. In America (and probably elsewhere), we have become accustomed to our conveniences, to our superior defense system, to our freedoms; and, at some point, we began to believe that these were our rights, that we were entitled to these things. (Because we’re ‘Mericans.) We seem to have this collective belief that our current situation is not how things are supposed to be, that we need to get “back to normal” and soon. [Also: the recent hunting of Ahmaud Arbery is reminding me how much I don’t want to go “back to normal”]. One of the biggest struggles with all of this is the very salient reminder that Life is fragile; that we are not actually entitled to being comfortable, or being free to move about the world however we want, or even to be safe and alive; that we all have to live life on life’s terms. This was always true, but, like many inconvenient truths, we had done what we do with situations that make us feel uncomfortable: deny, ignore, distract, avoid. We are now being forced to reckon with these truths and…we still really don’t want to.
The second line that stood out was also from the alien conqueror: “The era for humanity’s degenerate freedom is over. If you want to survive here, you must relearn collectivism and retrieve the dignity of your race!” While the Unknown is terrifying, I also know that sitting in discomfort is the greatest motivator to create change. (Nothing changes when people are comfortable because…why would we change anything? We’re comfortable.) And make no mistake: We need change. Our individualism has left us disconnected, fearful, selfish, and self-centered. Systemic racism is woven into the fabric of our society, and our unaddressed implicit biases continue to kill black and brown bodies at an alarmingly disproportionate rate. In a country where there is so much for some of us, we allow others to sleep on the streets and to worry about how they will get their next meal. Our cultural value system – money, image, power, convenience and comfort that we all chase – has made us the most addicted, most medicated, most depressed, most anxious, and most obese country in the world. We are a living demonstration that money doesn’t buy happiness.
In my leadership group this week, the second check-in question was, ‘what has this crisis gifted you?’ I was too tired that day to answer thoughtfully, but I’ve kept thinking about it since. As always, there are gifts. For one, there is such an overwhelming outpouring of good right now. People are showing up for and taking care of each other in different and creative ways. People – myself very much included – are experiencing a renewed gratitude for life, for our communities, for nature, for slowing down. I am continuously amazed at our resilience; humans are incredible, and the instinct of Life itself to survive is strong and deeply rooted. We really can do hard things.
Another gift is the opportunity with which this crisis presents us. Up until now, my generation has coasted along in relative comfort and without much struggle; this may be just the catalyst we need to inspire us to do something interesting! Creative destruction. A socio-economic-political-cultural revolution. In recovery, I’ve learned that crisis often invites us to reassess what is important. I can live with wearing masks, and without unlimited access to the beach; can I live without my partner? My connections to other people? Without food? Without love? Without faith? Is the life that I am living – the beliefs and values that I hold close, the choices I make about how I spend my time and energy, the way that I love people – aligned with the truest, most beautiful version of myself? Is the way that we are living – the values that guide our behavior, the way that we treat each other, the way that we treat the most vulnerable among us – representative of who we want to be as a people, as a country, as the human race? These are the questions that this crisis is inviting us to answer.
There will be an After. It’s almost hard for me to believe right now because this crisis seems like it has been going on for seventeen thousand years and the end is so indefinite and I’m so tired, but there will be. We will go back out into the world and we will hug each other and we will dance in the streets and it will be glorious and I will cry so many happy tears. And then, we will rebuild our world, and we will have a choice: Do we want to go “back to normal,” to go backwards to what normal was Before? Or, do we want to take what we have learned from the past and from this crisis and use it to build in a different direction, to create a new “normal,” to create a world based around connectedness and collectivism and the practices of love?
I’ve been accused of being an idealist for my entire career, and maybe for most of my adult life. I used to reject that label, mainly because it was normally being used to dismiss my ideas; idealists lack an understanding of reality, after all. But, it’s true: I am an idealist. I believe in humanity, in every sense of the word. I believe that we are capable of leading from a place of love. I believe that we are capable of creating a world in which we all practice being brave and kind together, a world in which we take care of each other. I believe that we can do hard things.
In Untamed (which I read twice in the beginning of quarantine and highly recommend), the woman who taught me to be brave and kind and that we can do hard things, Glennon Doyle, explains this idea in a way that deeply resonates. She writes,
“I have learned to live by faith, which does not mean that I live by a set of unwavering beliefs or dogma that men laid down ages ago to keep their power by controlling others. My faith has nothing to do with religion anymore. To me, living by faith is allowing the swelling and pressing inside me to direct my outwards words and decisions. Because to me, God is not a being outside of me: God is the first, the nudge, the warm liquid gold swelling and pressing inside me.
In fact, my favorite idea of faith is a belief in the unseen order of things.
There are two orders of things:
There is the seen order unfolding in front of us every day on our streets and in the news. In this visible order, violence reigns and children are shot in their schools and warmongers prosper and 1 percent of the world hoards half of all we have. We call this order of things reality. This is ‘the way things are.’ It’s all we can see because it’s all we’ve ever seen. Yet something us rejects it. We know instinctively: This is not the intended order of things. This is now how things are meant to be. We know that there is a better, truer, wilder way.
That better way is the unseen order inside us. It is the vision we carry in our imagination about a truer, more beautiful world – one in which all children have enough to eat and we no longer kill each other and mothers do not have to cross deserts with their babies on their backs. This better idea is what Jews call shalom, Buddhists call nirvana, Christians call heaven, Muslims call salaam, and many agnostics call peace. It is not a place out there – not yet; it’s the hopeful swelling in here, pressing through our skin, insisting that it was all meant to be more beautiful than this. And it can be, if we refuse to wait to die and ‘go to heaven’ and instead find heaving inside us and give birth to it here and now. If we work to make the vision of the unseen order swelling inside us visible in our lives, homes, and nations, we will make reality more beautiful. On Earth as it is in heaven. In our material world as it is in our imagination. […]
[…] There is no one way to live, love, raise children, arrange a family, run a school, a community, a nation. The norms were created by somebody, and each of us is somebody. We can make our own normal. We can throw out all the rules and write our own. We can build our lives from the inside out. We can stop asking what the world wants from us and instead ask ourselves what we want for our world. We can stop looking at what’s in front of us long enough to discover what’s inside us. We can remember and unleash the life-changing, relationship-changing, world-changing power of our own imagination. It might take us a lifetime. Luckily, a lifetime is exactly how long we have.
Let’s conjure up, from the depths of our souls: The truest, most beautiful lives we can imagine.
The truest, most beautiful families we can fathom.
The truest, most beautiful world we can hope for.
Let’s put it all on paper.
Let’s look at what we’ve written and decide that these are not pipe dreams; these are our marching orders. These are the blueprints for our lives, our families, and the world.
May the invisible order become visible.
May our dreams become our plans.”
This is my hope, my prayer, my vow for this time, the only thing that I need to do during quarantine besides survive. The only thing that I have the energy to do besides survive. I will sit in my discomfort. I will let it strip down my life and my world in the ways that need to happen, so that I can learn what I need to know, and imagine the Life I want to live, the relationships that I want to have, and the world that I want to live in. I will write down these blueprints, and use them as a guide in building the After.
I have written so many versions of this post. Perfectionism is the enemy of done. And creativity. And humility.
I simply don’t know what to say. My feelings about what is happening change day to day, hour to hour. There is an incredible amount of information to take in – they’re putting bodies in moving vans in Manhattan! Shelter-in-place through the summer?! Inject Lysol to cure COVID?! (omg) – on a daily basis. The whole world is grieving their life Before COVID. The whole world is living with complete uncertainty about the future (which has always existed, of course, but has never been more salient). I am constantly overwhelmed.
I don’t know what to say that will add value to the conversation, that is different than what anyone else is already saying (and better), that will bring any comfort or clarity. I have no answers. I told my Sister-in-Law last month that I was both completely fascinated by this crisis and also never want to talk about it again. I am tired of talking about it, and can’t stop talking about it. And honestly, at this point, I really just need to say something to acknowledge what is happening because I can’t bring myself to share anything else that I’ve been thinking about until I do. So, I still don’t know what to say, but I do know some things about crisis – experiencing the gift of crisis (and/or the gift of desperation) is almost a prerequisite for people in recovery – that I can share. Here we go…
I know this: We are smack dab in the middle. Probably the end of the first third. Who even knows? We are just past the beginning and before the end. We don’t yet know the arc of this story. We don’t yet know how long this will last, or how much this will permanently change our world. Without a full story, it is difficult to create meaning; how do we know the moral, if we don’t yet know how the story ends?
Puppy therapy during the quarantine.
I know this: All of Life is both/and, and this crisis is only making that more clear. I have All the Feelings, and I’m also okay. I am fascinated and excited by the possibility of this historical moment, and I am devastatedat the amount of suffering that is happening in the world today. I am grateful, all the time, for all of the gifts of this crisis; and I am also bummed about everything that it has taken away. I am inspired by the perspective that this time period is an invitation to learn Spanish / write a novel / train for a marathon / enjoy the pause, and I am exhausted and want to watch Netflix on the couch and want everyone to stop pressuring me to make the most of this time. I am both super motivated and ambitious, and super overwhelmed and tired. I like working from home, and I can not wait to get out of the house at the end of the workday. I am both ecstatically excited about the day that I’ll get to hug all of my people again, and I am overwhelmed at the thought of being so close to so many people again. I want people to stay inside to keep everyone – especially the most vulnerable among us – safe, and I also understand the desperation and fear of those that have lost wages, livelihoods, security. We need to balance the very real threat to public health and the very real threat of financial insecurity. We have never been so connected – in a fight against a common enemy, in our vulnerability, in our need for a universal response – and we have never been so isolated and alone. In some ways, I am living my best life – lots of reading, writing, cooking, walking in nature, hanging out with Daniel – and this is still really, really hard.
Yoga during the quarantine.
I know this: We are all doing the best that we can, and that is enough. People, we need to be kind to ourselves. Nobody ever said to go spend 24/7 with your family unit – and no one else – because it would be really good for your relationships. Nobody ever said that isolation, lack of physical and community connection, and a fear of getting too close to other people would be good for our mental health. Listen to me: It is totally cool if quarantine is causing your creativity to explode and your productivity to skyrocket. And it is equally cool if your biggest accomplishment today was not killing your people. We do not have to be in a perfectly zen state of acceptance all the time. We do not need to be model homeschool teachers for our children. We do not need to soak up every moment of family togetherness. We do not need to landscape our yards, write our memoirs, and learn guitar. We do not need to win at quarantine; we only need to survive quarantine, preferably without killing our people. Daniel and I talk a lot about grace, and quarantine has given us so many opportunities to practice it.
Socially distant hiking with friends during the quarantine.
I know this: This is hard. The truth is that I really, reallydon’t want to live Life on Life’s terms right now because I think that Life’s terms suuuuuuuuuck. I have been mildly-to-moderately-inconvenienced by this, which is a privilege – people are sick and alone; people are terrified about how they will pay their rent or buy food; people can’t have funerals for their loved ones that have died – and it’s still hard. We had a family zoom call with my parents, and Brother, Sister-in-Law, and their babies on my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. I laughed through the call as tears streamed down my face; I was so happy to see the kids, andwreckedthat I don’t know when I’ll see them in real life again. The Unknown is hard and uncomfortable. I also know this: We can do hard things. Humans are incredibly resilient; we were built with a tremendous capacity to adapt. The Truth is, Life is always hard for humans; the awareness that we will die is both a gift and a burden. (This is why so many of us practice some amount of faith.) We do hard things every damn day: we say goodbye to people that we love; we go to unfulfilling, challenging, or demanding jobs; our cars break down; we lose our homes to fire and foreclosure; we make amends; we help people who are suffering; we have miscarriages; the list is endless.
My heart.
I know this: We only have to live one day at a time. We only can live one day at a time. My sponsor uses the phrase ‘spinning of into the wreckage of our future’ to describe the anxiety that happens in my / our heads about what could be, and that is exactly what happens when I entertain the idea of being semi-quarantined for a year. There is so much conversation about what people – scientists, politicians, the general public, my friends – think will happen. How long will we be sheltered-in-place? How long after that will we need to wear masks and socially distance? How many people will die? What will the world look like in The After? And the reality is: We just don’t freaking know yet. And no amount of thinking or worrying about it is going to change that reality. Focusing on one day at a time means that when my mind starts to wonder into the wreckage of our future, I gently bring it back to where my feet are, in the present. I don’t have to worry about how I will be quarantined for a year; I just need to be quarantined for today, and today – one day (or, sometimes, one hour) – is manageable. One day at a time is how we do hard things.
Thank goodness for nature and the sun.
I know this: Crisis is a spotlight. So many problems that existed in our culture before – income inequality; disproportionality; homelessness; lack of access to healthcare; the list goes on – have been exacerbated. People are suffering, and the suffering is likely to continue. There has never been a stronger argument for universal healthcare, for a universal basic income, for housing first philosophies. I also know this: Crisis is an opportunity. Crisis invites us to hold our values and our ideas about how we live up to the light, to reflect on whether they represent the people that we want to be, to see if they are true enough. We can begin to imagine how our society could be: what the world would look like if we took care of each other, what the world would look like if we shaped it to serve the most vulnerable among us, what the world would look like if there was no Other. This crisis could lead to revolution; what does the world that we want to build – the world that we want to live in – look like?
Okay, I think that’s all that I know for now. And, at this point, I just need to push publish and stop obsessing. Onward.
We can do hard things.
Love you all so much. Take good care of yourselves and each other. ❤
She Won't Stop Talking 