A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
Yesterday was a day where I cried a lot in therapy. (Actually, yesterday was a day where I cried a lot for the entire day, following a series of days where I also cried a lot. I cry a lot, is what I’m saying.) It was in a category of therapy sessions where I sit down, barf words at my therapist for 20 minutes without stopping, and then sob. The only emotion I could really identify was TIRED. So, so tired.
My therapist said this, which I am now passing on to you: “It sounds like you’re trying go back to not only your life pre-pregnancy, but your life pre-pandemic.” She went on to say she’d been hearing a lot of that these days: people talking about how they just want to get back to normal already. A sense of longing for these mythical before-times. And maybe inherent is a sort of where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way attitude: an idea that if you just try hard enough, you will arrive somewhere that feels blissfully familiar.
But, in fact, you’re rushing a process that requires slowness. Very few people alive today have crawled out of a worldwide trauma the scope of Covid-19. And, obviously, I’m not writing this correspondence from an “after,” either. The best we can do is feel hopeful while listening to epidemiologists and scientists who believe that we can figure out how to live with this virus. Anyway, as with a body that has been through pregnancy and birth, there isn’t really a going back that is possible. There is a going forward. The going forward can be beautiful, but pretty much everyone with even a rudimentary understanding of human psychology and physiology will tell you it’s going to be slow.
Friend, you are trying SO HARD. Even on the days where you think, “I could have tried harder. I’m not where I want to be for reasons that are all my fault,” I want to assure you: you are doing enough. I want to give you permission to try less hard. You aren’t going to RESULTS (in all capital letters), but you’ll feel this truth: some of what you are longing for is not physically possible at this exact moment, and that isn’t your fault. You are two years in to a global pandemic. You don’t get to see nearly as many people smile as you used to, and that’s an important thing for human animals.
When your body experiences physical trauma — say an elephant takes up residence on your foot for an hour, crushing your toes — you would not expect the trauma to heal itself right away. You would expect to wear a cast, to stay off your feet, for time to loop around itself while your bones tried to regrow, for at least a dozen sessions of physical therapy (hopefully with a hot physical therapist, because that’s how it would go in the movies), before your foot could go back to anything like “normal.”
The emotional trauma elephant that is Covid-19 is still on your foot. So even if you decide to cut that foot off and build a whole new foot (I hope this metaphor remains in tact), you still need SO MUCH TIME before you can walk like you did before.
Treat your whole self, from time to time, like an elephant-squashed foot. Be gentle, slow, careful, and appreciative that chances are, you’ll survive this. And we can hope against hope that at some point, you will be able to heal.
Love,
Sophie
Add this to your to-do list.
Learn a new word. Use it twice in one day.
Write a thank you letter to your body. If that feels too hard, pick a body part, and write to that. Do you have any idea how much your LIVER does for you? (It struck me while talking on the phone this week [about livers] that maybe that’s why it’s called the Live-r. Like, that’s its job. TO LIVE.)
You could use your new word in your thank you letter!
A drawing.
Here’s an old watercolor of a kid holding a puppy, and they are both happily marching in a Sunday second-line. For joy.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about new parenthood. Skip it if you don’t want to read about new parenthood.)
I read a lot of listacle-type articles when I was pregnant about what I should buy and what I should avoid buying. Basically every article said that mobiles, while charming, were not worth it. You banged into them when you went to address your child’s bed-needs, and the child didn’t care much about them, the articles said. Luke wanted a mobile, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the blogs felt mobiles were soooo last century. So we let my mom buy us a pretty bird mobile from the MoMA. It really looked elegant in the nursery Luke built for T, and I had no regrets. Then our friends gave us their leftover mobiles: a felt elephant one and a spiral one with block colors. Luke loved the elephant one (and yeah, man, it was CUTE AF, so I get it), and hung it, on a bit of a whim, over the changing table. Now my baby is out, and is three months old, and I can only say one thing with absolute definitiveness: this dang elephant mobile is the fucking GOAT of all our baby things. We have (count ‘em) THREE chairs that rock back and forth all on their own, like futuristic nursery robots, and still I would choose the mobile in a heartbeat. We have clever cloth books that shake and rattle and have fabric mirrors (?!) integrated into them, and they’re nothing compared to the mobile. We have ergonomic swaddles and my-first-ring-of-keys and a state-of-the-art bassinet canopy protector and — well, you know what I’m gonna say. T is starting to teethe (yes, it’s early, but it’s happening), and pretty much the only thing that can get her to stop screaming is taking her to look at what is now lovingly dubbed Elephant Boyfriend. She gets all sheepish and coy and giggles and tries to hide her face like Rhett Butler just appeared on the ceiling or something. She also likes the bird mobile and the spiral mobile, and her upstairs roommate’s mobile (we live with another baby and his parents), which is felt planets. We have spent way more time just sticking her under mobiles that I ever could have imagined, and if you gave me three more mobiles I would excitedly take them and put them in other parts of my house, so T could always be blissed out.
Extras.
I assigned this essay called “Against Winning” to my students who all self-identified as “very competitive,” and they really liked it.
Did you know hamsters in the wild drink a lot of alcohol? And that hamsters are way better at alcohol consumption than human men named Chuck? (There is no actual Chuck; but it feels like those guys who are always bragging about their everclear consumption are usually named something Chuck-adjacent.)
I FINISHED THE VANISHING HALF AND IT DESTROYED ME. Like, it was the most beautiful book I have ever read, basically, and it should win every prize, and I cried until my body was like, “We are out of water.”
Have you guys had kabocha squash!? HOLY COW! I had mine cut into slices, then rubbed with a marinade of sesame oil + miso paste + soy sauce + ginger and roasted for about 35 minutes at 450 (F). People have told me that this was a good squash before, but I never really believed them. IT IS A GREAT SQUASH, ACTUALLY.
Please take this opportunity to learn about all the things that you can find out about childhood trauma by examining baby teeth.
Oh, I had to use a huge cleaver to cut the squash, btw. Or, I didn’t HAVE to use one, but Luke bought me one two Chistmases ago for cutting coconuts in half, and I had never used it, but MAN is it ever FUN to WHACK A SQUASH. Vegans think they don’t need meat cleavers, but they’re wrong.
ALSO! A person on Instagram named Natalie sent me this terrific drawing she did after Groundhog Day last week, and it filled me with boatloads of joy. Thank you for sending this to me, Natalie, and for letting me put it in this humble newsletter for the people to enjoy.
Wonderful article. Thank you to my liver.
Your emails brighten my day and my heart and my everything. Thank you!