Dear Friend,
I’ll be honest with you, I started this day with a cry.
It wasn’t a big deal or anything. Not really. Basically, Luke (my husband) woke up at 3:30 a.m. two nights ago COVERED IN HIVES. Like, his eyes were swollen almost shut. All over his back, all over his stomach, his legs, his hands. He got pregnant-woman-hands, and no one warned him to take his wedding ring off, so it got really stuck on there. This was alarming, and we couldn’t figure out what had happened. He took some allergy medicine, and the hives got better but did not go away. Then, in the middle of the night last night, it happened again. He woke up again covered in hives, totally swollen.
(For the medical mystery lovers out there: he did go to Urgent Care, where there was a person there who had [get this] THE EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS. But the urgent care person was stumped and didn’t even have a good guess. Luke has no other symptoms, so she prescribed him prednisone and sent him home.)
I know this is probably nothing, but I find it scary. I am quite attached to Luke, and I don’t want anything bad to ever happen to him.
Then, thing two: my 9-month-old T is still sick. If you’ve been following along, she has been sick for, like, four or five weeks. She, too, has been to Urgent Care; she’s been on an antibiotic, and yet, the booger flow and chest cough continue. No fever, so every person I’ve talked to has said, “Don’t worry about it; babies get sick.” And yes. I get that. But you still have to pay for daycare when your baby has to stay home, and if your baby has a runny nose, your baby has to stay home. This all makes sense, and we don’t pay childcare people enough. But Luke and I both have non-salaried jobs, where we don’t get paid if we don’t work. You see my pickle. At this point, I have paid for more days of daycare where T has not ended up going than days that she has.
And so, my friend, I had a little cry. I just buried my head in the mattress and had a delicate, non-threatening, quiet cry that bothered no one. It was not meant to be noticed by outside forces. It was like a leak in the system that had to trickle out before I could move forward.
But of course, attentive partner that he is, Luke noticed the cry and said, “Are you OK?” And I’m like, “Yes.” He goes, “You’re crying.” I go, “Yes, but I’m OK. I just wish things would… regulate.” Luke: “They probably never will.” Me: “I mean, I just want T to be able to go to daycare for one whole week. That is all. And I feel scared about your oozing lesions.” Luke: “Hives.” Me: “Sorry, yes, hives.” Luke: “They’re not oozing.” Me: “Sorry.”
Then Luke comes up with one of these:
And by this, Luke meant: “Aren’t you grateful? Because look around at our home, and our support network, and this fucking incredible baby that we now get to SPEND THE DAY WITH. And I could have a fever or chills or pains, and I feel fine. And look! I’m staying home again, so you can sit in your study and write your newsletter to your friend, and isn’t it great that you get to have the time privilege to write a newsletter? And it’s summer? And we’re in love? And if we wanted a pizza, we could just ORDER IT?” You know. He meant something like that.
Which reminded me of an email I received in response to this Buzzfeed essay I recently published (but have long ago stopped reading the comments on) about being pregnant and polyamorous. The emailer was mad at me. They were mad because it seemed like my love life was too perfect. Didn’t I know how HARD it was to NOT have a cis-male father-of-my-child? The crux of the email seemed to be that, as a bisexual polyamorous woman, I was not queer enough to be writing a story about being queer. (To be fair, I am REALLY paraphrasing and reading between the lines here, and this person didn’t ask to be written about in a newsletter. And I responded with an apology for not appropriately acknowledging my privilege, which, when I wrote it, I meant.) The thing is, I had not written a story about being queer; I had written a story about being myself, as I experienced pregnancy.
And basically, I understand why we say, “It could be worse.” And I get that it can feel bad when someone — particularly someone with a public platform — talks about having uncomfortable emotions or experiences when they have a lot of privilege to begin with. You are allowed to hear someone’s story, and hear about the feelings that they felt, and have whatever judgement you want to have about it. You can stop listening, you can quit reading, you can draw conclusions about how selfish and complain-y and bad strangers (or not strangers!) are at heart. That’s within your rights, and it’s a normal human reaction to living in proximity to other humans.
And I think we know that people do that, and it can feel scary.
But if you’re constantly telling yourself, “It could be worse,” or, “I shouldn’t be complaining,” or, “This is not that big a deal” (see beginning of this email), you have effectively done one thing: you’ve shut down the conversation.
I think we use “it could be worse” most often when we’re talking to other people. When you say, “It could be worse,” you’re also saying, “Don’t judge me too harshly; I have a good handle on reality, and I know this is not that bad. Also, I am not trying to get you to fix this, and I recognize that you might think I’m complaining. Let’s stop talking about this now.” It’s a very effective shut-the-conversation-down tool. The alternative to shutting a conversation down is getting vulnerable and risking judgement, and, like I said, that’s scary.
I might note, it’s not always emotionally safe! There are times to say “It could be worse.” Sometimes you don’t want to let someone in too much, because they haven’t earned your trust yet. And so, good on you. You’ve found a great last sentence, and you can change the subject.
But let’s explore the alternative.
Whereas you are feeling pretty bad, for whatever reason (feelings can’t be wrong), and whereas it might stir those feelings around in a productive way to talk about them, what would happen if you erased the caveats and trusted that the people in your life were there to receive whatever you were going through?
And hey, if you’re the friend (or husband, or Buzzfeed reader) receiving the story, what if instead of, “It could be worse,” you responded with, “That makes sense.”? Feelings make sense. That wouldn’t be a lie. It’s not like you’re saying, “I have evaluated your plight against all other plights in the world, and I have officially decreed that yours is worthy of complaint or sadness.” You’re saying, “I heard you, and it makes sense you’re feeling bad.” Because it does!
(To be fair, Luke is usually pretty good at that. And you have to know that I was like, “Luke, when you say, ’It could be worse,’ it makes me feel shut down; and that then he said, ‘You’re right you’re right you’re right,’ and then I remembered that he was the one with oozing lesions hives, and maybe I didn’t need to criticize his response right in that moment, as he was on his way to Urgent Care, and his, “It could be worse” was probably something he was saying to himself so that he didn’t catastrophic or worry too much about what mysterious and strange thing was going on with his body. I want all of that to be on the record.)
One more thing, before I let you go: I was really taught that “It could be worse” was a tool. In a Medium essay on this phrase, Kat Kennedy writes,
"Deep-rooted shaming into synthetic gratitude is hard to shake. Our parents worked long and hard to provide for us. We should have been more grateful. So, we learn to sweep away unpleasant emotions in a heartbeat. Of all the circumstances we could find ourselves, ours isn’t so bad. It’s only a shame that we apply this to all facets of our adult life too.”
I don’t know where exactly I got the idea that saying, “It could be worse” was the best way to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, dust yourself off, and move forward, but, honestly, sometimes it’s helpful! There are times when that turn of phrase helps shift perspective. It can spark the gratitude engine (I mean, yeah! I do get to spend the day with my amazing daughter!), and gratitude is a healing practice.
Optimism and positivity are sometimes helpful tools for moving forward. And sometimes, they’re really not, and your feelings are begging to be felt. Don’t feel bad about trying on all the phrases and all the mindsets. You’re experimenting, you’re noticing, you’re curious about what will land for you right now. You’re constantly at work in the mysterious business of being human, where there are, sometimes annoyingly, no right or wrong answers. And hey, it could be worse! But also, the sky could be green, geese could be reptiles, and water could be wine. You get to decide how useful that line of thinking is to you in any given moment.
Love,
Sophie
Parenting Paragraph
Wow, is T ever close to crawling. At nine months, she is a little behind her peers on this one — we have not *really* encouraged her, since we live with another baby who crawled early, and we learned about how that kind of *changes everything*, most notably the sitting still you’ve gotten used to enjoying. It’s really fun to watch her try to crawl, and interesting at how much I find myself rooting for her, against my better judgement. She gets into the crawling position and rocks her hips back and forth. She can crawl backwards, because that’s just scooting. She can move from one side of the bed to the other, in mysterious ways. I love seeing her drive to be in motion, to have her own agency. She wants to explore. She’s curious. Oh, ALSO, SHE LOVES CHICKENS. Scratch, our new Polish chicken, sometimes sits out by “the pool” with us on sunny days, and T loves to reach for her and pet her. I mean, who wouldn’t love Scratch? It’s a no-brainer.
This Week in Sophie
It is officially DEEP SUMMER. I posted about this on Instagram today, and include here the DEEP SUMMER BINGO SHEET, which I am hard at work on. My main goal is to savor and enjoy every last drop of the hot season, and not rush the cool one. I’ll welcome it when it comes, but in the meantime, I’ll be in the lake.
ALSO! Which of the following images should go on the first-ever “You are doing a good enough job” t-shirt? Feel free to also email me better ideas. I’ve been wanting to make this for a month, but I’m stuck in a rut.
Finally! As always, I want to appreciate those of you who are paying to subscribe. You are the literal ONLY REASON I can do this, and it really means a lot to me. (Without you, I would not be able to pay for the childcare that hypothetically gives me the time to do any writing at all.) If you want to be a part of that crew (and get two more VERY GOOD and very-different-from-this-one emails per week, plus other secret perks, like a RECIPE ‘ZINE, and a SECRET PLAYLIST), click here!
Despite being kind of a florals oriented person I went with the bat for obvious reasons.
I feel like a snail is the exact being I would say "you are doing a good enough job" to because OBVS.
Also, I was attacked by a bird at a young age, so they and me, we don't get along. They are NOT doing a good enough job of making up for that rudeness/trauma.