First time here? Here’s what this newsletter is.
A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Hi Pal,
Last night I had this dream where I was watching a documentary of my own life. (OK, yes, I am starting this letter to you by telling you about my dream — the universally accepted Least Interesting Thing to hear about, but it’s a [sort of poetic?] entryway to a bigger point.) I had become famous in my lifetime for being a mouthy Old Italian Woman, and there was a scene in the documentary where Old Sophie had been magically transformed into a baby lamb. (I’m realizing as I write this out that the dream was complicated and there were a lot of interesting-to-me details that are not going to be interesting to you. I’ll cut the fat and get to the point.) Basically, all the other old women were doing free-falls from a high height, but when they started to fall, a great gust of wind would carry them back to the top of the height, and the effect was that they felt like they were flying. Old-Sophie-as-the-baby-lamb was terrified to try this, even though she was assured that if she fell, she would fly. Everyone kept saying it. She was so clearly scared, but eventually she tried it — and the gust of wind never came. Old-Sophie-baby-lamb free fell hundreds of feet, and as I watched her, I could see how incredibly scared and let-down she was.
The message of this dream felt clear. People often reassure you that everything is going to be OK, and that taking a leap is safe, and that you should try it. Interview for a new job! Fall in love again! Pitch your article or your book or your screen play to a Big Wig! What’s the worst thing that could happen? But other people do not know about whatever old trauma you’re holding onto; they don’t know about the scars you’re carrying from your childhood that might make The Worst Thing That Could Happen actually, in effect, feel really really bad. It might trigger some bygone response that served you when you were a kid — be terrified of rejection, because if your parents rejected you, it literally DID make you unsafe, since they fed and clothed and housed you — but is no longer applicable. Just because your brain understands that a trauma response is no longer applicable does not mean that your body believes it.
Basically: you are a baby lamb. Everyone else in your life sees you as an Adult Person, but so many of your neural pathways were carved when you were small, and so a lot of your responses are baby-lamb responses. This can feel embarrassing, because everyone around you seems to be all done growing up. They can leap off of great heights and find that they fly. In fact, all people have baby lamb moments. We try really hard to cover them up and look like grown-ups, because that’s what we see everyone else doing. In reality, there are baby lambs all over the place, dressed up and acting like grown-up humans, behaving bravely and saying things like, “You are the only real boss of you; you should live your biggest life; you should pursue your wildest dreams.” I’m here to tell you: these mantras may be true in theory, but it’s OK if it doesn’t always feel that way.
One quick thing to add before I let you go: trauma responses can feel frustrating. “My brain understands something; why is my BODY refusing to react accordingly?” you might ask yourself. Remember that your body set up that response to protect you once. Your body was being smart. It was trying to take care of you — probably when you were young, and you shouldn’t have been responsible for taking care of yourself at all. You might say, “Thank you, body, for trying to keep me safe. I hope I can help you to learn that I’m safe now; but I understand that you are going to have to take your time.”
Love Always,
Sophie
PS - There is always a possibility that you are not safe. Maybe you are in an abusive relationship right now. Maybe you are experiencing housing insecurity or food insecurity or financial debt that’s threatening your physical wellbeing in a variety of ways. No matter what you are telling yourself: none of that is your fault. We humans should be so much better at taking care of each other, and there is enough love, time, money, food, and shelter to go around. Unfortunately, humans have made a lot of mistakes, and I am sorry that you are having to bear the brunt of them. If you are currently protecting yourself by avoiding risks, or leaning on dissociative habits, I want you to know: you are doing the best you can. And I’m sorry that we — the rest of the humans — have not taken better care of you.
Add this to your to-do list.
Try to draw a picture of a toilet without a photo reference. Look at the drawing and laugh at yourself. Feel successful in your failure to remember what a toilet looks like. (Email your toilet drawing to me if you want! I’ll put it in the next issue of this newsletter.)
Do you have water nearby you right now? If yes, have a drink of it! If no, go get a glass of water, and have a drink of it. It is such an INCREDIBLE GIFT that we have access to clean drinking water. If you have forgotten to be grateful for that recently, take a moment to be grateful for it.
A drawing.
Here is a context-free page from my upcoming book.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about pregnancy. Skip it if you don’t want to read about pregnancy.) Two weeks ago, my first blood glucose test came back high. I had no idea what this was until I got pregnant, so a quick summary: when you’re rounding the corner into your third trimester, you have to take this test to find out if you have gestational diabetes. (“Gestational diabetes” means that you, the pregnant person, have diabetes; and that it has shown up specifically while you are pregnant, and because you are pregnant.) The test works like this: you drink the worst drink in the entire world, which has the ingredients of JUST SUGAR and THAT IS ALL. You then have to wait for an hour, during which time you get a terrible headache and start to feel that dizzy-crazy feeling you used to feel when you were too small to eat the whole box of Nerds, but you did it anyway. Then they take your blood. And if the amount of glucose in your blood is too high, they make you come back for a second, much worse version of this test. For THIS version, you have to fast for 12 hours, and then they take your blood once. Then you drink a drink that’s SWEETER than the original drink, and because you have an empty stomach, your whole body (not to mention the fetus you’re sharing your body with, who is like, “WTF EXCUSE ME WHAT IS THIS”) reacts WAY MORE INTENSELY, and you have to sit in the horrible too-bright waiting room with a horrible couple named Chloe-and-Chad who are going to complain for over an hour about things that are total first-world-problem things (“Oh my GOD, this doctor doesn’t take AmEx? But I wanted my REWARDS!”), for THREE HOURS, and every hour on the hour, you go back and they take your blood AGAIN, and THAT is how they determine if you have gestational diabetes. (OK, uh, I wrote that in second person, and that scenario was somewhat specific to me, but the basic lab-work parts are the same for everyone.) For me, the worst part of this test is that there is this stigma attached to high blood-glucose and/or gestational diabetes. I don’t know who starts these rumors (cough: my former chiropractor), but it’s largely implied that you, the pregnant person, will be more likely to “fail” these tests if you’re too fat, or too old, or too willy-nilly about the things you eat. All of pregnancy is giving your body to another small, unmade human person. The extra layer of all the ways that you can do it “wrong” is excruciating for anyone who already beats themselves up. For six months, I felt like I was failing at pregnancy. Having high blood-glucose was the proof. See? I have been eating too much pie. This test is showing how I am killing my unborn baby via pie. I am weak. Other women can do this, but I can’t. WHAT KIND OF A MOTHER WILL I BE? I wrote a lot of sentences here that I just deleted about the medical establishment and the diet industrial complex and bodies all being different and blah blah blah blah blah, but here is the bottom line: my first test came back high. I felt deeply ashamed and scared and personally responsible. But every time I heard about someone else who had “failed” this test, I felt a little bit better. So I want to be out and proud as a person who initially had high blood glucose; and the second test was horrible, but it also gave me an opportunity to ask for help from people I loved and to be open to surrendering some of my control issues around pregnancy. And I will leave it at that.
Extras.
Rider Strong made a music video for Typhoon. THE AMOUNT THAT THIS VENN DIAGRAM IS IN THE DEEP END OF MY INTERESTS IS MAXED OUT.
I didn’t realize that rescue dogs had become such A Thing, but this article in The Cut about how there’s a shortage of shelter pups in NY was really fun to read and quite interesting.
I like the new New Yorker crossword puzzle, and it’s mostly because of this kid, who wants crosswords to be accessible for everyone; also because of this puzzle where one of the clues is “Homoflexible, maybe” and the answer is “BICURIOUS.”
As a vegan who has been a lifelong evangelist for the work of Isa Chandra Moskowitz (and I still am!), I am happy to have also recently gotten into Jackie Sobon of Vegan Yack Attack. I am eating food exclusively from her meal prep book, and it makes my body feel soooooo good. I don’t know what I would do without her, TBH.
Here’s my Instagram comic from today, in case you missed it.