Listening to: this song (my Dad’s favorite).
Hi friends!
It’s been a second. A month-ish? I think about writing everyday and I recently heard the (trite..?) Winston Churchill quote, “never give up on something you think about everyday.” Maybe that will inspire you in some way. It’s been rolling through my mind since I heard it.
Lately, I’ve been teaching, and grading, and responding to student emails, and taking care of my kids, and traveling home for the holidays, and wrapping Hannukah presents, and grieving lost life in Israel and Gaza, and reconciling the recent death of my grandfather - a Holocaust survivor - with the massive uptick in anti-semetism, and prioritizing Shabbat dinner with my family as an act of healing, and reading the news until I can’t anymore, and wondering if art is worth making and how to show up here, and generally feeling immense sadness and confusion alongside gratitude for what’s right in front of me. I don’t have the right words to say, or the perfect opinion, and the purity politics on social media (get off there, guys! I got off again!) are A LOT. Some quotes on the topic:
“personal purity is simultaneously inadequate, impossible, and politically dangerous for shared projects of living on earth.”
“if we want a world with less suffering and more flourishing, it would be useful to perceive complexity and complicity as the constitutive situation of our lives”
I’ll leave that there, and just say, I hope you are well and I hope you are extending kindness to the people you cross paths with day-to-day. I am trying.
I’m in a season of change over here (aren’t I always? nothing is static). I’m now 30 weeks pregnant, closing out my first semester teaching college courses. And, as I suspected, the teaching ate up the writing. And, that’s okay. I trust the ebbs and flows. If there’s anything I’ve learned since becoming a mom it’s the value of flow, of letting what is be, of quieting that chatter that tells me it should be different than it is. And that’s not to undermine striving, there are still things I’m reaching for. Cultivating. But it’s all less frantic, grasping, urgent. There is less rushing to move into the next phase, or chapter, or iteration of my life. There is less resenting what is and more being right here while carving out little bits of space for what I want to build: A movement practice, more home cooked meals, serving myself breakfast on an actual plate instead of scarfing it down over the kitchen counter, time to write, or walk, or put ice in my water bottle before I leave the house, a new career? Eventually.
Yesterday I was excruciatingly tired. So tired, that when I set out for a walk I only made it to the end of the block before I turned around to come home. I felt absolutely empty of energy. My limbs were actually heavy, not figuratively. The sleepiness was all encompassing. And yet, I really fought it, pep talking myself as I made another matcha, and silently chanted “you can do this, you can do this!” But really, I couldn’t do it. After the failed walk, I tried to do the stationary bike. I sat next to it for about five minutes, and then I peeled myself off the floor, swung a leg over the seat, secured one foot in a pedal straps and then…immediately dismounted. I couldn’t muster a single rotation of the legs, lol. My whole body was screaming, TAKE A NAP. And still, my mind would not release the narrative that napping was lazy, that it is wrong to rest when my kids are in someone else's care, that I’m only deserving of childcare if I use the time to advance my work or pour into my home or my family. I walked up the stairs past three LARGE mounds of laundry I’d intended to fold while I had the time, past the boxes of baby clothes I’d planned to wash and organize while I had the time, past my computer where emails live unread. I collapsed into bed and fell asleep for 2 hours. When I woke up it was time to scoop the kids. I’d spent most of my day trying not to take a nap.
SHOCKINGLY, after sleeping, I felt renewed. I felt like I could show up for the rest of the day with my kids, like I could clean the dishes after bedtime, and put away the piles of laundry, and read some pages of a book that I checked out from the library two months ago.
May we all notice the conditioned resistance to giving our bodies what they need. May we stop seeing our bodies’ needs as indulgent, inconvenient, or -at worst - shameful.
Being pregnant is such a gift. I do not take it for granted, and it also challenges me to really listen to my own needs. It shows me where I am still being unkind to myself. It shows me where I still need to let go of the stories I have about how I should spend my time, or what I should eat, or how I should look in order to be good enough. I am working on letting good be good. I am congratulating myself for doing a solid good job, instead of overriding all my own needs in pursuit of an unsustainable excellence. This year, I was a good teacher (who sometimes did less than her best.) I was a good writer (who sometimes published rushed work, or didn’t publish at all). I took good care of myself in pregnancy (and sometimes didn’t.) I was a good mom (who had bad moments). I did mostly a good job, and I’m proud of mostly good. When we are balancing the many overlapping demands of daily life, maybe good is great?!
Anyway, how are you all feeling about Substack? Taking a poll: Did substack get annoying? I can’t tell…but I think maybe it did? Is everyone writing articles on how to grow an audience? Is everyone hosting a workshop on how to make more money here? Is everyone tweeting (what’s the Substack version?) about how many new subscribers they saw this month? Maybe I’m just feeling bad about my own inconsistency. Lol, probably. Let me know your thoughts.
Love you.
Happy Holidays,
Stephanie
Oh my goodness I’m glad you said it I think Substack got annoying! Weird. But true.
Also, how good is that feeling after a nap. My husband and I both nap most days, and I know that feeling where you have sooooo much more in you for after dinner dishes, extra bits and pieces and bedtime etc. So good, at 30 weeks pregnant it sounds like an absolute must when your body is craving it.