Permission to still be struggling
Time is subjective
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Permission slip
I’ve been telling myself for months that this fall was going to be difficult. While I basked in the celebration of my baby’s first year at the end of August, I knew that the first anniversary of my brother’s passing was on the horizon, and it came in mid-September. I felt a lot of things and it was very difficult, but not in a traumatic way, just in a sad way, which surprised me. Maybe all the work I’ve been doing has been working. Which is maybe why I was also surprised at how anxious I’ve been feeling lately.
Fall of 2022 was characterized by a series of bad and difficult things happening one right after the other for about four months. Some worse than others, of course, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. I was swimming, swimming, swimming, and there was no relief. Sometimes my feet barely skimmed the bottom before it dropped away again and I swam on, praying for the shore.
Earlier this year, I wrote about feeling foreboding joy, but last fall? There was no joy. It was just foreboding, a constant sense of impending doom and a fear of every text and phone call and morning. When was the next shoe going to drop? And the next? And the next? I was so relieved when I started feeling joy again, even it was fleeting—I didn’t think I ever would. And over the months since then, foreboding joy has blossomed into regular joy, and so much of it.
So, on a Tuesday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was caught off guard when all those feelings came flooding back. I thought I had made it through the hardest anniversary. I thought all those weeks of EMDR had helped me process it all. I’d been re-reading The Body Keeps the Score for work, but I thought I had fixed my body. Of course, it’s never that simple. I know that, and yet, I hoped.
In a way, I’ve been looking forward to this fall because it seems like such a big deal— the first anniversary of everything. I am anxious to be past it. Because what I crave more than anything is for things to be normal: to spend weekends at brunch or in the mountains with my family and not think about everything bad that could happen or everything that already has.
I know, logically, that’s not how it’s going to be. The only sure thing about life is that it never stays “normal” for long, and I’m never going to stop thinking about my brother or my grief or how fragile all of this is. But if the past year has taught me anything, it’s that just as surely as we will struggle, things will get better, and infinitely so. I’ll get through the first anniversary of everything and the second and third and fifth and maybe, someday, I’ll feel a low rumble of anxiety in late September and just for a minute, wonder why.
This month’s recs
A much better book to read instead of The Body Keeps the Score.
CANNOT WAIT for new Mike Flanagan horror.
Saw someone post this recipe and decided it’s missing from my fall rotation. But if you have a better one, send it over ASAP.
Speaking of fall food: can’t keep these in stock at my house.
Only on episode two, but kinda fun new podcast from one of my favorite IG accounts as of late.
It’s prime time to play my absolute favorite board game.