Stuff I'm Listening To (8/10/23)

Content all day but I didn’t absorb very much. Sometimes I use podcasts like a white noise machine.

Heavy heavy heavy Fresh Air (E5659) with journalist Jennifer Senior about an article she wrote for The Atlantic. The article is about how Senior learned she has an aunt with special needs who’d been institutionalized when she (the aunt) was a toddler. Senior didn’t know about her aunt until she was 12.

Senior’s grandparents put their daughter in an institution because that’s what the experts of the day told them to do. And because our country is a hellscape for poor and working class families. These were good people who made the best decision they could with the information and resources they had. Their story is beautiful and heartbreaking and relatable.

Senior describes the shock of learning about this family member and how the new information explained so many other traits, habits, values, traditions in her family that she’d just taken for granted.

I can’t stop thinking about how spellbound we all are once we’re alive and part of (or not part of) a family. It’s so hard to realize that most of us are using the word “normal” to describe “what’s always been true for me.”

But if I look at my family from the right angle or from the right distance, little kernels of curiosity or confusion or doubt or contradiction can pop into consciousness as fully formed questions: Why did my grandmother have a different last name than everyone else? How come this cousin was in bed for decades? Who thought it was a good idea for this guy to supervise kids? More zealots than most families, though, right? But why did they run away from home?

I can get carried away looking for a plot or conspiracy or mystery, sure. But there are so many of them and they are right in front of us! Conspiracy is a strong word — not every secret or unknown detail is a conspiracy, not necessarily, not all the time — so stories. There are so many stories that make me go, “OOOOOOOOOOOH, okay, that makes more sense.” I can’t get enough of those.

Stuff I'm Listening To (8/9/23)

Rich Roll was talking to Baratunde Thurston about his podcast called How To Citizen. Thurston said this beautiful thing about his mom who left the earth several years ago. He was actually talking about patriotism and used a metaphor about his relationship with his mom to describe true love, or true patriotism. He said, roughly:

My mom wasn’t perfect and I’m realizing things about her and her impact on how I developed that are not great…

I’m resentful with this perfect mom who I have been so publicly grateful toward and told everybody, she’s the best, and she is — ALSO, she messed up in a couple of very significant ways that I’ve had to wrestle with…

But this opens up a relationship with my dead mother that wasn’t possible when she was here. I’m still getting to know this person…When you know someone, that’s love. If you don’t know the dark stuff, you can’t love the whole person.

I’m blogging about this quote because I want to wave it around like a flag. I want to wear it like armor. I want to coat by body with it like Axe Body Spray so you can smell me coming a mile away.

I just wrote a story about being a little kid and how I got so good at dissociating. I love this story and I’m really proud of it. It’s a little upsetting. But I’m energized to write about growing up and why my brain is wired the way it is.

And I’m terrified of upsetting people. I’m scared that someone will charge into my DMs to tell me, “That’s not how it was! That’s not true! You’re awful!”

I intend to be brave about it. But like, later. In a minute.

In the meantime, I’m going to wrap myself in this quote and also in Fresh Air interviews with David Sedaris (E5636), Richard E. Grant (E5651), Andre Dubus III (E5653) and Shane McCrea (E5658).

Stuff I'm Listening To (8/8/23)

You may not believe it but, again, I have found myself relating to the letter writer in an episode of Dear Therapists (Alexis’s Controlling Family, S4 E9). I did not immediately recognize myself in the title of the episode but as is often the case, once Lori and Guy sniffed out the meat and bolts of the guest’s dilemma, I said, “Ahha! There I am!”

The lady, Alexis, survives in the world by asking for and expecting no help. She is so preoccupied with gauging other peoples’ emotional limits and reactivity that she’s 100% out of touch with her own emotions and emotional needs.

I found a dead body once and after my part with the emergency responders was done, an EMT asked me if there was anyone I could call because I didn’t look okay to drive myself home.

Of course there were people I could call but my body wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want to worry anyone or make them drive any distance to pick me up or bother them at work. Even after I drove myself home, I didn’t tell anyone what happened until the next day.

When I say my body wouldn’t let me, I mean I could not press the call button on my phone. I could not imagine how I would start the conversation. What words would I use? What tone? What if the person I called said, “How are you?” or tried to make small talk? What if they said, “How can I help you right now?” I had no idea what to even ask for. Why would I reach out if I don’t know what to ask for? It would be silly. I’m fine.

So rather than let my capable friends and family help me through an internet-confirmed traumatic experience — because I thought, I can see into the future enough to know that they can’t help me AND more importantly, I’m not the kind of person who needs help or deserves help with this kind of stuff — I froze.

This event in my life is special for a lot of reasons and I may talk about it a lot. Because it changed me. Or it helped me see things I wanted to change. It took stumbling over a dead person for me to understand that I have body freezing up issues asking for help.

I love Dear Therapists because even though Alexis, the letter writer, and I have different growing up stories, enough about her family dynamic resonates with me, and helps me understand how we both got stuck on similar icebergs.

The other podcast I listened to was Pod Save America (Judge May Shush Trump…In America??). Nothing profound or therapy related but a wonderful thing I learned was that Jon Bon Jovi hand-wrote the lyrics to “It’s My Life,” had the paper framed and sent to Chris Christie who then presented it to President Zelensky during his rescent trip to Ukraine. Just, what a world, is all.