The body experience. Damn, it’s so hard at this part of life, when I am old enough to recognize the changes ahead, and I feel completely terrified by them looming around the corner. I feel such a strong pull to blow my life to rubble just to feel it all, one more time. When I was younger I was never focused on what I would lose down the road but now it’s all I can see. This body has done so much and continues to but I am constantly distracted by what comes next, by what I won’t feel or see or say or do again. But also doing this, just this, forever is so fucking boring and hard so I see a need for change. So then I come back to blowing up my life because at least that’s more interesting.
There is so much intense relief in knowing it’s not just me.
Ok, I read your post like 3x because it is so real and so beautifully true. That idea of being focused on what you will lose down the road. I feel that sometimes too like every ache or weird skin reaction could be chalked up to this sloping path. The funny thing is sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Some days I feel so vibrant, other days like I am creaking and cracking just getting out of bed. But the gift out of it is similar to your desire to blow stuff up. I have been blasting past so many barriers that I didn't even know that I corseted myself around. Let's keep blowing up and opening up our experience and share here.
I love that so much, blasting past the barriers. It’s exactly right. The sloping path hits me so hard that being in this moment almost feels impossible but here we are. I will blow up and open up with you all. I love that.
I don’t even know where to start, Sara G. I feel so connected to you and all you say in your comment. I want to collect my thoughts before I respond in full. But just wanted to thank you first.
I get so distracted , too. I feel these surges of fear that I am messing up my one precious life, not enjoying it enough, abusing my body too much, not enjoying my child enough, not loving purely enough, not enjoying the world enough, traveling enough, all while living inside this body that is slowly aging, falling apart. And then that weird impulse to change, change, change, explode things, to feel it all again—yes! How you put it resonated with me deeply. It helped me understand that part of myself. It’s not about self-destruction. It’s about waking up. It’s also about that feeling of entrapment —entrapment in the body, in time and space, in aging—and escaping it all. When I talk to the part that feels entrapped, I know it holds so much trauma and has very few tools for dealing with it. When I talk to the tightrope walker who lives in fear of the darkness beneath, I know that its fear is coming from a place of exquisite love of the body and all it has done for the whole system of me. But man, it can be exhausting and confusing contending with it all! I am at peace when I simply accept the way I exist in this world. Drink hot herbal tea. Stretch. Walk in the sunshine with my dog. Send my husband a text that says: I love you. Read a book. Check Miranda July’s Substack.
This hit me hard, this feeling of entrapment and waking up. There is this feeling that I now have everything that I have wanted and been climbing towards my literal whole life. Now I’m here and sometimes I feel so locked in it scares me. It’s this. Forever. I also stopped drinking a few years back and feel things and see patterns in my history that I never saw before. It’s been fascinating to recognize my draw to secret risky behaviors and try to examine the trauma and experiences that cause me to run towards that.
I love that you highlighted the howls in his sleep line because I read that particular bit over and over when I first read your response. The idea of falling into this unknown. Or trying not to fall into it. I just love that. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and ideas so much.
Ha! I think we are sooo dialed into each other—I was JUST recognizing my achievements, chastising myself for not pausing and appreciating what I’ve been able to build and create. And so I paused. And I realized that I have accomplished the dream (more or less). And I did feel gratitude and a bit of satisfaction. And in the next moment I was ready for more. But that gap between satisfaction and readiness—I think that gap is that feared place, the unknown. (Goddamn! Whoever designed this game was crazypants.) how old we’d you when you stoped drinking? Do you mind sharing what was going on that made you stop? I have been using moderation for years now but when I go out and have one too many, my 50-year-old body does not like it, and I consider stopping altogether. I work with clients who want to drink moderately—success is mixed.
Absolutely. I stopped in May of 2021 so I was 44. I come from a long line of problem drinkers who were mostly functional but definitely not moderate. I am the middle child and both of my sisters have struggled with substance use disorder to varying degrees. My older sister has been in and out of treatment from 17 and still struggling.
During Covid I found myself making rules around my drinking and breaking them over and over. I have 3 little kids and would wake up at 3am. a pool of guilt and shame. I realized that it would never be enough. I just couldn’t moderate and was angry if I had to. I never hit a traditional rock bottom but the realization that I was no longer in control hit me hard. The amount of brain space it was taking up and how I saw myself prioritizing it over everything scared me. I knew that I just couldn’t end up like my sister. So I stopped. About three times before it stuck but it has. I have dabbled in the recovery world and currently go to a women’s AA meeting once a week that is so impactful and beautiful. I do struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling like I wasn’t off the rails enough to qualify. I’m working with a sponsor who often reminds me that walking in the rooms and feeling seen and connected with these women and their stories is enough and that I belong there. I tell myself that any work we choose to do on the how and why, the introspection can only help us understand ourselves better. It has freed up my brain in a way that I never expected but I feel frustrated with myself for filling that with thoughts about my body and food and weight and dumb shit. And the draw to the secret risky behavior is always still whispering in my ear. But I also feel so empowered and brave for making this choice. And the ripple effect to both friends and family that have followed suit is pretty amazing. For me none was the only answer, moderation just wasn’t possible.
In the truth of this moment —yes, here I am, trying to understand, along with you, how to keep on keeping on in this body, this “heavy bear that sleeps with me,” as Delmore Schwartz so poignantly put it in this poem :
Gosh. I am just so happy to be here, in community with you all, and with Miranda July. My post-menopausal age 50 body definitely is beginning to feel seasonless. But for me—at least right now—there is relief, rest, peace in that.
At the same time, existential dread isn’t just a vague acquaintance, it’s motherfucking *real*…even when I’m playing Uno with my son. Cracking up laughing and then suddenly! Cold. Dread.
But there is another kind of high that’s coming around these days—it’s the high I feel when I think I am not being ruled by forces internal and external but am instead manifesting love, compassion, joy, wisdom. I sound like a Hallmark card. But man —it’s just the best thing ever.
So in those rare moments when I’m manifesting the good good good stuff, I feel such appreciation for my gravity-strained 50 year old body. This morning while doing yoga I had to stop because I sprained my ankle a year ago and it still hurts and probably will forever. For fifteen minutes, I was able to sort of kind of be okay with that reality.
I love this idea that we are here in our bodies to have body experiences—like, that’s the whole point. It’s so weird.
I am a therapist and I keep seeing myself and my clients as waves of flesh peeking up out of this massive tapestry of stuff that we’re all part of, like threads in one big extremely messy and oddball cosmic blanket.
"I am a therapist and I keep seeing myself and my clients as waves of flesh peeking up out of this massive tapestry of stuff that we’re all part of". I really like that.
So good to hear your voice on here! This is Michelle Mounts—-I volunteered (along with my now ex-husband, Jon) to perform in “Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About” at The Kitchen in 2007 and later wrote about it for one of your books (a monograph I think?) because we were basically acting out our own love story up there. I continue to be so inspired by you and your work, and I laughed, cried, shouted through All Fours—my god it is a beautiful and important book. I felt so seen while reading it. I’m delighted we were born in the same year because I look at all you do and say, Wake up, Michelle, keep going. My private practice, Sky Psychotheraoy, is now open for business! Early days, and I’m a little scared, but mostly so very ready. xxxx
This is the part I relate to the most: “I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.” I think my body’s been absorbing grief and acting out against me.
but what if your body can't act out against you? what if it is you calling you into being you? (i don't know answers to these at all and am not posing them from any sort of position of superiority...these are questions i ask myself)
“without some kind of crisis that involves real suffering, it's hard to actually change, to see yourself and really approach life in a new way”
YES! I think we resist this but it’s so true and remembering it might make the crises easier to swallow, and give meaning to the struggle of it all. Aging often feels like lurching from crisis to crisis (many of them about physical ill health or discomfort, which - in the darkest times - feels like an unbearable condition and nothing but deterioration. Good to think they serve a useful purpose.
PS
Psychoanalysing my metaphors may become my new favourite hobby. Why did I never think of this before! Where do they come from? Why do they get so easily mixed?
I like this description: “…it’s like all the seasons stop, you know? Like you’re permanently in Hawaii or something. It’s temperate all the time.” I’m 52 and love the changing seasons so I’m a bit worried now. The heat is starting not to feel so hot anymore… except for the hot flashes and night sweats of course! But, who knows, maybe something good will come out of it, like maybe I’ll finally stop biting my nails.
I should add that this same woman, "Camille," was having sex she loved, which she explained to me in wonderful detail, and is just one of the more alive and interesting people I know. And, fwiw, not the earth-mama you're probably picturing - rather glamorous and put together! I eventually realized that while these things she said about grief and the body experience were important, you really needed to see the whole picture of her, hear everything she had to say, to not feel slightly devastated. It's *because* she's so in touch with herself and the pull of the moon that she even notices the one-season feeling (and misses the wild shifts, while many women are glad to be done with them.) Maybe you're getting the sense of why, in the end, I did not include the many interviews I did while writing the book. Tiny pieces, here and there, but not to this extent. It's really because any single, real woman is too complex! I whole book unto herself.
Should I put this as a footnote to the post? Will take me awhile to figure out how I like to use all the tools here. AND THAT'S FINE MIRANDA. THERE IS TIME. IT'S NOT A RACE.
I was originally going to call this whole Substack: In Trouble. "In Trouble with Miranda July". Because all my work is basically the antidote to this deep, constant sense of being in trouble. A rebellion against that feeling; freeing myself again and again. Also: we are in trouble. Troubled times. And I'd like company in this trouble -- be in trouble with me.
I LOVE THIS TITLE! I LOVE THIS ADDITION about the Camile. I think it could be the whole next post! I love the writing in this post but yes, I think the left out stuff about her is crucial. She does come off in the first version like the a harbinger of bad times to come. In the second version she comes off more like the bad times are a memory that she might sometimes be nostalgic for. This is WAY interesting.
ALSO - I read that the average age that women report having their best sex is in there 50s. HOLY UNDERREPORTED IMPORTANT FACT!!!! This really goes against our narrative of aging in such an OBVIOUS to me way. Of course we're encouraging women to think badly of themselves just before it's time for us to reap all the rewards. The sexual rewards. Anytime the sex part gets left out I feel like there's something missing.
I adore this idea. Loneliness is an invisible weight on the pendulum between an unraveling present and the desirous wild unknown. Company on a long haul journey with no “right” or “wrong” turn, especially in a troubled world with little appetite for nuance, feels like a full body exhale. Thank you.
I also have been noticing the sense of "trouble" with my kids. the whole horror when they feel like they are "caught" or "in trouble" and I wonder where this comes from. cause half the time i think the "in trouble" is so loud in their system that they can't hear that I'm actually just saying "can you please not always leave the frozen box of waffles out on the counter?" I also wonder if "being in trouble" is a foundational sense that empire's rely on for their very existence.
I would love to embrace the idea that when someone sees me, they think "Here comes trouble." This was commonly said about me as a child and I want to return to that kind of abandon when being "trouble" meant I was expressing, sassing, playing, and being dramatic about all the things that played in my imagination.
I love the idea of the antidote to this deep sense of being in trouble. You hit such a solid nerve here. I often find myself sighing and saying, "I am tired of being good." This is usually around my work ethic with my business or with my health stuff but it can be exhausting.
There is no where I’d rather be. Your work has let me finally see the trouble that I was pretending not to notice for so long. Letting myself see it, feel it and accept it has changed me wholly. Now to do the work to free myself
This was necessary for me to understand a little bit more of her relationship to her body around intimacy. Thank you for the clarity. I wonder sometimes aloud, "Will I have great sex again?" It has been a long time since I have let someone into my personal space that way and I am all for it as long as it feels right. But after 5 years, you start to wonder if you will lose it because you haven't used it. I am not sure what is but I am afraid to lose it sometimes.
also. i found "camille" to be radically UNdevastating. she sounded so at home inside of her changingness. and noting how she could bear grief to boot!! THIS is the woman for me.
At 66 I’ve been living in this temperate Hawaii body for quite a while, and the grief, yes, it’s real, but delicious, tender and in that tenderness is a new redemptive body- a new « me »/not me- beyond body? Peeking out. Perhaps she’s been there all along.
Yes, I'm starting to feel this. I do believe there must be some way to get *this* across. I see a lot of "I don't give a fuck anymore" and that's a great energy too, but this tenderness is is subtler and feels like some private candle flame women have and protect and it sees them through life. I think my drive to name and describe these things is because maybe we survive, and even grow powerful in the manner of a people who have had to keep the flame hidden in order to have it at all, never thinking it could become the dominanat paradigm.
Two quick things – I am going through the very human, very embodied experience of my mother dying. One body observing another body making an essential shift that doesn’t get a do-over. In the midst of this, your (character’s) observation is a welcome warning:
“I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.”
Secondly, when you wrote, “that’s what I’m here for,” I suddenly heard Jane Siberry singing those words in her clarion mellifluence, and I wondered if you heard it too — “the sky’s so blue, you can see right through La la la la la la. My heart it is so big, I can’t get through the door. That’s what I’m here for.”
This. This so much. The things my body did to avoid grief were outrageous. And juxtipository (i made up that word). We need this conversation opened up so we don’t feel so alone.
Sending care and strength as you live through this experience. 💛
This meant so much to me. Didn’t want to go off-piste in MJ’s thread with a long response so just know that it’s a very meaningful message to me at a very tenuous time. Much gratitude.
I can only imagine the powerful and hard feelings as you witness your mom's dying. I get terrified when my mom becomes ill because there is so much fear in losing here even though we have been in conflict most of my life.
The things we avoid to feel grief is a very real and painful experience. I am learning to embrace whatever I feel lately and often to let it go, to move past me. I notice the more I let myself face and embody the feelings, the more I get to the other side where their is a "clean burn" feeling and then beyond that a freedom and even elation at times.
Theatre professor here, so thinking about women and bodies made me think of the play Fefu and her Friends by the incredible María Irene Fornés, which both I and my daughter have had the pleasure to direct, 35 years apart. Julia is alone in the bedroom in Act II, reciting what the “judges” (patriarchal forces controlling her) have told her as a prayer. It is so powerful to see performed live.
“Man is not spiritually sexual, he therefore can enjoy sexuality. His sexuality is physical which means his spirit is pure. Women's spirit is sexual. That is why after coitus they dwell in nefarious feelings. Because that is their natural habitat. That is why it is difficult for them to return to the human world. Their sexual feelings remain with them till they die. And they take those feelings with them to the afterlife where they corrupt the heavens, and they are sent to hell where through suffering they may shed those feelings and return to earth as man.”
I think the judges are right about our spirits being sexual, and I think that's why we get SO DAMN TIRED.
you know. the thing i really notice here is this: “I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.”
indeed.
i had this idea for most of my life until recently, that i got from somewhere and everywhere, that it would be a good idea to leave myself when things feel nearly unbearable. just kind of hover over myself while the bad stuff happened and then pop right back in once things felt somewhat reasonable. but i'm noticing more and more that its the hovering over myself that is perhaps more of a source of pain than comfort. a way to compound suffering rather than relieve it.
i'm developing this facility lately with talking to dead people. its something i've kind of dabbled in in the past...i think i always knew it was something i could do and a few years ago my friend's friend died on her birthday. she was on a weekend away with her girlfriends and decided to try cocaine for the first time and it was laced with fentanyl. so she died then and there on the airbnb floor. horrifying. anyway i was thinking of this sitting in the waiting room where i got my weekly allergy shots, waiting the required 30 minutes to make sure i didn't go into anaphalaxis (which i did once) and i thought casually, 'maybe I'll tune into Deb's dead friend and see how she's doing.' And there was this immediate typhoon of rage. She just swirled right through the waiting room and gobbled me up inside. She was so loud and windy, just this huge maw of mother rage, like how could she be ripped away from her kids like this. I tried to say something nice or just "hold space" but it did less than nothing and so I kind a tried to just tiptoe backwards. Eventually typhoon of her kinda lost interest in me, like a wrong number, but I felt stupid and scared. And I felt this deep confirmation that there are these huge scary unseen forces that I cannot contain and that maybe I'm crazy and also not equipped to handle this like other people who know how to be good psychic mediums.
But then this October my friend from middle school died in a river. He drowned. And the night before his funeral he showed up in my dream. Standing at the foot of my bed, exactly as he was in life, only 50% smaller. He was just standing there looking around and blinking. Dressed head to toe in baby pink Louis Vitton. Knit hat, long sleeves, pants, boots. Which I've come to understand as a really really good sign. Anyway, one day as I was driving home from dropping off my kid at his friend's house and my pink LV friend kinda energetically slammed into me. It felt like he was sucking on my chest and bladder with 2 straws while I was turning right on San Pablo St. And I got scared. Felt the memory of the windy rage mom. And then I remembered something this Ute woman told me at my friend's funeral. She was confiding in me about how my pink LV friend had visited her energetically while he was drowning. She showed me the position his body was in and how scared he was. I asked her what she does when people visit her like this--it seemed like she had some experience. And she just stood there calmly on her legs and feet and said "Nothing." and just looked at me with this neutral calm knowing. "There's nothing to do." And so I heard her voice saying this when I was being chakra sucked by my pink LV friend in the car and I thought okay. There's nothing to do. So I just let it happen but the one thing I knew I did need to do was be as deeply in and with and as myself as I could possibly be. And I felt this kind of bodily saturation. Like I was sinking into all my volume of all my cells and then it sort of naturally extended outwards and I could feel how I was basically connecting with everything in the universe and beyond. And then it felt totally fine and no big deal about the chakra sucking. So he just kept right on going and I felt his deep deep sadness and then he showed me a picture of myself and my partner and I was like oh right. I get to be in a body here with him. And that is really something. Because my friend doesn't get to do that anymore, the human body on earth thing. And I kept driving home.
Oh wow, this is really powerful, thank you for sharing this. I’ve had very different experiences of other realms of existence that started in the last couple of years - one came on suddenly a few weeks after I finished All Fours, I don’t think because of it at all but it certainly informed the freedom I felt coming out of it.
I think lots of people (women, but not exclusively) experience forms of knowing that don’t align with consensual reality and we just don’t talk about it. It is a gift and can really affirm being here, but not an easily.
100. i think often about how in chinese medicine, menopause is understood as the second spring. as the blood moving from the womb to the heart. and this of course makes different layers more available to us in our lived experience, you know?
I never thought of my body, except in shaming, critical, self-loathing, or, in rare flashes, beautifully compassionate ways. It was this thing, but it wasn't me. Not me, me - ya know? Never truly a representation (unless it was beautiful and small and well put together).
Now, this thing I've mentally denied proper and full ownership of is somehow betraying me and demanding attention, all at once, if only for what it seems to now lack. It's taking me by the chin, snapping its fingers by my ear and saying "focus!". I don't know if I should be resentful to it, or apologise for my neglect or lack of appreciation, for my previous contempt and derision. It's making demands, not promising anything better, but requiring something, anything, for survival.
BUML! Yes!!! I am definitely in a Blowing Up My Life Phase and it seems like my body is trying to get there ahead of me. I went to a holiday party and couldn’t stop eating. It’s as if I had been starving myself for days and suddenly I was ravenous. Now I am feeling all of it but can’t sleep, can’t dance, all I can do is experience the BUML of it all. Like my stomach has taken center stage but my real feelings are sitting in the front row wanting to walk out of the theater. I can’t just let my spilled guts be the whole story. I’m finally being a witness to my own life, because my body is putting things in perspective for me.
Eating to feel, reading to feel, writing to feel full. Relishing being at the table with all of you. Grateful to you Miranda for sharing your body in ways that inspire a deeper connection to our very own selves so we can show up for each other.
Bring on frivolity to the point of exhaustion please.
I had a bike accident a couple of years ago that resulted in a concussion that I’ve still not recovered from. It’s one of those injuries that some people bounce right back from and others really don’t - it depends on lots of things including the state of your nervous system at the time of injury. Mine, it turns out, was on high alert after some intense life stuff just before and so it’s still with me, in a subtle way but enough that I have to life totally differently to avoid complete exhaustion / inescapable brain fog / piercing headaches.
I’ve been super lucky to be supported in my recovery by therapists who have slowly coached me to appreciate the opportunity to change how I live. I’ve developed the kind of intimacy with my nervous system that it seems like Camille must have, and I wouldn’t trade that for a second. Nor the new experience of wildly altered states of consciousness that I get now about once a year, which leave me unable to function at all in consensual reality but open me to the universe in a way that is a huge gift. It’s also let me value my body experience in a way that makes me want to have lots more sex, have different relationships than before, and ensure I have the right people in my community to hold me in this different way of life.
None of that was obvious to me before. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ‘back to normal’ as people keep expecting of me - I actually really hope not.
Anyway… I appreciate the vulnerability of this space as well all fumble our way to experiencing our bodies at all.
Thank you 💕 I forgot to say in that response… dancing, nearly every day, is one of the things that has helped me develop that intimacy. That and lots of craniosacral therapy and yoga nidras 💨
Lauren, thank you for what you shared. Your newfound intimacy, your sexual exploration is such an expansive way to shift from your accident. I have heard that if we can relax before a traumatic impact, our bodies can heal faster but the tightening from stress or fear can affect the recovery. I feel like you found your opening and expansiveness post the accident and that takes such courage.
I broke my leg in 3 places while skateboarding in my 30's. The bone was literally jutting out of my shin. I couldn't walk properly for 6 months but I could dance better than I could walk, so I auditioned for a showcase of performers and it started an amateur dancing career. It saved my life in a different way.
I’m grieving a lot these days. Flashing images before my eyes: a baby in my arms, a toddler in the bath. And I instantly start weeping uncontrollably.
I’m also grieving earliest rejections from my mother, and my father.
Grieving old and newer families that are no longer what they used to be.
I didn’t expect me to be grieving the emotional rollercoaster because I didn’t expect it to be gone too. It’s a love/hate relationship with that one. But she’s been a steady partner through it all. It makes sense that this will be gone too. That’s very sad. It’s good to be prepared though.
I feel I’m going back to where it all started. Before puberty. Is menopause puberty in reverse?
Yes. It’s a return to your 11 year old self. No hormonal fluctuations. Time was a run on sentence. Long-ass summers and perpetual school weeks. I only remember those times so vividly now because I have no cycle. I’m time traveling! Menopause has returned me to when time was linear. It’s wild.
WOAH. This is a fascinating perspective and observation that resonates with me very much. As my body enters the first wing of perimenopause I feel like I can finally shamelessly and successfully jump back onto the train I was riding so joyously when I was about 10.
Just all of this! Thank you so much for sharing this interview here. I can see why it wasn’t in All Fours, but wow is it potent! As a veteran of the shot nerves type of exhaustion, I hope you find things that bring you peace and rest and healing. 🩵
Thank you Miranda for this meaningful meandering that I said "oh" to aloud at many points because it hit home again and again. It especially hit home today when we had a 7.0 earthquake and then a tsunami warning right after as I was gathering my son and our paperwork, laptop, etc. My townhome that faces the bay and the backend faces the ocean. We got stuck on two bridges over the water because everyone was fleeing the peninsula at the same time.
My body experience said, "sleep darling, sleep." When we got inland to my son's dad's house ( my-ex) I kinda crumbled. I felt like I hit a gas leak and was so dizzy that I conked out for 2 hours. Holding your shit together for your child who is watching the water in case it crashes down on us is so damn hard. He kept singing to it "I love you water but please don't hurt us." In the past, my body would muscle through it, hit the gym and get into the "I am good at crisis" mode.
Today, my body wouldn't let me lie to myself. I was grateful for just the open, free expression of this exhaustion. Somedays, it just pisses me off that I need to nap even when I don't want to- after a meal, after an orgasm.. like I have no choice. That is what scares me the most- not having a choice in my body experience. Does anyone else feel this?
Yes, my body has been telling me to go sleep earlier than usual or it tells me I can’t do this or that (work, social life, etc.). Sometimes I resist, sometimes I give in. Sometimes I feel good when I resist, usually I feel better when I give in. I don’t get frustrated at my body, I have a lot of empathy for her now because it carried me through some hard stuff.
I love the dialogue you are having with your body, the listening and even the resisting. It is true, our bodies have carried us through incredible changes and journeys. I do think it is time I listen more to mine.
The body experience. Damn, it’s so hard at this part of life, when I am old enough to recognize the changes ahead, and I feel completely terrified by them looming around the corner. I feel such a strong pull to blow my life to rubble just to feel it all, one more time. When I was younger I was never focused on what I would lose down the road but now it’s all I can see. This body has done so much and continues to but I am constantly distracted by what comes next, by what I won’t feel or see or say or do again. But also doing this, just this, forever is so fucking boring and hard so I see a need for change. So then I come back to blowing up my life because at least that’s more interesting.
There is so much intense relief in knowing it’s not just me.
Ok, I read your post like 3x because it is so real and so beautifully true. That idea of being focused on what you will lose down the road. I feel that sometimes too like every ache or weird skin reaction could be chalked up to this sloping path. The funny thing is sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Some days I feel so vibrant, other days like I am creaking and cracking just getting out of bed. But the gift out of it is similar to your desire to blow stuff up. I have been blasting past so many barriers that I didn't even know that I corseted myself around. Let's keep blowing up and opening up our experience and share here.
I love that so much, blasting past the barriers. It’s exactly right. The sloping path hits me so hard that being in this moment almost feels impossible but here we are. I will blow up and open up with you all. I love that.
I don’t even know where to start, Sara G. I feel so connected to you and all you say in your comment. I want to collect my thoughts before I respond in full. But just wanted to thank you first.
I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts and to connect with you. It’s so good to feel your presence and company in the truth of this moment.
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath…
I get so distracted , too. I feel these surges of fear that I am messing up my one precious life, not enjoying it enough, abusing my body too much, not enjoying my child enough, not loving purely enough, not enjoying the world enough, traveling enough, all while living inside this body that is slowly aging, falling apart. And then that weird impulse to change, change, change, explode things, to feel it all again—yes! How you put it resonated with me deeply. It helped me understand that part of myself. It’s not about self-destruction. It’s about waking up. It’s also about that feeling of entrapment —entrapment in the body, in time and space, in aging—and escaping it all. When I talk to the part that feels entrapped, I know it holds so much trauma and has very few tools for dealing with it. When I talk to the tightrope walker who lives in fear of the darkness beneath, I know that its fear is coming from a place of exquisite love of the body and all it has done for the whole system of me. But man, it can be exhausting and confusing contending with it all! I am at peace when I simply accept the way I exist in this world. Drink hot herbal tea. Stretch. Walk in the sunshine with my dog. Send my husband a text that says: I love you. Read a book. Check Miranda July’s Substack.
This hit me hard, this feeling of entrapment and waking up. There is this feeling that I now have everything that I have wanted and been climbing towards my literal whole life. Now I’m here and sometimes I feel so locked in it scares me. It’s this. Forever. I also stopped drinking a few years back and feel things and see patterns in my history that I never saw before. It’s been fascinating to recognize my draw to secret risky behaviors and try to examine the trauma and experiences that cause me to run towards that.
I love that you highlighted the howls in his sleep line because I read that particular bit over and over when I first read your response. The idea of falling into this unknown. Or trying not to fall into it. I just love that. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and ideas so much.
Ha! I think we are sooo dialed into each other—I was JUST recognizing my achievements, chastising myself for not pausing and appreciating what I’ve been able to build and create. And so I paused. And I realized that I have accomplished the dream (more or less). And I did feel gratitude and a bit of satisfaction. And in the next moment I was ready for more. But that gap between satisfaction and readiness—I think that gap is that feared place, the unknown. (Goddamn! Whoever designed this game was crazypants.) how old we’d you when you stoped drinking? Do you mind sharing what was going on that made you stop? I have been using moderation for years now but when I go out and have one too many, my 50-year-old body does not like it, and I consider stopping altogether. I work with clients who want to drink moderately—success is mixed.
Absolutely. I stopped in May of 2021 so I was 44. I come from a long line of problem drinkers who were mostly functional but definitely not moderate. I am the middle child and both of my sisters have struggled with substance use disorder to varying degrees. My older sister has been in and out of treatment from 17 and still struggling.
During Covid I found myself making rules around my drinking and breaking them over and over. I have 3 little kids and would wake up at 3am. a pool of guilt and shame. I realized that it would never be enough. I just couldn’t moderate and was angry if I had to. I never hit a traditional rock bottom but the realization that I was no longer in control hit me hard. The amount of brain space it was taking up and how I saw myself prioritizing it over everything scared me. I knew that I just couldn’t end up like my sister. So I stopped. About three times before it stuck but it has. I have dabbled in the recovery world and currently go to a women’s AA meeting once a week that is so impactful and beautiful. I do struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling like I wasn’t off the rails enough to qualify. I’m working with a sponsor who often reminds me that walking in the rooms and feeling seen and connected with these women and their stories is enough and that I belong there. I tell myself that any work we choose to do on the how and why, the introspection can only help us understand ourselves better. It has freed up my brain in a way that I never expected but I feel frustrated with myself for filling that with thoughts about my body and food and weight and dumb shit. And the draw to the secret risky behavior is always still whispering in my ear. But I also feel so empowered and brave for making this choice. And the ripple effect to both friends and family that have followed suit is pretty amazing. For me none was the only answer, moderation just wasn’t possible.
In the truth of this moment —yes, here I am, trying to understand, along with you, how to keep on keeping on in this body, this “heavy bear that sleeps with me,” as Delmore Schwartz so poignantly put it in this poem :
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
—The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
This 🙏🏼
Gosh. I am just so happy to be here, in community with you all, and with Miranda July. My post-menopausal age 50 body definitely is beginning to feel seasonless. But for me—at least right now—there is relief, rest, peace in that.
At the same time, existential dread isn’t just a vague acquaintance, it’s motherfucking *real*…even when I’m playing Uno with my son. Cracking up laughing and then suddenly! Cold. Dread.
But there is another kind of high that’s coming around these days—it’s the high I feel when I think I am not being ruled by forces internal and external but am instead manifesting love, compassion, joy, wisdom. I sound like a Hallmark card. But man —it’s just the best thing ever.
So in those rare moments when I’m manifesting the good good good stuff, I feel such appreciation for my gravity-strained 50 year old body. This morning while doing yoga I had to stop because I sprained my ankle a year ago and it still hurts and probably will forever. For fifteen minutes, I was able to sort of kind of be okay with that reality.
I love this idea that we are here in our bodies to have body experiences—like, that’s the whole point. It’s so weird.
I am a therapist and I keep seeing myself and my clients as waves of flesh peeking up out of this massive tapestry of stuff that we’re all part of, like threads in one big extremely messy and oddball cosmic blanket.
Having body experiences together. Wild.
"I am a therapist and I keep seeing myself and my clients as waves of flesh peeking up out of this massive tapestry of stuff that we’re all part of". I really like that.
So good to hear your voice on here! This is Michelle Mounts—-I volunteered (along with my now ex-husband, Jon) to perform in “Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About” at The Kitchen in 2007 and later wrote about it for one of your books (a monograph I think?) because we were basically acting out our own love story up there. I continue to be so inspired by you and your work, and I laughed, cried, shouted through All Fours—my god it is a beautiful and important book. I felt so seen while reading it. I’m delighted we were born in the same year because I look at all you do and say, Wake up, Michelle, keep going. My private practice, Sky Psychotheraoy, is now open for business! Early days, and I’m a little scared, but mostly so very ready. xxxx
Relief, rest, peace and existential dread. That sums it up so well. I love everything about this comment.
This is the part I relate to the most: “I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.” I think my body’s been absorbing grief and acting out against me.
but what if your body can't act out against you? what if it is you calling you into being you? (i don't know answers to these at all and am not posing them from any sort of position of superiority...these are questions i ask myself)
Can it be both? Can our bodies be both acting out against us and calling us into being? I definitely feel like it is both.
When I pop a blood vessel on my hand because I strained to open a jar of sauce, I feel like it is acting out against me.
When I can get back into intermittent fasting and dance for an hour, I feel like it is calling me into being.
My body asks me to listen so much to it now. That is a blessing in many ways and often when I listen, I find both loss and celebration.
“without some kind of crisis that involves real suffering, it's hard to actually change, to see yourself and really approach life in a new way”
YES! I think we resist this but it’s so true and remembering it might make the crises easier to swallow, and give meaning to the struggle of it all. Aging often feels like lurching from crisis to crisis (many of them about physical ill health or discomfort, which - in the darkest times - feels like an unbearable condition and nothing but deterioration. Good to think they serve a useful purpose.
PS
Psychoanalysing my metaphors may become my new favourite hobby. Why did I never think of this before! Where do they come from? Why do they get so easily mixed?
Confidential to Satin Bowerbird: I'm working on a response to your comment on my first post -- it sparked some things for me.
I like this description: “…it’s like all the seasons stop, you know? Like you’re permanently in Hawaii or something. It’s temperate all the time.” I’m 52 and love the changing seasons so I’m a bit worried now. The heat is starting not to feel so hot anymore… except for the hot flashes and night sweats of course! But, who knows, maybe something good will come out of it, like maybe I’ll finally stop biting my nails.
I should add that this same woman, "Camille," was having sex she loved, which she explained to me in wonderful detail, and is just one of the more alive and interesting people I know. And, fwiw, not the earth-mama you're probably picturing - rather glamorous and put together! I eventually realized that while these things she said about grief and the body experience were important, you really needed to see the whole picture of her, hear everything she had to say, to not feel slightly devastated. It's *because* she's so in touch with herself and the pull of the moon that she even notices the one-season feeling (and misses the wild shifts, while many women are glad to be done with them.) Maybe you're getting the sense of why, in the end, I did not include the many interviews I did while writing the book. Tiny pieces, here and there, but not to this extent. It's really because any single, real woman is too complex! I whole book unto herself.
Should I put this as a footnote to the post? Will take me awhile to figure out how I like to use all the tools here. AND THAT'S FINE MIRANDA. THERE IS TIME. IT'S NOT A RACE.
I was originally going to call this whole Substack: In Trouble. "In Trouble with Miranda July". Because all my work is basically the antidote to this deep, constant sense of being in trouble. A rebellion against that feeling; freeing myself again and again. Also: we are in trouble. Troubled times. And I'd like company in this trouble -- be in trouble with me.
I LOVE THIS TITLE! I LOVE THIS ADDITION about the Camile. I think it could be the whole next post! I love the writing in this post but yes, I think the left out stuff about her is crucial. She does come off in the first version like the a harbinger of bad times to come. In the second version she comes off more like the bad times are a memory that she might sometimes be nostalgic for. This is WAY interesting.
ALSO - I read that the average age that women report having their best sex is in there 50s. HOLY UNDERREPORTED IMPORTANT FACT!!!! This really goes against our narrative of aging in such an OBVIOUS to me way. Of course we're encouraging women to think badly of themselves just before it's time for us to reap all the rewards. The sexual rewards. Anytime the sex part gets left out I feel like there's something missing.
OMG, thank you for this reported fact that I will hold onto for dear life.
I adore this idea. Loneliness is an invisible weight on the pendulum between an unraveling present and the desirous wild unknown. Company on a long haul journey with no “right” or “wrong” turn, especially in a troubled world with little appetite for nuance, feels like a full body exhale. Thank you.
I also have been noticing the sense of "trouble" with my kids. the whole horror when they feel like they are "caught" or "in trouble" and I wonder where this comes from. cause half the time i think the "in trouble" is so loud in their system that they can't hear that I'm actually just saying "can you please not always leave the frozen box of waffles out on the counter?" I also wonder if "being in trouble" is a foundational sense that empire's rely on for their very existence.
My friend said she and her sister coined “trubs” when they were younger… uh oh, we’re in trubs ☺️
I would love to embrace the idea that when someone sees me, they think "Here comes trouble." This was commonly said about me as a child and I want to return to that kind of abandon when being "trouble" meant I was expressing, sassing, playing, and being dramatic about all the things that played in my imagination.
I love the idea of the antidote to this deep sense of being in trouble. You hit such a solid nerve here. I often find myself sighing and saying, "I am tired of being good." This is usually around my work ethic with my business or with my health stuff but it can be exhausting.
staying with the trouble <3
Oh yes! Today I am hungover and exhausted and accordingly feeling such a deep abiding sense of being in trouble.
There is no where I’d rather be. Your work has let me finally see the trouble that I was pretending not to notice for so long. Letting myself see it, feel it and accept it has changed me wholly. Now to do the work to free myself
This was necessary for me to understand a little bit more of her relationship to her body around intimacy. Thank you for the clarity. I wonder sometimes aloud, "Will I have great sex again?" It has been a long time since I have let someone into my personal space that way and I am all for it as long as it feels right. But after 5 years, you start to wonder if you will lose it because you haven't used it. I am not sure what is but I am afraid to lose it sometimes.
also. i found "camille" to be radically UNdevastating. she sounded so at home inside of her changingness. and noting how she could bear grief to boot!! THIS is the woman for me.
I just saw a thrilling network of novels emerging in all four directions out of all fours.
At 66 I’ve been living in this temperate Hawaii body for quite a while, and the grief, yes, it’s real, but delicious, tender and in that tenderness is a new redemptive body- a new « me »/not me- beyond body? Peeking out. Perhaps she’s been there all along.
Yes, I'm starting to feel this. I do believe there must be some way to get *this* across. I see a lot of "I don't give a fuck anymore" and that's a great energy too, but this tenderness is is subtler and feels like some private candle flame women have and protect and it sees them through life. I think my drive to name and describe these things is because maybe we survive, and even grow powerful in the manner of a people who have had to keep the flame hidden in order to have it at all, never thinking it could become the dominanat paradigm.
Yesssss, ~a private candle flame~ is most certainly a spot-on descriptor. That’s what I feel for sure.
Oh beautiful
So much meat here.
Two quick things – I am going through the very human, very embodied experience of my mother dying. One body observing another body making an essential shift that doesn’t get a do-over. In the midst of this, your (character’s) observation is a welcome warning:
“I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.”
Secondly, when you wrote, “that’s what I’m here for,” I suddenly heard Jane Siberry singing those words in her clarion mellifluence, and I wondered if you heard it too — “the sky’s so blue, you can see right through La la la la la la. My heart it is so big, I can’t get through the door. That’s what I’m here for.”
Much gratitude to you. 💚🙏
This. This so much. The things my body did to avoid grief were outrageous. And juxtipository (i made up that word). We need this conversation opened up so we don’t feel so alone.
Sending care and strength as you live through this experience. 💛
This meant so much to me. Didn’t want to go off-piste in MJ’s thread with a long response so just know that it’s a very meaningful message to me at a very tenuous time. Much gratitude.
A suppository of juxtaposition! Insert as needed.
I can only imagine the powerful and hard feelings as you witness your mom's dying. I get terrified when my mom becomes ill because there is so much fear in losing here even though we have been in conflict most of my life.
The things we avoid to feel grief is a very real and painful experience. I am learning to embrace whatever I feel lately and often to let it go, to move past me. I notice the more I let myself face and embody the feelings, the more I get to the other side where their is a "clean burn" feeling and then beyond that a freedom and even elation at times.
“Brace yourself for a fair amount of frivolity” — happily. This was so fun, and I DID lol at the 1986 woodchips metaphor
In NorCal we call it tanbark. The oddest thing …
I am also in NorCal in Humboldt.
The school where i work 100% has monkey bars over wood chips… I’m like, is this outdated and i didn’t realize it?
Theatre professor here, so thinking about women and bodies made me think of the play Fefu and her Friends by the incredible María Irene Fornés, which both I and my daughter have had the pleasure to direct, 35 years apart. Julia is alone in the bedroom in Act II, reciting what the “judges” (patriarchal forces controlling her) have told her as a prayer. It is so powerful to see performed live.
“Man is not spiritually sexual, he therefore can enjoy sexuality. His sexuality is physical which means his spirit is pure. Women's spirit is sexual. That is why after coitus they dwell in nefarious feelings. Because that is their natural habitat. That is why it is difficult for them to return to the human world. Their sexual feelings remain with them till they die. And they take those feelings with them to the afterlife where they corrupt the heavens, and they are sent to hell where through suffering they may shed those feelings and return to earth as man.”
I think the judges are right about our spirits being sexual, and I think that's why we get SO DAMN TIRED.
Holy mother of god! This is gorgeous and so true.
What a passage! Thank you for taking the time to share that with us all. That was a riveting read.
Julia’s entire scene is a tour de force
you know. the thing i really notice here is this: “I guess grief itself is always bearable. But the things we do to avoid grief might not be.”
indeed.
i had this idea for most of my life until recently, that i got from somewhere and everywhere, that it would be a good idea to leave myself when things feel nearly unbearable. just kind of hover over myself while the bad stuff happened and then pop right back in once things felt somewhat reasonable. but i'm noticing more and more that its the hovering over myself that is perhaps more of a source of pain than comfort. a way to compound suffering rather than relieve it.
i'm developing this facility lately with talking to dead people. its something i've kind of dabbled in in the past...i think i always knew it was something i could do and a few years ago my friend's friend died on her birthday. she was on a weekend away with her girlfriends and decided to try cocaine for the first time and it was laced with fentanyl. so she died then and there on the airbnb floor. horrifying. anyway i was thinking of this sitting in the waiting room where i got my weekly allergy shots, waiting the required 30 minutes to make sure i didn't go into anaphalaxis (which i did once) and i thought casually, 'maybe I'll tune into Deb's dead friend and see how she's doing.' And there was this immediate typhoon of rage. She just swirled right through the waiting room and gobbled me up inside. She was so loud and windy, just this huge maw of mother rage, like how could she be ripped away from her kids like this. I tried to say something nice or just "hold space" but it did less than nothing and so I kind a tried to just tiptoe backwards. Eventually typhoon of her kinda lost interest in me, like a wrong number, but I felt stupid and scared. And I felt this deep confirmation that there are these huge scary unseen forces that I cannot contain and that maybe I'm crazy and also not equipped to handle this like other people who know how to be good psychic mediums.
But then this October my friend from middle school died in a river. He drowned. And the night before his funeral he showed up in my dream. Standing at the foot of my bed, exactly as he was in life, only 50% smaller. He was just standing there looking around and blinking. Dressed head to toe in baby pink Louis Vitton. Knit hat, long sleeves, pants, boots. Which I've come to understand as a really really good sign. Anyway, one day as I was driving home from dropping off my kid at his friend's house and my pink LV friend kinda energetically slammed into me. It felt like he was sucking on my chest and bladder with 2 straws while I was turning right on San Pablo St. And I got scared. Felt the memory of the windy rage mom. And then I remembered something this Ute woman told me at my friend's funeral. She was confiding in me about how my pink LV friend had visited her energetically while he was drowning. She showed me the position his body was in and how scared he was. I asked her what she does when people visit her like this--it seemed like she had some experience. And she just stood there calmly on her legs and feet and said "Nothing." and just looked at me with this neutral calm knowing. "There's nothing to do." And so I heard her voice saying this when I was being chakra sucked by my pink LV friend in the car and I thought okay. There's nothing to do. So I just let it happen but the one thing I knew I did need to do was be as deeply in and with and as myself as I could possibly be. And I felt this kind of bodily saturation. Like I was sinking into all my volume of all my cells and then it sort of naturally extended outwards and I could feel how I was basically connecting with everything in the universe and beyond. And then it felt totally fine and no big deal about the chakra sucking. So he just kept right on going and I felt his deep deep sadness and then he showed me a picture of myself and my partner and I was like oh right. I get to be in a body here with him. And that is really something. Because my friend doesn't get to do that anymore, the human body on earth thing. And I kept driving home.
Wow. I'm interested in this. I'm feeling around at the edges of these things right now.
Yes. The edges in these realms are subtly not the same as the ones I have been paying attention to up until recent-ish.
Oh wow, this is really powerful, thank you for sharing this. I’ve had very different experiences of other realms of existence that started in the last couple of years - one came on suddenly a few weeks after I finished All Fours, I don’t think because of it at all but it certainly informed the freedom I felt coming out of it.
I think lots of people (women, but not exclusively) experience forms of knowing that don’t align with consensual reality and we just don’t talk about it. It is a gift and can really affirm being here, but not an easily.
100. i think often about how in chinese medicine, menopause is understood as the second spring. as the blood moving from the womb to the heart. and this of course makes different layers more available to us in our lived experience, you know?
I never thought of my body, except in shaming, critical, self-loathing, or, in rare flashes, beautifully compassionate ways. It was this thing, but it wasn't me. Not me, me - ya know? Never truly a representation (unless it was beautiful and small and well put together).
Now, this thing I've mentally denied proper and full ownership of is somehow betraying me and demanding attention, all at once, if only for what it seems to now lack. It's taking me by the chin, snapping its fingers by my ear and saying "focus!". I don't know if I should be resentful to it, or apologise for my neglect or lack of appreciation, for my previous contempt and derision. It's making demands, not promising anything better, but requiring something, anything, for survival.
100% relate to this!
Me too. Betraying me. But actually I know that it’s right and I should have been listening for years.
BUML! Yes!!! I am definitely in a Blowing Up My Life Phase and it seems like my body is trying to get there ahead of me. I went to a holiday party and couldn’t stop eating. It’s as if I had been starving myself for days and suddenly I was ravenous. Now I am feeling all of it but can’t sleep, can’t dance, all I can do is experience the BUML of it all. Like my stomach has taken center stage but my real feelings are sitting in the front row wanting to walk out of the theater. I can’t just let my spilled guts be the whole story. I’m finally being a witness to my own life, because my body is putting things in perspective for me.
Eating to feel, reading to feel, writing to feel full. Relishing being at the table with all of you. Grateful to you Miranda for sharing your body in ways that inspire a deeper connection to our very own selves so we can show up for each other.
Bring on frivolity to the point of exhaustion please.
I had a bike accident a couple of years ago that resulted in a concussion that I’ve still not recovered from. It’s one of those injuries that some people bounce right back from and others really don’t - it depends on lots of things including the state of your nervous system at the time of injury. Mine, it turns out, was on high alert after some intense life stuff just before and so it’s still with me, in a subtle way but enough that I have to life totally differently to avoid complete exhaustion / inescapable brain fog / piercing headaches.
I’ve been super lucky to be supported in my recovery by therapists who have slowly coached me to appreciate the opportunity to change how I live. I’ve developed the kind of intimacy with my nervous system that it seems like Camille must have, and I wouldn’t trade that for a second. Nor the new experience of wildly altered states of consciousness that I get now about once a year, which leave me unable to function at all in consensual reality but open me to the universe in a way that is a huge gift. It’s also let me value my body experience in a way that makes me want to have lots more sex, have different relationships than before, and ensure I have the right people in my community to hold me in this different way of life.
None of that was obvious to me before. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ‘back to normal’ as people keep expecting of me - I actually really hope not.
Anyway… I appreciate the vulnerability of this space as well all fumble our way to experiencing our bodies at all.
I got a lot out of reading this. "Intimacy with my nervous system."
Thank you 💕 I forgot to say in that response… dancing, nearly every day, is one of the things that has helped me develop that intimacy. That and lots of craniosacral therapy and yoga nidras 💨
Lauren, thank you for what you shared. Your newfound intimacy, your sexual exploration is such an expansive way to shift from your accident. I have heard that if we can relax before a traumatic impact, our bodies can heal faster but the tightening from stress or fear can affect the recovery. I feel like you found your opening and expansiveness post the accident and that takes such courage.
I broke my leg in 3 places while skateboarding in my 30's. The bone was literally jutting out of my shin. I couldn't walk properly for 6 months but I could dance better than I could walk, so I auditioned for a showcase of performers and it started an amateur dancing career. It saved my life in a different way.
I’m grieving a lot these days. Flashing images before my eyes: a baby in my arms, a toddler in the bath. And I instantly start weeping uncontrollably.
I’m also grieving earliest rejections from my mother, and my father.
Grieving old and newer families that are no longer what they used to be.
I didn’t expect me to be grieving the emotional rollercoaster because I didn’t expect it to be gone too. It’s a love/hate relationship with that one. But she’s been a steady partner through it all. It makes sense that this will be gone too. That’s very sad. It’s good to be prepared though.
I feel I’m going back to where it all started. Before puberty. Is menopause puberty in reverse?
Yes. It’s a return to your 11 year old self. No hormonal fluctuations. Time was a run on sentence. Long-ass summers and perpetual school weeks. I only remember those times so vividly now because I have no cycle. I’m time traveling! Menopause has returned me to when time was linear. It’s wild.
I loved being 11. I can’t wait.
WOAH. This is a fascinating perspective and observation that resonates with me very much. As my body enters the first wing of perimenopause I feel like I can finally shamelessly and successfully jump back onto the train I was riding so joyously when I was about 10.
This a very attractive idea to me
Just all of this! Thank you so much for sharing this interview here. I can see why it wasn’t in All Fours, but wow is it potent! As a veteran of the shot nerves type of exhaustion, I hope you find things that bring you peace and rest and healing. 🩵
Thank you Miranda for this meaningful meandering that I said "oh" to aloud at many points because it hit home again and again. It especially hit home today when we had a 7.0 earthquake and then a tsunami warning right after as I was gathering my son and our paperwork, laptop, etc. My townhome that faces the bay and the backend faces the ocean. We got stuck on two bridges over the water because everyone was fleeing the peninsula at the same time.
My body experience said, "sleep darling, sleep." When we got inland to my son's dad's house ( my-ex) I kinda crumbled. I felt like I hit a gas leak and was so dizzy that I conked out for 2 hours. Holding your shit together for your child who is watching the water in case it crashes down on us is so damn hard. He kept singing to it "I love you water but please don't hurt us." In the past, my body would muscle through it, hit the gym and get into the "I am good at crisis" mode.
Today, my body wouldn't let me lie to myself. I was grateful for just the open, free expression of this exhaustion. Somedays, it just pisses me off that I need to nap even when I don't want to- after a meal, after an orgasm.. like I have no choice. That is what scares me the most- not having a choice in my body experience. Does anyone else feel this?
Strongly relate to this.
Yes, my body has been telling me to go sleep earlier than usual or it tells me I can’t do this or that (work, social life, etc.). Sometimes I resist, sometimes I give in. Sometimes I feel good when I resist, usually I feel better when I give in. I don’t get frustrated at my body, I have a lot of empathy for her now because it carried me through some hard stuff.
I love the dialogue you are having with your body, the listening and even the resisting. It is true, our bodies have carried us through incredible changes and journeys. I do think it is time I listen more to mine.