How do you do what you do, every day?

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I received this letter from a young woman who’s at the beginning of what I’m certain will be a big life in advertising. With her permission, I’m replying here.

Dear Stefanie,

What does a female need to do to have her name remembered in this business by the males she works with every day?

I thought it was something like “work really really hard,” “do really really good work that continues to make the wall and the pitches and the CCO’s desk.”

I read that it was to “lean in,” or “keep your hand up.”

I figured maybe “work the weekends,” “go in early / stay late” couldn’t hurt. And that “volunteer to work on this” would only yield positive results.

I even thought maybe the most basic, “introduce yourself” and “say hello in passing” might be totally valid ways. Seems sensible?

How is one expected to be motivated to keep doing the good work when if she does, a male writer is “accidentally” given the credit?

Or when she’s told, “He keeps forgetting you’re on this pitch. It’s weird. But I remind him and he thinks it’s really cool you want to help” ? Help? No, I want to win.

Who do you look to when there are literally no females in higher creative positions in your place of employment?

How do you do it? I’m sincerely asking. Is the answer simply “more”? More time, more work, more handshakes?

It makes me feel really sad. And sick. And then I wonder if my name was only remembered in the first place because I really liked to bake cookies in college. And that makes me sadder.

Sad Mad Woman

Dear Sad Mad Woman,

I have been obsessively thinking about your letter and how to answer you. In no small part because it could have been written by a 22-year-old me, just staring to make her way in the world and almost wholly unprepared.

You say it makes you sad. It used to make me furious. Probably sad is better, because you won’t ever find yourself having to live down a reputation for being “inappropriately angry,” “scary,” “dramatic,” and “overly emotional.”  You also won’t have the humbling experience of realizing it’s all true, and learning a new way to be.

I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll also tell you that I learned what I know from Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Tina Fey, Marie Forleo, Sheryl Sandberg, Janet Kestin & Nancy Vonk, Rebecca Solnit, and Naomi Dunford. So I did learn from the best.

This chart.

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Things you can’t control include: how other people behave, how other people treat you, what other people think of you, the weather, the past, who you are related to, your sexual preference, and everything you don’t acknowledge. Also, the laws of physics and the fact that the cat will immediately kick litter all over the floor immediately after you vacuum. Because cats are assholes.

Things you can control: your behavior and how you respond to the behavior of other people. It may not sound like a lot, but includes everything from who you spend time with to how you develop and use your talent to whether you make it a habit of flossing every night.

You can’t control who remembers your name or who takes credit for your work. Only how you respond to it.

Youth is prized. Immaturity isn’t.

I once read that there is no such thing as a neutral woman. Every choice we make — long hair or short, makeup or bare face, long nails or short, manicure and pedicure or natural, skirt or pants, length and kind of skirt, bra or no bra, and on and on — every one of these choices telegraphs something. I’m feeling it pretty acutely myself lately, and often stand in front of my closet, asking myself, “What do 46-year-old grown-up ladies wear?” I’m still figuring it out, but I’ve decided it’s not the plaid dress I’ve had since 1998.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/241175950/vintage-1980s1990s-jodi-kristopher?ref=market

Vintage. Like me.

I guess what I’m saying is, take inventory. Are you dressing and styling yourself to look like someone who ought to be taken seriously? How do the people in your office present themselves? Do you mesh with the vibe? Do you look like someone they’d happily put in front of clients? I’m not saying you need to wear a nice pantsuit (unless a nice pantsuit is your thing) or be anything other than unique yourself, but you do need to ask what story you’re telling about yourself with your choice of clothes, hair and makeup. Who do you look like? I know I probably sound like a traitor to post-feminism, but you know what? If you show up at the meeting in a dress that looks like a shirt and you forgot your pants, they STILL may not remember your name but you can be certain they will remember your fanny.

Don’t lean in so far you fall over.

Look, it’s not worth it to work harder and harder and longer and longer and lean in and raise your hand and then suddenly wake up one day to realize you’re 40 and your asshole cat is dead and you haven’t taken a vacation in 11 years. It’s just not.

You need to go home. You need to read and knit and do whatever else it is you want to do. You need a way to recharge your battery and meet people who are not people in your office. You need to have a life. And yes, the hours in our industry are notoriously brutal. But the trick is, only work that hard when it matters. On a pitch? Work until you drop, sure. A launch, a deadline…all good reasons to put in the hours. But on a regular basis, showing up and staying late just for the sake of being there isn’t worth it.

As for volunteering to work on projects — do your own time. Unless you bring something vital to the table that no one else can bring, like the pitch is for a knitting business and you’re the only knitter in your office (Do you even knit? I seem to think so.) Otherwise, let the assigned team do the job they were assigned to do, and YOU go home. Or better yet, to dance class or whiskey tasting club or to dinner with a skier you met at the farmer’s market over the weekend. You need to live a whole life.

That said, in some situations it is good to be generous and ask if you can help. Not in a way that seems like you are hovering or trying to edge in on anyone’s territory, but if someone looks like they’re drowning or the pitch team is being run ragged, go ahead and ask if you can lend a hand.

http://www.marymaxim.com/free-chunky-blanket-crochet-pattern.html

I wish I could knit, then maybe I’d stop spending all the money on fancy Pottery Barn throws.

Don’t apologize.

Unless you are wrong, of course. Then apologize quickly, humbly, and with sincerity. I’m talking about things like “Sorry but, I had an idea?” “Sorry but, I think maybe I disagree with you?” “Sorry, I know how busy you are, but could you review this copy?”

I don’t know if you do this, but if you do, stop. As one of mentors advised me, “Just be normal” and say what you mean: “I have an idea…” “I disagree with you and here’s why…” “Please look over this copy and let me know what you think by the morning…”

You do not have to apologize for showing up and doing your job well. You don’t have to apologize for your thoughts, your talent, or your opinions. You have nothing to be sorry for.

Don’t bake.

I am going to assume you no longer bake things and bring them to the office. But if you do, stop today. You can bake for your friends, your family, your boy/girlfriend, me, and your children, should you decide to have some. Do not bake for your workplace. You are not anyone’s mother, girlfriend, daughter or roommate at work. You don’t want them to remember you by your cookies.

Don’t sit on the floor.

Do you do this? There are no chairs left in the room so you sit on the floor? Stop it. Sit at the table or if there are no seats left, stand close by — not at the edges of the room and not in the corner.

http://www.johnnylovesjune.com/collections/canvas/products/corner-where-nobody-puts-baby

“Stop interrupting me.” “I just said that.” “No explanation needed.”

Internalize this powerful advice from Soraya Chemaly: http://www.alternet.org/words-every-woman-should-know

“We’ve met before…”

This comes in handy when someone doesn’t remember you. Do NOT let anyone get away with pretending they don’t know who you are. Remind them, with good humor, that you’ve met, and where, and when. Do this every time they forget you.

Believe people when they show you who they are.

That male copywriter who “accidentally” got credit for your idea and didn’t correct the mistake? He’s a thief. Remember that for all your future interactions with him. He will take credit for your work, he will not pull you into the meeting or support you. Let that inform all your future interactions with him. I don’t mean you should be rude or hostile to him, or gossip about him. But don’t give him anything — no favors, no ideas, no help, no support. And protect your work against him.

Keep your cool.

If you need to cry, go somewhere private. If you feel yourself getting flustered or losing your temper, excuse yourself. When this happens to me, I sometimes pretend my phone is ringing and I have to take a call, and I put a worried look on my face, apologize for the interruption, and leave the room to collect myself.

Find an ally. Or many.

There may not be any senior women creatives in your agency, and that’s awful. But there is the 3% conference, AWNY, and all these women. Go to conferences. Reach out via email. Build a network.

And after all of this, there will still be some people who don’t remember your name, don’t acknowledge your contributions, and forget you are on their pitch. Time is not the answer, working harder is not the answer. Boundaries, respecting yourself, doing amazing work, taking credit for what’s yours (and being generous with credit to anyone who collaborated or helped you), refusing to be forgotten, reminding them that they DO know you, that you’re NOT sorry, and you are NOT going anywhere, this is where you start.

Always,

Stefanie

Nice Girls Do…Negotiate

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I have a new piece up at LinkedIn, which is part personal story and a whole lot of advice about negotiating like bad ass motherfucker.

I had been working at MTV Networks for seven years on the day my paycheck was too big. I hadn’t gotten a raise, it wasn’t bonus time, and I wasn’t getting reimbursed for expenses—but for some reason my regular paycheck was hundreds of dollars greater than it should have been. I was nonplussed (in the traditional sense), and confess I thought about cashing it and not saying anything. But reason prevailed, along with guilt, and I called human resources. HR, also confused, said they’d look into it. Thirty minutes later I got a call from the head of my department, who apologized for the awkwardness but had good news to share. A recent audit of department-wide compensation had revealed I was significantly underpaid, and as a corrective measure I’d been given an increase to bring me into the correct salary band. I’d just gotten a double-digit raise.

You’re welcome!

I was happy, of course, but also unsettled. For a long time I’d had a vague suspicion that my salary didn’t compare to that of my colleagues, and here was absolute confirmation I’d been underpaid since my first day on the job. Every raise and bonus I’d received had been negatively impacted by my low starting salary and my failure to ever ask for a substantial increase, even though several promotions.

Here’s the irony of the situation: I was a senior-level contract negotiator in the Law & Business Affairs department. If ANYONE ought to have been able to advocate for herself it should have been me. But I was 25 when I started at MTVN, and so thrilled to be there, I would have paid them for the privilege of walking into 1515 Broadway each day. My insecurity never truly abated, and the certain knowledge that there were hundreds of people more than willing to take my place made it difficult to ask for more than I was offered. I failed negotiate for myself over and over, and I paid the price, literally, in real dollars.

Read the full post, 7 Tips for Negotiating Like a BAMF, on LinkedIn.

The Solid Ground I Walked On And The Safe Air I Breathed

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When I was 6 years old, my mother and father divorced. He vanished like a sorcerer’s trick and she, until then a stay-at-home mother, went to work. She was very glamorous, dressing each morning in silk and wool, donning tall leather boots and statement jewelry. I had only the vaguest idea of what she did, but I imagined her as one of the career gals I saw on TV, a cross between spunky Mary Tyler Moore and cheerful Bonnie Franklin on One Day at a Time. A bus took my mother to Manhattan every day, where she rode an elevator to a high floor. There were late nights at the office, business trips around the country, and something called “market week,” which demanded all her time and energy several times a year.

When she was gone, I was entrusted to her mother’s care. No wrinkly bubbe, my grandma was young and charming, only 46 when I was born. I adored her, the way swing music seemed to play wherever she went, her delight in bawdy jokes, and the endless stories she told about her audacious youth. We had the most glorious time together.

My grandma posing for the camera as a young woman.

My grandma posing for the camera as a young woman.

But despite the love and care lavished on me by my grandmother when my mother was away, and my mother’s own playful affection when she was home, I was furious with my mother. In the dark fairytale I told myself, my handsome, charismatic Daddy’s strange disappearance had opened a door for her, and she had deserted me for a glittering life that lay elsewhere—in offices and on airplanes, in hotel rooms and tall buildings. My rage grew between us like brambles. I thought I knew the truth of her, that she was distant, and selfish. I believed I mattered to her, but not as much as everything else.

To call me a fool would be too kind.

In recent years, I have pieced together my mother’s version of this story. She resisted telling me, not wanting to upset me, but I have pried it out of her, a sharp-edged treasure.

On the day my mother kicked my narcissistic, philandering, thieving father out of the house, she was 30 years old, possessed only a high school diploma, and was in a mountain of debt she knew nothing about, because my father had “managed” their finances. She was movie star beautiful (I have seen photos and she was a dead ringer for young Elizabeth Taylor), deeply intelligent, and so terrified she could only manage to exist from one breath to the next. She began her career as a secretary at a company that manufactured underwear, and with nothing but her formidable grit, nimble mind, and unshakable determination, she rose to become Vice President of a lingerie company that was known around the world. Her success was personal, certainly, but it was also political. She was one of the women who cracked the glass ceiling so future generations could shatter it.

She did this not for vanity or ambition, but because there was no one else to take care of us. She divorced my father and settled his debts. She fed, sheltered, and clothed us. She bought me books, took me to plays, sent me to camp. All the while, she sheltered me from the painful realities of our life, never letting me know about the years of financial precariousness, my father’s cruelty, her exhaustion and sadness. She accepted my rage to spare me the weight of the truth—the Daddy I pined for had abandoned me utterly. He never called to ask how I was; he never sent a dime of support. My mother was the sun that warmed my shoulders and the moon that lit the dark, the solid ground I walked on and the safe air I breathed, and I never knew.

I see her with new eyes now; my anger replaced by awe for all she accomplished, for her courage and ferocious compassion. When I revisit our shared history, the thought of her — so young, so overwhelmed — makes me hurt. But there is one memory I treasure as a talisman and a comfort. When I was little, I would sometimes weep and beg her to tell me where my father had gone, ask why he didn’t love me anymore. And she would rock me in her arms and soothe me with the names of all the people who did love me, always starting with herself. “Mommy loves you,” she would whisper. “Mommy loves you most of all.”

My mother, gorgeous in a silk suit, dancing with me moments before my wedding in 2004.

My mother, gorgeous in a silk suit, dancing with me moments before my wedding in 2004.

This post originally appeared on the blog “I’m Just Sayin” as part of a series about the often complicated love between mothers and their children. 

Don’t Wear Shoes That Hurt

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Today is my 46th birthday. It’s a surprising number, in its nearly smack-in-the-middle relation to the lifetime between 0 and 100, and its largeness (46? Seriously? That many?) although I’m not sure what age I think I ought to be. For years I mostly felt 19, and then later, for an even longer period, I thought of myself as 36ish. But this year I feel acutely, undeniably 46, which is a cocktail of responsibility, worry, joy, regret, and a slightly world-weary version of my inveterate optimism, along with knees that hurt when it’s cold and hair that needs to be dyed every three weeks lest I start to look like Jessica Tandy in her later years.

It’s hitting me, I guess is what I’m saying, that 46 is a number by which you are expected to have learned some things. I love reading the wisdom lists people write about age, 29 Things Every Woman Should Know By 29, 30 Things I Learned in My 30s, 50 is the New Black, Do Whatever the Hell You Want, You’re 80. My favorite is What You Learn in Your 40s by Pamela Druckerman.

These advice pieces always seem like jewel boxes, the sort your grandmother keeps tucked nearly out of sight up on her tall dresser. And sometimes, when you visit, she’ll take it down and show you her treasures – the circle pin from her high school dance, the engagement ring your grandpa gave her when they were young and poor, later replaced by the ring she wears now, the big diamond she never takes off but promises to leave for you one day, the necklaces and bracelets. They are a look into the author’s lives, the lessons they’ve learned the hard way, what they’ve saved and polished.

My accumulated knowledge, such as it is, is less a treasure box and more of a well-worn backpack. One that fell off a truck and rolled into a river and dried in the sunshine, got ripped against rocks, frozen in the snow, thawed in a meadow. And it’s filled with treasures, but they are things like abandoned bird’s nests and stones flecked with mica, single earrings and journals with flowers pressed between their ink-smeared pages.

But I think one of the privileges of 46 is getting to tell what you know, and so here are the things I carry:

Not everything turns out for the best. You are going to make some awful choices, there will be times when you don’t get what you want, you are going to say the wrong thing and miss opportunities, and you are going to have regrets. It’s weirdly comforting to know that it’s all right to feel terrible about some things. But you do have to find a way to live with your sorrows, a way to be in your life that isn’t ruled by the pain of what was and what could have been. You need to find a way to let it stay in the past. And if you can learn something and not make the same mistakes again, you’ll be all the better for it.

Stop being such a goddamned narcissist. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and all the things that ever happened to you, that will ever happen to you, sublime and horrible, have happened and will happen to more people than you can imagine. That’s why we recognize ourselves in books we can’t put down, songs we sing out loud in our cars, and movies we watch and re-watch. Most of our experiences are universal, unless you’re an astronaut going on the first mission to Mars or something, and even then you’ve got people sharing that experience, and I bet your feelings setting out for Mars are deeply similar to those of every explorer who set out to chart unknown seas and territories. It may feel a little disappointing at first, to realize you’re not as unique as you thought, but it’s much less lonely.

Be generous. By now, with luck, you’ve achieved some success and have a little money. So when you hear from a nervous 20-something on LinkedIn who wants to buy you coffee and ask how you got to where you are in your career, take them to breakfast and tell them. When you see a new mom in Starbucks fumbling for her wallet and trying to soothe the baby, offer to help. Put down your phone and let your 9-year-old tell you about the dog she saw. Ask questions – was the dog brown? Did it have long legs? Thank your partner for putting the toilet paper in the bathroom, instead of complaining that they didn’t put it on the roll. When the mom who works 80 hours a week comes to a PTO meeting, introduce yourself and sit with her, and don’t tell her how it’s SO NICE to FINALLY see her since she NEVER comes to anything at the school. If you have the sort of relationship with your parents where calling them won’t cause you tremendous pain, then call your parents.

Sometimes it matters what people think of you. The trick here is knowing when to care and when not to. The ex-husband who snuck your collection of Kinks vinyl into his suitcase and told you he hated your haircut on his way out the door? Who gives a damn what he thinks. The boss who writes your performance review at work? You want him to think you’re knocking it out of the park. Learn to tell the difference.

There are cool kids. You may be one of them. No, really, right now someone somewhere probably thinks you are so cool they hardly know how to talk to you. Because who the cool kids are is relative, and believing someone is cool has everything to do with our own wishes and insecurities and very little to do with some empirical definition of coolness. This is why you should pursue you own big passions and nerdy niche interests and not worry about it, because that thing you always thought made you weird is precisely the thing that makes you wonderful.

Don’t be a jerk about music. You don’t have to love One Direction or care about Ellie Goulding. You can dismiss Ed Sheeran and Walk the Moon. Go ahead and roll your eyes at Meghan Trainor and Andy Grammer. Just shut up about it, because when you complain about music you sound pretentious, rigid, and boring. Stop it. And seriously, if you can’t dance to Uptown Funk, you hate life.

There are still surprises in store. After the tumult of your 20s and the striving of your 30s, your 40s can feel sort of settled. There’s the furniture and the rugs and the cups in the cabinets, and the books on the shelves and the photos on the walls, you’ve got a partner or you don’t, you’ve had children or not, the cat you had in your 20s died years ago, and you think, “Huh, so this is what happened. This is how it all turned out.” And then you find out they’re reviving The X-Files and even Skinner is coming back and you remember there is still time to fulfill your potential, for all the mistakes and missteps and stupid things you said, the choices you made and didn’t make, the regrets and the hurting knees and the compromises, for all of the things you lost and didn’t try for you can still be surprised by something so purely fantastic you never would have imagined it could happen. The world can still surprise you. You can still surprise yourself.

You don’t have to clean before your friends come over, but… Your friends really don’t care what your house looks like, but it’s still nice to clean the toilet before they come over. It’s a gesture of goodwill and civility. No need to make yourself crazy, just give it a wipe with a paper towel.

The cat will always kick litter on the floor the moment you put away the vacuum. I’m not speaking metaphorically here. Somehow the cat just knows.

Do that thing. Several years ago a manhole exploded on the street where I was working, and we were evacuated through the fire stairs and told to run downtown. It was one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever lived through, because there was every reason to believe the horrific boom and smoke-filled sky was another terrorist attack on New York City. And as I was running from 40th street to 14th street in sandals that cut my feet bloody, I thought, “I’m so glad I just paid my life insurance bill. Damn it, I wish I’d written that book.” The dream that presents itself as an imperative when you believe you’re outrunning death? You should do that. Start today.

Never masturbate with a Clarisonic. Trust me on this one.

Don’t wear shoes that hurt. It’s not worth it. For years I tried to find a pair of heels I could wear and still feel like myself. It turns out that I am happiest in a pair of loafers, which accommodate my habit of walking while daydreaming and exude the kind of bookish sexiness I have been cultivating since I was 14. You still have places to go. You’ll walk there on your own two feet. Dress accordingly.

What Should I Eat While I Watch That Movie: G.I. Jane

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When it comes to Ridley Scott’s G.I. Jane, we are a nation divided. Ask someone about this 1997 film and you are likely to get one of two responses: a dismissive eye-roll accompanied by a jerk-off gesture, or a fist-pumping “Fuck yeah!” Rotten Tomatoes supports this observation, where the movie earns 55% on the Tomatometer and an audience score of 53%.

G.I. Jane tells the story of Lieutenant Jordan O’Neil — played by Demi Moore and her supernatural lats, quads, and glutes — the first woman to be accepted for U.S. Navy Combined Reconnaissance Team training (a fictional stand-in for U.S. Navy SEAL BUD/S). There is a plot here, something to do with Anne Bancroft’s Senator Lillian DeHaven making a deal to keep military bases open in Texas. But honestly, who cares? The power of G.I. Jane, its ridiculously strong heart, has nothing to do with plot and everything to do with action.

MPW-62970

O’Neil is taunted and ostracized by her fellow trainees. Her military higher ups are a bunch of Sexist Evil White Men™, all of whom are conspiring to get her to ring out of the program. In one pivotal scene, her master chief (Viggo Mortensen and his lush mustache) beats the crap out of her and then threatens to rape her during a simulated POW training. In an environment known for pushing trainees to the absolute limit physically, mentally and emotionally, she is on her own, a pawn in a game she doesn’t even know she’s playing, and staring down institutional sexism that’s locked and loaded. But does O’Neil waver? She does not. She rejects any accommodation to her training (fuck that helper step on the obstacle course), does her push-ups like a man (no knees), and shaves off her hair while The Pretenders sing The Homecoming. As for the master chief’s attack, she breaks his nose with her head while her hands are tied behind her back and then tells him to suck her dick.

It will come as no surprise that, in the matter of G.I Jane, I am firmly in camp “Fuck yeah!” I love this movie, despite its predictable plot, stereotypically drawn characters, and unambiguous politics. I love it for its warrior heart and brutal training sequences, for Viggo Mortensen’s tiny shorts, Anne Bancroft’s silver-bobbed badassery, and Demi Moore’s buzzed head.

gi-jane-picture-insert

Among the eye-rolling set, a common complaint about G.I. Jane is that it’s an impossible scenario; that there is simply no way any woman could ever complete SEAL training.

This has always seemed a ridiculous argument to me.

This is an action movie. Last I checked, there are few complaints about a lack of it-could-happen-just-like-this-in-actual-life-as-defined-by-my-own-experience-and-abilities realism in action movies. Instead, we eat it up when a millionaire playboy is a secret superhero, humanity is enslaved to robot overlords, a regular cop defeats all the terrorism, a college professor takes on Nazism with a whip and a hat, and a lady in a yellow tracksuit is a sword-wielding assassin who can punch her way out of a buried coffin and kill you by tapping on your chest.

It may very well be true that no woman will ever have the physical ability and mental toughness to complete SEAL training. None have been allowed to try, although with the U.S. military lifting the ban on women in combat that is changing as I write this. We do know that most men who attempt it ring out, because it is hell. That anyone gets through elite Special Forces training is utterly remarkable.

For my money, I think there will be a woman SEAL one day. Women have a history of doing the “impossible.” But for those of us who cheer, “Fuck yeah!” at the mention of Jordan O’Neil, that’s not quite the point. Even if no woman ever makes it all the way through BUD/S, G.I. Jane will always be a clarion call, will always matter, because there is something deeper here, a truth we know in our bones and muscles.

G.I. Jane is a goddess myth in fatigues.

Jordan seems so much larger than life because she’s nothing less than Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and courage, law and justice, and war. She is the stuff of myth, and like all myth, she rides in the place where awe crosses mystery. You may not know her name, but you do know her. She is the grit that stiffens your backbone when it would be easier to quit. She is the fire in your belly that burns hotter than fear. And when the world tells you what you cannot do, what you must not do, what has never been done before and will never be done, not ever, it is she who speaks when you say, “Watch me.”

Hooyah.

images

What should you eat while you watch G.I Jane? I think you should go ahead and have whatever it is you’re truly hungry for. Whatever the hell you want. Tear it up.

Read What Should I Eat While I Watch That Movie: The Silence of the Lambs and What Should I Eat While I Watch That Movie: Blue Valentine.

Want to know what to eat with that movie? Leave a comment here or tweet me at @stefgunning and I’ll suggest a pairing for you!

Heart of the Matter

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The night before Valentine’s Day was going to be celebrated at my daughter’s school, I received the following text from my husband, Jonathan:

Emmy bought God cards. Won’t give them up. Crying. Help.

To translate our married shorthand, he was telling me that our 9-year-old, Emerson, had somehow selected religious Valentine’s Day cards, and now that he had discovered the fact he was trying to explain why she simply couldn’t hand them out to her friends, and she was very upset.

I called the house and he answered on the first ring. “How bad?” I asked.

“Bad.”

“Like ‘Jesus died for you have some candy’ bad?”

“Like, one puppy telling another puppy that God wants us to be friends.”

“Oh.”

“Also, there’s a Bible verse.”

He felt terrible about it, but in all honesty, those cards were sneaky:

godmadeusfriends

Awww. Puppies! I’m glad we’re friends too, puppies!

cards2

Wait, hold up a sec…

In the grand scheme of things, one animal baby telling another animal baby that God brought them together in friendship is no tragedy. But there are several factors operating here that made this a Threat Level Red, Zero Card Thirty, codename God Cardgate situation.

First, there is the fact that we live in the kind of neighborhood where trying to find the owner of a lost blue hat can turn into a culture war. I just want to write my check to the PTO and bring my pie to the annual pie-related fundraiser, not set off a debate about the imposition of religious values on a multicultural community through the distribution of propaganda with a kitten on it.

More significantly, we’re Jewish! Sort of. I’m Jewish, culturally at least. Emmy is technically Jewish in the same way I am, because she’s the child of a Jewish mother. Jonathan was raised Catholic. We’re both Buddhist. And yet, in the sprit of Candy is Delicious and Everyone Loves Presents, we celebrate all the things, our Christmas tree glowing in the light of our menorah, Easter candy decorating our Passover table. We leave offerings to our Ganesha statue when faced with an obstacle. We welcome Persephone on the first day of spring. We smudge any new apartment we move into. My point is, if we were going to hand out God Cards, they would not feature the God of 1 John 4:8.

“Put her on the phone,” I said, standing to pull on my coat. It was now 7pm, I was still at work, and the evening suddenly included buying replacement Valentine’s Day cards, bringing them home, helping her to fill them out, and soothing her hurt feelings. Oh, and explaining God to her.

So, a typical Thursday.

“Helllloooo moooooommmmy,” she warbled in a tiny little voice.

“Hello baby,” I said. “I hear you picked out some cards with God in them.”

“Yes,” she said, crying. “I don’t understand. Daddy says I can’t hand them out, but they are just puppies. And I worked so hard on them. And there’s one for my teacher. And why is there anything wrong with God saying we should be friends? That’s nice!”

“I know, sweetheart,” I said. “And I’ll explain everything to you when I get home. But for now, you just need to trust me. I’m going to go to the store and buy you some other cards, and you can give those out.” We negotiated a deal. She would shower and put on her pajamas. I would buy new cards and bring them home. We would fill them out together, and I would try to find a way to tell her about the difference between puppies who love each other under the benevolent gaze of a gentle deity and the centuries-long bloody complexities of organized religion.

I thought about what I could tell her, while I shopped for cards at the CVS and rode the subway home from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I was raised in an atheist home. My mother is so anti-religion, such a disbeliever, that she threw a fit when I wanted to mention heaven in my grandmother’s eulogy. In the house where I grew up, no book was off-limits, no movie inappropriate, no cultural or political topic not worth talking to death, and my boyfriends started sleeping over when I was 16 — but no one talked about religion. I once asked my mother what she thought happened when we died, and she said she thought it was nothing. No heaven, no hell, no ghosts or spirit, no afterlife. Just the power going off in a house about to be demolished. Nothing left but the memories other people had of you, and a pile of paperwork to be attended to.

I met God my freshman year of college, in a Western Civ. class taught by a professor who captured my full attention. More than God, he showed me god in all his forms, and hers. A universe of myth and story stretching from the underworld to Asgard, spanning time from the moment that first prehistoric ancestor looked up at the sky in awe to me in the drugstore buying cards for my good-hearted daughter, and in doing so wrestling with ancient mysteries about what we wish, what we fear, what we stand for. I minored in Religious Studies in college, and while it may have started as a way of flirting with my professor and horrifying my mother, it matured into a genuine fascination with the sacred places of myth and faith, the archetypical stories of heroes and gods, goddesses and monsters. But for all this, I am no true believer. I have no answers. I’m just another traveler. Another curious wanderer. A storyteller who loves a big yarn. Perhaps, I will concede, better read than most.

I arrived home to find Emerson freshly showered, her thick hair combed out, wrapped in a blanket on the couch. I showed her the cards I’d bought. They had gel window clings on them, in the shapes of dragonflies, butterflies, frogs and owls. She thought they were wonderful. And I’d brought a special card for her teacher, too, with Snoopy dancing on it. We sat at the dining table together, me and my sweet girl, and I read her the names of her classmates while she carefully filled out each card, selecting just the right cling for each friend — a butterfly for Sophie, an owl for Gus, a dragonfly for Paloma.

“Mommy,” she said when we were done. “Why were the puppy cards not ok?  They were so cute!”

They were, I told her, they were adorable. But the thing is, those cards were about a specific God, the God that is in the Bible called the New Testament, and not everybody believes in that God. The people that do are called Christians, and not everybody is Christian. Some people are Jewish, and Muslim, and Buddhist. Some people don’t believe in God at all. And if you are a person who doesn’t believe in that Christian God, or any God, it can feel upsetting or confusing to get a card about that God. And anyway, religion is between the religious person and the God they believe in, we don’t impose those kinds of beliefs on other people. And giving out those cards could feel like you expected the person you were giving it to to believe in that Christian God.

She nodded. “Ok,” she said. And then she asked me the real question, the question at the heart of it all. “Mommy, what do you believe?”

What do I believe? I believe that religion is the cause of endless suffering, of war and hatred. That it’s a way to control the rebellious, creative, far-reaching, fierce thing that makes us human to start with. That it is yet a another way of dividing the world into an “us” and a “them,” and we have far too many of those. I am no fan of religion. But I do believe in something bigger than me, something vast and ferocious, made of rage and pain, pleasure and goodness, vengeance and forgiveness, something unknowable and unsolvable. I believe that sometimes god is a lion, with hot breath and a rough mane, and you visit him by sneaking through a wardrobe. Sometimes god is a grey-eyed girl who carries a bow and a quiver of arrows. Sometimes he’s a dangerous swan. Sometimes she’s a demon slayer. Sometimes god is a lightening bolt, a crash of thunder, a flood, or a fire. Sometimes he is a dancing elephant who clears the way forward. Sometimes she is a fierce mother who finds you in the dark and rescues you from the arms of a monster. I believe in the stories we tell, in the kindnesses we do, in the ways we find to love each other. I believe in the mysteries. I believe in what I don’t know. I revel in everything I don’t know.

“You’re so silly mommy,” she said, and she crawled into my lap and hugged me. “God is a lion?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “His name is Aslan, you’ll read about him one day.”

There were several cards left over, and Emerson asked if she could have the clings. She arranged them on her window, a little scene where the dragonflies flitted with the butterflies, and the owls kept company with the frogs. “They’ll be so pretty when the sun shines through,” she said, and she climbed into bed. I kissed her and hugged her, wished her sweet sleep.

I do not know what she dreams about. And I revel in that too.

Curiosity and the…Cat

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a working mother in possession of even a single hour alone in her own home will inevitably look upon some heretofore unremarkable object and think to herself, “Huh. I wonder if I could masturbate with that?”

Such were my circumstances on a recent Thursday morning, when I found myself blissfully showering in an empty house, all on my own but for the company of my Clarisonic. A Clarisonic, if you’re unfamiliar, is a cleansing brush that oscillates at a sonic frequency that produces over 300 movements per second. It’s a power washer for your face, essentially. It is also a waterproof, handheld device that vibrates at a truly admirable rate.

“Why not?” I thought, and proceeded to have a perfectly lovely interlude with the business end of my Mia 1.

Hello lover.

Hello lover.

By now, in my mid-40s, you might think I’d learned a few things. Such as, if one is beginning an adventure with the thought, “Why not?” one might pause for a moment to go ahead and answer that question PRIOR to skipping gaily forward. Perhaps one might think, “Self, despite its pleasing shape and cheerful vibration, this device is designed, literally DESIGNED, to remove deep-seated impurities from the skin. It’s for DEEP CLEANING the skin ON YOUR FACE which is exposed all the time. Do we really think this sonically oscillating brush head is something we should jam against our usually sheltered flower?” And further, to paraphrase the poet — Chris Rock — just because one CAN masturbate with a thing, does not mean one OUGHT to.

But la-di-da, I have always been a devil-may-care, pay-the-piper-later, adventuresome sort of girl. “Why not?” is my raison d’être.

Sisters, look upon me and learn, for I have dirty danced with sonic technology and come home to tell the tale.

First came the stinging, a sensation very much like rug burn, only decidedly more painful and in a place where you’d really have to work to get contact with a rug. It grew worse as the day progressed, and by the next morning the situation had escalated.

Significantly.

S'up.

S’up?

Yes, in the wake of my Clarisonic indulgence, my secret garden had swollen to a primeval forest. It had swollen past the point of pants, sitting, or clarity of thought.

I did the only rational thing, and I called my best friend, Lisa.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I said, and confessed my folly. She stopped laughing at me long enough to burst into a parody of My Sharona, thusly:

Oh there you were, there you were
in the shower, hon
Watching that motor run, CLAR-I-SONIC

Never gonna stop, give it up
Such a dirty mind, always get it up
For the touch of the vi-bra-ting kind
My my my i yi woo!
My my my my CLAR-I-SONIC

I mean, with friends like these.

I spent the weekend alternating between warm compresses, perching on an ice pack, and suffering my husband’s amused sympathy.

Eventually the swelling subsided, to be replaced by the itching. This was a hellish itching, spawned by Satan himself in an fiery underground bunker where punishment is born. I withstood it as long as I could, then finally broke down and made an appointment to see my gynecologist.

Of course, I am not the first person to turn up at the doctor with a story of self-pleasuring gone awry. But like so many things, it’s only funny if it’s NOT YOU explaining how your Clarisonic talked fancy to you and now that the baboon swelling has subsided you itch in a way that is Biblical. To her credit, my doctor was understanding and matter-of-fact. She examined me carefully and pronounced me healed but suffering from bacterial vaginosis. The cure? Five days of a cream to be applied nightly, and a gentle suggestion not to do it again.

For the record, Clarisonic has not called, texted, or emailed me since this all went down. It’s also unfriended me on Facebook.

Bastard.

It’s a Date

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With her 47th birthday rapidly approaching, my best friend, Lisa, has dipped a toe into online dating for the first time. Lisa is professionally successful, slim and lovely, hilarious and brilliant, cooks like Ina Garten, dresses like a model, and has a head of hair that would make a Disney princess angry. In other words, she is rich, gorgeous, generous, sensitive, and authentically cool (and I am totally unbiased).

And yet, her experience online so far has been less than a fairytale. And so it occurred to us one recent evening while simultaneously trolling Match.com and watching The Bachelor (shut up) that there ought to be a competitive elimination dating show for ladies and gentleman of a certain age. That age being the white-knuckle hydroplane into the black ice of “the middle.”

Join us, won’t you, for The B-AARP-chelor. One man with a prescription for Viagra and a houseful of perimenopausal women in the pursuit of love, marriage, and the chance to spend down their retirement plans together.

  • Watch as the women fight over the temperature in the house. It’s too hot!! No, it’s freezing!!
  • Adventure dates…for colonoscopies!
  • A night in the Fantasy Suite…where the couple talks about how much their knees hurt before dozing off in front of the TV while watching The Good WIfe!
  • Swapping beauty secrets…like which derm has the lightest hand with the Botox!
  • Dyeing each other’s hair…to cover the grey!
  • Fine dining…before 5pm!
  • And instead of a rose ceremony, the presentation of an aloe plant, to naturally hydrate dry skin!

We were kidding, of course. Sort of. This is the same kind of whistling in the dark we’ve been doing since we were old enough to whistle, since we were old enough to know there were awful things in the dark, terrible things we could only face by holding hands and telling jokes and making each other laugh until the laughing turned to crying and the crying let in the truth.

We have been friends for a very long time. So long, I have never known the world without her. We grew up together; tethered by our mothers’ lifelong friendship and our own sisterly attachment, which was forged in the fire of absent fathers and secrets we kept from everyone but each other. In the lonely confusion of childhood, she was as essential to me as my hands, my eyes. She still is.

In our 20s, our lives diverged. I married young, far too young, to the wrong man. And just as my first marriage was falling apart, Lisa married a man 20 years her senior, who promised her everything and gave her hell instead. I was already remarried and pregnant with my daughter, Emerson, when she left him. We were in our mid-30s by then, and in radically different places. She was raw from her divorce, and newly single. I was a newlywed and about to become a mother. But we were tied together more tightly than ever, and in the decade since we’ve each lived two lives, vicariously. Working mom and single world traveler. Gentrifying Brooklyn and chic Manhattan. The comforts of marriage and the excitement of potential.

I know her, is what I’m saying. I know her as well as I know myself, even better than I know myself, in some ways. And because I know her, from the way her hair misbehaves in humidity to the way she doesn’t feel properly groomed without a pedicure, I know what sorrow hides in that shadowy chasm between making fun of arrogant profiles on Match.com and the harem shenanigans of The Bachelor.

What hides there is the truth of being a woman in your late 40s who is still looking for the kind of love that feels like a homecoming. What hides there is the particular sadness of realizing that even if you do find that kind of love, you are too old to now to grow up with someone. What hides there is something that has already been irretrievably lost.

“This is some cast of characters,” I said, scrolling through potential dates for her. “Why does this 50-year-old man have a parrot on his shoulder in his profile picture? Is he a pirate?”

“You see what I’m up against?!” she laughed.

Despite the odds, she believes, we both believe, that is possible to fall in love, crazily in love, fantastically in love at our age, at any age. Who knows what surprises are yet to unfold? But for everything she has, everything she may yet still have, what she will never have is an uncomplicated beginning with someone who is still figuring himself out, who hasn’t already become whatever it is he’s going to be. A shitty first apartment together, to look back on and laugh about. Raising children together. Accumulating friends together. Making a life together.

Here in the middle, we already have our lives, and pasts. We have careers, and friends, cabinets full of good dishes and furniture we bought new. We’ve loved and lost multiple cats by now. We have children, some of us, and ex-spouses, ex-lovers. We have scars, and stories. Histories upon histories.

“It’s all so complicated,” she said. “The idea of taking two entire lives and fitting them together. It’s like starting a movie in the middle. Two movies that you have to watch at the same time.”

It is. But Lisa and I bet on love. We bet on hope. We bet on the improbable happy ending. Every single time. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it this far. Otherwise, we would have given it all up for lost a long time ago.

“Maybe,” I said, “Or maybe it’s more like when Emerson plays with all of her Playmobil sets at once.”

Emmy has a half dozen of these plastic sets — dinosaurs and mammoths, a whole zoo full of animals, a camper with a pop up top and teeny tiny dishes. She plays with them without consideration for time or logic, the camping family driving into a prehistoric adventure, the zookeepers tending the mammoths. She plays it all at once, history folding into the present to make a single story where a caveman takes a shower in an RV and a lion marries a saber-toothed tiger.

Maybe that’s what it can be like, to love in the middle. Two stories that seem disparate but somehow synchronize, like when you play Dark Side of the Moon and watch The Wizard of Oz at the same time. It may not be the kind of beginning we get when we are young. But it is a place to start.

We’re still debating the best sponsor for our mid-life version of The Bachelor. I’m pulling for Maalox. She thinks Lipitor.

That’s Lisa. Playing it from the heart. Every time.

Just You And The Words And The Dark Sky You Shout To

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About a week ago, I received a tweet from a reader named Thomas, which read:

I started a novel and got 3/4 the way written then lost inspiration. Anything I can do to rekindle the desire to finish my book?

With permission, I’m replying here.

Dear Thomas,

Let’s begin with a confession: I haven’t finished my debut novel yet either. I’m working on it, with a NOVEL OR BUST sign hung across my chest, but it’s not done. I am unpublished, unrepresented, and unrepentantly optimistic.

Furthermore, I have been working on this novel of mine for a long time. It started as a glimmer of an idea I had in 1999 while on vacation with my best friend, Lisa. 1999 was not my finest year. My first husband had left me just months before, and I was in a haze of depression, anxiety, and emotional turmoil that made it difficult to put on pants, much less consider writing a book. And yet, this idea nudged at me and poked at me and stamped its foot while I tried to ignore it and did other things. It absolutely refused to go away. The main characters took on names, and then personalities, and started asking — demanding to know, really — why I was ignoring them.

I made at start at writing my book in January of 2013, and it was like falling in love — a headlong hot rush of words and ideas. That lasted for a few months, and then in April of 2013 I attended the Robert McKee STORY seminar, which is to writing seminars what Ultraman is to endurance races. I do not exaggerate when I say I cried through most of that seminar, for a few reasons:

I cried with frustration, because I was more than 100 pages into a novel that I now realized had to be dismantled and rewritten from page 1.

I cried from relief, because finally, FINALLY, I had a method for doing the work. I have been to many writing classes and seminars where the focus was on beautiful writing, finding your unique voice, and being brave on the page, and these are good, worthy things to learn, but holy hell — INDEX CARDS ARE THE KEY TO EVERYTHING. (OK, now I’m exaggerating, but the McKee seminar gave me a precise method for understanding characters and crafting a story. It gave me tools, not permission.)

I cried because on the last day of the seminar we watched Casablanca for hours — with McKee stopping the film to explain the mechanics of the plot, the subplots, the way everything from camera angles to costumes tell us that Elsa and Rick are soul mates – and I always cry when I watch this movie, hoping in vain that this time he won’t put her on the plane, this time she’ll refuse to go, this time there will be an epilogue where they find each other after the war.

I cried because it is four very, very long, exhausting days, and it is so cold, and the seats are so uncomfortable, and I was so hungry, and I had to pee all the time, and did I mention I had to throw my whole book away and start over?

That was April 2013.

I went home from McKee, and took the book apart. I went back to basics. I outlined. I wrote character bios. I wrote scenes. I threw them away. I made a timeline. I made a Spotify playlist. I tried again. I wrote and rewrote.

I thought I had it.

I didn’t have it.

In mid-2014, I got stuck. Profoundly stuck. Scary stuck, the kind that makes a person want to give it all up and re-watch The X-Files. All of The X-Files. Including Season 9. And both movies.

So I stopped writing the book, and I started thinking about it instead. I had a problem, a major problem, and the problem was I didn’t know what my main characters wanted. Oh, I had lists of things they desired, dreams and wishes, motivations and hungers, but nothing that could be expressed in a single sentence, nothing that would drive a person forward.

I thought about them all the time, these two characters who first appeared to me as I climbed a mountain in Costa Rica with my best friend in 1999. I thought about them as I drifted off to sleep. I thought about them on the treadmill. I sat in front of my computer and I tried a million answers to the questions “What do you want? What do you wish for? If you had a magic wand, what magic would you do?” I listened to Into the Woods. I listened to Bleachers. I listened to Motown. And I finally got my answer last month, in December of 2014. It was a terrible answer, raw and full of pain, but it was the absolute truth.

I wrote it on an index card and I got back to work.

This is a very long way of telling you that I am no field commander in this business of giving advice about finishing the book. But I am here in the foxhole with you, and I will share my cigarettes and coffee and tell you what I know, what I believe.

You say, Thomas, that you lost inspiration ¾ of the way through. Which makes me suspect that you don’t have an ending, something went awry that makes it impossible to get to an ending, or you’re scared of what will happen (or won’t happen) when you finish.

Do you have an outline for your novel? Do you know what happens in act 3? Do you have an honest resolution for your plot, your subplots? Will you know when it’s done? These are questions you need to ask yourself, and if the answer is no, then you have work to do; however you do it (index cards!). Returning to the bones of your story, writing an outline that takes you from where you are to that last moment, figuring out the “and then and then and then,” will free your mind to write beautifully. It will give you the comfort of knowing exactly how it all goes down, and the ability to structure your time by giving yourself assignments and deadlines for those assignments. It sounds so obvious, but you need to know how it ends to write the ending.

“But Stefanie,” I imagine you protesting, “I do have an outline! I have all of act 3 carefully planned on multi-colored index cards and I’ve got a string map that shows how the plot and sub-plots resolve. I made a Pinterest board! I have a Spotify playlist! I’m just not feeling inspired to finish.” It is possible, Thomas, that you aren’t feeling inspired because there is something essentially wrong with your story, something dishonest, a problem to be fixed that requires dismantling and reassembling. You may need a rewrite. It may be terrible, the idea of starting again, but take heart in that it happens to the very best writers. You are in good company, if this is the case.

But it may be something else. It may be that as you stand on the cusp of finishing you are thinking, “Well shit, it looks like I’m actually going to finish this thing and then what? What if I finish and no one wants it? What if I can never find an agent, find a publisher? What if it DOES get published, and the world thinks it sucks? What if it DOES suck? What if I suck? Even worse, what if it’s good and I have to do this AGAIN?”

I am well acquainted with this kind of crazy making thinking, and after years of therapy and meditation and yoga and journaling and studying the Dharma I have found there is nothing for it but to tell that voice to Shut. The. Fuck. Up. and do the work. That voice does not have your best interests at heart. That voice is not your best self. That voice rides with fear, and complacency. That voice likes The X-Files. Even Season 9. And both movies. That voice is an asshole, Thomas.

It really does help to have a teacher to consult. For me, that teacher is Robert McKee. When I get mucked up, I turn to the two notebooks I filled during the fours days I attended his seminar, and his giant book STORY. If McKee isn’t your thing, Anne Lamott gives some wonderful, encouraging, beautifully Lamotty advice in Bird by Bird. Neil Gaiman has some excellent things to say about getting the work done (although I find it hard to hear him over those soulful eyes and magnificent floppy hair). Stephen King’s On Writing will kick your ass (and scare you half to death). Steven Pressfield can help you get out of your own way. Find the one who speaks to you, who can help you figure out what to do next when the going gets tough.

Here’s what it comes down to, Thomas. There is so much in this world left undone, unresolved. People leave us in all sorts of ways, for all sorts of reasons, and we never get to tell them the one thing we always meant to — I’m sorry, I love you, it was always you, I didn’t mean it, thank you. Jobs end. Accidents happen, and tragedies. We make choices, and by their nature those choices leave us wondering about what might have been, lingering wants, regrets that can’t be made right. There is no way to control all that gets left behind as we make our way through life, but you do control this. Finish the book. Finish it. Give it closure. See what it feels like to be done, to have done this thing, to have said the thing you meant to say, to not back down to fear or apathy, to have given your heart and your sweat and your time and your best intentions to something with no guarantee, no promise, just you and the words and the dark sky you shout to.

Always,

Stefanie

The Life That Will Be Your Life Forever

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I received the below email from a reader on New Year’s Eve. With her permission, I’m replying here.

Dear Stefanie,

I’m 37 and single and not a mother. I was engaged for a while and have been in a series of relationships for the last 12 or so years. I recently realized I want to have a family, but I’m mystified as to how I could possibly ever believe love lasts and being a parent is something I wouldn’t screw up. I really loved your piece on FaceTime and your daughter. I have babysat for children in the midst of young romance and have been so moved by their ability to open their hearts so wide without fear (well fear of being embarrassed I guess). I suppose this isn’t a question you can really answer, but it felt right to send it out into the Internet ether: How do you settle into a life that will be your life forever? How do you know what man will be a good father to your as yet non-existent children? How did you know?

Anyway, quite personal I know, no one answer fits all, but I am so new to wanting actually wanting a family, that I would gladly accept any thoughts you have.

Anne

Dear Anne,

There’s a story I tell about the day I found out I was pregnant. It’s a funny story, about how I took a pregnancy test in a bathroom stall at Nickelodeon, where I was working at the time, and how I was utterly floored to find myself knocked up by accident at the age of 35, a newlywed, and days away from quitting a lucrative full-time job I despised to start a career as a “permalance” writer. You can go read it, if you want to, and then come back here. Or not, that’s all right. What you need to know is that I took all the elements of that day, the day I found out I was unexpectedly, ambivalently pregnant, and turned it into a sweet story with a happy ending.

It’s not a lie, that story I tell, but it’s not complete.

I’m going to tell you the part I always leave out, because it goes to the heart of what you’re asking, or at least some of what you’re asking. I’ve never written about this before, and I’ve told only a few people about it. But these questions of yours demand courage, in the asking and in the answering.

I went home from work the day I found out I was pregnant and told my husband, Jonathan. He was surprised, but joyful in his gentlemanly, muted way. That night we discussed logistics (Oh God, our apartment is so small and we have no doors!!!) and finances (Oh God, we have no money!!!) and if I could still quit my job (Oh God, it’s a huge pay cut and I’ll lose my paid maternity leave but if I don’t quit it will surely ruin my life but how can I possibly?!?). Sometime after midnight we fell into bed exhausted and giddy, having decided that babies are small and surely we could fit one into our Brownstone floor-through apartment, and it was inaccurate to say we had “no money” because we were managing, and would continue to manage, and that I would quit my job, no question about it. We’d figure it out.

At six the next morning, I woke Jonathan from a sound sleep, so overwrought I was nearly dry heaving. I’d been up for two hours by then, sobbing in the bathroom (the only room in the entire apartment with a door). I told him I wanted a divorce. I was going to have an abortion, and I wanted him to move out, right now, today, and I wanted a divorce. Because this baby was going to turn him into a father, and fathers leave. That is simply what they do. It was unbearable, to think of this man I loved turning into a father— unknowable, frightening, ultimately gone. And anyway, who was I to believe I was the kind of person who got this life? This love, this husband, this baby? I was the girl who got left, everybody left, I was made for loss, but not this time. This time I was the girl who was leaving.

He let me go on like this until my throat was so raw I couldn’t talk anymore, and then he opened his arms to me and I fell into them. If I wanted an abortion, he said, then he would take me for one. And if I wanted a divorce, he said, he’d give me one. And if I truly couldn’t bear to have him in the apartment, then he’d just sit outside on the stoop. You know that quote, he asked, the one from Winnie the Pooh? “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” Well if you live to be a hundred, he said, I promise I will live to be a hundred plus one day, because I am going to be the man who never leaves you.

You asked, Anne, how I knew. This is how. I showed him my most ugly, vicious, terrified secret self, and in return he showed me exquisite compassion and promised me the thing I could never bring myself to ask for. He promised to love me, in all my broken sorrow. He promised to stay.

For the longest time, I wondered how he managed it. How he was able to comfort me exactly the way I needed, cracking open the door to possibility just enough for me to walk through. I’ve come to realize part of it is who he is, his goodness and decency, his fearlessness. But also, I let him. He was the first man I was willing to be completely honest with. No fronting, no performing, no trying to be interesting by pretending to be what I thought he wanted. The irony of all this is that, when we first met, I thought he was so out of my league I didn’t even bother trying to be anything but what I was, and it was me in all my messy realness he fell in love with. Go figure.

I wonder, Anne, what is the promise you can’t bear to ask for? And where do you keep it hidden, this visceral, essential need you have? It’s worth investigating, I think. And once you’ve thought about it, can you be courageous enough to show someone, to let them see you in your raw, most vulnerable wanting and answer you with kindness? Can you show up and say, I don’t know how to believe, but I want to. I want to believe in a love that lasts, I want to believe I can have kids I won’t screw up. I want to make a family somehow, but I don’t know where to begin. Here is why it’s so hard for me to trust in that. Here is why it’s so hard for me to ask. Will you stand with me and let me show you how I am when I’m at my worst? Can you see how my worst is also my best?

I think you can. I think you’re that courageous.

That’s how you start. You find out what your plus one day is — the secret ache you hide, the thing you suspect no one could ever possibly give you — and you ask for it. You keep asking until someone opens his arms and says yes. And then you believe him.

I know how overwhelming it sounds, how scary, but it gets easier, the more you do it. And you do have to keep doing it. Because even when you find that lasting love, even when you have the kids and you’re almost certain you’re not screwing it up, there is no such thing as a life you live forever. You were engaged and then you weren’t and then there were relationships and then there weren’t, there were friends and jobs and places you lived and here you are. For years I was scared and then I was alone and then I was in love and then I had a baby and now I am a wife for more than 10 years and have a child who can FaceTime. And soon I will have a teenager and then she will be gone and Jonathan and I may finally take the honeymoon we never managed and we all roll along, the years unfurling like an endless road while we keep telling the truth about who we are now and the secret thing we still need, in the face of change and heartbreak and joy.

Always,

Stefanie