Your Weekly Dose of EEE #20: If Everyone Else Is the Problem...

Also, a moment on grief

A different kind of water photo. Sunset at the pool. This thing is in full shade as of about 4:30 PM, and I get quite cold in the water. But if my master plan works, I will be able to sit on the deck and watch after this summer! Photo by author.

Hello!

I missed you on Wednesday! I didn’t mean to, but I ended up taking several days off this week. If you read last Wednesday’s essay, you can probably anticipate one of the reasons I wasn’t able to work—but there were many! At any rate, I’m here today with a quick roundup and will one day finish that essay I told you about, like, a month ago. Fingers crossed for next week. For now, here’s the working title: I’m Not a “You People.” Be on the lookout for it sometime between now and the day I die.

What’s Exciting Me?

On Wednesday, when I wasn’t able to open my computer for the third day in a row, I took my youngest two kiddos to the pool. We discovered that not only can my three-year-old touch the bottom in the pool we go to most often, he also can do some floating and treading on his own.

If you’re thinking, “Who cares?” I don’t blame you. I tend not to gush too much about the awesome things my kids can do, especially if they’re things most kids also do. But if there’s anything I remember from raising my older two kids, it’s that the day they could touch the bottom of the pool was the most freeing day of my summer existence. You see, I like going to the pool. I love swimming. In fact, back when I used to do triathlons, swimming was my best event.

But you don’t get to enjoy the pool—or at least I don’t get to enjoy the pool—when standing in chest-deep water holding a little terrorist who wants you to do exactly what is in their brain but which they can’t articulate—like spinning around counterclockwise while they hold these goggles (not those goggles!) in their right hand and you hop on one foot—and not do things that keep your body warm in the water, like actually swimming, or getting out of the pool and sitting in the sun.

The day my girls could touch was the day I could say, “See you when you’re done swimming, kids.” And then I’d spend the day reading my book on the pool deck watching them from my chaise to be sure they didn’t drown themselves or each other.

BUT AT LEAST I WAS DOING IT ON MY OWN TERMS.

So. This year, the baby can tiptoe in the shallow end and move his limbs a little to get around. By next summer he’ll be winning gold at the Olympics. And that has me not just excited but ecstatic.

What’s Entertaining Me?

📺 We finished Unstable, and I don’t have much more to add that I haven’t already said, but I like it and I definitely recommend it!

We’ve now started watching Shrinking, and wow is it good. Jason Segel plays Jimmy, a therapist and father to a teen whose wife dies and he, well, goes a little off the deep end. Okay, so it sounds kind of similar to Unstable, but while they’re both quirky comedies, the two shows definitely have their own personalities.

Jimmy decides one day he’s going to start practicing extreme therapy, and he starts becoming more involved in his clients’ lives. What could go wrong?

I enjoy most the show’s authentic yet light take on grief and loss, and also its look behind the curtain at the (often messy) lives of the people whose job is is to help us untangle our messes. Episode 3 has been my favorite so far—the first 5 minutes had me laughing to the point of tears, and then the last 7 minutes just had me in tears. More on that later. Of course, there’s only one season of this show on Apple TV+, and the episodes are short, coming in just over 30 minutes, so we’ll finish this one soon and then be looking for something else to watch. What do you recommend?

📖 Speaking of the real lives of therapists, I really loved Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb. This book illuminated how so many of us are so good at helping each others while failing to recognize even the most obvious signs of dysfunction in our own lives.

Before she can give in to the process of grieving and accepting the role she played in her divorce, Lori spends a great deal of time denying she needs a therapist at all, psychoanalyzing the therapist she chose for herself, and putting forth explanations for her situation that seemed so obvious to her but were, shall we say, incomplete and one-sided. Of course, like with any (physical or psychological) issue, she didn’t start getting better until she acknowledged there was a problem and set out in earnest to fix it.

It’s a good read, especially for anyone who’s ever been resistant to engage in therapy, despite paying lots of money to sit on the big, cozy couch each week.

🎶 I think P!nk’s song, “So What,” goes well with the theme this week. In a way, this is the song version of Gottleib’s book: Nothing wrong with me! You must be the problem! Also, I’m seeing P!nk in concert at Fenway in a few weeks, so I’ve got her on my mind. Some more P!nk essentials:

On Grief: Who Knew (Though the Storytellers version is my favorite)
On Mental Illness (or Gaslighting?): Just Give Me a Reason, featuring Nate Reuss of fun.
On Persevering Through Pain: Try

And I’m also realizing she’s released two whole albums I haven’t really heard. So I’m going to get on it this weekend and report back next week with some newer recs!

What’s Enlightening Me?

Alright, so back to when I was crying watching Shrinking. Two moments punched me pretty hard in the gut and will stay with me for a long time.

When Jimmy begins making more of an effort to connect with his daughter, Alice, she’s angry. “You’ve been walking around for so long acting like it only happened to you,” she says, “but it happened to us. It happened to me.” This moment was such a painful reminder that grief, while very personal, is also a collective experience. And it is so hard to be present in your own grief while also supporting others through theirs. And a lot of the time, especially as we become responsible for more people, this means that we don’t get that chance to fully grieve for our losses.

In a tender moment, Jimmy’s friend and colleague, Gaby, confesses to Jimmy how much she misses his wife (her best friend). She doesn’t even feel right sharing this pain with Jimmy, knowing it will likely bring up an even greater feeling of loss for him. In the end the hold and comfort each other. But it’s taken a year to get to this point, and in the meantime they’ve both been grieving (or, probably more accurately, avoiding grief) in isolation.

I don’t have anything profound to say here, only that this show reminds me of some recent losses and an essay and a poem I wrote about grief. Click through to read more, and I’ll see you next week.

Until then,

Nicci