Seeing is believing

unless it's not

Hi friends. I’ve had this little note sitting in my drafts folder for weeks, feeling shy about hitting publish. But then I reminded myself that the people I most admire are those who don’t pretend to have the entirety of their shit together (whatever that even means), who are willing to admit to their very human failings, who share their so-called shortcomings and missteps in an effort to comfort the rest of us in ours. My hope with anything I write here (or anywhere), is to offer some modicum of the same. All of this to say, thank you, sincerely, for reading.

by Ogata Korin via rawpixel

My third grade year, after I’d spent months struggling to read the chalkboard at the front of the classroom, my dad took me to an optometrist for an eye exam. At the end of my appointment, this so-called professional concluded I’d been faking my vision issues and was only pretending I couldn’t see in order to procure myself some glasses and also the attention such a farce would likely confer upon me.

First of all, no eight year old in 1990 was desperate to start wearing glasses. Second of all, WHAT?

That this doctor said what he said isn’t even the worst part of the story. The worst part is my parents believed him. The worst part is they took his word over mine.

By fourth grade, I still couldn’t see the chalkboard from my seat amongst my peers (surprise, surprise) and my dad finally agreed to get a second opinion about my eyesight. The optometrist in this case was assertive in his assessment — “Your daughter can’t see” — and my parents were thereby convinced I’d been telling the truth and that it might be time to set me up with some spectacles.

I’ve thought about this incident many times over the years, thought about little me and how she must have felt knowing she couldn’t see but having nobody believe her when she said so. There were other times I asked for help as a child — both directly and indirectly — and was told I didn’t need it, had my suffering shrugged off or (literally) laughed at. And because I was celebrated each time I successfully pushed through physical or emotional pain or dis-ease, I learned that to ignore my body’s signals, to minimize my own discomfort, was to guarantee praise, was a surefire way to feel like I was loved.

This is a common experience, I know. We shrink to survive and are rewarded for our smallness, for our so-called resilience, for our capacity to push through, for our willingness to gloss over our own needs, for our persistent self-denial. We learn not to trust ourselves, we’re conditioned to outsource our self-knowledge to people or institutions or systems or even gods that seek to control us, to usurp our inner conviction. But at what cost?

I was recently diagnosed with a medical condition that will require surgical intervention and while it is a relatively routine procedure it is still a major surgery and I am feeling a confused assortment of feelings in anticipation of this event. One of them is anxiety because, well, surgery (which I’ve never had). Another one is grief (which I will write about more in the future, I’m sure). I’m also feeling shame. Shame about this health situation over which I have zero control but which is requiring me to rearrange my life for several weeks and to also ask for help from various friends and loved ones, and for which my partner will be making certain concessions during my recovery. Shame that I can’t ignore or pretend away this diagnosis, shame that is causing me to doubt my own experience of various life-disrupting symptoms and to question the very clear evidence shown on reliable diagnostic images and confirmed by subsequent hands-on palpation. My shame has me wondering if I’m JUST BEING DRAMATIC and feeling like maybe I don’t need any — let alone invasive — medical treatment after all, even though several professionals have assured me otherwise and also intellectually I know they’re right.

And yet. Old survival instincts die hard, you know?

I realize I’m being annoyingly vague here, but the specifics of my situation are not really the point. I’m also still processing my feelings about this upcoming surgery and right now they’re all a little jumbly, not yet ready for public consumption. When I’ve got them somewhat sorted, I do intend to share more details of my experience. In the meantime, I want to urge anybody reading this who might have learned some of the same lessons I did about the minimization of your pain as some sort of noble feat or inherent moral good to start questioning that narrative you were sold and to practice honoring what you know you know. When you’ve been gaslighting yourself for decades, believing yourself is a skill you have to learn. When you’ve been rewarded for denying your own suffering, for keeping up appearances and the performance of productivity, it can feel unsafe to acknowledge something’s wrong — especially if doing so might require you to stop, to press pause on that performance. When you’ve been raised in a culture that fetishizes resilience, asking for help can feel like failure, acknowledging your need for outside care can feel a lot like admitting defeat.

But it’s not. I promise.

Understanding on an intellectual level that we are supposed to rely on one another, that this is the essence of intimacy, is different from actually leaning on your people. Knowing you need support is not the same thing as being vulnerable enough to ask for it. (Why is having needs so embarrassing?) And building true community means not just showing up for others but allowing them to show up for you.

May we remember true resilience is deeply relational.

May we commit to participating in the reciprocity of care.

I will if you will.

xoxo

---

❍ Why I Hate Mother’s Day by Anne Lamott — I know Mother’s Day was weeks ago, but, as I said at the top, I’ve had this post in my drafts folder since then . . . if you’re not a mother or you’ve lost your mother (either to death or estrangement), this essay will likely resonate

❍ The real life consequences of restricting access to abortion

❍ Annie Bot was a thoroughly enjoyable read

❍ This post about tax debt by Cody Cook-Parrot is an act of pure generosity and made me feel better immediately about all the ways I feel like I’m falling short (you have to be a paid subscriber to read it, but their newsletter is well worth the investment, imo)

❍ Alie Ward interviewed genocidologist Dr. Dirk Moses on her podcast Ologies and it is a must listen

❍ This is your life, too

❍ Good girl

❍ I could clean, but it would be a terrible effort