How's Your Weather?

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

Hi all,

There’s a moment towards the end of the new Severance season — I won’t spoil anything, promise — when this question is posed:

Mark, played by Adam Scott, answers sarcastically: “Oh my god. So good….” And I won’t say more but, dang, that was about the funniest moment I’ve seen on TV in a long time… (I’ve fallen hard for Severance; I’m hardly unique I know. Is it the best TV show ever? TBD I suppose).

This moment got me so good perhaps because I’ve long struggled with the question ‘How are you?’ These last years and especially months it’s become all the more impossible, such a question.

I was listening to this segment not long ago on This American Life about lying and it was clarifying for me. I certainly identified with the interviewee in terms of not getting small talk, not really (even though I can pretend like I do).

The upshot was: Some of us, myself certainly included, don’t do well with lying. Lately perhaps I think this is why I became a journalist, albeit a literary journalist. Long before I was ever an “actual journalist” I was a fact checker, starting the summer I was 20. How I enjoyed that activity of picking away at a piece’s every last fact until I could say they were all well-supported — to my own satisfaction at least, as the fact checker. (Deep down, it worried me, this not being enough...)

Nowadays as the journalist, I enjoy when I experience the opposite, being fact checked (as for my Believer piece last fall). How I relish getting to hand over my “final draft” and saying, well, do your best to some fastidious somebody or team of them. Sometimes they do find an error or a few (which does annoy but also delight me, I admit, if only because of the prevention of future embarrassment). Sometimes I’ll have to go digging for backup, through files digital or literal. Sometimes I’ll be pulling books off my shelves, hunting for some paragraph, some line, exclaiming when I locate it at last. Sometimes I’ll have to contact a source for clarification one final time per discussion with my editor, so forth. (I explain all this in part because I don’t know if non-media-types know how seriously real journalists do treat the facts, when we’re doing our jobs right.)

Books, on the other hand, aren’t fact checked — a notorious, even infamous situation. (And the topic of my favorite podcast.) As I like to mention sometimes, I did hire two fact checkers out of pocket to check the science portions of my first book; one of the fact checkers had a psychology PhD. Though my first book was, in a sense, an exercise in pushing back against the entire conceit of facts being stable enough to check. In it, I was interrogating the problem of objectivity/subjectivity itself, vis a vis a discussion of our mental health care system and the diagnosis of “Schizophrenia.”

I’ve lately been re-reading some of what was written about that book when it came out, in January 2018. I had a lot of trouble reading the book’s reviews back then, overwhelmingly positive though they were. When I saw those write-ups about the book — heck when I saw its cover — it all just looked wrong. Now when I reread such media of course it’s obvious what was wrong: all the deadnaming and misgendering, all the mentions of “niece.”

As I’ve written about, it was only after seeing my own wrong name on that cover that I started coming out, or trying to. Not knowing, then, what that might entail. I always tried to do the “least” I could, coming-out-wise. Like initially I hoped I could just add a “they” to my bio somewhere and that could be enough. Now, some seven years, two surgeries, and four years of weekly hormone injections later (amongst countless other changes), my initial hopes sure seem comical.

I started coming out in my thirties. At last, I made myself visible. At last, I was my authentic self. It’s an experience so awesome it defies language, and yet I’ve tried describe it anyway, in various essays. I’ve happened to come out during this era, when my people are so loathed, scapegoated, vilified — and my very life and future are therefore in jeopardy now. Everyday is an endless onslaught of majorly depressing news, some of which still hits hard, however predictable it might feel.

So anyway, I often contemplate the very question ‘how are you?’, one I’ve never been great with. I get that people want you to just respond “good” or “fine” or whatever and move on. I understand it’s just manners.

But I’m uncomfortable with lying, even white lies, is my truth. And I’ve never tended to actually feel “good” or “fine” in my life, is another truth. I know that people are being polite; they rarely want to hear how you are, actually, and believe me, I’m extremely practiced at hiding how I actually am.

So much so I’ve tended to have no clue how I am, so practiced I was at ignoring my own insides; this took me a long time to realize and address. These days I’ve gotten better at thinking about how I actually am. I’ve gotten better at sharing the hardest, least-appealing feelings with my most trusted connections and mental-health-type professionals and my JournalSpeak page.

These days I’ve noticed when someone asks me how I am, I tend to just burst into laughter, however inappropriate a response that might be. If some cis person especially asks me that, truly, what the fuck am I supposed to say?

“Oh my god. So good.”

Sometimes I think of myself as a beach and I think of my feelings, my mood, as the weather.

Usually I picture the little Northern Californian beach I grew up beside. It was often shrouded in fog, its skies often gray. There’d be big piers or logs that had washed up on the sand, evidence of prior winter storms.

I often think of myself as a little gray-skied beach, with its wet sand and frigid water. I think of my moods as the weather.

I do all this for a few reasons: One, to remind myself that even the worst of my own bad feelings do pass with time. Or at least, they will lessen. Whatever it is that’s got me activated, it will eventually recede from my focus, somewhat — even the harshest rages, or the deepest sorrows, or the most convincing of fears.

Second, I like to keep in mind what I can and cannot control about a given situation. In particular, I cannot control what washes in on my shore. I can’t control the rain nor the fog nor the sunshine.

The little cove I grew up beside, sometimes in January for example there’d be big storms, rain for days, sometimes the whole beach would get flooded out. When I’m having a tough time for whatever reason — events in my life, events in the world, usually both — I think of myself as a stormy beach, with that huge surf and relentless rain and wind. Sometimes I think of myself as a beach that’s gotten totally washed out.

During such times especially, I try to focus on myself, on tending to my own needs and comfort, however small or seemingly insignificant. I especially try to do this if the weather’s harsh and my best bet is to mostly wait it out, let the storm pass.

Especially when my weather’s overwhelming, I try to lean on my self-care routines. So for me personally this means “brain cleaning,” as I tend to call it — the 20-minutes-of-JournalSpeak-followed-by-10-of-meditation I do nearly every day, which I explained here for example.

If my weather’s overwhelming, I try to consider if I can do less. If I can lighten my own load somehow. Maybe I can solicit some help. Maybe I can boundary myself and my own energy better, to preserve my finite self.

Per Brené Brown, when your nervous system is activated, ‘don’t talk type or text.’ I try to remember this during heightened times. I especially try to be patient before I resume any communications that may have played a role in upsetting me.

During times of great activation, I try to focus on getting grounded. I try to focus on getting present. For me, this might mean… Going outside. Breathing air. Being active. Walking, gardening, doing yoga. Hiking, sitting by a river. Playing piano and singing. Booking with my mental health-type professionals. Catching up with a close friend in person or on the phone or exchanging voice messages about what’s going on.

During times of great activation, I also try to do whatever might soothe me. Like a bath. A favorite snack or meal. Music I find calming or nostalgic. A favorite TV show or movie. (The sort of stuff I’m often recommending.)

During such times, most of all: I try to trust that another day, another weather, will eventually arrive.

So my proposed alternative to how are you? is: ‘How’s your weather?’ I find it helps me, this reframe. Helps me consider what I can and cannot control, and how to best approach those roughest of stretches.

Maybe you want to try this reframe, yourself. Though maybe you aren’t a beach; maybe you’re a desert or a woods or an arctic tundra or some city park or block. DIY metaphor.

My point is: If you’re really activated, if something’s got your own weather really stirred up — whatever that might look like for you — consider what you can and can’t control about the situation.

Focus on your own part. Which may just mean: Tending to your own needs, being excessively kind to yourself, and waiting out the worst.

Lately I’ve been so overwhelmed it’s been hard to take my own best advice, I admit. But I am trying.

The responses to the post have slowed but continue on nonetheless. If you didn’t already, I still suggest scrolling through the reposts/replies, reading some of all that’s been said. Really affirming, as others (trans/gnc folks and cis allies alike) have agreed:

What’s Helping Today: Spending tons of time outside this week in the garden, flipping compost, hauling mulch, weeding. Finally planted out my first seedlings (kales, onions, leeks). A week of rainy weather ahead as well, good for germinating seeds and new transplants, hooray.

What’s helping you today? You can always feel free to write me, about anything. The way to do so is here.

Sending love,
Sandy

p.s. As I sometimes repeat: If you want to send in a question for my occasional advice column, write [email protected]. Questions can be about whatever and I won’t print your name.

p.p.s. When in doubt, do as Star Trek does:

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