I read your paragraph about The Wall and thought “I bet she’d like The Vaster Wilds” before reading on. Hah. Have you read Station Eleven? I haven’t revisited in many years but it’s about making art after an apocalypse in a way I found to be deeply hopeful.
Yes! I read Station Eleven many years ago -- not sure whether it would be soothing or frightening to return to it now, the pandemic part of it really freaks me out. I also LOVED the limited series adaptation of it they did on HBO a few years ago. It's so in this same vein!
I re-read Station Eleven last year and I was worried about the pandemic parts. But they form a very small part of the novel and I found myself able to be rather clinical about them. I really appreciate that she doesn't really detail much of the horrors. The main character has amnesia and cannot remember the first year of the pandemic and I feel that's a kindly curtain the narrative draws across the worst of the horrors. Instead I really found myself drawn to the depiction of the power of stories and art to carry people through desperate times.
Thank you for sharing about your Desperate Self, especially in the form of an exhausted mom with a baby that won’t sleep. As a new mom myself, I have also encountered this same Desperate Self and am working through my shame and fear of her. It helps to see I’m not alone
Thank you for sharing about your Desperate Self, especially in the form of an exhausted mom with a baby that won’t sleep. As a new mom myself, I have also encountered this same Desperate Self and am working through my shame and fear of her. It helps to see I’m not alone
I read The Wall per your recommendation and found it to be a very beautiful and profound book that raised many questions for me. Thank you for the recommendation!
Your opening paragraph feels like a window into my head. I was that Desperate Self after all five of my kids were born. It wasn't until my kids were older and they started getting diagnosed with anxiety, one after the other, that I finally was able to give a name to that desperation: postpartum anxiety. I had never heard of it before. Postpartum depression, yes. But not anxiety. And I had no idea that anxiety could feel like anger, like desperation. I thought it was worrying over ideas, not something so physical, so animal, so out of control.
I'm glad you published this because I think it's good for us to be able to acknowledge that midnight self, to give her a name. I felt so ashamed, so guilty. I needed to pretend like she didn't exist because I didn't know how to control her. I wish I'd had a narrative. I wish I had been able to give her a name. Maybe then I could have got help instead of trying to power through on my own.
Fully resonate with your description of the desperate self. Having a period of terrible sleep with my 3yo and it’s taken me right back to darkest newborn days. So important to talk about the reality of motherhood not just the sweet sustaining moments
your opening bit read like THE NEED by Helen Phillips, the conspiratorial twinning... not sure how intentional that may have been -- though I know you've read it, because your recommendation made me read it!
I was left so unsettled after reading The Vaster Wilds, needing people to talk to about it, unsure of how I felt about the novel, only that it made me feel SO MUCH. It was, imo, a kind of claustrophobic reading experience, but also weirdly beautiful?? Anyway, loved reading your take!
Yeah, me too! I actually asked one of my closest friends to read it immediately after me because it felt too intense to process alone, thank goodness she read it too! Needed that feeling of not sitting with it by myself. One of the most intense and unsettling books I'ver eve read -- but I agree, weirdly beautiful, especially in the end. So there was at least a sort of uncomfortable satisfaction. Fiction is so amazing in that way. I don't think any of those historical "facts" or events (many of which I knew about already) would have hit me so deeply without reading that book. I can't stop thinking about that dimension of it.
I read your paragraph about The Wall and thought “I bet she’d like The Vaster Wilds” before reading on. Hah. Have you read Station Eleven? I haven’t revisited in many years but it’s about making art after an apocalypse in a way I found to be deeply hopeful.
Yes! I read Station Eleven many years ago -- not sure whether it would be soothing or frightening to return to it now, the pandemic part of it really freaks me out. I also LOVED the limited series adaptation of it they did on HBO a few years ago. It's so in this same vein!
I re-read Station Eleven last year and I was worried about the pandemic parts. But they form a very small part of the novel and I found myself able to be rather clinical about them. I really appreciate that she doesn't really detail much of the horrors. The main character has amnesia and cannot remember the first year of the pandemic and I feel that's a kindly curtain the narrative draws across the worst of the horrors. Instead I really found myself drawn to the depiction of the power of stories and art to carry people through desperate times.
Thank you for sharing about your Desperate Self, especially in the form of an exhausted mom with a baby that won’t sleep. As a new mom myself, I have also encountered this same Desperate Self and am working through my shame and fear of her. It helps to see I’m not alone
Thank you for sharing about your Desperate Self, especially in the form of an exhausted mom with a baby that won’t sleep. As a new mom myself, I have also encountered this same Desperate Self and am working through my shame and fear of her. It helps to see I’m not alone
I read The Wall per your recommendation and found it to be a very beautiful and profound book that raised many questions for me. Thank you for the recommendation!
Your opening paragraph feels like a window into my head. I was that Desperate Self after all five of my kids were born. It wasn't until my kids were older and they started getting diagnosed with anxiety, one after the other, that I finally was able to give a name to that desperation: postpartum anxiety. I had never heard of it before. Postpartum depression, yes. But not anxiety. And I had no idea that anxiety could feel like anger, like desperation. I thought it was worrying over ideas, not something so physical, so animal, so out of control.
I'm glad you published this because I think it's good for us to be able to acknowledge that midnight self, to give her a name. I felt so ashamed, so guilty. I needed to pretend like she didn't exist because I didn't know how to control her. I wish I'd had a narrative. I wish I had been able to give her a name. Maybe then I could have got help instead of trying to power through on my own.
Fully resonate with your description of the desperate self. Having a period of terrible sleep with my 3yo and it’s taken me right back to darkest newborn days. So important to talk about the reality of motherhood not just the sweet sustaining moments
your opening bit read like THE NEED by Helen Phillips, the conspiratorial twinning... not sure how intentional that may have been -- though I know you've read it, because your recommendation made me read it!
Oh my gosh, I hadn't made that connection but YES! Wow, now I want to re-read The Need immediately. I think that book lives deep in my subconscious.
I was left so unsettled after reading The Vaster Wilds, needing people to talk to about it, unsure of how I felt about the novel, only that it made me feel SO MUCH. It was, imo, a kind of claustrophobic reading experience, but also weirdly beautiful?? Anyway, loved reading your take!
Yeah, me too! I actually asked one of my closest friends to read it immediately after me because it felt too intense to process alone, thank goodness she read it too! Needed that feeling of not sitting with it by myself. One of the most intense and unsettling books I'ver eve read -- but I agree, weirdly beautiful, especially in the end. So there was at least a sort of uncomfortable satisfaction. Fiction is so amazing in that way. I don't think any of those historical "facts" or events (many of which I knew about already) would have hit me so deeply without reading that book. I can't stop thinking about that dimension of it.