The Secret Life Of Sadness & No, You Can't Catch Sadness.
On: breaking your own teeth, tenderness, feeling sad, alone & pathetic, and a soup recipe I can't give out because you don't want it.
Hello from L.A.
Santa Monica, to be precise. I’m at my apartment for a bunch of days to get work done on the book without any distractions, and to have my doctor and dentist appointments. I’m making this another freebie so please pay it forward ny sharing it, by offering a kindness to someone, by doing love, in some capacity. Or upgrade to paid if you can. Just pay it forward. And read it, will ya? I love you so stinkin’ much- this community. Ugh, I do.
My doctor Name Redacted (you might find him and he is already impossible to get to because he is so beloved and I simply can’t have that) is perhaps my favorite person on earth. I think I’ve been with Dr. Secret for 25 years now and I will never move farther than two hours away so I can continue to have him as my doctor favorite human on earth.
When I email him in fact, I begin with that moniker. Dear My Favorite Person On earth, can I get a refill of my lexapro? He calls at home. He replies to every email. Even at like 1:30 a.m. which makes me worry for him. Is he sleeping enough? Eating enough? We cannot lose this man. He listens. He cares like I am his child. He’s even read my book, for Chrissakes (blush. The only person I blushed when I found out they read it.) I love him and will protect his life at all costs. We are not worth of Dr. K. Oops, now you know the first letter of his last name.
My dentist in Venice, whom I have also been with him for a hundred years is also wonderful, but I have such teeth and dental anxiety that I, unfortunately, cannot hold the same feelings for him as I do Dr You Know Who. I get a panic attack when I think of the dentist, and sadly, that overrides the feeling of love. Nonetheless, he is gentle and kind and knows my issues. He is lovely. He doesn’t take it personally, my dentist phobia. (Man, I hope not, Dr. Khoe.)
I had to get a crown Monday and a filling. And another crown and filling and filling and tooth implant and all teethings but OMG let me breathe. One thing at a time.
I drove over an hour and a half from Ojai to my appointment, crying most of the way in the car to my friend Dani Deluca, who has an amazing book of poems about to drop that I would love you to pre-order. It matters. It is a remarkable collection and just look at this cover:
As for why I was crying, I am not ready to share, and, it is not just one thing. Never is, is it? We have a capacity to hold much at once.
I am in the soup. I am in the soup of shit. I am in the is it up or down or left or right or back from where I came I lost my way soup.
I am sorry I cannot give you the recipe for this soup.
It helped talking to her and when I pulled into the dental parking lot I said Shit, You know what? I am going to take a Klonopin.
And I most certainly did.
I announced loudly to my dentist and to Daria, his assistant- again, both of whom I’ve known since I was an embryo- I TOOK A KLONOPIN.
They know my nerves well. They do their best to calm me. Always have, over the years. I keep asking if they’d consider getting like a good massager or something to work on people’s (mine) feet while we have our mouths being drilled, but it has yet to happen; nor has that so-called laughing gas. I have never taken a Klonopin or anything before a dental visit and boy, it did the trick. Duh.
Dr. K (my GP doctor’s name also begins with a K but it is a different guy, obvi) kept saying Wow Jen, in all the years, this is the easiest time I have had working on you. You are so calm. Maybe the Klonopin?
Me: Um, yes. I took an actual anti-anxiety pill.
He was wowed.
My gosh, I must be a terror normally.
It was so relaxing. I almost fell asleep. Judge me. Don’t care.
Anyway, three hours later I left and wait for it.
Later that evening, I forgot that I had a temporary crown on (takes 2 weeks for the real one to get made) and I flossed with one of those dumb picks, which caused the thing to fling off into oblivion.
I laughcriedcriedlaughedcriedwept.
I went to bed and when I woke I forgot about my fuck up. Until my tongue felt the disgusting feel of a stub of a tooth. I searched the bathroom for the temporary crown. Nada.
I called the dentist, explained what happened and that I’d lost it. The receptionist told me that it would be easy, if only I had it; that they could just cement it back on. Now, I would have to go back and get a new mold and go through the whole thing again and he had no space to see me so, Yay Me!
I got my iPhone and turned on the damn flashlight and crawled like a rat on my bathroom floor until I found it nestled in the bathmat. Gross. However, they were able to squeeze me in this morning at 7:30 (bless that man for coming in early), and clean it off and pop it back on easy as 1-2-3. I did not have to have the DREADED NEEDLE, which still gives me heart palpitations even though I have been going to the dentist since one starts going to the dentist. Not all needles do this. It’s just needles in my mouth. I felt cocky with my I just went to the dentist and it was so easy feeling as I got in my car. In fact, it was a pleasure. Look at me! I was as calm as a baby. I am great!
I was like Yea, this is a sign that this day is gonna be good!
I need that sense of good. I have been feeling the opposite, as aforementioned in car ride chat with Dani, crying, et al.
I needed to hold on to something that suggested not only did I deserve a little luck but here you go, here is some luck!
It’s a funny thing to write about feeling sad and pretty fucking bad without detailing why because:
Feels like I owe it to people to share. (Ridiculous. I do not. You do not. That is an ass backwards sentiment.)
Feels like it’s unfair to say I’m sad and not explain why because people will want to know. (Guess what? Too bad.)
I would want to know. I’d be like Tease! but then I’d let go of the curiosity over the details and listen to what was really being said. Often it feels like we want to know just to scratch that itch of needing to be in on it.
Feels hard to write about without writing details. It’s like figuring a puzzle out (hate puzzles), but also beautifully challenging in a way that helps me as I edit the draft of my book because it makes me consider all the different ways to say a thing, to show a thing, to share a thing. To get someone to feel a thing.
Feels shameful. Don’t ask. Sham isn’t logical. OMG, that should say shame but a typo made it sham and it’s perfect because SHAME IS SHAM. and a SCAM. (Gross, I am like a weird wordplay dad today.)
Feels decadent. Who am I to feel sad? (So much of my next book is about this kind of thinking. Breaks my heart to think of how many of us talk ourselves out of things, especially our feelings. How many of us deny ourselves so much. I am writing a book about it and in classic human aka Pastiloff form, I still do it.)
So many people make up so many stories about other peoples lives. Often, it is based on what they see on social media, to which I say: HAHAHAHAHAH. Stop that. It’s smoke and mirrors. You just don’t know. WE never know unless we are part of the story.
I am grateful and aware I have a good life. A beautiful son. A lot to be thankful for, and yet, that does not negate what I feel. It’s as if more than one thing can’t possibly be true at once.
It can! It always is! I am exclaiming today! I know I am using a lot of exclamation marks and frankly, I don’t care! Okay!
I get back from the dentist and realize I forgot my garage clicker, so I run up to the apartment and the combo of my ADHD (hi buddy, I see you) and a text that upset me deeply caused me to forget I had my car on the street with the blinkers on, on street cleaning day.
Did I get a ticket? Reader: I did.
Want to know how fast my earlier cocky I am great look how good I did attitude went away? Faster than you can say meh.
Did I cry? Meh. A semi-cry.
I got angry at myself. It was more like the moan of a dying cow, not that I have ever heard one, thank G-d, but I just bet that is what it would sound like. I definitely called bullshit on my lucky tooth story because, obviously, my luck had runneth out and not only that, but it cost me $73, to boot. I shall not share how much the dental work is costing but feel free to donate to the million dollar repair of fixing my teeth for, wait for it- the grinding them away.
That’s right. I began grinding at 8 when my dad died so I wouldn’t cry to death or feel a thing.
Worked! The cost? My teeth. Sounds like a credit card ad. There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Mastercard.
(I need a Mastercard to pay for all this dang dental stuff.)
When my dad died, I locked my jaw. Still can’t pry it open, he fucker. All day long I grind. I clench. My little man goes Mommy, you’re grinding. Mommy, you have to stop. I have no idea I am even doing it. This is during the day. Imagine what I am like all night long. Between that and my snoring, you would murder me in my sleep. I know you would, you killer.
Anyway, the dentist tells me it’s my bite. I am literally breaking my teeth by biting. I am doing this.
I am destroying myself.
A thing I have gotten pretty darn okay with is asking for help and allowing support. Last night I was afraid to be alone. It’s a strange thing. I don’t know if you know what I mean when I say that?
I wasn’t scared like I was going to get robbed or because I am scared of the dark or because I can’t be by myself. It’s like this primal yearning to feel safe.
Ah, There it is. My thing. My forever thing. The need to feel safe.
I felt so sad and alone and pathetic. And my friend? Just shows up. She’s done this before. Koa. She drove all the way to Ojai once, just to hug me when she knew I needed it. Then promptly turned around. Last night she held my hand all night as we slept.
You know, I was talking to my pops Jack this morning (I am so lucky to have gotten a second shot at having a dad- speaking of which, this Saturday 4/27 is my daddy’s birthday. Mel.) I’m telling Jack that even just a couple years ago I could never imagine myself allowing such tenderness.
I would die before I held hands or faced someone sleeping (as I do with Henry. Who’d a though it? Not me. I would rather have eaten glass, I thought.)
I couldn’t allow for tenderness, be it receiving it or showing it. Hardness was how I survived. It became part of me. Nay, it became me. It was me, period. No separation. Hard was who I was and it seemed impossible to undo what felt like my DNA structure. There was no way to remove the nothingness, the shell, the armor; it would be like peeling my skin from me.
It was so deeply unconscious and embedded within my way of being that I didn’t know how I would ever begin to soften. My hardness was intrinsic as breath.
And yet, I did. I softened. It still feels like a magic trick. Like I will wake from this dream to find my old self there laughing at my stupidity for thinking change is possible.
Sometimes, when my heart hurts or I am sadsadsad, I wish I could go back to the old way. The one where I couldn’t access my feelings. Where I would go Oh well, doesn’t matter, It’s fine, I don’t care. (When my dad died I said I Do Not Care. I was 8. And that was that.)
Can someone go find little me and save her?
Nope.
I can only save me now and I don’t need saving. Just support and love and compassion and a willingness.
I told Jack (my stepdad aka Pops) about Koa and how she held me. She really did. Not just with her hands either, but with her embodiment of I got you.
I have certain women who are feel motherly in a sense, regardless of their age. Not like they are stand-ins for my mom but it’s this maternal energy that makes me feel safe to let go, to exhale, to drop my shoulders. Katie Hendricks. Lidia. My friend Ceri. They have an inherent way of making me feel like everything really is going to be okay. My mom is amazing so it’s not to say I find this dynamic because she sucks (she certainly does not) or is absent (absent-minded but that’s it; she’s the best), but rather, it reminds me all the different ways we can show up for other people and how magical that is.
We find our people and they often meet needs we didn’t even know we had. I have it with some men too (Oh, me and my daddy shit.) Like Gay Hendricks- he’s a dad to me in many ways. I feel safe and seen and supported and like he cares about me so much (like his wife, my beloved Katie.) Hi, Dad! Your jokes are rad.
I do not take this for granted. I’ll tell you, even writing about it pulls me from my sadness, even for a bit. The tapestry of love I have around me and how all I have to do is say I’m scared and that love is at my doorstep. It reminds me of a thing I need reminding of a lot. That it’s going to be okay.
I felt so alone the other night that I grabbed two framed pictures off the shelf. One of my daddy (holding a cigarette, of course, goddamned pain the ass) and one of my friend Ceri (my gayer and more spiritual partner in crime at my Italy retreats) and me in Bali in 2012.
I sat with them on my lap and tried to watch a show on tv, but couldn’t. I found myself distracted, unable and uninterested in following the intricate plot. I read instead. The Secret Life Of Trees. I didn’t get very far.
Instead, I imagined I was living inside the secret life of sadness.
I know all about the secret life of sadness.
I do, so bring me some of yours. I can handle it. I can hold it a while, then let it go. We can let our people do that, you know. We can let them carry some and they won’t keep it. If they do keep it or think that they have to, they have some work to do, because, as I wrote in my last essay here in my poem What is Ours To Carry, it is not theirs to carry.
Regarding the secret life of sadness: I will not live there any longer. It does not have to be a secret, which is to say: shameful.
Enter: Shame Loss. Always and forever.
I’m not sharing details or being vague just for the sake of it, but because right now it’s not for others, except a select few. It’s not for public consumption. If I decide it is, then it will be. Also, for the reasons I shared above.
Not everything is for everyone.
That night on my couch, I sent Ceri a picture of the photos on my lap. I’ll show you.
I’ll also share what she sent the next morning, as well as a couple others because it’s important to me to remind YOU if/when you feel sad or alone or depressed or whatever it is- that your people are there. If you feel you have none, I implore you to look closer.
The biggie: that I know how to reach out and ask for help, as well as receive. That is the thing. Always the thing. I also share so you can see the ways love will show up, if we let it, and, because friendship is so important to me. I nurture mine. And in return, I am nurtured.
Just don’t look away.
Bear witness. Not just to me. To all of it.
Listen, you can’t catch sadness or grief or unfortunate things that have happened to someone else. You won’t die from hearing someone else’s pain. You will not spontaneously combust from being with discomfort, especially your own.
In fact, it’s magical medicine. I have found it’s grown my empathy muscles more than I could have imagined. It has made me softer- that thing I prayed for.
You can hold it for a bit, like I said. You can sit with it. You can listen to it, quietly. You can let it know you’re there. You can offer a hand, a coffee, a bad joke.
You can help by not trying to fix it or platitude it to death or poke at it for the details. You can just be with it. I’m talking other people’s stuff. As far as your own? I hope the same. I am working on that bit. Just being with it. As someone who truly only began feeling her feelings less than two years ago, it still frightens me and sends signals of YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE! YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE!
It helps when I have people to reach out to who remind me those signals are false alarms.
I hope I am one of those people for you.
Anyway, that’s it. I am deep in edits with the most amazing editor I hired to help me finish Proof Of Life. Her name is Sara Carder and she is just everything I could have dreamed of. As is my agent, Lynn Johnston, and my editor Maya Ziv, at Dutton.
I have an extreme amount of LOT, like more LOT than I can say, on my plate. A lot of LOT. So much LOT that the plate cracked and I had to superglue it and use whatever I could find to put it back together, but shit, what’s that things the Japanese talk about?
Kintsugi.
Kintsugi is a Japanese art that repairs broken pottery with gold, rendering a new piece that is more exquisite than it was before the break. It literally means to join with gold.
If you’ve seen my art, you may notice my slight (major) obsession with gold. Now I understand why. I am joining with it.
(Or else I just really love gold.)
Let me know if you want. to buy a painting. I have a few for sale. I have some on my Insta art page at @jenpastiloff_art.
Okay, I have to get back to work on the book. I am excited about it; literally on fire. That’s how I know I am on the right path with it and that Sarah was the best investment. I have never worked harder on anything.
It is such a gift, and one I hope we all experience, to be excited by what we are doing/creating in our lives.
As far as my sadness, it is already dissipating from writing. Aha! Another tool I talk about in the book. Just get it out of you. It’s not all gone but even a smidgeon being gone helps, just having my attention be elsewhere helps.
There are some very real things that need tending to in my life, some complicated and fragile things. There’s things that don’t need tending, per se, only to be cried about. There are dark things that need to be loved into light. Loved so hard (or soft) that they actually become light. Lighter, at least. So that the load isn’t so heavy to carry.
Thank you to everyone who came to my virtual ALLOW workshop last weekend. Next one will be in summer. I was blown away by last week’s. If you want the recording, you can send a donation and get it. It’s that easy. Just shoot me a note. It’s worth it. You will see, hear, experience, and learn so very much. You will laugh and cry.
I am also planning a workshop with Brooke Baldwin on finding your voice, your people, your self. Please stay tuned for info and check out her amazingly brave Vanity Fair piece yesterday. I am so proud of her!
The Vanity Fair essay is titled:
Leaving CNN Was How I Found My Voice
Former anchor Brooke Baldwin exited the network after 13 years not because of Trump coverage or pandemic chaos, but because of something far more ordinary—and insidious.
If you want to join me in Italy Sep 14-21 I believe I have 2/3 spots left so email me. Look how organized I am. I don’t even know how many spots remain. G-d help me, for I have failed the test and never learned how to keep the fuck up.
Italy is a popular retreat of mine, and for good reason. You have no idea what this retreat is. Life-changing. Money back guarantee.
And please, keep sharing about this Substack. Consider gifting a subscription if you can or becoming a founding member (it is more money but helps sustain me in so many ways) or a paying member?
If you want to be a paying member but cannot afford it, again, just email me. I make it so easy, really. It’s one of the reasons I need support- to keep the ecosystem going of making my things accessible. You can also donate to my scholarship funds via Venmo or PayPal. Venmo is Jennifer-pastiloff (0172) and PP is jenniferpastiloffinfo@gmail.com.
Get ready. I have some cool perks coming up for paid subscribers and most posts have a paywall to read the whole thing. Today is for you all though, regardless of paying or not. I got you.
Now, in the comments, tell us how we can get you. Tell us something beautiful or sad or inspiring or the last time you felt lonely or if you do now or what you’re having for dinner or if you afraid. Tell us anything. Just tell us.
Love, me
Oh, p.s. The book is actually called The Hidden Life of Trees and I know this, but for some reason my brain keeps calling it The Secret Life Of Trees. Huh. Interesting. Anyway. That is the real book title.
I love you, weirdo.
Love, me, a weirdo too
Love you too Jen! So much. Thank you for sharing all the feels. And for keeping it real and relatable. (I have some of my own dental issues going on right now). You got this!
I'm still sad over losing my best friend in 2016 and just last year finding out why my marriage has been lacking some of the most important things that I needed. Wait, I'm still processing the first loss. To me, sadness and grief are like cousins who get together for the holidays and raise all kinds of Hell.
Kintsugi! So effing beautiful! I love that!
Speaking of Italy, I'm so excited about going to one of your in person retreats! Is it too early to buy my plane ticket? Am I running behind? Where's the best place to stay in Florence? Is anyone else going a bit early to see the city? Is this too many questions? I need help. I've never done this before.
Thanks for everything Jen. I got you! Ciao!
‘I am always safe and divinely protected’ is a very helpful affirmation for me. Once, it seemingly turned a lightning storm in the other direction as I looked for shelter, while repeating the affirmation. I love your honesty, Jen. x