Letting life back in
On post-lockdown pins and needles
Re-entering ‘normal’ life is doing strange things to my brain. It’s in hyperdrive. Stuck on 1 ½ speed. Social events and interactions are followed by a come-down and then crowded, frenetic dreams.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising. There’s a lot to process. A combination of covid, having Edward, and then a series of prolonged local lockdowns, meant that for well over a year I didn’t go anywhere at all – not even the supermarket, in that first, most uncertain part of the pandemic, when we were still quarantining parcels in the porch and disinfecting groceries.
Then, this month, within the space of a fortnight, I went to London twice. Once for a wedding, once for work. Both times, it felt like a sugar high. There’s lots that I knew I’d been missing in the last year (people, adult conversation, dancing, meals I haven’t cooked myself). But it turns out there have been so many more incidental things that I hadn’t even realized. (The outfit inspiration that comes from people-watching. Adverts on the tube. Buskers. The pleasure of slipping around a busy city, unencumbered, alone).
All these tiny sparks of life, of living, that had gone out, without my noticing.
Now they’re back and my brain is whirring to keep up. It feels like a lot. Actually, it feels not unlike how I felt when Dan and I took a deliberate, year-long break from trying to conceive after our fourth miscarriage. There’s a parallel sense of rediscovering the parts of yourself you had forgotten, or perhaps just lost the feeling in. It’s fizzy and exciting, but also pricklish and uncomfortable, as life rushes back in.
Maybe that’s what this is now, too – a kind of emotional pins and needles.
Whatever it is, it’s tiring. So, after a busy month, this is a slightly shorter newsletter than normal. And by the time you’re reading this, I will – fingers crossed – be on holiday. Our first proper family holiday, as a three. I’m hoping for sea, sandcastles, and stillness.
Things I’ve written…
This about ‘rainbow’ babies – and why it’s not always as straightforward as it might seem from the outside.
And this about whether by continuing to frame miscarriage as a taboo we risk masking the bigger, structural problems around it. (It’s not lost on me that the headline on the rainbow baby piece above uses the word taboo, of course…)
I also got a chance to talk in more depth about recurrent miscarriage on the Guardian’s Today In Focus podcast, which you can listen to here.
Things I’ve read…
No book recommendations this month, but I have high hopes for An Island by Karen Jennings, which I ordered after reading about its irresistible underdog backstory here. It’s just been longlisted for the Booker prize, but had an initial print run of just 500 copies and was rejected by mainstream publishers. Whatever I end up thinking about the novel itself, I liked the moral of this particular tale.
This new short story by Curtis Sittenfeld.
This interesting deep-dive into why the U.S. still doesn’t have mandated, paid maternity – and whether that might be about to change.
As someone who has declared ‘to-do list bankruptcy’ many, many times, this piece on our to-do list obsession and why productivity apps are doomed to fail really spoke to me.
This on termination for medical reasons is a must-read (but by no means easy, so choose a non-wobbly moment).
I couldn’t get enough of Leslie Jamison on c-section guilt and birth stories: ‘Why do we want so much from our birth stories, anyway? It’s tempting to understand life in terms of pivotal moments, when it is actually composed of ongoing processes: not the single day of birth but the daily care that follows… If we’re lucky, birth is just the beginning.’
This thoughtful piece by Arielle Tchiprout on her experience of anti-semitism.
And finally, this delicious personal essay about lockdown delirium and regression by Dolly Alderton.
Country-core pic of the month…
Nosy cows.
