As I’m sitting here in my gym after walking in circles around the track for 38 minutes with a bunch of senior citizens (and their aides) I’ll tell you that I love receiving an email from you. Just like when I was a kid and reached into the mailbox after school to see if my Highlights, then a few years later, my Seventeen, magazine arrived. It’s a nice surprise and an even nicer reason to sit down and have quiet reading time. This is my last year in my 40’s, so I can relate to being in the middle (of life) or just the middle of my emotions.
This makes me so happy. I feel the same way when I receive comments from people. I really believe I have the best readers! Every comment is insightful or offers some kind of connection that makes my day.
So I don’t have kids/am single and may have read your previous work only once in a blue moon. I came across you again when Dooce passed away and subscribed. You have a great voice and the things you describe here that you do in your day-to-day life seem really lovely. Birds are cool and feeders are a great way to interact with them. Having a really great therapist (which it sounds like you’ve found) is super amazing. Having found and been helped by a few great therapists myself, I’m glad for you. I obv don’t know you IRL but it sounds like dropping a diagnosis is a sign of your growth. People can change and you are! I don’t know where I’m going with this but keep going and keep writing, I enjoy it!
One last random thought, not sure if this helps, a long time ago I worked front desk at a couple of fitness clubs. Other than generally watching people exercise in a sense of “ok everyone’s ok, no one is hurt or passed out” I never paid attention to people exercising and when I wasn’t doing front desk tasks I would generally often look out across the fitness floor.
This does help. Intellectually I know that no one is paying attention to me. But my nervous system always reacts otherwise. I'm so glad you found me. And my therapist IS a good one. Within in an hour of posting this he messaged me that he reads ALL my stuff. :)
Always a pleasure to hear from you! I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering when you might post something again. As always, your words make me think. I am grateful for that and the fact that I found your writing again after losing you for a little while (when you stopped blogging). Thanks for your continued insights.
Oct 13, 2023·edited Oct 13, 2023Liked by Monica Danielle
You know what I learned today? That when you have intrusive thoughts from trauma (and let's be real, this situation is traumatic) that you should play Tetris. It reduces those thoughts and it's interesting because I've been playing tetris before bed for years and was kind of ashamed to admit that it helps me sleep.
Anyhoodle, I love your voice and you. You're a good egg, Mons. I look forward to your new posts!
Yup. The mini cross word archives are my Tetris and have probably saved me from several nervous breakdowns. Thanks for always being a voice of support, humor and reason. Yours is a perspective I value greatly.
I think I have been reading your essays for about 20 years and always enjoy your perspectives. The pain of the ‘in your head argument’! Can so relate but yes agree as we get older it’s easier to snap out of it. Sending love 🤍
I'm a fellow getting-old, and finding the joy of a morning cup of coffee before everyone else in the house wakes felt like leveling up - a trick I happily carried from my 30s into my 40s. Thanks for sharing your writing, for so many years. This year has been rather heavy, and I'm so sorry that you've been dealing with heaviness, too. Someone I love very much is also going through something that might be similar to your situation (what little I know of it), and it's just heartbreaking sometimes how little we understand other people. I've been following your writing for many years and I'm grateful for all that you've shared.
The internet is a strange beast. We think we know, especially when someone shares so much online, but we never really do. I think about Heather Armstrong a lot. She was a good writer and shared so much but, as it turns out, so much of it was not true. It leaves you wondering how much of her writing was truth, how much of it was what she wanted to be true and how much of it was mental illness. We'll never know.
Ever since she posted about her alcoholism, I had to really wonder what was truth anymore. I really miss her writing, though, even if it wasn't all true. I'm still so sad about her loss. Still grappling with the fact she's gone, though I never knew her personally.
Yes, I also read Dooce - I remember being blown away by how funny and cool she was, and it's so complicated to embrace how someone can be those things AND also something else entirely. Like, we know it is true of everyone - I am all to intimately familiar with the way it is true of myself - but it still feels like a surprise when we're reminded of how someone else has this interior life we don't know about. The internet adds an extra layer of absurdity to the whole thing, because I am both even more aware of how little we know each other and yet also given the gift of a mostly-stranger telling me very important things about their life. It's harder to remind myself that it isn't the whole story, because there's not the back-and-forth, shared invention of whatever reality is. And yet, I don't think it's just an online issue - even with people whose humanity stares me in the face daily, it can still be a struggle to remind myself that anything I see or experience with them is filtered through their own lens, and I won't be privy to that. I'm really chewing on that idea that arguing is futile because everyone is ultimately in their own reality, we can't argue for the ultimate primacy of a single version of events - thank you for sharing that.
I too loathe gyms so congrats on going there. It is the being inside surrounded by those much more able and knowledgeable that throws me. I prefer getting outside to see the seasons whilst running or going to reformer Pilates which is brutal but brilliant - and like you my motives are now all about maintaining strength (having turned 50) and less about looking slimmer. So yay that you have begun! I think you will stick at it. Also it is no mean feat to have stuck at therapy. Sitting with pain is so hard. Acknowledging and understanding our reactions is painful. Enlightening sure, but it means admitting needs weren’t met, boundaries not kept, voids created - that we have tried to quieten or drown out with all kinds of methods - usually to our own detriment. But there is something so comforting in bringing it all to light and sorting through our emotional closets. For me therapy is a messy closet - we re box and file away the items we no longer need. Chuck stuff that no longer fits. Bring out the new. We can never erase our pasts, never fully dispose of those old clothes but we can box them away in a box labelled ‘no longer serves me.’ I wish I could afford more! It’s expensive in the UK.
So much to say about letting go… I have often written letters to people to get out what I need to express. Then, I don’t send them. But there is a release of having said it all - because as you say, they won’t want to hear it anyway… That is the hardest part in breakdowns of friendships and relationships - that often the most important stuff is never said. But the thing is the people who don’t do the work on themselves - who don’t have the closet clear out - aren’t receptive to anything because they need to cling tightly to their own beliefs - like a castaway on a small float. They hang on for dear life because to try and communicate or discuss rationing would mean owning their part in the breakdown - and they can’t do that - they need to be right… that way they don’t have negotiate the gnarly messy closet.
I’m a reader of gosh - 20 years next year. 2004 I found you. You saved me in a very important way back in 2013 - helping get a job that allowed me to transition for full time script editor to work from home writer. That Babble money supported me. I miss writing there… I’m entering my older stage too where a dog walk or a cold water swim mean more to me than any glitzy tv party. I find my extroverted self becoming more happy at home… My nights of hitting the tiles in London long gone. The simpler my life is the happier I am. I’m proud of you Monica for all you have done and how beautifully you tell us about it all. I’m incapable of being friends with anyone who cannot be vulnerable, cannot admit failings and fears. Please never stop writing because we all care about you so much and are grateful you let us into your life. X
Hey there. Whoa. Thank your for all of this. So much. Nail on the head. My email is full of drafts that I have learned not to send. and I'm looking to get a tattoo that just says LET GO. It's the only way. Your comments are always the best. It's funny that our journeys have mirrored each others in lots of ways. Your insight is spot on and I appreciate that you take the time to share it because it really helps. I love knowing you're across the Atlantic over there wisely living your life and becoming a therapist and taking the cold plunges. It's comforting, all of these amazing women I have encountered online have made this weird digital existence absolutely worth it.
Babble! haha! Didn't we write the celeb column together for a minute? So wild.
Love the taking BPD out of your file! When I was 20 I diagnosed myself with BPD, read a lot on DBT, went through dozens of therapists/shrinks/diagnoses as I changed jobs or insurance or my mind. Only in the last few years was I correctly diagnosed with CPTSD, which I'm told is just a step down from BPD? Work in progress but I still jump as if a killer clown emerged from the shadows whenever someone says hello to me. The hypervigilance is real.
Anyway, your talk of gratitude made me think of the first little 12 minute meditation from 7 Days of Happiness on the Calm app. It made me feel so warm to sit there feeling grateful for my sense of smell, for my therapist, and for everything else as it guided me through. If you don't have a subscription and have any interest, I still have one of my five shares left!
I've only been reading for the last 14 years or so. Really glad I finally subscribed the other day. I love your writing and your journey.
Understanding the concept of CPTSD has been as profound as learning about BPD. So much of my personality is formed in response to CPTSD. For example - I recently realized I'm always rushing around doing shit (even when i don't need to rush) and being late to things makes me super uncomfortable and causes me shame and embarrassment. I have been able to connect this with CPTSD and hyper-vigilance/survival mode. It's pretty amazing to connect the things we do and the ways we are with the way we were raised and begin to untie all of that and get to a place of calmness and peace about and within yourself. I'm not saying I'm there yet, but, in understanding BPD and CPTSD I can begin to understand who and why I'm the way I am, realize it isn't my fault I'm this way and take steps toward a better me.
As I’m sitting here in my gym after walking in circles around the track for 38 minutes with a bunch of senior citizens (and their aides) I’ll tell you that I love receiving an email from you. Just like when I was a kid and reached into the mailbox after school to see if my Highlights, then a few years later, my Seventeen, magazine arrived. It’s a nice surprise and an even nicer reason to sit down and have quiet reading time. This is my last year in my 40’s, so I can relate to being in the middle (of life) or just the middle of my emotions.
This makes me so happy. I feel the same way when I receive comments from people. I really believe I have the best readers! Every comment is insightful or offers some kind of connection that makes my day.
So I don’t have kids/am single and may have read your previous work only once in a blue moon. I came across you again when Dooce passed away and subscribed. You have a great voice and the things you describe here that you do in your day-to-day life seem really lovely. Birds are cool and feeders are a great way to interact with them. Having a really great therapist (which it sounds like you’ve found) is super amazing. Having found and been helped by a few great therapists myself, I’m glad for you. I obv don’t know you IRL but it sounds like dropping a diagnosis is a sign of your growth. People can change and you are! I don’t know where I’m going with this but keep going and keep writing, I enjoy it!
One last random thought, not sure if this helps, a long time ago I worked front desk at a couple of fitness clubs. Other than generally watching people exercise in a sense of “ok everyone’s ok, no one is hurt or passed out” I never paid attention to people exercising and when I wasn’t doing front desk tasks I would generally often look out across the fitness floor.
This does help. Intellectually I know that no one is paying attention to me. But my nervous system always reacts otherwise. I'm so glad you found me. And my therapist IS a good one. Within in an hour of posting this he messaged me that he reads ALL my stuff. :)
Always a pleasure to hear from you! I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering when you might post something again. As always, your words make me think. I am grateful for that and the fact that I found your writing again after losing you for a little while (when you stopped blogging). Thanks for your continued insights.
Thank you for still reading! Like running into an old friend, yours is a name I am always happy to see.
Awww. Thanks!
You know what I learned today? That when you have intrusive thoughts from trauma (and let's be real, this situation is traumatic) that you should play Tetris. It reduces those thoughts and it's interesting because I've been playing tetris before bed for years and was kind of ashamed to admit that it helps me sleep.
Anyhoodle, I love your voice and you. You're a good egg, Mons. I look forward to your new posts!
Yup. The mini cross word archives are my Tetris and have probably saved me from several nervous breakdowns. Thanks for always being a voice of support, humor and reason. Yours is a perspective I value greatly.
I think I have been reading your essays for about 20 years and always enjoy your perspectives. The pain of the ‘in your head argument’! Can so relate but yes agree as we get older it’s easier to snap out of it. Sending love 🤍
That blows my mind! Thank you for reading all these years! <3<3<3
I'm a fellow getting-old, and finding the joy of a morning cup of coffee before everyone else in the house wakes felt like leveling up - a trick I happily carried from my 30s into my 40s. Thanks for sharing your writing, for so many years. This year has been rather heavy, and I'm so sorry that you've been dealing with heaviness, too. Someone I love very much is also going through something that might be similar to your situation (what little I know of it), and it's just heartbreaking sometimes how little we understand other people. I've been following your writing for many years and I'm grateful for all that you've shared.
The internet is a strange beast. We think we know, especially when someone shares so much online, but we never really do. I think about Heather Armstrong a lot. She was a good writer and shared so much but, as it turns out, so much of it was not true. It leaves you wondering how much of her writing was truth, how much of it was what she wanted to be true and how much of it was mental illness. We'll never know.
Ever since she posted about her alcoholism, I had to really wonder what was truth anymore. I really miss her writing, though, even if it wasn't all true. I'm still so sad about her loss. Still grappling with the fact she's gone, though I never knew her personally.
Yes, I also read Dooce - I remember being blown away by how funny and cool she was, and it's so complicated to embrace how someone can be those things AND also something else entirely. Like, we know it is true of everyone - I am all to intimately familiar with the way it is true of myself - but it still feels like a surprise when we're reminded of how someone else has this interior life we don't know about. The internet adds an extra layer of absurdity to the whole thing, because I am both even more aware of how little we know each other and yet also given the gift of a mostly-stranger telling me very important things about their life. It's harder to remind myself that it isn't the whole story, because there's not the back-and-forth, shared invention of whatever reality is. And yet, I don't think it's just an online issue - even with people whose humanity stares me in the face daily, it can still be a struggle to remind myself that anything I see or experience with them is filtered through their own lens, and I won't be privy to that. I'm really chewing on that idea that arguing is futile because everyone is ultimately in their own reality, we can't argue for the ultimate primacy of a single version of events - thank you for sharing that.
I too loathe gyms so congrats on going there. It is the being inside surrounded by those much more able and knowledgeable that throws me. I prefer getting outside to see the seasons whilst running or going to reformer Pilates which is brutal but brilliant - and like you my motives are now all about maintaining strength (having turned 50) and less about looking slimmer. So yay that you have begun! I think you will stick at it. Also it is no mean feat to have stuck at therapy. Sitting with pain is so hard. Acknowledging and understanding our reactions is painful. Enlightening sure, but it means admitting needs weren’t met, boundaries not kept, voids created - that we have tried to quieten or drown out with all kinds of methods - usually to our own detriment. But there is something so comforting in bringing it all to light and sorting through our emotional closets. For me therapy is a messy closet - we re box and file away the items we no longer need. Chuck stuff that no longer fits. Bring out the new. We can never erase our pasts, never fully dispose of those old clothes but we can box them away in a box labelled ‘no longer serves me.’ I wish I could afford more! It’s expensive in the UK.
So much to say about letting go… I have often written letters to people to get out what I need to express. Then, I don’t send them. But there is a release of having said it all - because as you say, they won’t want to hear it anyway… That is the hardest part in breakdowns of friendships and relationships - that often the most important stuff is never said. But the thing is the people who don’t do the work on themselves - who don’t have the closet clear out - aren’t receptive to anything because they need to cling tightly to their own beliefs - like a castaway on a small float. They hang on for dear life because to try and communicate or discuss rationing would mean owning their part in the breakdown - and they can’t do that - they need to be right… that way they don’t have negotiate the gnarly messy closet.
I’m a reader of gosh - 20 years next year. 2004 I found you. You saved me in a very important way back in 2013 - helping get a job that allowed me to transition for full time script editor to work from home writer. That Babble money supported me. I miss writing there… I’m entering my older stage too where a dog walk or a cold water swim mean more to me than any glitzy tv party. I find my extroverted self becoming more happy at home… My nights of hitting the tiles in London long gone. The simpler my life is the happier I am. I’m proud of you Monica for all you have done and how beautifully you tell us about it all. I’m incapable of being friends with anyone who cannot be vulnerable, cannot admit failings and fears. Please never stop writing because we all care about you so much and are grateful you let us into your life. X
Hey there. Whoa. Thank your for all of this. So much. Nail on the head. My email is full of drafts that I have learned not to send. and I'm looking to get a tattoo that just says LET GO. It's the only way. Your comments are always the best. It's funny that our journeys have mirrored each others in lots of ways. Your insight is spot on and I appreciate that you take the time to share it because it really helps. I love knowing you're across the Atlantic over there wisely living your life and becoming a therapist and taking the cold plunges. It's comforting, all of these amazing women I have encountered online have made this weird digital existence absolutely worth it.
Babble! haha! Didn't we write the celeb column together for a minute? So wild.
Love the taking BPD out of your file! When I was 20 I diagnosed myself with BPD, read a lot on DBT, went through dozens of therapists/shrinks/diagnoses as I changed jobs or insurance or my mind. Only in the last few years was I correctly diagnosed with CPTSD, which I'm told is just a step down from BPD? Work in progress but I still jump as if a killer clown emerged from the shadows whenever someone says hello to me. The hypervigilance is real.
Anyway, your talk of gratitude made me think of the first little 12 minute meditation from 7 Days of Happiness on the Calm app. It made me feel so warm to sit there feeling grateful for my sense of smell, for my therapist, and for everything else as it guided me through. If you don't have a subscription and have any interest, I still have one of my five shares left!
I've only been reading for the last 14 years or so. Really glad I finally subscribed the other day. I love your writing and your journey.
Understanding the concept of CPTSD has been as profound as learning about BPD. So much of my personality is formed in response to CPTSD. For example - I recently realized I'm always rushing around doing shit (even when i don't need to rush) and being late to things makes me super uncomfortable and causes me shame and embarrassment. I have been able to connect this with CPTSD and hyper-vigilance/survival mode. It's pretty amazing to connect the things we do and the ways we are with the way we were raised and begin to untie all of that and get to a place of calmness and peace about and within yourself. I'm not saying I'm there yet, but, in understanding BPD and CPTSD I can begin to understand who and why I'm the way I am, realize it isn't my fault I'm this way and take steps toward a better me.