đ¨ LAST MINUTE THING SORRY! đ¨ Got peri-menopause questions? Iâm interviewing Dr Louise Newson, one of the worldâs leading menopause experts in the morning (Paris time), and Iâd be very happy to ask questions on your behalf. Youâll need to post them in the comments by lunchtime (AEST). Sorry to leave it so late! (Much like my awareness of perimenopause, actually).
Speaking of, Iâm a hot mess. I have no issues with (over)sharing here that the past four days Iâve cried puddles into my rug, my pillow, the night, and two forests. Which is why this post is late and not nearly grounded enough.
My heated mess is not personal per se, so donât feel sorry for or worried about me. I just hit saturation points from time to time. When Iâve held too hard, too long, too tight, too âgood girlâ, my body/psyche decides that my centre can must no longer hold and then, as a helpful favour to the rest of my being, will explode in as many directions as it can, by way of release, and by way of a stopđŚmechanism.
I think Iâm sharing this to remind us all that big, despairing emotions that draw up grief and pain from deep, deep within are so very often a gift.
It wasnât just the despairing swirl of world affairs that got to me, such as news that Trumpâs weird-arse and unhelpful anti-wind turbine campaign dates back to a petty feud he had with some Scottish politician whom he tried to bully into canceling an offshore wind farm that would spoil the view from a golf course he owned (to think our collective future is being determined by the petty feuds of these men!). And footage of Israeli settlers once again destroying food aid destined for their starving neighbours. And the rest.
It was also having to observe the way those who I expect to know and do better descending into the very thing they claim to be above. It was the relentless barrage of DMs and texts from Jewish acquaintances, which has not let up since October, defending the food aid destruction and feeding me sad IDF-lines and AI-generated fake memes1. It has been the commentary broadly about the place, on all manner of issues, but particularly around the Middle East. I am so very disappointed that
âs The Free Press is pushing an increasingly slanted agenda under the guise of being âheterodoxâ. This post, written in an authoritative, patronising âI canât believe we have to point this outâ tone about how four Israeli institutions and an Israeli government department have âfoundâ that the people of Gaza are getting more than enough food calories, pushed me over an edge this week2. Meanwhile, Weissâs wife Nellie Bowles has released a book going hard at progressives (the woke), which as NYTâs Michelle Goldberg argues, is misguided - both Bowlesâ research (apparently) and her mission, namely to skewer progression at this precarious juncture in history.I have various conclusions. They donât form a compassionate whole yet, but the gist is this: Most of us are so very lost and scared and our coordinates are all thrown, we donât know how to make sense of the âso muchâ going on everywhere; thusly, many of us are failing to see when we are throwing babies out with bathwater, when weâre clinging to fundamentalisms because we donât like the uncertainty, when weâre adding to dangerous pile-ons, when weâre acting in bad faith, and when weâre gripping at an identity defined by victimhood (where the world is only with you or against you). Those who have previously been more vested in certitudes and authoritative status than the rest of us are finding it particularly hard. They try to drive stakes into flimsy ground. They have to use increasingly forceful tactics. They have to draw on more and more cognitive biases.
Anyway.
My approach just now is to go fully messy
Which is to say, let my body and my emotions take me down to the essences. To tears and dirt. Strategising, Iâm realising, canât cut it with the world as it is now, with all the dissonances and bad faith arguing and nasty DMs. It sees us essentialise. And apply linearity to clusterfuckery. We have to join the chaotic patterning (not the chaos, mind!).
For example, on Saturday I woke raging and frantic. I could feel everyoneâs rage and fear. Iâd been dreaming about it. I couldnât keep myself in my body so I committed to joining my dangerous, rebellious trajectory, rather than âgood girlâ strategising away from it. I got prepared for everything to go wrong, for nothing to slot into place. I had a cold coffee at a grim cafe. I got on my electric bike and it had 2 bars of power left. I rode regardless, 15km to a forest. Not a great forest. I set out in mud, resigned to getting lost. I ran and ran and after some time I wailed and wailed and then after two hours the sun came out.
And I remembered. I remembered my essence.
A dog came and hugged my leg.
Then I rode back home on 1 bar of power. And I passed the pro-Palestine protesters setting up for their weekly effort and the riot police strapped in and up with tear gas canisters and machine guns and helmets. And I cried for the violence and sadness. I cried for the police, and the normalisation of it all.
Then, five metres from my front door, the bike power cut out. Ha!
Honestly, every time I give into the grimness, shit likes this happens. Life flirts back. (Some of you might remember the Maria Shriver story from Wild and Precious? I can tell it again in the comments later if you want).
I share this because I thought it might give some of you a tactic for when youâre next a hot mess - try just joining it, not strategising your way out of it. Let it ride out. Invite life to flirt back. Weâre going to have to as things got more rigid and stuck and authoritarian.
I also share this memeâŚ
Which isnât appropriate for everyone (it should not be used by people who have a habit of letting ships sink). BTW, it comes from my mate Barb who I met hiking with the poet David Whyte several years back.
Nor should it be applied in a blanket fashion. But I think to cope going forward we will also need to get discerning about letting some things die out - relationships, ideas, allegiances. Iâve had to let a few such things sink this week. Including my subscription to The Free Press.
Finally, I had a date with a cool, rat-baggy guy during the week, amid the tears
He has lots of interests and a refreshing honesty. And we were talking about online dating culture (we are all perplexed and grappling and hurting and canât believe we are still doing it3), which generally leads to a guy talking about how hard they find it to know how to navigate what to do, what to say etc in a changed #metoo world, which often leads them to ask me how they should go about their existence and how they should change where men and masculinity are at. I often get asked the same here, as some of you know. I think, much as Cate Blanchett articulated this week at Cannes about fixing sexism in films, the men need to work it out. I did add this suggestion, however:
âItâs not complicated. Itâs not about whoâs right and wrong and who should do whatâŚjust donât be a dickhead. Thatâs it. Simple.â
I think most people know what it means to not be a dickhead, give or take. We have just forgotten for a bit. So we need to go for a mad run in a forest, a walk through a hall of mirrors and flirt with life again to remember.
My date smiled and said, âCa câest parfaitâ.
OK. Thatâs the best I can give today.
Sarah xx
PS My Wild chat this week is certainly not messy. Itâs with Kate Raworth about âdoughnut economicsâ. Listen all the way to the end; Kate proffers some intimate salves to the hot mess. I need to go back and listen to it again.
I mention this here because Iâm not sure that these people know that many other people are doing the same thing all at once (itâs a thing) and that it is taking its toll on me and the other creatives who feel itâs our responsibility to speak out on injustices consistently. We have to call each other when weâve not slept after a particularly bad and personal barrage.
I will let you read it and form your own positions on where the bad faith faults in the argument exist.
PS I have not forgotten about the dating series I promised. I need to flirt with life for a bit, firstâŚ
Sarah, I think as one of your paid subscribers, there is something I feel needs to be said right at this juncture . Sarah, despite being one of the most emotionally open, honest and transparent writers /public thinkers / social commentators, (who is prepared to go where mainstream journalists often fear to tread) I think that your post today (even by your own high standards) displayed an extraordinary amount of emotional courage and honesty to express your emotional vulnerability, in response to our perception that on so many fronts (issues) our collective defences appear to be getting overrun.
By expressing your own feelings of being "overwhelmed" and emotionally vulnerable to the all relentless 'external global stimulus', I believe it helps to support people experiencing similar types of responses. Whether it presents itself in the form of sadness, anxiety, stress, depression, or pessimism about the future. The upshot is that it doesn't really matter if we are talking about the symptoms of their emotional response being at clinical or sub-clinical level of intensity. They are all still feeling them.
The message in your post, signals to all those readers, that given the turmoil in the world today, validates their own personal feelings and reassures them they are not "going crazy", it is an understandable reaction and that they are not alone.
And neither are you, Sarah. Take care.
Thank you Sarah for sharing that raw post.
In a way I envy you for being able to experience at least some release through sobbing out your despair.
I feel so much anger building in meâŚ.hatred towards Trump and his hideous agenda, anger at Dutton and his ridiculous, morally corrupt push for nuclear power, anger at the atrocities being committed by the Israeli government and the way our politicians jump to Israelâs defence against the totally logical, humane ICC position. I feel like my anger has nowhere to go because this anger is directed at forces that seem way more powerful than the remaining, seemingly dwindling good forces in the worldâŚ