LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Sari Botton!

Well within the realm of normal

Howdy Lovelets! I love you all, and welcome!

This week’s theme reminded me of this anecdote — years ago, I overhead a relative of mine (who was in middle age at the time) saying to a friend, “Only a cruel Old Testament God would saddle people in their 50s with all of these difficult conditions at the same time: handling troublesome teenagers or young adult children; dealing with sick or dying parents; trying to maintain sexual and emotional intimacy within a stale marriage; and facing their own aging bodies. It’s too much!”

At the time I was a perky young lady in my 20s with her whole life ahead of her, and I thought, “Geez, man, that sounds like kind of a shitty attitude.”

But now I get it.

I get it.

The middle years of life, for many of us, seem to be a time when a LOT is asked of us — at the very same time that we might be feeling our own diminished vitality.

And these are the years when many of us end up as caretakers — trying to handle the needs of either or both the generations above us and below us, while also going through our own transitions of aging.

It can be tough out there.

For all of you who feel as though too much is being asked of you (at any age, by the way) I am delighted that our guest this week is the brilliant

Sari Botton

— writer, educator, editor, journalist, Substacker (yeah, sister!) and author of several books, including the fantastically named memoir AND YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF . . . CONFESSIONS OF A LATE-BLOOMING GEN-X WEIRDO (I love a title that says it all, and this title says it all!).

Sari’s Letter from Love is amongst the most honest and vulnerable we have seen yet. It is a deep dive into the truth about being a caregiver — both the exhausting parts and the rewarding parts. I am so grateful whenever our special guests really go there, really allow the hardest parts of themselves to be seen, so that Unconditional Love can find where we need, in this moment, the most healing, compassion, tenderness, and forgiveness.

To all of you who are taking care of others right now, we love you.

And to all who are being taken care of, we love you, too.

There is nothing you could do to not be loved, no matter how hard it feels.

Onward, brave ones.

Love,

Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about being a caregiver?

My love, my Lizzy — it is not your time to be a caregiver right now. You have been a caregiver in the past. You have been a hands-on nurse and orderly to the needs of the sick and the dying. But just for today, just for today, you are not in that role.

In the past, you have also been an emotional caregiver — utterly convinced that those whom you love cannot survive a day on this earth without your constant nervous ministrations, without your desperately anxious advice-giving and guidance and acts of attempted rescue—but just for today, just for today, you are not trying to save anyone else from the ravages of their own mind, either.

So right now, just for today, you have the rare privilege — very rare for a human being, especially a woman — not to be actively involved in caregiving anyone. This could change tomorrow; hell, it could change in the next five minutes, as we both know.

But just for today, you aren’t all up in it.

Which is great because it means that you and I have the opportunity to discuss this subject of “caregiving” theoretically, philosophically, and from a slight remove, rather than when you are in urgency or emergency.

I want to take advantage of this relatively undemanding moment in your life to tell you something incredibly important about what will happen the next time you find yourself in the position of needing to provide hands-on, daily, sometimes exhausting, care for another human being.

I could tell you all sorts of nice-sounding stuff like you read about online, about how important it is as a caregiver to always practice self-care — to take lots of breaks, to do kind things for yourself, to go for walks in the woods, to take a nap, to keep up your spirits, to go get your nails done or a massage, to meditate or take a pause to make art during it all . . . but let’s be real, because I, Unconditional Love, cannot serve you unless we stay super real.

As you well know, my dear, when you are in the actual inferno or emergency — meaning when life becomes bigger than you can handle, unmanageable and exhausting — you actually cannot practice self-care any more than you can fly to the moon.

In fact, you have become angry in the past when people told you at such times to take care of yourself because the reality was that you couldn’t do it.

Do you remember what it was like, to be a caregiver? Do you remember how little sleep you got? How you couldn’t exercise, pray, or make art? How you often couldn’t cope? How short your temper became? How much resentment arose? And how much shame you felt that you were doing it wrong — that you weren’t good enough, that others were better at it, more skilled, more graceful than you?

Life during a state of someone else’s emergency becomes something like a screaming ambulance siren, an inferno of anxiety, and all your old panic-driven impulses to either take control or completely collapse into helplessness arise.

This has happened before, and I’m here to tell you the tough grown-up news: my pooh bear, it will very likely happen again.

For this is the reality of life on earth: there will be seasons of urgency and seasons of peace. There will be times of needing and times of giving. There will be times when you think, “Things are going nicely, I’ve got it all under control” and times when you become a howling, angry, exhausted, overwhelmed wreck, trying to manage situations that feel unmanageable.

What if I told you, my darling, that I am not here to offer you any tips on how to be better at caregiving, but only to tell you that everything you will ever experience within the caregiving realm — good or bad, easy or hard, rewarding or infuriating — is completely normal.

Remember that friend of yours many years ago, who was at the time a new mother, expressing her frustration that the only thing her pediatrician ever said to her, when she called in a panic about something that was going on with her baby: “This is well within the realm of normal”?

Frustrating, but what if it’s true?

What if those words — “this is well within the realm of normal” — are actually the kindest and most loving gift we can offer you when you are in the caregiving role again, no matter what you are ever going through, no matter what demands are being placed on you, no matter how much you are struggling, or how well or badly you think you are handling things?

This is well within the realm of normal.

Do you feel the weight and fear that this removes? Because when it comes to giving or needing care, the thing that makes you panic is never the challenge itself, but the fear that somehow YOU ARE NOT DOING IT RIGHT.

We are here to tell you that you are never not doing it right. That you can never not do it right. That you couldn’t do it not right if you tried.

Any of it, my love. All of it. And yes, we have seen it all, and we know all about it. We saw the times you were incredibly heroic and times you felt you fell short, and the times you lacked grace, empathy, patience, dignity . . .

But all of this is well within the realm of normal.

This is how humans react to the experience of stress and overwhelm, and being a caregiver is often stressful and overwhelming.

So. No matter how messy it may get, no matter how scary, no matter how wrong: you are not doing it wrong. You never did it wrong. You couldn’t do it wrong if you tried.

Does that help?

We know it does. We know it will. Because this sort of loving grace is the only truth that will bring relaxation to your nervous system.

We love you, that’s what we want you to remember for next time. We love you and we are right here with you, through all that you will ever walk through — no matter how hard, how degrading, how enraging, how exhausting.

That is what we want to tell you, as you sit here within this moment of relative calm. That whatever happens, whatever will happen is all well within the realm of normal.

You’re just gonna do what you have to do, the best that you can, however and whenever you have do it.

And we will love you through it.

And that, my little hard worker, is what’s what.

Believe it, breathe it in, tuck it away somewhere, and remember it, and that is all.

Love, LOVE

Prompt

This week, my friends, we are thinking about which side of the caregiving spectrum we’re on, if either. Even if you don’t identify as a full-time care giver or care recipient, you might reflect on whether the issue of caring for another or receiving care yourself might define some part of your life. If so, you can pose either of these questions to Unconditional Love: What would you have me know about caring for others? or What would you have me know about being taken care of? And of course, if those don’t work there is always our old, gold standard: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

Did one of you beat me to this upstate New York rest stop? Thank you for your message, whoever you are. And I left this sticker behind!