A Dose of Hope: Healing the Mental Drain
Plus a personal health update below the pay wall
TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS:
I’m giving away TEN copies of Democracy in Retrograde. If you are feeling hopeless or don’t know what to do next, this book is your roadmap. It will take all of your pent up anger, sadness, frustration and anxiety and mold it into an action plan for hope. To enter: you must be a subscriber to this Substack (free or paid). Post a comment below about what you think needs to be done to reach women! Closes 5pm EST Nov. 10th. Winners will be randomly chosen from comments over the duration of the promotion!
For one week only I’ve lowered the ANNUAL subscription price to $30 (the minimum allowed!) Ends November 13 at 5pm EST. That’s only $2.50 a month to get fact-based and actionable information about politics.
The mental drain is real right now my friends. I could use an entire year of sleep just to get over this week.
Take care of yourself. Maybe you want to buy everything on Oprah’s 2024 cozy things list, or these sweatpant jeans a friend just sent me. Maybe you never want to button jeans again. I’m living in my Barefoot Dreams robe.
A few other things I’m doing this weekend to soothe myself:
1. Delete social media just for the weekend. 2. Take a walk and call a friend. 3. Buy yourself something cozy. 4. Burn the expensive candle. 5. Read your favorite book from childhood. 6. Cuddle something soft 7. Binge watch something mindless 8. Sleep 9. Lay in bed and stare at nothing 10. Catch up with a friends, I did book club and had Thai iced tea with my best friend yesterday and today we are headed to breakfast.
I’ve been devouring too much news, too many essays, all of the substacks and a lot of twitter/threads (but no TikTok!). A lot of it remains soul crushing but there is absolutely inspiration out there right now. I know it can be hard to find in the absolute tsunami of content available so I wanted to round up some of my favorites.
We need to remember that women all over the world see us and are standing in solidarity with us.
Elizabeth Holmes has a great piece on thinking through election emotions and grief.
Jennifer Senior wrote about how we have to focus on the things that matter (gift article.)
This inspiring story of girls leading a bicycling revolution in Afghanistan and their escape.
This post from Cup of Jo on the good in the world does all of the things.
If you feel overwhelmed today, think of small things you can do for now, neighbors you can help, loved ones you can text. Remember the starfish story? Thousands of starfish had been washed up on a beach after a storm. A little boy was throwing them back into the water, one by one. An old man saw him and said, “You’ll never be able to save them all; you won’t make a real difference.” The boy picked up a starfish and said, “I made a difference to this one.”
Xochitl Gonzalez wrote a reflection on what this means for women now.
My friend Jo Piazza wrote a substack and did a podcast on how to talk to your kids about all of this.
This essay about how redwoods care for and support one another might have brought a tear to my eye.
In our Darwinist dogwood-eat-dogwood worldview, we look at a forest and assume the trees are trying to one-up each other; each is vying for light and air and water, after all—which are valuable resources that diminish with each new member. It stands to reason that the trees would block each other, ensuring they get the most and the best of what nature has to offer.
But rather than competing, they’re connecting.
The artist Grace Farris brings me regular joy and this piece she did for Cup of Jo this week was just the right thing at the right moment.
Also I promised you all a health update -
So many of you have checked in on me this week and I couldn’t be more grateful. Dealing with this election is a lot for anyone and dealing with it while battling a chronic illness that no doctor seems to be able to diagnose is something I never expected to do.
But I am doing it. And I’ll keep doing it. One thing I realized this week is that we have to keep moving forward and that is what I intend to do.
One of the difficulties in getting treatment for medical conditions is it’s hard to pinpoint the source of the problem, this has resulted in me going to a lot of different doctors to try to exclude possible diagnoses. I had a very bad incident this summer in which my cortisol as well as a few other hormones dropped to almost 0, which sent me down the path of seeing if I had adrenal insufficiency. Cortisol is a hormone produced by your adrenal glands (located above your kidneys) and directed by your pituitary gland (in your brain). When you have low cortisol you take a pill to augment it. It’s very similar to diabetes inasmuch as this is about a hormone that your body produces to help you deal with differing situations.
Normally when you have low cortisol you have a disease that you can’t make cortisol, what happened to me is my body bounced back and then (I think) went the other way and I had high cortisol. High cortisol is a different disease called Cushings. There is a very rare condition called Cyclical Cushings where you go up and down, normally caused by a pituitary brain tumor. It’s extremely hard to diagnose - and I don’t know that it’s the answer.
The blackouts were getting pretty dangerous. I fell once pretty bad, I worry about how many times my brain can handle whatever is happening to it. I have spent the last 6 weeks doing as little as possible to try to not aggravate my condition until I can get treated correctly. I’m not able to eat much or do much without going into a super sick tailspin - it sucks to be honest.
And frankly, not sure where this is headed. I’m very very hopeful that the doctors at Mayo Clinic will be able to provide an answer and more importantly, a path. If not I will likely be left to figure it out on my own, like so many women do.
I have spent a *lot* of time thinking about our healthcare system. 100 years ago I would have died, you don’t survive an acute adrenal crisis without medical intervention. I am beyond lucky I can earn enough money to keep a roof over my head typing from my bed. But I feel incredibly un-taken care of, alone and adrift.
I’m not alone in my chronic illness, so many Americans and I imagine many of you, have either experienced this yourself or have a loved one who does. And as MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) has shown, this is political. We all agree it’s a problem, the thing we disagree on is the solution.
I don’t think we should blow the system up. I think we need to fix the system. We need to put humans back at the center of it instead of profits. We need to listen to scientists and also question them. There are paths forward and that is why I keep doing this work every single day.
Humans really do need to be put back at the center of the healthcare system.
Sending good vibes to you Emily, and I truly hope you find your answers when you go to Mayo Clinic!!