Anxious Questions, Awkward Conversations
and other ways we try to find each other.
My baby girl was born without a voice. My first glance of her little face, was as it contorted with the effort of trying to cry - and I couldn’t take my eyes off her silent screaming. The first 24 hours of her life were filled with people I didn’t even meet putting tubes and cameras into her throat, and more than one tightly swaddled trip through MRI machine. In the early fog of post-partum life, I engaged in what felt like endless medical conversations that all boiled down to “well it could be nothing - or it could be devastating.” That uncertainty in every conversation quickly forced me out of haze and into focus - but not into problem solving mode, rather - into a mode that was pure instinct and intuition. I knew on a deep, unreachable level - that she was fine. Yet - the levels of anxiety of many of the people around me threatened to veer the knowing off course. It annoyed me, angered me, and reminded me - I get to be in charge of this story. I get to decide how we feel about this, and what will happen. I get to tell this story - and not the anxious voices flying all around.
No one ever daydreams of the what if scenarios - we all picture that pink baby in a cute knitted hat, the successful job interview, and obviously that we’ll be thanked in the speech. The what if scenarios haunt us as we are trying to fall asleep at night, they break through our will to go just a little further, and they whisper to us as we are trying to lead a team meeting. They become that gnawing sense of dread that we swallow down each morning, the doubt that creeps in when we try something new, and the mouth of fear that swallows us whole. We try not to talk about them, we wear amulets to protect against them - but the big secret is: we all share them, and are desperate to connect over them. The other big secret: many of us are really bad at that connection. This is why “what not to say when…” lists are so easily populated for people whose friends and loved ones are moving through transition moments in life.
Navigating pregnancy and new-motherhood at 40-adjacent has sharpened my awareness of how people - and especially women - hold their own experiences of becoming a parent. Matrescence is the term for the physical, emotional, and psychological changes that occur during the transition to motherhood. This process can begin before conception and continue through pregnancy, birth, adoption, or surrogacy, and into the postpartum period and beyond. Just as adolescence is the term for all of the above transition to adulthood, matrescence brings with it changes that last way beyond the birth of the child. It is a process that often begins with secrecy, fear, trepidation, and tremendous anxiety. Once the news are shared, it becomes public discourse - just as the mother shifts internally and physically to accommodate baby, come the comments about her body, energy, and functionality in society.
In this particular trip through matrescence, I was more attuned to the types of comments and questions that being pregnant in public invite. Comments about my energy, age, body size, and choices I made regarding my health and wellbeing suddenly were open for conversation. In my job(s), I really had no choice but to be publicly pregnant - to engage with comments from colleagues, students, and congregants. I noticed who approached with chatter, and who with silence. I noticed who is led by fear, and who by curiosity. I noticed whose experiences nest in scarcity, and whose in abundance.
At first - it was jarring - and I wanted nothing of it. I’ve written extensively over the years about my battles with my body, but mostly as a way to allow others to access tools to recovery. Now, I was navigating questions from people that sometimes tiptoed over the line of too intimate -and sometimes bulldozed right through it. It ranged from the amusing - a four year old student asking me to take the baby out so he could play with “him,” to the down right uncomfortable - a male congregant asking questions about my body that somehow, I was expected to answer. I sought refuge in the words “fine”, “just tired”, and “I don’t know.” I appreciated people who sat with me in the experience, but demanded nothing of it.
As I reflect on it now, I find myself wondering about the stories behind the questions and comments. What are people trying to connect over when they ask about whether we can still fit in our clothes? What are people seeking, projecting, or yearning for in these messy interactions?
One of the most important skills we practice in training for Rabbinic ordination is how to listen to the question behind the question. If someone is asking us about a specific stringency in Halacha (Jewish Law) - say - fasting when feeling ill, we have to ask ourselves first why are you asking this? What is it that you are trying to communicate through this worry? - The question that has finally bloomed, has below it a much deeper root- a universal urge to be heard, seen, and validated.
Looking deeper, I find hidden stories of loneliness in questions about whether I had support. I find a corona of anger around comments about parental leave (or lack thereof). I find musings of despair, misery, and suffering in the question I get most often: How are you even out right now? (subtext: why are you not home, miserable, crying, and alone?)
As women, we are expected to suffer. Culturally, it nests in the Biblical suffering as punishment gifted onto Eve at the exile from Eden. We inherit stories of suffering as part of our matrilineal heritage. It is stifling, all this suffering. It makes it much harder for joyful moments to shine on their own, and it teaches our children that even good moment need to have tinges of bad. Don’t enjoy that cake too much, because inevitably you will have a stomach ache. We prepare children to expect sorrow, failure, and pain, seemingly to protect them from it. Where does this come from? From our own experiences of pain- of knowing that little white cloud could any day become a thunderstorm.
As children, the only thing we wanted was to be loved - by our caregivers, by our teachers, by our friends. At some point we all experience a sense of brokenness in our most crucial familial and social foundations. Someone who doesn’t see us for who we are, someone who makes us feel about about who we are, or someone who tries to change us. We might live with yearning, rather than stability, and we might seek connection and healing in ersatz ways. We might even fear what loving others might do to us - in case it doesn’t quite work out.
In moments where we see our darkness, our pain, our sorrow in someone else’s experience - we want to jump at the chance to scream out ME TOO! We want to connect, to forge healing bonds - but we are really, really bad at it. Fear and anxiety take over, and somehow we are no longer in charge of the story, or even of the words that come through. We might want to say something like, “I remember how hard this was for me, and I hope it is easier for you.” Instead what we say sounds morel like, “Oh my GOD, you must be SO miserable right now.”
Most of the time, we just want someone to sit with us in our lonely place, and make it feel a little less lonely. We want someone to hear our silent screams, to let us know that they have them too, and to know that we are fine. We want to use our own memories of pain to alleviate the suffering of others. Instead, we flounder - and project our fears onto their current experience. It’s pretty normal, and we all do it in some way or another. We sense that someone is mad at us, when really they’re just busy, or tired, or constipated.
Recognizing our own yearning can allow us to shift how we respond to (some of) the questions and comments that emerge in our times of transition. Questions about body functions levels of energy, how we parent, bladder control - and other intimate topics - might be an expression of love, caring, and deep understanding. Other times, they might just be misguided. We might want to see what happens when we take a breath, look the person in the eye, and say, I’m curious about why you might be asking that? We might then engage in the sacred act of sharing our stories with each other. Perhaps, we might crack a joke at their seemingly serious question, and find that everyone is now laughing -sharing in the glory of gallows humor in ways only people who have been there can know.
Connecting to one another in our modern world is hard. We would much rather watch a 60 second reel about the best way to peel a potato, than talk to our mothers about how to make a casserole. We are afraid to waste time in the every day moments. Let’s be honest- when I said 60 seconds, you were really thinking not more than 30. We find it easier to heed advice from anonymous podcasters than ask our friends how they’re navigating a similar situation. We want to connect, but we don’t know how, so we tell someone they “look good, considering…” We look for misery in others, when what we really want to find is shared healing. There is no perfect way to do this - we are all guaranteed to mess up somewhere in daily conversation. There is, however, always the chance to take slightly deeper breaths, and wait for the story behind the story to emerge. We never know what kind of special connection can lie behind an awkward conversation.
Sometimes we know - and we get to take control of the story.