A Little Existential

How are you?

My last piece, The Culture War Comes for Boy Moms, was one of our most popular. Paid subscribers can read the whole thing, plus access all of the Real Self-Care archives.

Collecting rocks in Breckenridge

I’ve been feeling existential lately. When I’m feeling like this it’s hard to write to you because my thoughts feel jumbled. So, I’m trying something different today: I’m answering the question “How Are You?” truthfully. What follows is more stream of consciousness than my usual letter, so bear with me.

Since I last wrote you in mid-June, my son K came down with Hand Foot and Mouth which is seriously the devil’s disease (IYKYK). K spent almost a week not being able to eat and in a ton of pain. It was brutal.

Luckily, he healed just in time for our annual July 4th trip with Justin’s family. This year we rented a house in Colorado. It was one of those trips that parents of little kids know all too well. K had a blast with his cousins. Justin and I came home bedraggled after four days of full-time parenting and flight re-routing due to Texas storms. Despite the exhaustion, I’m pleased to report that this year’s trip did not involve me climbing into a pack-and-play like last year’s (yay). And, Colorado is gorgeous.

What To Do When Things Fall Apart

Earlier this week I finished reading David Wallace Wells classic book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (his NY Magazine piece of the same name is a great synopsis). Critics complain that Wells presents an overly pessimistic analysis of climate change. Meh. I live in Texas where a half million people are still without electricity in Houston thanks to hurricane Beryl. A dystopian future does not feel too far off to me (if you’re in the mood for climate content, particularly in relation to parenting,

Anya Kamenetz

‘s newsletter

The Golden Hour: climate, children, mental health

is thoughtful and smart).

Speaking of Houston, I’ll be there next week for an appointment with my fertility doctor at CCRM. Justin and I are considering whether we will pursue trying to have another baby, and so, it makes sense that climate is top of mind for me right now.

Embryos on Ice in Texas

My brain feels too heavy to write anything that is not expletive laden about the state of American politics so, let me just link to some other reading material: The Rise of Global Authoritarianism & Last Chance, USA both by

Sarah Kendzior

, one of my favorite political writers, who has been sounding the alarm since 2016 (actually earlier than that, but I found her in 2016).

But, this isn’t supposed to be a political post.

Since I last wrote to you, I was at the Aspen Ideas festival where I spoke on a panel about Maternal Mental Health¹. It was a peak experience — I was energized, excited, floating around. And, as soon as I got home, I crashed. I always pay a heavy energetic price for speaking engagements. I’m still trying to sort out how much of this is my ego vs. my natural predisposition to introversion vs. an ADHD brain that gets overwhelmed by the logistics of travel. TBD.

In the meantime, I’m leaning heavily on the writing of Indigenous poet

Kaitlin Curtice

, author of Living Resistance and the

The Liminality Journal

newsletter. I turn to Kaitlin when I need to be reminded that time, energy, and life is cyclical. In that vein, I told myself that July and August would be interview and speaking-gig free, and that I wouldn’t be on social media as much. So far, I’ve kept up that promise to myself. And, instead, I’ve been letting myself stop, play and go internal.

Part of my play included participating in a Zoom seminar last month on the work of Karen Horney, a psychoanalyst and a contemporary of Freud, who broke from conventional psychoanalytic thought (at the time) to explore how social and cultural issues impacted women’s psyche. I know, I know, this doesn’t sound like play. But I promise, for me, it is!

The seminar was run through the Austin Psychoanalytic Society. It was lovely. I might write a post about Horney, and her work at some point because the reading and the discussion were stimulating (I know some of you are therapists / mental health professionals — let me know if this is something you’d find interesting!).

So, that’s how I am right now. I’d love to hear how you are in the comments.

xo

Pooja

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How Are You? (for Real)

The Culture War Comes for Boy Moms

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You are reading Real Self-Care, the email newsletter written by psychiatrist and best-selling author Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD.

1. You can watch Reimagining Motherhood: Giving Moms What They Need at Aspen Health here.