An accident 🫂 (And a club)

This feels a little like a "please clap" moment. Sticky! Uncomfy! This is not a cry for help, I promise!

Welcome to Permission Granted, a newsletter I send on no set schedule, despite a medium level of effort to do otherwise. I’m still trying to work through what “wellness” means in light of this [waves hands around]. This week, join the club. I’d love it if you shared this with someone who might want to join the club too.

Hello!

It’s Friday, and the weather is likely doing something interesting in your area. I woke up to snow on Mt Tam, which is beautiful. Weather is an eternally worthwhile conversation topic. Never forget it.

I’ve been meditating on where we’ve come in the world of capital w Wellness. Not literally meditating; let’s be realistic. I mean contemplating the suggested habits and singsongy skincare routines (don’t get me started on the TikTok 3:30 am thing¹) and endless products, presented to us as wellness. It feels haphazard these days. Flinging pasta against a wall that is not even a wall, just thin air? Flinging pasta at nothing?

Three years ago, staying on top of these trends was a big part of my life and job. I wanted to help open doors to trying stuff out — workouts, practices, mind-body-career-connection healing. I wanted to give opportunity for women to see what worked. I wanted to be the one peering around the corner to what was coming next and bringing the best of it to the community. I wanted to create a space that felt like you could choose it and you could choose within it. It didn’t choose you or for you.

It broke down, we all went inside ourselves, and here we are. And while therapy speak is everywhere we turn, our mental health is demonstrably suffering. So if you’re like me — a bit stuck, a little lost, weird vibes, desperately looking for the energy that used to be out there for the taking, and unsure where you’ve been dropped off after three years of this — join the club. The Stuck Together Club (working title). The let’s bust something wide open club. What’s your member number?

I am ready. So are you.

One story and then I’ll get back to this club and how to join. This past Saturday morning, a scene: me, baby, running stroller, uneven sidewalk, accident, screaming, 911 call, paramedics, sheriff questioning, panic, tears. She is okay. Our little 13-month-old has only scratches in the end, nothing more. So lucky.

I, on the other hand, am certainly not okay.²

I have been in a significantly heightened mental and physical state since the accident, replaying what happened every time I close my eyes. Constructing a worst-case scenario and letting it play through a few times just for utter self-torture. Trying to remember exactly what went wrong and why? I’ve run that block with this stroller so many times. I don’t know. I won’t know. We will move on, and this will be the story I tell to her when she’s older….when you were one, we were doing a run we’ve done together dozens of times and the running stroller flipped over on top of you!

Many of the parents I know who I’ve told this to have stories of their own — drops and falls, trips, and tiny broken bones. The guilt and shame will recede or have receded, so we laugh about it because curling into a ball forever is not an option. We keep going with a slightly larger pit of anxiety in our stomachs; it’s just what we do.

A day later the itching started — acute dermatitis in all the places I usually get it when The Big Stress comes in. My chest, neck, left abdomen, lower back, right wrist, and left ring finger. A trip to a dermatologist. A set of questions — sure, you had this trauma but did you hike recently? With your dog? And you’re allergic to poison oak? Yes, yes, yes.

This same thing happened to me when I closed The Assembly. Stress. An extreme, blistering rash breakout. Dermatology appointment/allergy check. Poison oak diagnosis. Steroids. Move on.

But there has to be something more than that. This physical reaction is outsized. You’re saying that at the same time, by coincidence, at the two most stressful moments of the past three years, I’ve just so happened to have gotten Poison Oak? On the same day as this accident? Maybe, but that’s not enough for me.

This is going somewhere, stay with me. So my non-medical self-assessment:

1. My base level of internal stress is so high, it feels like I can boil over at any moment (and this weekend was a fairly big moment). This is, I think, a culmination of everything that has gone on for all of us in the past few years. I do have current stuff going on, but this feels cumulative.

2. It is made worse by this feeling of Stuck, of Loss we haven’t processed. Call it what you will — purpose, calling, direction — but the energy has been drained.

Tell me I’m alone in this…

These are connected. I know it. I’m wearing it all over my body right now thanks to Poison Oak and stroller accident and a cold that won’t quit. Take those three things and sub in three of your own. And in case I haven’t said it enough — I am the luckiest motherfucker of all. I am generally healthy, my kid’s little magic wolverine healing capabilities have her looking like new five days later.

I don’t want to talk about it or complain, I want to do about it. And I want to do this with you.³

Accidents happen. Terrible accidents that keep us up at night, or much much worse, happen. I will live with the accident from last weekend, which was my doing but not my fault. Guilt is part of being (and certainly parently, LOL). This will weigh on me for a long time, even though the outcome was really and truly okay.

But my point today, which I know is scattered, is this experience has given me a project, a mission. I want to do it alongside whatever yours may be.

Join the club.

Join the club of accidents that have happened. Join the club for those of us with inconsistent energy, weird motivation, and lack of juujuu. Join the club for what is going on? Join the club of what happened to all those friends I used to text with and see sometimes? Join the club for finding something — purpose for lack of a better word — in what we’re doing here. Join the club of guilty moms, partners, friends, daughters, sisters, dog owners, and humans. Join the club for digging and finding out. Join the club for connection, and dare I say, Assembly.

This is a club for sharing — because of course — but it’s also a club for acting. So how do you join? I don’t know, just be here? Let me know what’s going on with you and I’ll do anything in my power to help. I bet the rest of you will too.⁴

I am at my best when I am putting one and one together. People, ideas, activities. That is what I can do, have done, and will again.

While this is a space of learning, I also want to decouple our practices from our sense of self worth. I no longer believe in assigning virtuousness to any particular behavior, so you won’t find that here. Working out more or using the right products, drinking certain drinks, and taking powders and pills, don’t make you better or worse. They really, truly don’t. We can share, but we cannot proselytize.

I’m still learning all the time. This week alone has taught me a ton. As I sat on a curb, mere blocks from my home, in a neighborhood where I don’t have close friends, clutching a crying little kid who can’t tell me how hurt she is, I was reminded of these things.

1. I must do what I can to mitigate harm within myself and to others. Risk exists, accidents happen, and more is coming, always. It’s my job to know me best and I don’t have to do it alone.

2. Having a set of tools around decision-making will serve you in moments large and small, urgent and less so. You will have times of having to do this without the input of others and the guidance of others can get you in a good place for when that happens.

3. Never underestimate the value of connection. We don’t all need a ton (but I do love having lots of them!) but when we are in moments of panic, there is nothing more lonely. Nurture your lifelines and be one.

This is my “wellness” north star today. I want to figure out a bit more about what’s going on under my skin, which I know will be a process. I want to get back to what I think I do best and I want to connect, reconnect.

I want to open this conversation up. Where are you surprising yourself? Where are you finding purpose in the larger sense? What is going on with you – in parenting, in body stuff, in anxiety, in joy? There is room for joy.

I have made mistakes. I have been the catalyst for accidents. I will again and again, but I am learning. There is a lot going on in the world — places we can channel energy and be helpful. I am working on a personal thesis of this and will share it soon; I think this will be a way we can work together.

I miss you. Want to join the club? Take a step.

1. Membership starts here. Come as you are, say hi. I’ll make a t-shirt or something.

2. Ask for something, anything, and see what comes. How can I help?

3. Or tell me the story of a mistake, an accident, a moment. We’re in this together, baby! Be messy.

4. Be unafraid in this very small space — do we want to gather, chat, write, run, escape. I don’t know!

5. Be ready to bust something wide open.

6. Go for a [run/walk/sit/stay] and tell us about it.

7. Invite someone in who could use a gold old fashioned conversation.

8. Ask me anything, always!

Permission granted, always. What if no one wants to do this? But oh, what if they do.

xo,

Molly

P.S. There is a tremendous amount going on in the world. I try not to be scared to write for fear of not acknowledging everything. I do not always get it right — at all. One place I donated this week to protect children other than my own is to Kindred Space LA, the only Black-owned and operated birthing center in Los Angeles.

Just a few quick links today:

1. Two new podcasts from people I adore: Heather Caplan’s about topics no one talks about and Jo Piazza’s all about one thing we certainly don’t talk about: women having affairs.

2. And one not from friends: Vibe Check

3. Paying too much (but not too too much) for sneakers is a fatal flaw. These are my new faves. I know this is what some of you are here for. More shopping next time.

4. I am not a supplement person (see everything above) but after this podcast and this article (and FINE Dr. Mark Hyman, I talk a big game but am immune to nothing!) I am trying out Fatty15.

5. Should we bring back book club? I am currently enjoying Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

1. 🎶 come with me on my 5-9 before my 9-5 🎶…which is a literal thing that young people do on TikTok where they wake up at 3:30 am to clean their apartments, do chores, walk on a treadmill incline, meal prep and have seven step skincare regimens before the makeup get ready with me which are intriguing until you remember they have 22-year-old skin …and again, all all of this before work and they don’t even have children? And we wonder why mental health is at an all-time low? That’s not health and wellness, that’s social media convincing you there’s virtue in inflicting this schedule on yourself….I could talk about this for hours, but I digress…

2

I am fine, really really. Don’t worry about me. This is not a cry for help! Just honesty!

3. I’m trying to avoid using the word “journey” here because frankly, I’m sick of it. You do you, it’s your…journey. But for me, this isn’t a journey. It’s more of an excavation. An exploration. A dig.

4. Should we get slack going again? Discord? WhatsApp group? Buddy system? Idk, what do you think? This is all a tiny tiny idea for now. I, like all of us, have a lot “going on” with family and work and finding time for my own exercise, but we don’t know until we try. So, it’s something.