Housekeeping, Month Two-ish

on Fleishman is in Trouble, relationship grief and all the various gazes. Also, come write with me about death and let's make a mix tape as the toilet explodes/room caves in.

when the symbolism is obvious: a memoir

I started blogging again (aka this substack) in early November so it’s actually closer to month three but I’m always somewhat off with my timing (time is a construct! what even is time!) so just consider this an update, months be damned.

First of all, we need to talk about:

1. Fleishman is in Trouble (Hulu)

I mean, we are talking about it! And if you’re a paid subscriber (thank you, thank you!) you can join our chat, here. I also highly recommend this piece by Amanda Montei whose work I cherish and adore.

I have now watched the series twice bc, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I found the first watch somewhat life changing and judging by the conversations I’ve had with other 40/50-something women these past few weeks, I am not alone. The average middle-aged Fleishman is in Trouble viewer has watched the series 2.5 times and is now reading the book according to a Johns Hopkins study. Just kidding, but also not really because this show REALLY hit, and I want to talk about why it hit especially hard for me.

Spoilers may or may not be ahead so if you haven’t watched Fleishman is in Trouble yet, you might want to skip down to the next part… wayyyyy down there past this part.

I’m still processing the show so forgive me if my thoughts are disjointed and half-baked. And while I have yet to finish it, I am now reading the book (which I have found to be nearly identical to the series so far — a case for authors to EP/write their own adaptations) but I want to take a moment to address the point of impact of this show and how it made me interrogate my own gaze and its filters. And why it brought me back to my oldest daughter’s birth.

Years ago, I prided myself on being a one-of-the-guys girl. I lived with male roommates, spent the majority of my time with male friends, felt empowered being the only girl in the room. If and when I did bond with a woman in my late teens/early twenties, it was because she was just like me — the token girl in a sea of boys.

My fear of women and girls was so pivotal to my identity that when I found out I was pregnant with Archer, I prayed he was a boy. When years later I found out I was pregnant with a daughter I was in crisis.

I was so afraid to raise a daughter, afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it right — that I wouldn’t be strong enough. That she would be difficult for me to love in the same way.

I wrote the following in 2012:

When I was first pregnant, I wanted a boy. I wanted all boys. I wanted Fable to be a boy because I didn't want a daughter. I had already experienced one teenage girl's coming of age. I resented my femininity on too many occasions. My … boobs, body.

If I had another son I could still be one of the boys.

With a daughter, I would have to change. I would have to respect myself for her…

I’ve written about Fable’s birth many times throughout the years — how it changed who I was on such a fundamental level. What it was like to go from thinking I was incapable of raising girls to figuring it out in real time.

It was almost as if I released something when she came out of me. Knowing her now, this makes so much sense and in so many ways my children have raised me and not the other way around, but my journey — like all of our journeys — has been a wild one full of conundrums and 180s in perspective.

And now that my oldest daughter is a teenager and her sisters are on the cusp of the same fate, I recognize so much of myself in them while witnessing a kind of strength they all possess that I was unaware of in myself at their ages.

Anyway. There is a moment when Libby (who is spiraling in her own existential midlife turmoil unable to see the overlap in her story and the one she, and by default, us has spent six episodes judging) sees Rachel, and everything shifts.

This was the moment for me.

The OH FUCK I WAS WRONG. HOW OFTEN HAVE I BEEN WRONG. WHAT AM I GETTING WRONG RIGHT NOW THAT I THINK I’M GETTING RIGHT.

It's not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though
By now you know

It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

It was in that moment on the bench that I went from identifying with one woman to EVERY woman. At least that’s what it felt like. Like suddenly we were all the same. Lost. Fucked up. Trying our best as the world caves in around us.

The fact that any of us assume a female gaze is less misogynistic than a male gaze is patently false. Which sucks and it feels misogynistic to even type those words, but the truth is — at least in my experience — many women are dripping with just as much if not more misogyny than our male counterparts. Which is why I spent YEARS rejecting feminism. Because I equated feminism with being pro-woman and frankly, for many years, I wasn’t. Because the majority of the criticism I experienced in my teens and early twenties came from girls and women. And I was too naive to realize that their misogyny came from a culture that rewarded it. In men, yes, but also in women. Internalized misogyny is real and we. all. carry. it. around. with. us. Even after all these years of unlearning, I still find it my pockets.

In Fleishman Libby is one of the boys. Which is made clear from a title that pledges its concern for a man. Fleishman may be in trouble but what about Libby and Rachel? Where are their stories in the first six episodes? Here we have a show narrated by women — ABOUT WOMEN in middle age — and we spend the majority of it distracted by a dad who has to (gulp) take care of his own children and occasionally fuck a women wayyyyyyyy out of his league.

But that’s the point. And as viewers we get swept into his story the same way Libby has — at least I did. We get so swept up in it we forget to recognize that uptown, there is another side.

From the get, Libby is there for Toby Fleishman and Seth (Adam Brody) in a way they are not there for her. She is a useful to them — a mother and caretaker — someone to confide in. Beyond that she is seemingly only of use to them when they are not in relationships with other women.

Libby does what I spent so many years doing — being the beck and call girl for needy dudes — showing up for them with advice and support without expecting it in return. Putting men in crisis first. Becoming everyone’s therapist. Fuck buddy. Phone call. Wanting desperately to be included, respected, given the same opportunities TO EAT THE WORLD. Boy mom meets friend with benefits as personality type.

And then there’s the part where Libby doesn’t seem to have a single female friend. Acquaintances, yes, but she seems to hate them, resent them, fear that she has become them. They are not cool. And if she were to befriend them, it would mean… she has accepted a life that is also uncool. So? She vapes in a hammock and dreams of her glory days as… one of the boys.

It took me many years to trust, love and build a community of women I adore and trust implicitly — all of whom I’d kill for. All of whom I believe would kill for me, too. Meanwhile, my relationships with men have all but disappeared in the last twenty years. First, because I was married. And then again, because I was single. (IYKYK)

My point being, I am no longer a "one of the boys” type o’ girl.

Not even close.

At least….

I didn’t think I was. Until I started watching the show and judging the shit out of Rachel, relating wholeheartedly to Libby and the boys, forgetting what I should have known better — especially after all of the stories I’ve absorbed in the last few years — that a man’s version of a woman’s story — even when filtered through another woman’s lens, is not her story. That men will hide behind their women — friends, associates, lawyers, new wives, lovers — in order to become more empathetic. Professionally. Politically. Personally….

Women hate in each other what we fear in ourselves. Perhaps men do, too, but for women — our hatred of each other keeps men safe. Because it keeps women quiet. Who’s gonna hate you if you keep your mouth shut, your legs closed, your ambition to yourself.

And watching the bench scene followed by the last two episodes of the show, made me think about the ways in which women empathize with men — even when it pulls us away from our own truths and belief systems. That women are socially rewarded for criticizing each other. Judging each other’s instincts to fight or flight or fuck or freeze instead of digging deeper into why.

Why does she feel threatened? Why does she feel lonely? What caused her to reach this point where she can’t not blow up her entire life. Why is she supporting her family on OnlyFans? Why doesn’t she get a *real* job?

Beyond that, we’re ALL SO VERY human and choosing to judge others does nothing but call attention to our own hypocrisy.

Which is why I think the show affected so many of us the way it did. Because we all KNOW. We ALLLLL FUCKIN KNOW what it feels like to question how the fuck we got here.

To compare.

To wonder if…

To fall apart.

Want one thing.

Want no things.

Want it all.

Every mid-life is in itself a crisis. How could it not be? To claim mid-life is to assume we’re going live a full life which begs the question: what IS a full life? Did we do it right? It certainly is HARDER than we expected it would be — more complicated for sure. So what now? we ask. Should we change directions? Turn around? Jump and swim to a completely different shore?

Yeah, dude. Same.

I recently looked into going back to school because I was like, fuck, I can’t support my team much longer. I have managed to stay afloat as the sole parent of four growing humans for almost five years on a measly writers’ income in a city where 5600 in rent is considered SO CHEAP WHY WOULD YOU EVER MOVE, digging into a dwindling savings account every few months, but it’s become unsustainable. So what now? What to do when we hit 40 and realize that our lives-as-we’ve known them cannot go on the way they are. Not just financially but professionally. Maritally. As mothers and creative professionals who were able to hustle ten jobs in our twenties but not so much at 41 with soon-to-be-college-aged children…

It’s a LOT and it’s been a lot, and yesterday, while plunging a toilet that was overflowing with shit, I had my first panic attack of 2023.

It was necessary after the week I had. The plumber was here DAYS AGO before fixing a pipe I broke when trying to snake a sink myself the week before (which I did to SAVE money and ended up having to dish out way more than I would have had I NOT tried. An electrical outage came next — one I could only partially turn back on with the breaker box.) This has been a pattern lately. A reminder that I can’t do it all myself. And that trying is ALSO unsustainable. EVEN THOUGH I REALLY FUCKING WANT TO DO IT ALL MYSELF. I want to find a way. WHY CAN’T I FIND A WAY.

And my girls, who were home with me, just kept passing me towels as the water overflowed, like yo, we got you. At one point I looked down and there must have been twenty towels there. My kids just kept going back to the towel closet to get me more of them until I was no longer surrounded by overflow — I was surrounded by wet towels.

And my daughters in the doorway asking me what else I needed until I finally wailed EVERYTHING. I NEED EVERYTHING. NEVER MIND. SORRY. I DON’T NEED ANYTHING. THANK YOU FOR TOWELS I LOVE YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME SPACE SO I CAN CLEAN THIS UP I’LL BE OKAY I JUST NEED TO… HYPERVENTILATE FOR APPROXIMATELY FOUR MORE MINUTES.

Which I did. And then I was fine.

And then I Cloroxed the shit out of everything through sniffles and hiccups and then I was okay and made dinner and went back to being myself.

My point…

There is so much to mine from this time in our lives and Fleishman nailed it better than any show I’ve ever seen. And yes, I have an extra cigarette. A light, too. Here. I won’t tell anyone.

Speaking of experience-mining, I’m very excited to announce a class I’ll be teaching with my dear friend, Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of my Inheritance, Anxiety: the Missing Stage of Grief, and After This.

Claire and I first chatted about doing this workshop back in September when she hosted me for a salon and book signing in Mill Valley. Claire is a brilliant writer and therapist and has been writing on the Internet for as long as I have. We have recently become dear friends and there is NO ONE I would want to partner with for this class more. She brings so much experience, expertise, wisdom and honestly to her work and I am absolutely thrilled and humbled to join forces with her in this.

The Living Gaze factors into so much more than just writing about grief. It’s about spelunking into the ravines of our relationships with the dead; past, present and future.

To have a living gaze insinuates that our aliveness becomes more pronounced in the wake of a loss — that while grief is universal and death happens to all of us, our experiences with dying, death and our own aliveness are deeply personal, layered and for many of us, difficult to dig into because of societal expectation, familial relationships and how we hold, metabolize and define ourselves by our trauma. Beyond that, writing about someone who is no longer alive is to accept the ethical ambiguity (cc: What is Consent to a Ghost) that comes with writing about someone who is no longer alive. How do we center our stories within the emotional landmines of our grief? How do we stay honest when tasked with another person’s legacy as well as our own? Are we even willing to?

I bring this up because the majority of people who I have spoken to — who are looking for guidance in writing their own memoirs— bring this up all the time. (I know they do for Claire as well.)

Writing honestly about our experiences — not as heroes but as humans can feel terrifying. It is also, in my experience, a liberation. Grief has and will always be complicated. Just like the love at its cause. To explore our own grief is to explore our humanity at its most visceral. But first we must allow ourselves — and everyone else — to be human. To be great. To be terrible. To be flawed.

The Living Gaze is open to all and it costs $299 for six weeks (that’s less than $50 a class!) and I will be available for hire when the class is over if you are interested in working with me directly. All classes will be recorded so if you cannot make every class in person, you will still have access to all recordings.

You can find more about our class and weekly curriculum, here!

And speaking of grief, this week on SEX AND THE SINGLE MOM, we’re talking about the permanent grief of an unwanted divorce:

You can read the column in its entirety, here.

My book, All of This has been out in the world for 5+ months so I’m giving away 5 copies for those who have generously chosen to support this newsletter with a paid subscription. (Thank you for your support!)

To win please comment below with… your favorite song to blast when you need to pump yourself up after dealing with a shit parade. Braid Anthems: VOLUME ONE. (I’ll share it in a follow up post, here. For me, it’s CRIMINAL by Fiona Apple. It always makes me feel alive and MEAN when I need to feel mean and alive. Since 1997, baby.)

give me room to lay the law then let me go

Big love, solidarity and gratitude once again for supporting my work here, elsewhere and always. xxx