Meeting the Page With Unfolded Underwear

Ritual as an on-ramp.

One of my favorite magazines,

Open Secrets

, published an essay I wrote about my inner turmoil around Carolyn’s beloved stuffed bunny and what I’d do if she hadn’t survived her cancer years.

It was a really difficult essay to write, and once it was done I was stuck on where to submit it— it is the raw truth of our experience, but it’s also a dark consideration. I was thrilled when I heard from Open Secrets that it was a fit. I’m so grateful to

Rachel Kramer Bussel

for giving this one a home.

As a Mom of a Sick Child, I Couldn’t Bear to Lose My Child’s Stuffed Bunny

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I recently participated in an 8-week journaling workshop led by the lovely

Amy Shearn

(her next session starts April 1st!) During our last session, the prompt and conversation centered on how our beliefs and approach to journaling had evolved over the course of the class.

Because everything is intertwined in ways I’ll never fully understand, a friend and I had been discussing something similar the week prior— how the way we come to the page has evolved over time. More specifically: how we entered into our writing life in our earliest days, and how we reengage after a period away.

When I first started writing, there was a lot of ritual. Journaling had always been slapdash, all grocery lists and half-thoughts, but writing was my essence and every moment I was engaged in it was a moment I felt compelled to refine, even memorialize.

I practiced my most elegant cursive over those early pages. I lit bergamot-scented candles and artfully arranged plates of my favorite snacks. I used special notebooks I bought at quaint paper stores and treasured bookshops. I had a writing hoodie I’d pull on with baggy sleeves and a deep hood that blocked out my periphery, effectively cutting me off from the world outside my mind.

There was the right music, the right setting, the right circumstances. I couldn’t have a headache or be tired, couldn’t lack focus or have a cold or a cramp in my foot. Any disturbance or inconvenience had the potential to throw me off my game. I wrote this way for a long time, only coming to the page when the circumstances were ideal.

Those early writing days remind me of the beginnings of all my closest friendships. They start out with the best intentions, a desire to show up as my ideal, most polished self. If I have plans to have a new friend over, I’ll begin cleaning my home the day before. I lift mounds of unfolded laundry off of the dining room chairs and hide it all in the dryer. I rinse out the dog bowls and lint-roll the couch. My kids will spend their afternoon laying flat on their stomachs sweeping under the beds and couch, reaching a broom into the farthest corners of every room.

I want to be organized, clean, well-dressed for new friends, even if it means spending their whole visit with my bra band digging into the center of my chest. I feel a pressure to show up under near-perfect circumstances, to make meaning out of our much-anticipated meeting.

As my relationships progress, eventually I release a lot of that need for control and lean into a state of trust and comfort. My best friends— the people who have come to know me over several decades, who’ve seen me through haunting depressive episodes and long periods between scrubbing out my tub— are more likely to be greeted by tumbleweeds of dog hair rolling along my hallway’s baseboards and lines of Numa slobber still drying on my throw blankets. We socialize on the couch because the dining room table is buried under a mound of my son’s unfolded underwear.

This is how I must come to the page, I now understand: with unfolded underwear. Which is to say, I have to come to it like I meet my old friends: unguarded, without pretense, and largely without ritual.

I’d love to wake up every morning with a clear path to my day’s work: a french press full of coffee waiting for me on the counter next to slices of sourdough smeared with butter, the kids off to school on time and without complaint. A bergamot candle flickers on my desk undisturbed by the cats, and the dog is walked and fed and down for a nap that will extend into lunchtime. The sink is empty, the dishwasher unloaded and refilled. No one microwaved nachos in the middle of the night and left a mess of cellulose-laced cheese shreds on the counter. The work of writing welcomes me with open arms, and I drift to it, serene, ready to begin.

This is the case on maybe one day out of every ninety.

The reality is that the make-or-break of my writing life, much like my long-term friendships, cannot rely on the perfect circumstances. I’d become so preoccupied with setting the scene (and so thrown off when my expectations weren’t met!) that I’d forget to enjoy my life.

I can’t only write when my morning has gone my way. I can’t only have friends over when I’ve had time to set the scene. I’m not willing to trust the most valuable elements of my life to circumstances that I can rarely achieve.

I’ve had to learn to shove a heap of Jack’s longswording padding into the far corner of my couch, offer a dear friend a chipped mug of store-brand tea, and say, please, sit down! as Numa’s tail obliterates the contents of my artfully-arranged coffee table.

I’ve had to learn to write from the couch because the cats knocked a plant over in my office and now it smells rank because I’m pretty sure they were peeing in it.

I’ve learned to come to the page like I meet my oldest friends: weathered, worn, wandering from room to room with a Cheetos snack bag tilted up to my face à la Kylie Kelce. There can be no pretense. Sometimes we grab a nice dinner, we dress up, we indulge, but that isn’t the backbone of our relationship.

I’ve learned that it isn’t about order or control— in relationships or in my writing life. It’s about showing up in the ways I am able, even when the house is a mess, even when I don’t feel ready.

Often the ordered path is necessary in order to find a way in to the messy middle. I needed the years of enticing ritual and ideal circumstances before I could acclimate to working through chaos. The years of scented candles on my desk and savored first sips of locally-roasted coffee helped me transition from my outer world into my inner one at a time when I couldn’t get there on my own.

There is no mistake or misstep in craving routine, but for a long time I believed I couldn’t write without it. Ritual, I’ve realized, isn’t the enemy— it’s the on-ramp.

Ritual opens the door. Habit keeps me in the room.

an ideal writing day: delicious veg-heavy lunch, hydration jar, notebooks neatly stacked, computer open, emotional support craft book at the ready. It was probably quiet. Surely everything went according to plan for that entire day.