Notes On: Rules for Healing
Bc that's what Spring is for, right?
“I wanted to get the tears out of the way so I could act sensibly” — Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. What I say, is that the world will end in the constant need to be happy (read: Smile or Die). Because our whole society seems to spin to the melody of achievement, of amelioration, of happiness – leaving those other, thornier, less sexy emotions to fend for themselves (thereby multiplying their effect).
Because what’s worse than the feeling of heartbreak, of sadness, of loss? The feeling that you should be over it by now. That incessant, societal pressure to be ever-carefree, ever-improving, ever-happy. (There’s a reason that ‘happily ever after’ are the most powerful words in the literary canon).
Every few weeks, I ask my gorgeous paid subscribers what they’d like me to write about. This week, their response was overwhelming: healing. From a reader:
Maybe something to do with healing? I'm happy for the sunshine and the longer days but I'm also still navigating grief and therapy and the two sometimes feel very at odds with one another. I know you're often inspired by playlists so think the vibes of Clean by Taylor Swift on my better days and "help I'm still at the restaurant" on my bad days.
Oh, she knows me so well.
This ‘notes from the mailbox’ piece would normally be just for my paid subscribers. But post-zine sell-out (!!!!) I thought I’d lift the paywall as a tiny thank you.
Notes On: Rules for Healing
Cook pasta every night. Eat it with olive oil and grated cheddar cheese on the sofa, to the accompaniment of reality TV.
Read an Instagram post by someone who calls themselves a self-help ‘guru.’
Type a phrase from it into your notes app: time heals all wounds.
Text your friends and tell them that you’re entering your ‘healing girl era.’
When they ask what this entails, tell them: any kind of green drink (juice, matcha); a Pinterest board filled with athleisure; the concept of convalescence, Victorian-style.
Create said Pinterest board. Fill it with lambs basking in long grass, wild-flowers and cool tumblers of home-made oat milk.
Become temporarily fascinated by Emily Mariko. By farmers markets and slicing cucumber into long, thin strips to store, upright, in glass containers filled with water. Like tiny soldiers. Salmon rice in ceramic bowls and oversized kitchens bathed in natural light.
Drink lots of water.
Spend five minutes every half an hour on the loo.
Realise that this might not be the way to heal yourself, after all.
Google the word: ‘convalescence.’ Come across an article in The New Yorker by a doctor who wants to bring the word back into consciousness because, as he writes, ‘research increasingly suggests that the Victorians had a point. Sleep empowers us to fight infection; good nutrition allows us to repair wounds; time in nature has been shown to lift moods, alleviate pain, and lower blood pressure. Companionship can reduce the lethality of disease.’
Flick your eyes down to where he writes about the importance of structural change, and let your mind drift to that thing you heard a while back: that we’re often individually trying to fix the problems caused by an ailing society.
Feel very lost, and very stuck, for a moment.
Look out the window. Click your phone shut. Take three deep breaths. Notice that your tea has gone cold, but you still have the biscuit you brought up from the kitchen for your afternoon snack. Take one, tentative bite. Savour the feeling on your tongue: the smooth chocolate against the crumbling biscuit.
Download an astrology app. Read its daily predictions every morning in bed. Realise this is all you needed, all along: guidance, mapped by the stars, and potentially an AI-algorithm.
(Choose to ignore this last part).
Download a journaling app because writing by hand makes your hand ache in a way that reminds you, viscerally, of exams.
Download a meditation app.
And a yoga app.
And a breathwork app.
Realise your screen-time has crept up without you noticing. That you’re now averaging nine hours a day looking at this tiny portal to hell.
Delete Instagram.
And TikTok.
And Hinge.
Attempt to read a self-help book about ‘caring less’ only to find yourself caring a lot about how much you care.
Call your best friend.
Allow her to tell you that your tendency to care so much is the best bit about you. That she wouldn’t change it for the world, and neither should you. Notice as tiny needles appear behind your eyes.
Allow yourself to cry in (but not limited to):
The shower
The bathrooms at work
The train station
The bath
Let your friend’s words echo within your mind as you do: it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to hurt. In fact, it’s more than okay: it’s part of what it means to be human.
Sleep. A lot. For whole days. Whole weekends. Take to your bed and commit yourself to rest.
Try open water swimming.
Stub your toe on a rock. Shiver all the way home. Notice that it makes you feel scared, and also alive, and for this reason you want to do it again.
One Saturday, go for a hike and think very profound thoughts from a summit (life is meaningless and meaningful at the same time; maybe I should move across the world; bees only live for a few weeks, but that’s all they ever know, and isn’t that weird – the relativity of time? Maybe I should get a bagel on the way home).
Drink bone broth in the morning and rub tea tree serums into your cheeks and burn lavender-scented essential oil before bed.
Stir Manuka honey into a turmeric-ginger latte.
Give up alcohol for a week.
Go to the sea, just to breathe the air.
Buy a rose quartz because someone wearing a nose ring with a tiny tattoo of a monstera on her wrist tells you that it promotes emotional healing and self-love.
Peel off a face-mask and sip hot lemon water every morning and repeat affirmations to yourself as you brush your teeth.
I am worthy / I am strong / I am, I am, I am
Spend a lot of time on Skyscanner. Create imaginary trips. To Sri Lanka, and Dubrovnik, and Cancun. Close your laptop and find that it’s gone dark and that it’s time for dinner, but you don’t have anything in.
Cook plain pasta with cheese, again.
Learn how to rest without guilt.
How to while away long Sunday afternoons.
How to plant herbs in your garden.
How to make focaccia.
How to recuperate in compassion, as opposed to remorse.
Clear out your fridge, which is now filled with mouldy strips of cucumber, ready—not for battle—but for retirement.
Change your sheets.
Try Pilates for the first time. Wonder where it’s been for your whole life. Realise that it teaches you something fundamental: that all you have to get through is this present, uncomfortable moment, and afterwards you’ll realise that you were stronger than you thought, and also that you feel better.
Notice, as you tap these exact words into your notes app, that if your whole purpose in life is to feel better, then you never will.
That you’ll just be stuck, in this ever-reinforcing loop, this treadmill of self-amelioration. Personal optimisation, sponsored by the American Dream. (#AD).
That you might just wake up, in ten, or twenty, or fifty years, and think: oh god, I’ve been so good, I’ve been getting better and better, I hardly ever check my phone anymore, and I never drink alcohol anymore, and I don’t eat refined sugar, but what about my LIFE?
That healing isn’t something you can do externally: with turmeric, or bath bombs, or face masks, or even playlists designed to echo your emotions back to you.
That healing is something that happens incrementally.
Like learning. Or growing.
That, unlike the quick-fixes promised to you by gurus on blogs, healing is quiet, and slow, and soft. It doesn’t announce itself, like a breaking news alert or even a text message. It whispers; in the internal monologue that accompanies you to sleep each night; in your dreams.
That healing is so slow, and so quiet, that one day you might be crying at Kings Cross because your train has been cancelled and you don’t have any of your overnight things or even somewhere to stay, and also you hate your job and think that maybe you’re making all the wrong life decisions, and a few weeks – or months, or even years – later, you’re sitting on a sun-drenched bench outside your best friend’s house, completely absorbed in the moment (the book, the birdsong, the buttered toast, the home-made latte perched next to you). That—just like growing up—you’ll one day realise that you’re all healed, and you have no idea how that happened. That all the Manuka honey and Pinterest and cheesy-pasta can’t take away from the raw, earth-shattering feeling of heartache. Of grief. Of loss. Of exhaustion.
That sometimes, the most healing thing you can do for yourself isn’t drinking green juice or even swimming in the sea: it’s allowing yourself simply to be.
P. S. A tiny reminder that a paid subscription gets you access to posts like these - in which I respond to requests from you. Also: the coolest, cutest, loveliest group chat to ever exist on the internet. (I may be biased, but also, it’s TRUE).
At the risk of stating the obvious, this post was … Healing. And also marvellously beautiful. Thank you Hannah, as always
Elaine Stritch with the ice cream really brought it home 🫶