In a Word with Jacey Verdicchio

Welcome to the companion podcast to the In A Word newsletter!

This is episode four: change. (You can read the change issue of the newsletter here.)

I’ve been thinking about change a lot for the past three years. My husband named 2017 the “year of transition,” which is a gentle way of saying “year of change.” He got tenure, and I quit podcasting. I stayed at my job, but it changed dramatically. We moved apartments, and many of our close friends moved away. We had a baby. We kept comforting ourselves with this “year of transition” business when the upheaval felt like too much, promising ourselves that a new homeostasis would somehow arrive with a new calendar year.

I’m not sure when in 2018 that we looked up at each other and said, “Is this just adulthood? A constant transition from one thing to the next?”

I read a book this summer that was illuminating for me in a lot of ways. In the early chapters, I wasn’t even sure I would stick with it. By the end, I had goosebumps and was tearing up at the end of every chapter.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a memoir of sorts. The author is a therapist, and a personal upheaval in her own life prompts her to seek therapy for herself. The book interweaves her story with the stories of several of her clients, and its central question is: how do people change? Relevant to our discussion here, I’d say.

In one of her sessions with her therapist, he says: “the nature of life is change, and the nature of people is to resist change.”

This little quote gave me so much comfort while simultaneously exploding this neat little story Mike and I had been telling ourselves about “transition.” We’d been naively imagining change in a time bound box, a state that would eventually leave us alone.

There are changes we set out to make- the new exercise routine, the daily prayer practice, the drastic haircut. As someone who thrives on these kind of changes and resists even the most minor of changes not of my making, I wonder if we make the changes we can to stave off the ones we can’t control. In the last episode, Dream, I mentioned that my big dreams are often the mechanism I think will make me feel how I want to feel.

Similarly, the changes we choose are about how we want to feel, and how we don’t. We want to feel capable, confident, strong, loved, and successful. Maybe we seek a career change, a hair color, a yoga class to get there. On the flip side, we don’t want to feel out of control, unstable, like a victim of circumstance or rejected. Hence our resistance to the unexpected job loss, errant gray hair, canceled yoga class.

It seems that our relationship with change is a complicated one: we crave it, and we resist it. We fear it to the point of denial at times, and we feel desperate for it at others. One year a cascade of change gives us whiplash; another, we feel stuck, afraid nothing will ever change.

We feel unmoored by change, and electrified by it. We orchestrate it, and we feel blindsided by it. We lament it in other people, when we feel left behind or rejected in the wake of their transformations. And, we wring our hands over unhealthy family scripts, toxic tendencies, and addictive compulsions that play out the same, every time. We wait a long time to admit it, even to ourselves, when marble solid beliefs have slowly been carved into a different shape.

If you’re listening to this in real time, we’re on the edge of a change of seasons. There’s something about this particular shift, from summer to fall, that lends itself to fresh starts. Wallace Stegner puts it well, in this quote from Angle in Repose:

“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”

I hope you find yourself at the beginning of some welcome change this almost-fall day. Listen to the episode for a poem and benediction on this theme!

As always, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on anything this episode calls to mind for you. Connect with me on Instagram or email me ([email protected]) to let me know!

Gratefully, Jacey

If you like In a Word, please share it!

* Take a screenshot of your favorite part to share on Instagram. (Tag me @jaceyverdicchio and use hashtag #inawordnewsletter)!

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Welcome to the companion podcast to the In A Word newsletter! This is episode three: dream.

My husband dreams about traffic on the way to the airport. Not day-to-day traffic, but the kind that makes him detour into the entirely wrong city. He dreams that he is at a crowded restaurant, with a large party, and they can’t find his reservation. The group assembled behind him is a crashing of his worlds: a grad school mentor, an acquaintance who’s moved, his niece. He wakes up knowing he didn’t miss the flight, or fumble the reservation, but he can’t shake the anxiety. His body reads the subconscious stresses as gospel, even as his mind points to fact.

I have been dreaming lately of the past. I dream about people I haven’t thought of in years that once meant the world to me. I dream of acquaintances that meant little to me. I dream of things I’m too afraid to know, memories I no longer trust. In the dark, while I am safe under the covers, my mind works them out. Upon waking, I allow myself to ask if my dreams are trying to tell me something, if God is. Dreams are figments of our imaginations. But sometimes they’re more true than what we tell ourselves in the light of day.

And then there are the dreams we’re desperate to translate into reality. Dream jobs and homes. Dream vacations and dream days. I’m not opposed to such dreams, though I’ve been wondering what’s behind them lately. I’m convinced that usually, the job, the house, the baby isn’t about the tangible thing itself, but how we want to feel. Maybe owning a home feels like security, achieving a professional goal or having a child feels like significance.

This is the tricky way we begin to put existential stakes on the tangible, changeable pieces of our lives. So I’ve begun to ask myself what I really want when I set my sights on lofty dreams. I might never stop seeking meaning or security or confidence through new jeans, an organized pantry, or accolades, but I’m at least going to be honest about what I’m really aiming for.

And here’s my deep hope: that the big dreams my generation has been taught to chase would extend beyond us and outgrow us. That our big dreams wouldn’t simply be to serve ourselves, but to serve the world. That we could keep a kernel of vision untouched by cynicism, turn our collective gaze from our navels to the world. This is the big dream. I don’t know how to get there. I should probably start with organizing this closet, right?

(Not a complete transcript of the episode, but other written pieces can be found in the newsletter proper!)

Thanks for listening!

Welcome to In a Word, a newsletter that cultivates thoughtfulness, one word at a time. If a friend forwarded you this email, click here to subscribe.

Hey there!

Three exciting things about this issue- an audio edition, a new look, and a giveaway!

* You may have noticed the giant “play” button at the top of this email. That’s because there’s an audio edition of this issue. To listen in your podcast app of choice, click the “listen in podcast app” link just below the player.

Click here for step-by-step instructions to add it to your podcast app manually if this email was forwarded to you, or if you’re reading in a browser. Or, hit the play button to listen right in your browser.

* I worked with Erin of Primavera Studio to refresh the graphics and aesthetic of the newsletter!

* To celebrate one year and the new look, I’m giving away a gift card to someone who shares In A Word on social media this week. (Tag me @jaceyverdicchio so I see that you shared.) Gift card is winner’s choice: $10 to Target or Starbucks. I’ll choose a winner (by random selection) on August 20th!

In this issue, we’re exploring the word “wait.” A paradox of my generation is that we don’t have to wait for anything but we’re always waiting for something. We can one-click order most anything, skip grocery lines with order pickup, and get instant feedback on Instagram. But existentially, we’re holding our breath, waiting for our lives to mean something. Waiting for a partner, a calling, a pregnancy to arrive so our real lives can begin.

If we trained ourselves to wait when the stakes are inconsequential, I wonder if we could more easily step into the flow of life and stop waiting for it to begin. I wonder if the existential hope and dread of life would dissipate some if we didn’t live every minute looking for something outside of what’s already here.

In this issue, you’ll find an essay about the caution parents give new parents to ‘“ just wait.” Then, you’ll find a collection themed around waiting, and a closing benediction.

“Oh, just wait.”

Occasionally, it’s presented as encouragement in an Instagram post “to moms of littles” from a mom of bigs: one day, they’ll wipe their own butts, and sleep in, and load the dishwasher instead of unloading it onto the floor while you try to load it.

Sometimes it’s said smugly, by a grizzled mom who’s seen the front lines of bodily fluid spills, cross-eyed exhaustion, and high-decibel screaming. She laughs in the face of your hypothetical ideals. She can’t help but smirk sideways at your intentions—plans that she, too, once laid. What seems to really get under her skin is the hubris, the illusion of control.

Maybe it’s rooted in lingering shame over the ways she feels she “failed.” Maybe it’s retroactive repulsion at her former self’s naiveté. For one reason or another, she’s compelled to spew her hard-won, fire-tried perspective onto unsuspecting pregnant ladies. She holds high this poor woman’s labor/breastfeeding/sleep training hopes and sends them plummeting like a watermelon from a second story window.  

She is desperate to disabuse this woman—or maybe her former self—of her dreamy ideals. Enjoy your fashion-forward overalls while you can; you’ll be wearing milk-stained sweatpants with a busted waistband for the next decade!

Even the “dear moms of little ones” genre often drips with condescension. They’re hitting a more harmonious note, but I can hear that minor key in the background. They still know better than you. They know that these days of endless runny noses and rejected vegetables are to be cherished, because it will all be over soon—too soon.

Their wistfulness is withering to those of us in the trenches, because the desire to see for ourselves is as deeply held as their desire to show us a better way. We want to believe that we will not have to surrender the whole of ourselves on the altar of motherhood.

We want to believe that it’s not an altar at all, consuming our sacrifices with ravenous hunger, but just another role we can add to our textured view of ourselves. We are holding out hope that it won’t be the slog we so often see portrayed in media, social and otherwise.

Just two years in, my parenting “philosophy” bears many (teeth) marks of reality. Resolve and limits have been tested. The rubber has met the road—(and my daughter’s mouth, when breastfeeding didn’t work for us).

You’ve never met someone more determined than I was to give birth without pain relief. I wasn’t going to “wait and see” how labor went—I was committed. But my labor ended abruptly with a Cesarean.

I was equally hell-bent on breastfeeding. Like many women, I assumed something so “natural” would come, well, naturally. Unlike labor, which ended after 18 hours, (my steel will be damned), I dragged the battle to breastfeed over six grueling months of misery. I had no choice but to follow my body’s surrender when I stopped producing milk altogether.

So, am I one of those opinion-spewing moms now, here to tell you that breastfeeding isn’t really that important, and that “healthy mom, healthy baby” is the only delivery outcome that matters?

I’ll never forget a conversation with our pediatrician when I was at my wit’s end with breastfeeding struggles. “Is it important to you?” she asked. When I said yes, she said, “Then we keep trying.” In that moment she gave me both the freedom to stop if I wanted, and the encouragement to keep going. She gave me the agency to choose without flippantly waving off my desire.

Desire and determination may be good, or they may be misplaced, but they are nearly impossible to talk a person out of with such flimsy stuff as reason. I’d have ripped the butt paper off the table in rage if she’d dared to tell me about the advances in formula nutrition in that moment.

For me, it wasn’t about the inherent value of my birth plan or breastfeeding, but how they were totems of stubbornly held beliefs I needed to shed. Like, that I can bend reality by sheer force of will and white-knuckling. That to stop short of doing “everything I can” would be failure. That the birth and nourishing of a baby, animal and miracle at once, can be so crudely drawn in terms of “success” or “failure.”

Perhaps the advice-giving mothers aren’t filled with bitter regret for their “failures.” Perhaps they regret categorizing their mothering choices into columns—success v. failure, good v. bad—in the first place. Perhaps their wills have been broken, and what they found on the other side wasn’t the heartache of defeat, but the freedom of accepting their own humanity.

That’s what happened to me, anyway. A world of liberating nuance opened up for me as a mother, and as a person. I’ve tended toward black-and-white, moralistic thinking my whole life, and these initiating motherhood experiences finally shook some of that loose.

I’m like the blind person Jesus healed by rubbing clay in his eyes. My crystalized vision needed muddying so I could better see grace. What I deemed precious gems had to be pried from my hands for me to see that they were actually fool’s gold.

Expecting moms and new moms: I don’t know if it will be like this for you. But if you’re afraid of losing yourself, like I was—maybe you will. Maybe you’ll lose parts of yourself you didn’t even know were weighing you down. Maybe one day you’ll meet your tired eyes in the mirror and by magical paradox, you’ll see all you’ve gained through what you’ve lost.

Oh, and if you’re even a little inclined to, definitely wear the maternity overalls.

In the Waiting Room of Estranged Spouses - a man finds comfort in coincidences while he’s hurting.

Wait for Me chronicles the boundless, legendary loyalty of dogs. I will never, ever get tired of reading stories like this. My favorite part is when Helen Keller describes her puppy as an “angel in fur.” GOOD BOY.

I really like the blog Wait But Why. Its posts are insightful and funny about human motivation, self-sabotage and more. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate is a good one to start with.

Emily P. Freeman has some wise words for us about waiting in the “Wait, Now Go” episode of The Next Right Thing podcast.

I appreciated this honest grappling with the unsatisfying void the author finds between shame-driven purity culture and a consent ethic.

Summer will forever hold memories of waiting for Bets:

A few last links worth a click:

* This homemade bread takes 18+ hours to rise, but is worth the wait. Bookmark it for fall!

* The Hamilton cast performs a 360º version of Wait For It:

* I used to have this song on a “Calm” playlist in college and I forgot how good it is:

* As a person, 2019 John Mayer > 2010 John Mayer, but doesn’t his shaggy mop remind us of simpler times?

In the waiting rooms of life, may agitation give way to settled calm. May we learn to hold our breath without feeling like we’re underwater.

May we settle into the in-between, waiting with hope rather than dread, hope that extends like a daisy chain, one moment at a time.

When we find ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop, may we feel the ground beneath us. Both shoes are present and accounted for, rooting us here, now.

As always, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on anything this issue calls to mind for you. Simply respond to this email to let me know.

And share In A Word this week if you’d like to enter the giveaway!

Gratefully, Jacey

Connect with me elsewhere: Instagram | Twitter

If you like In a Word, please share it!

* Forward this email to a friend.

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Welcome to this audio companion to the In A Word newsletter! Click “Listen in podcast app” link above, just below the player, to listen.

(If this is the first email you’re getting from me, welcome! You can read the latest issue of the newsletter—In A Word: Vacation—here.)

My original vision for In A Word included a podcast, but I wasn’t sure what that would even look like. Interviews? Me reading my essays or poems, spoken-word style, with snaps?

I’m still not sure. But while I was working on the vacation issue, my friend Courtney was taking her family of five on their annual—as in, they do it EVERY YEAR—weeks-long road trip.

And it struck me that this would be the perfect trial podcast-y content for In A Word. (Terri Pershey DM’ed me the phrase “audio postcard,” which is the perfect description.) Courtney agreed to sit down with me, so that’s what we did!

How to listen:

* If you want to listen in your podcast app, the easiest way is to click the “Listen in podcast app” link at the top of this email.

* Or, you can add it manually by pasting this URL into your app: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1820.rss

Here’s what that looks like in the Apple Podcasts app:

* Or, you can simply click the play button at the top of the email and listen on your phone or computer. (You’ll be using Wifi or data to listen since you won’t be downloading it, so be aware of that.)

If this ever becomes a more regular thing, I’ll certainly submit it as a show to iTunes so you can subscribe like you would any other podcast. But thanks for bearing with me in the meantime!

Things Courtney mentioned:

* Kid road trip activities: Look and See books, Water Wow, crayons, markers, coloring sheets (NOT books), journal, audiobooks, movies.

* USA’s Best Trips Guidebook

* Road trip snacks: bougie beef jerky, fancy popcorn, cheese sticks, plantain chips, granola, guac single serving cups, fruit snacks, microwaveable mac and cheese.

* Vacucraft water bottles

* Elta MD sunscreen (this is the one I recently bought)

Connect with Courtney:

* Instagram (She is a fantastic follow!)

* All The Best Days podcast

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this audio postcard! Simply respond to this email to let me know.

Gratefully, Jacey

Connect with me elsewhere: Instagram | Twitter

If you like In a Word, please share it! Here’s how:

* Forward this email to a friend.

* Take a screenshot of your favorite part to share on Instagram. (Tag me @jaceyverdicchio and use hashtag #inawordnewsletter!)

* Use the arrow button below to share on Facebook or Twitter.

* Text the link to a friend.

Some links in this email are affiliate links, which means if you use them and buy something, I’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work!