Your messages after I posted last week were amazing. I want this week to be easier for all of us, so here's 20 Little Things to do in October to make life feel happier
I'm sharing what I'm doing this week to keep my mood up; if you share too, in comments, we should have a good list of things. I've also written about my week, which features marriage+pumpkin+No Kings.
The responses so many of you gave me to the piece I wrote last week, from a place of acute mental pain, last week has made me feel so much more whole and real; judging by the comments, I think it’s helped some of you feel more real, too. Isn’t it amazing, how healing it can be to simply name a feeling, and express it? And in sharing it, we know we are not alone. That’s what your comments all helped me feel, and I’m super grateful, because when I sat down to write that piece for you, I’d gone into that space, which I think is depression, where emotional pain has started to make me feel transparent.
You know that feeling? When you’re not quite sure where the edges of yourself start, and you feel like you are dissolving. Pleasure in normal things - a cup of tea, a chat, sunlight, sitting at the kitchen table with someone you care about - are replaced by a solidifying sense of nothingness: no joy, no pleasures, no patience, no optimism, no glimmers, no humour. By the time I had finished writing, I felt I’d written myself back into some feeling of existence; your very human responses confirmed this. As I said last week, writing it made me feel well enough to wear my pink jeans again.
And your responses! What beautiful messages you left for me. I feel so much closer to so many of you, having read your voices in the comments. I feel a much stronger sense of who YOU are, and I love that. I often wish that this page could become a real life meeting place (and when I get back to England, maybe it will become exactly that…), but reading your comments, I felt we were all sitting around this table I’m writing from now, chatting, connecting, and feeling human. Feeling real. Feeling part of something, together. Much like we do during Write with Me, my twice-weekly Zoom for paid subs to focus on work, reading, writing or anything else you have to do, which we can do together. Details of how to join are at the bottom of this post.
Read some of my past posts:
I know from experience that depression and low mood needs careful handling; you cannot be rough with it, but it needs tenderness and care. And the last week was much better than the time proceeding it. I had emotional dips, but not the big, edge-of-ledge plummet of the week before. The little things which felt devoid of joy last week came back into focus: walking across the park to school with the children on the first cooler day where it felt like autumn; lighting some good smelling pumpkin candles while I wrote early in the morning; making a cottage pie and a visit from a cousin who was in DC; watching Ten Things I Hate About You with Evangeline in bed together on Friday night and registering her delight in Heath Ledger, whose spirit truly is delightful (do you know who he is Mum? Yes, my sweet one, I really do); a text from a friend asking me to join her on the No Kings Protest; Evangeline’s excitement at the prospect of her first fitting for ballet pointe shoes; being beaten at Connect 4 by Lester. He is unbeatable at that game.
And it was a relief to make it back across the week to Friday again. We’d been to Virginia, where we filled the back of the car with pumpkins. I’ve never been to a pumpkin farm in England, but it’s something we’ve done every autumn now here, and it’s part of the ritual of this season, for sure. As you might know, I’m always happier out in the countryside, and the feeling of finding pumpkins is inherently slightly ridiculous.
Something there also BLEW my mind, in a good way. Did you know that watermelon can grow in the same place as pumpkins? Me neither! Pete pointed to this big green and yellow fruit amongst all the big orange ones, and said, “oh look, a watermelon.” I bustled over to look at it thinking, seriously, a watermelon. And I got all bossy on Pete and was like, “no no no, that’s clearly a marrow not a watermelon” (don’t be so utterly ridiculous, do you know nothing..another voice was saying in my head though luckily not out aloud.)
But then we saw another one, this time split open and HOT DAMN it was pink inside and full of seeds, it was only a flipping watermelon! I was so excited to see that, although it was a bit strange for the vibe. Watermelons make me think of feta and mint and a bikini, whereas in that slightly muddy autumnal pumpkin field I’d gone into full cinnamon and cosy blanket type of vibes in my head. I definitely wasn’t thinking cool summer fruit.
And at the weekend I also took the kids to the No Kings protest, which was huge, and heartwarming, and made me feel connected to 200,000 people in DC, which is not a feeling I have everyday living here, I can tell you. I posted a few snaps of it on my Instagram but it looked like this:
And here we are back in Monday morning. I know that I still need to keep an eye on my mood this week. Pete is away for three weeks now, which I never especially enjoy but a degree of separation is part of our relationship and living in DC has taught me that it probably always will be, wherever I live. Even if I move to the place of his work, his work will always take him away. We make compromises. I really don’t relish several weeks - or even a few days - of Pete being away, even though it happens a lot. But that’s the nature of his work, and also, he wants to be out in the world. I believe in creating space for one another within a relationship to live the life we seek, without being forced into a smaller space. I’m not sure a relationship or a marriage can survive if we force the other to do things we don’t want to do.
And I know, too, that Pete didn’t think “Oh great! Clover’s writing a memoir about marriage! Brilliant!” when I told him the subject of my next book, but we do the work we want and need to do, and make the compromises for one another. Anyway, more of that for another time, yeah? (I do love writing that expression here on Substack, you understand me, yeah? It reminds me of the editorial freedom I have on here to be and say EXACTLY what I want, yeah?).
I said that I was going to write on secrets this week, but I think that this week, what I need to concentrate on more than anything is feeling good. So here are twenty things I’m going to be doing this week, to try and keep that pink jean mood going. Some of these are silly, some more serious, some emotional, some practical.
And please please share in the comments things you do to feel good - to feel your own version of pink jeans - and then perhaps we can build up a nice long list to get us all the way through the week, and to Christmas, and through the winter, yeah?