How Are You? For real…

This morning, Kelly Gordon posted the most honest caption I have ever read on Instagram. She wrote about her children’s mental health and the gist of her post was “We are not OK.” Yesterday, when a friend asked how I was doing I said fine and she said really and I said no and she said me neither and we laughed cause what else can you do? The world is so hard right now. And while I sure wish it wasn’t maybe something good can come from this time?

As more people answer the ‘how are you?’ question honestly, I am repeatedly taken back to my days as a brand new mom. To put it mildly, Caroline was not a fan of sleep and I was chronically sleep deprived and super grumpy about it. Even then, it was clear my girl was an extrovert so we spent a ton of time in baby classes out of the house, meeting new people. I knew lots of people with babies. I was honest with all these strangers, telling them how poorly Caroline slept figuring surely I would find countless people in the same situation. But nope… all these babies slept so instead of feeling better, I was not only sleep deprived but also lonely.

That is, I was lonely until I overheard one conversation that I still think about 18 years later. I can picture the scene. I was in a Gymboree class at a strip mall that was too far away from our house but offered classes at the ‘right time’- however I was interpreting the right time at the moment. There was a woman in our class with a baby the same age as Caroline but, who unlike Caroline, slept through the night. I was so jealous of this mom and added her sleeping baby to the long list of things that proved what a bad mom I was. And then, I heard her tell another mom that her baby spent the night- wait for it- in her swing.

She had told me weeks earlier that her baby slept through the night. Period. She had never mentioned the swing. And from then on, I realized how often people lie. Maybe they aren’t flat out lying. I mean- this woman’s baby did sleep through the night but she was doing so in constant motion. After that, we put Caroline to sleep in her swing for awhile and you know what? She slept for far longer stretches than she had previously.

Now, when I get that feeling that everyone is more competent than I am or happier than I am or dealing with all the madness of the world better than I am- I remember the swing. It is often easier to tell people that things are fine than to be honest when they aren’t. The irony is though, while making things easier initially, this behavior makes things so much harder long term. This behavior doesn’t make the hard things go away. Instead it keeps the hard things right where they are while adding a side of loneliness to the problem.

So thank you to all the truth tellers out there. Things are hard right now. May this time lead to connection, a greater openness to therapy and medication when needed and importantly, honesty.