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Hi, I'm Kate Baer and it's going to be okay.
That was the poet Kate Baer.
Kate is a poet whose words have often been my okay thing because Kate writes poems about womanhood and motherhood and personhood and friendship and bodies.
She writes poems that have felt to me like a form of literary Xanax.
And if you're thinking, ah man, are we going to be talking about poetry today?
Yeah, we're going to be talking about poetry today.
Kate is not going to read one of her own poems.
Kate is actually sharing a poem that makes her feel like it's going to be okay.
It's a poem by Kim Adonizio titled, To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stoll.
And depending on your taste, this might not be a poem for little ears.
To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stoll by Kim Adonizio.
If you ever woke in your dress at 4 a.m.
Ever closed your legs to someone you loved, opened them for someone you didn't, moved against a pillow in the dark, stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles, paid good money for a bad haircut.
Backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you, led into the backseat for lack of a tampon.
If you swam across a river under rain, sang using a dildo for a microphone, stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun, ripped out the stitches in your heart, because why not if you think nothing and no one can?
Listen, I love you. Joy is coming.
The first time I read this poem, I physically put my hand on my heart and thought, oh yes, not only because it's beautiful, which of course it is, but because it truly sums up the human, or at least my human experience so perfectly.
I read it and thought, this is taking my entire experience being an adult woman and putting it in this boiled down storytelling way of like a friend, you know, it reminded me that there's like always a woman in the stall next door experiencing, if not the same thing, something similar.
And it also reminds me of my actual friends and how no matter how bad things feel, they are there, they're the joy that's coming.
It just brought me so much comfort and I think a lot of women feel the same way. This poem has been passed around the internet, you know, over and over it. I see it cycle through every few months, people passing it back and forth because I think it's that same feeling like, oh, this is it.
This is what I've been experiencing, you know, for the last decade or my 20s or my 30s or wherever you are.
There's so much emotion in it. And I always find that it's so wild that these two emotions, joy and sadness can exist in the same human in the same day, or within the same hour, and how we're all just carrying around these dueling emotions and trying to act normal and meetings
or at the grocery store or at, you know, school pickup. It's so many of us are just walking around with both of these things. And that's what this poem kind of does to you.
It's if you've ever felt all these ways and you feel that feeling of needing a tampon or missing someone or just feeling so lost.
And then she kind of gut punches you with that last line like joy is coming, which it is, and it always does. You know, it was like just last week I was feeling so terrible and so kind of like lost in myself.
And I was invited to go on this like group walk with my dumb friends and they were like, it'll be so good to be outside and I'm kind of like fuck you. And then I got there.
And you know, within like five minutes I was laughing. And like, just in that same morning I was like, I don't know if I can get out of bed. I don't know if I can care for my children. It's like, how can these two things happen? But joy is always coming.
It's so easy to forget in those like low moments, but just such a relief to experience that or to just remember that, which is what I think this poem does.
There's this Buddhist saying that says life is suffering and yet.
And those and yes are what remind me that it will be okay.
Life is suffering and yet and yet today the and yet is the thing because sometimes you are the one crying uncontrollably in the bathroom stall.
And sometimes you are the one passing toilet paper underneath that little divider, letting someone know that you are there, that they're not alone, that this is not all that will ever be.
Sometimes you are the one who believes that this miserable moment is the only moment that will ever exist.
And sometimes you are the one reminding another person that yes, this is a miserable moment, but there will be more.
I'm Nora McInerney and it's going to be okay.
That's a hard thing to say when you are a depressed person, but there I said it because the it changes all the time.
And it is extremely subjective and I want to hear yours. So call us at 612-568-4441 or send us a voice memo at i G T B O at Feelings and dot co.
We will link that in the show notes along with Kate's books of poetry.
Thank you very much Kate for contributing this week.
It's going to be okay is an independent podcast production from Feelings and Co. in Independent Podcast Production Company.
This episode was produced by Megan Palmer and Claire McInerney. Our bigger team is myself Marcel Melikiwu, Eugene Kid, Larissa Witcher and Jordan Turchen.
Our theme music is by Secret Audio.
This episode of It's Going to be Okay was brought to you by the Hartford.
Have you ever signed up for employee benefits and then not actually use them because you didn't know how to use them?
The Hartford is trying to change that.
Their leading group benefits provider that's tired of seeing the insurance industry use terms and descriptions that normal people like us don't understand.
They're simplifying benefits language, making it clearer, making it more concise.
That way workers and families can find protection that actually fits their needs.
Learn more at the Hartford.com slash benefits.