Comfort and Distress

How I sooth Big (Bad) Feelings

It feels very natural to go from writing about anxiety around vulnerability, to talking about comfort in times of distress. Over the last week I have had moments where I have really needed comfort, and places to go that feel like safety and relief.

I’ve also watched my beautiful two-year-old daughter, Astrid Snow, go through some significant stuff. There was a scary head-first fall down the stairs (she is fine) which ended with a Sunday night in children’s A&E at Homerton Hospital, the place she was born and spent her first ten days of life outside of me. And there has been the unexpectedly hard graduation from crib to bed and the massive challenges that this – on the surface small – change brings. Freedom to get up whenever she likes, which is always too early. The loss of security that the forth wall of her crib offered. And a change to her feelings about that very vulnerable time for all of us; the moment when we try to fall asleep. It’s a rough time for me, too, so I happily sit with her, quiet and comfy in the dark of her bedroom, delighting in her being mine, listening to her snuffle and fidget until her breathing slows, telling me she has drifted off.

Being two is hard. Everything is a lot. So is being – well. My age. Or any age, for that matter. It’s all hard. I don’t think that it ever really stops.

Anyway. Comfort is obviously what we all seek in times of distress, but often those sources of comfort are uniquely personal. There was a time when my greatest source of comfort was my mother. I remember, so vividly, the feeling of safety I felt in her lap. Hearing her distinctive gait on the stairs — she had a weakened left side after a brain aneurysm when I was Astrid’s age and it left her with a graceful limp. The smell of her ‘special’ French perfume when she kissed me goodnight before going out for the evening, and the longing I felt knowing I was falling asleep in a house without her.

When she died, I started looking for comfort anywhere I could find it. That was usually in other people, and more often than not, people ill-equipped or unwilling to give it to me. It was also something I hoped to find at the bottom of a glass of wine. As Mitski says in Bug Like as Angel, ‘sometimes a drink feels like family.’ I don’t drink alcohol for comfort anymore.

For my daughter, her primary comfort is me, her bunny (the trusty Mr Ears, who does a lot of heavy lifting in my house), sucking her thumb, her dad, the cats. The order changes, and sometimes it is dad first, me last, but that is the current one. She also takes comfort in the 1989 Disney film The Little Mermaid, which I loved when I was small, too. And she likes to get cosy with a blanket, and have a glass of milk with a (paper) straw.

No I have not taken my Paris Review hat off since I got it, thanks for noticing

As I have gotten older (and wiser? Debatable) I have found healthier and more effective comforts in life than emotionally unavailable men and pinot grigio, and this week I wanted to share some of them with you. I’d love you to share yours in the comments. The stranger and more banal the better. We all have them!

The supermarket

I know that I am pretty much alone in this, but I find the supermarket enormously comforting. I don’t know if it’s the florescent strip-lighting, the just-below-comfort temperature, the aggressive capitalism, the wonky rogue trolley that I always seem to choose, or the awful moods of everyone else in there, but whatever it is, I love it. I love that you can go to any Sainsbury’s or Waitrose or Tesco and know where stuff is. I love picking out the least brown lettuce, I love rummaging at the back of the fridge for the humous with the longest sell-by date, I love gently pressing the tops of avocados with my thumb, tapping the melons, checking the eggs for cracks. I love talking to the cashiers and security guards, doing that weird smile thing while apologising to people unnecessarily for being in the way, helping short people reach stuff on the top shelf because I’m tall. I just love a supermarket. Sometimes we need boring.

Scriptnotes

I have spent a lot of time over the last few years learning screenwriting, and as well as working with a coach through Script Angel, essential to that learning has been John August and Craig Mazin’s Podcast, Scriptnotes. It is an institution, and a public service. Something about how generous and open John is, and how grumpy and charming Craig is (he wrote Chernobyl and THAT episode of The Last of Us), makes it wonderful, soothing listening. I don’t like to waste a minute of my day (unhealthy, I know) so at any moment when I am not being a mum, a friend, writing, or reading, I try to listen to an episode. This particular episode is pure writing gold.

My kid

Before I had my daughter, I presumed motherhood would mean I’d lose all sense of myself and become a giant, milky, human comfort blanket, giving every inch of my being to a little emotional vampire who I would love infinitely and be stuck with forever. I was exhausted just thinking about it, but, y’know, I didn’t want to not have kids. I was so very wrong about all of it. No one tells you this: Your kid is the greatest comfort you will ever know. The weight of their small body on your lap, the sound of their laugh, their sticky, warm palm in your own, the smell of their damp hair after a bath as you read them the same story sixteen times in a row, the utter nonsense they try to pass off as ‘good chat’ — nothing is better. Nothing makes me feel better than she does.

Astrid Snow and me in Margate last week

My people

I am so incredibly lucky to count some of the very best people on planet earth amongst my friends. I spend a lot of my time either with or speaking to my friends, many of whom are in London, but more and more are moving away and it makes me very sad when they do. Keep your people close, and tell them how much you love them.

A really strong cup of tea

I’m a big coffee drinker, but every now and then, when I’m feeling sad, I make a really fuckin’ dark cup of tea (think: gravy) and it soothes something deep inside of me. I usually then make a second one, seeking the same feeling, and it is always shit.

Appropriate tea colour. Mug featuring The Groke from The Moomins. She is always seeking warmth and comfort, turning everything she touches to ice without meaning to. HARD RELATE

Bob Mortimer

I love comedian and writer Bob Mortimer so much. He is so funny and has such a childlike playfulness that his very existence brings me comfort. His humour is gentle and kind, surreal and very, very silly and he has an delightfully low centre of gravity. His memoir is beautiful, and he is the best thing on Instagram. I encourage anyone feeling sad to watch this complication of Bob falling over on Gone Fishing. Or, this little song, trying to make Daisy May Cooper laugh. Look at those teeth. What a man.

Just As Long As We’re Together by Judy Blume

I very rarely read a book twice, but this 1987 young adult novel by Judy Blume is a book that I have read probably close to fifty times over the years. I first read it when I was eleven or twelve and I find it to be a very nostalgic and comforting read that reminds me who I am and where I came from. I also take comfort in Mary Oliver’s poetry, and any of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books.

Running

Bit of a wildcard, because it isn’t exactly a comfort in the same way that everything else on this list is, but running is the very best thing I can do for myself to calm my distress and find myself again when I am spiralling. Unfortunately, I have run so much that I am almost always injured, despite the very best efforts of physios. I suspect that I’m built more for comfort than for speed because I have plenty of friends who still run marathons. Yoga and lifting very heavy weights can help, but there is nothing better than a really good, unplanned-route, outdoor run around east London.

Wallace and Gromit

If you follow me on Instagram you’ve probably picked up on my love of Wallace & Gromit. It is the most pure, beautiful thing, full of silly little jokes, slapstick humour, love and kindness. It makes me feel sane. It makes absolutely everything better. Gromit is my favourite character of all time, and he’s never said a word. I think about him a lot.

Neal’s Yard pillow mist

Sleep and me – we have a complicated relationship. I don’t really sleep well, and rarely for periods longer than a few hours. I find falling asleep especially difficult. It is a moment in my day in which things in my head can very quickly get out of control. I’m an expert in what therapists call/teach as ‘sleep hygiene’ and a big part of that is making my sleep routine and sleep space (aka bed and bedroom) as nice as possible. For years I have used this Neal’s Yard pillow mist. I find the scent very comforting and always buy a bottle for friends having a hard time.

High Violet

This album by The National came out in 2010 and it is one of my favourite albums. I find Matt Berninger’s voice and words a comfort whenever I am feeling unrooted. If he can be as sad as he is and keep going this long, then I will be fine. This album in particular does something to my nervous system that nothing else can.

Other albums that do something similar; Memoryhouse by Max Richter, The Remote Part by Idlewild, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins, and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet soundtrack.

Online shopping

Buy something you don’t need with money you don’t have! You will instantly feel better! And then, later, awful again.

Writing

How lucky I am to have found writing and what a privilege it is to be able to call it my job. There are massive highs. But also anxiety, worry, a lack of control, self-doubt, creative blocks. . . This is just the truth of it. Fortunately, all of it can be calmed with more writing. I say this to any other writer feeling fearful about their talent and careers — do the one thing you have control over, and write, and write better than you have ever written before.

If you liked this, then you might want to pre-order my debut novel Bitter Sweet which is out on July 3rd in the UK and Commonwealth/July 8th in the US. You can find out more about it and me HERE. Pre-ordering is the single biggest way you can support an author. I will be eternally grateful!

BIG FEELINGS RECOMMENDS

I have been in a black hole for much of this week, but it has been made better by:

• Advice and help from my brilliant, generous writer friend NIKESH SHUKLA who has a great Substack that you should check out

• Watching a knock-out performance by ROSIE SHEEHY in Conor McPherson’s new play THE BRIGHTENING AIR at The Old Vic in London

• Listening to a lot of WEYES BLOOD and MITSKI

• Drinking with my trusty friends

• A visit to a freezing-cold Margate in Kent with where I brought this incredible, ugly trout hair clip which I will cherish until sometime next week when I inevitably lose it.