Introduction to One Hard Thing Substack
written and video versions - a repost for everyone!
(About a 7 minute read, with an 11 minute video mostly giving the same information)
This post was one of the first I created and then inexplicably paywalled. I’m reposting it now as perhaps some helpful context for what I’m trying to create here. I’m really hoping that both free and paid subscribers can find this site to be of value. In working my way around this platform, I am getting to know a bit better what the optics are for you as readers, and so please bear with me!
For free subscribers, I believe you have to navigate to the website onehardthing.substack.com in order to find the archive. Most posts are free and remain so. However the archive will only go back about 6 weeks so some content will disappear on you! I’m hoping, though, that this amount of time lets you quietly leave some content in your inbox, or delete it, and still be able to find it in order if you do have a spare half hour.
For paid subscribers, I think it’s easier to find your way around the content (intentionally, on Substack’s part!). The archive will go all the way back for you, and none of the posts will be inaccessible. Also, you have access to chats, with various threads that I’ll be starting based on ideas I’m throwing out to you as readers but also colleagues in this safer homes venture. If you’re paying for content, I expect you would like it to be relevant, helpful, clear, and organized. I will continue to do my best, and am working hard this week to share my thinking around presentation, patterns, and processes.
This is me on my mare, Jetta. She was almost 19 last Christmas, when I had to make the difficult decision to put her down. My daughter painted this picture for me on Christmas Eve. Which was its own miracle, so I cried for a few reasons that next morning, unwrapping it.
Life and death and everything in between are mysteries. There’s no good way to truly say goodbye to someone you love. The wrongness of death, the greater wrongness of pain and suffering, the responsibility to care for, and the inability to control outcomes…these are the subject matters I think about maybe a little too much.
One Hard Thing is a substack, or subscription-based content platform, built on the premise that suffering is a fact underlying most of our lives. Yes, there are moments of delight, wonder, happiness, calm, a perfect hair day, sitting on my horse in the pasture while she grazes. Yes, there are ways to be disciplined, work harder, do great things, attempt to “manifest,” and all that jazz. This is not about those things. Not precisely.
I would like to talk, write, play with, experiment, make analogies for, and basically analyze the shit out of the real meat and potatoes part of life. The stuff that we have to deal with to get through each day. The hard things that pile up, hit us on a Tuesday, or which slowly creep into our awareness as monsters, or climate change, or finding out we disagree with the people we love most, on things we can’t change our minds about. Hard things are my day to day reality. I am dealing with a LOT. To give you an idea of how much, I had cancer last year, and it was by no means my biggest problem on any given day.
One Hard Thing was a concept that I was already using, when my life was just moderately hard. It was mostly a professional consultant sort of concept. The idea that we can only tackle one thing, particularly one hard thing, at a time. This seemed like a good title for a website and blog, because I noticed in my own life, and also in my personal and professional environment, that slowing down enough for that to be a strategy was its own hard thing. Multiple barriers for anyone trying to single-task, people! It is really difficult to NOT text and drive. It is really hard to sit down to eat. It is (almost?) impossible to do a good job at parenting, marriage, friendships, career, and ALSO self-care.
My life got exponentially harder one Sunday night. I can’t really share how because it isn’t just my story. However, one hard thing was, eventually, for me, a true survival strategy. I HAD to slow down. I had to make, as Walter Mitty put it, oxygen choices. I gave up a lot. Then I gave up more. Then I took a very deep breath, and gave up even more.
I gained a lot, too. I’m not writing this because I feel sorry for myself. (That’s what my journal is for. Sometimes, anyway). This substack is not about whining, complaining, or even trying to get out of, hard things. It is for people who are willing to face their lives, their loves, their choices, and their battles, but who might appreciate a little encouragement to do it in a realistic way. I know I had small moments of encouragement that got me through some particularly dark moments. It wasn’t usually very sage stuff - mostly things like someone squeezing my shoulder and telling me it will get better. Or someone sharing a look with me and then getting me a coffee. Or someone willing to just talk about something else for a bit, knowing how badly I needed to remember that there was a world out there apart from the valley of the shadow of death I was in.
Encouragement that is not just fluff, but is a little bit practical, a little bit embodied, a little bit…maybe unexpected in its direction - that’s the stuff I soak up. That’s what I want to provide to you, my patient readers of my many words.
I don’t have a schedule in my life that gives me the ability to control my work life. That’s one of the things I gave up. I write when I can. As now. Gotta run, soon, to a pretty important appointment. But I write to stay sane, to figure it out, to try to bring my unconscious, worried self up for air and sunlight. I write and play with ideas and concepts to get the abstractions I believe to become realities I can do. I also want (and this is the hard part) to let my feelings know I’m there for them. I’m listening. I am not going to betray my self if I can help it - anymore. What I have gone through, am going through, is worth a few big feelings, and giving them space and understanding is a big part of my new level of self care.
I’m trying to upload a video with a bit more information as to the focus of One Hard Thing - that title being more of a meta-strategy than a topic. However, if you’re more of a reader than a video-watcher, the basic idea is this:
everyone needs a home as a base for doing things that have meaning to them
everyone also needs a home as a haven for putting themselves back together after trying to do stuff with meaning to them
home is a rich concept, with significance that can’t really be overstated at the individual, family, or societal level
home-making is also a really rich concept, and in my history, totally distorted by stereotypes, perceived gender roles, and simplified conceptions of what home is or could be
those of us invested in not only creating a home for ourselves, but also others who are different from ourselves, know the difficulties this task presents
as an occupational therapist, I have specific expertise in analyzing tasks, breaking them down to manageable chunks, and supporting clients in meeting their own meaningful goals in what they do in their daily lives.
as a person living in both external chaos (look around, you’re in it, too, I know) and internal chaos (stuff in my home and heart that I wish wasn’t there, but won’t just leave because I want it to) I’m now choosing to make home-making, for me, for those I love, my one hard thing.
I suspect there are others out there like me, and I want to give you encouragement. Selfishly, I hope for/want/need encouragement back.