Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays—sometimes I smush them together. I also do a biweekly podcast with my husband, roundups and a segment of brisk thoughts on music, TV, and film.
One thing before we jump in, I show up very much as myself here. Myself first, and all my other labels are secondary. If a therapist speaking candidly feels like too much to your system, that is absolutely is OK and this may not be the best particular newsletter for you.
Am I the resident scrooge of birthdays?
It’s quite possible.
I feel perfectly capable of celebrating other’s birthdays. And I mean that word exactly. No stunning displays, just merely capable.1
When it comes to my own, I feel like we stubble into incapable territory.
I’m a therapist. I’m big on feelings. This is the problem with my birthday.
It never feels like anything.
Maybe it has and I just can’t remember but that seems unlikely. I suspect I’d commit to memory the experience of waking up and feeling something.
Instead, without fail, year after year, I open my eyes slowly, disoriented, and realize with absolutely zero internal fanfare, it’s the day of my birth.
Some of this may be because I’ve always shared this day with my mother. Not in the way we all do—in that our birth mothers are there the day we were born. But in that I have the same exact birthday as my mother…almost to the minute.
I think that set me up to feel confused about this day. My mother is not one to celebrate anything, let alone herself. I don’t want to speak for what her reasons are, although as I’m sure you can imagine I have a whole folder of my own theories on the matter. Regardless, it just wasn’t a thing we did. There were clearly anxieties about acknowledging the day at all.
I also happen to share it with one of my closest friends, my favorite couples therapist, Esther Perel, and my celebrity crush, Sebastian Stan.
(pausing to take in this image fully…)
That is quite a group to be a member of. It inherently feels like a powerful day and yet, I typically don’t get much from it, other than pressure—pressure to respond to happy birthday texts, to know what I want, and what I want to do.
On any random Friday, I know what I want to do.
On my birthday, my brain goes completely blank. Frozen may be an even better descriptor. Nothingness.
This strikes me as curious.
I guess one thing I do feel is reflective.
I read a perspective on birthdays in Emily Henry’s recent novel, Funny Story, that I loved:
“Birthdays aren’t meant to celebrate progress, but rather existence.”
If we were playing Marco Polo, this is where I’d start shouting, “WARMER!!”
I just finished my Level 1 training for a therapeutic modality called Internal Family Systems (IFS).2 I won’t give the whole spiel3 but a quick and dirty primer should do: through this approach you connect with all sorts of different parts of yourself.
Parts that want to keep you on task all the time. Parts that want you to chill the fuck out. Parts that are impulsive. Parts that are neurotically focused.
The thinking is these parts are developed when we are young and often get stuck in the past when something overwhelming, scary, and/or traumatic occurs resulting in some rigidity around these roles they have in our lives. There is a whole process for how you create a deeper relationship with these parts and, at a certain point, you ask if these parts know how old you are.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. What’s funny is that it’s not the age that seems to mean anything to them. They are stuck in the past after all—most children have no concept of what 36 means.
What they are soothed by is the power and choice we have as adults. The support we have. The lessons we have internalized. The life we have lived.
Now, that is a kind of awareness I can let myself bask in today.
I found this great piece about why introverts hate their birthdays. I may be a Leo but I’m also deeply introverted. The internal battle abounds. I wish I could be like my fellow Leo J.Lo and really flourish in the glow of other’s attention, but alas, I am me. Here is a part of the article that really resonated:
“And God forbid you suggest you don’t want to do anything for your birthday — people might look at you as if you’re crazy. They will try to convince you that you’re wrong and that you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t do something special on that day.”
I’ve taken the day off work. I got to scream sing, “But, Daddy I Love Him” with the windows down on the way to drop off with my son, I wrote these very words. I plan to go on a walk, read a bit, watch some TV and play volleyball tonight.
This Leo is less lion and more cat.
Speaking of horoscopes, I got this message from the Co-star app. I know it’s just an app and I’m not gonna make any huge life decision based on something that is akin to a magic 8 ball but I’d be lying if this didn’t stop me in my tracks.
Thank you for reading these words. This is a place where I feel like I can show up and people are glad I did.
And, truly, what else is there.
You may not be able to tell from the existence of this post, but I’m still on a hiatus. Lolz.
I hope I can get a pass on this appearance. I thought it’d be fun to write something in one sitting on this day. So, that’s what I did…and if there are any editing errors, fuck it.
And in the spirit of my birthday, I’m having a little sale on paid subscriptions. At this time, the benefit of being a paid subscriber is access to the archives (posts more than 2 months old). However, around my 1 year anniversary here on Substack (next month!!) there will be more regular paid subscriber-only content. If you’d like to get in on the ground floor, I’m having a little sale for my birthday. Until the end of August, paid subscriptions will be 20% off.
Questions for you:
What is your relationship with your own birthday? Do you feel that buzz in the air or is it like any other day?
What is your preferred way to honor your birthday?
You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. I don’t think you could possibly confuse this newsletter with mental health treatment. Alas if that were to happen, let me say definitively, dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
Any comments, questions, suggestions, please feel free to email me at dialoguingsubstack@gmail.com—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
Also,
has been generous enough to offer a giveaway for a select few for the Mental Health and Motherhood Virtual Conference on October 11th. The first two who DM me will be given a code for free admission! I will be speaking there about self-compassion and mothering our inner children with an IFS lens.I’ll do a whole debrief at some point when it’s been more fully processed. The sneak peak I’ll give is that it was life-changing.
Truly had no idea that is how you spell that word. In my mind it was schpeel. :/
thumbnail image credit: Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash
Happy birthday Kaitlyn. I hope you find a simple and lovely way to mark the day. Birthdays tend to be the opposite for me.... all the feels! I seem to revisit birth, death and my whole life trajectory 🙃 Thank goodness they're only once a year!!
I missed this post during back to school/kid starting kindergarten hell, but thank you for writing this on your birthday! I love that line from Funny Story.
My birthday feels weird now, at one time I was very excited by birthdays but I haven’t felt that way since I was about 16- when we did turn 16, my sister and I saw Love Actually with our mom, and my 15th birthday in 9th grade is the last time I remember hosting a party. We had an Olive Garden dinner followed by watching Oceans 11 with 10 friends. as a twin I always shared my birthday and I enjoy spending time with my family on my birthday because it’s always around Thanksgiving- we were born on Thanksgiving at 12:14 and 12:45 pm in 1987. My mom had to get a C-section for my sister after my vaginal birth and I always feel sorry for her on my birthday— she was also on hospital bed rest for about 3 weeks prior to our birth with preeclampsia but thankfully we made it to 35.5 weeks and had no NICU time. We were both 5 lbs.
We turn 37 this year and the weekend before my birthday I plan to go to tea at a local hotel with my mom and sister- we did this for my mom’s birthday 2 years ago and it’s lovely near the holiday season to see all their decorations. My anniversary trip to Hawaii is within a couple weeks of my birthday so I expect my husband and I will go on a typical dinner date on the day- it’s 2 days before Thanksgiving this year. I have requested a mini cheesecake, my husband has made me cheesecakes for years on my birthday and I go back and forth on whether I want to share a big one or have my own personalized one!