Holding Myself with More Patience
how I’m talking to myself these days
Quick Announcements
It was such a treat to be interviewed by Stephanie Graham for her podcast noseyAF: Conversations about Art, Activism, and Social Change. My episode is called “Queer History Is Everywhere: Dr. Kate Henry on Archives, Rhetoric & Lisa Ben.” Enjoy!
I’m holding co-working for Success & Accountability Coaching Clients and premium newsletter subscribers tomorrow Thursday November 20th from 1-3pm EST. Access the Zoom details here.
It’s not too late to join AcWriMo, a month of free resources that Dr. Katy Peplin and I have created for scholarly writers. I’ll be hosting a co-working session on Saturday November 29th just for AcWriMo participants. Learn more and sign up here.
In the early summer of 2017, holding my hand and chatting between sets at a queer variety show, Kris nonchalantly mentioned that they didn’t want kids. A few months into dating and spending every weekend together (we lived on opposite sides of Massachusetts), I was already falling in love, but this clicked things into place: I didn’t want kids, but I did want a life partner. My daydream of our future would eventually come true: 8 years later, we’re happily married, both working from home taking tea breaks together, and bookending our days snuggling in our living room with our maine coon cats and our chihuahua.
Last week, Kris was out of town for work, which means I was on solo pet parent duty: meals, walks, litter box, and a lot of playing. The two sleepy cats are easy. Since they were kittens they’ve eaten on the bottom two shelves in a bookshelf: Dean takes his dry kibble on his private top shelf, while Sam enjoys a savory canned paté, his go-to since he had most of his teeth removed earlier this year, on the shelf below.
Recently, the boys have taken to switching shelves halfway through their meals, jumping down and then back up to reassemble: Dean now savoring the aromatic mush Sam left for him, and Sam somehow munching on a few of the kibbles Dean left behind, putting those three remaining teeth to work.
When they make this shift in the morning we have to keep an eye on our dog, Friday, so she doesn’t sneak up to wolf down the wet food, which she can reach if she stands on her back tippy toes. This is easy to do when we split the chores, Kris making our pour-over coffees while I toast my gluten free waffles and supervise the mealtime shenanigans. With Kris across the country for work, attention to Friday falls on me, not just to prevent cross-species ingestion in the morning, but to navigate the shift in our daily routine as a temporary family of four.
My preferred morning is sipping black coffee and quietly spacing out on the couch, while Friday’s includes…
chasing her brother Sam, who is twice her weight and yet sweetly tender with her
no less than fifty smooches on her head (which prevents one from seeing their phone, should they have hoped to have a mindless morning scroll)
and playing fetch with her stuffed “babies.” Her current favorite is a red fish because it’s the newest, but she also loves her tiny chocolate doughnut from a set that also includes a white felted powder and a pink frosted with sprinkles stitched on top.
With the help of our trainer Marita, we’ve trained Friday with positive reinforcement and cooperative care methods, things I’d never heard of as I hadn’t adopted a new dog before (our previous dog, Lucy, was adopted by Kris many years before I came into the picture). Using cooperative care means Friday gets to choose to opt in or out of nail trims, something she was truly horrified by when we adopted her. She now gets excited for nail trims, because she gets fancy training treats after each nail, but she also knows she can stop and walk away at anytime if she’s scared. I like this approach because it means she trusts us and I’m offering her the ability to consent. But to train a dog in these ways requires repetition, commitment, and accepting that growth will be incremental because trust takes time.
One of my favorite things about myself is how patient I am, a trait that comes easily to me perhaps because I like it so much. My patience makes me good at my job and the kind of friend people are grateful for, and it helps me show up to situations with kindness and curiosity. Sometimes when I’m feeling drained by a too-long workday or overlapping deadlines or a chronic illness flare or overwhelm at the state of the world, the patience is harder to access. I am human, after all.
One afternoon last week, when I was feeling particularly grumpy because I had overworked that day and hadn’t drank enough water or taken enough breaks, I caught myself feeling resentment for Friday’s demands for a walk outside. It was 30 degrees! I didn’t want to go! I was tired! It would have been easy to extend my annoyance to Friday, but I caught myself in the anger and paused. I thought to myself, why not adjust my voice to tell her how excited I was to see her instead? I AM excited to care for her. This sweet, cute, little creature! How lucky am I to have her! This moment of pause helped me truly see that she wasn’t asking for too much—just a moment of love to reassure her that it was okay, even though her routine was off, even though Kris wasn’t there to take her on their daily long walks together.
She might not understand all of the words in, “what’s going on babygirl, it’s okay to have big feelings, and it’s okay to relax, we can go for a walk in a little bit, but mommy has to finish this one thing,” but she responded well to my soft voice, my eye contact just for her, and my full attention. And slowing down to speak to her reassuringly and softly soothed my own nervous system, too.
The day before Kris returned, I knocked over a glass of water on the counter and surprised myself by saying out loud with the same soft tone I’ve been using with Friday, “it’s okay, everyone spills water sometimes.” On another day, I might have felt angry at myself or the glass or the water or a meeting I was rushing to. Instead, I mopped up the water, smiled to myself, and bundled Friday and myself up in our warm jackets for our walk.
Curiosities
I’m excited for Catherine LaSota’s Be Your Own Daddy three-hour intensive workshop that’s coming up on December 12th! I love Catherine’s approach to creative projects, both the ones she creates and the ones she coaches others to create, so I’m sure it’ll be amazing.
My new musical obsession is Nora Brown! She’s an amazing banjo player who started playing as a child and released her first album in her teens. I hope she’ll come up to Boston for a show soon.
Not a curiosity as much as an honoring. Like so many others, I’m heartbroken at the loss of disability advocate and writer, Alice Wong. She founded the Disability Visibility Project and was such an important person who was well loved by all who knew her. Rest in power, Alice.
Take care and talk soon,
Dr. Kate
Email: kate@katehenry.com
Website: katehenry.com
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