Um, I invented Post-Its

What, like it's hard?

Before we get started, please find 16 Post-Its and a writing utensil. You could also use small scraps of paper or just write out your answers in a simple 4x4 grid.

I’ll wait while you collect your supplies.

During an early Doula training session, we were handed small stacks of different colored Post-its. Nervously we shuffled them in our hands, unsure of how to proceed. The 15 of us were still mostly quiet during the meal they provided as our training opener. This was intended to be a way to slowly allow us to gather, break bread, build a more casual rapport, before we were to dive into such intimate and vulnerable work on such short notice. But building that kind of camaraderie can take time when we all seemed to come from such unique backgrounds. So there we sat, fucking uncomfortable. My slightly sweaty palms were already starting to warp the fragile papers in my hands while awaiting instruction. This felt like a bad sign.

Around the room, we began to lay out our papers in a 4x4 grid formation. The gentle shuffling and adjusting of the papers was an interesting exercise in itself, watching who made micro movements to align the papers, and their negative spaces, perfectly and who were contented to simply space them out haphazardly at any god forsaken angle. You can possibly guess which camp I fell into.

The first instruction, and join me if you will, was to write the names of 4 important people in your life across the top row of four stickies. These are the names of people that are the most meaningful to you. Horizontally. One name per Post-it. The exercise had barely begun and some folks were already visibly uncomfortable trying to choose between so many people that they loved while others were struggling to name the required 4. It is important to note, these people must be alive. One woman in the group later admitted that she made up a “friend” named Carol lest people judge her or pity her for not having 4 names. Something about this confession tickled me endlessly and I found myself so endeared to this 70 something woman and her delicious silliness and absolute sincerity.

In the next row, you’ll write 4 aspects of your identity that are important to you. This is a bit nebulous so I’ll provide examples: mother, writer, daughter, fitness instructor, friend, entrepreneur, construction worker, gamer, musician, etc. These are 4 parts of who you are and roles that you play in your own life.

The third row across, you’ll write 4 activities or hobbies you enjoy doing. This can be anything from painting, reading, hitting the gym to crocheting, going to church, watching movies, cooking, petting your cat, etc.

Lastly, you will write 4 possessions that hold great meaning: your dead friend’s sweatshirt, your bike, your wedding ring, your favorite dog-eared novel, your vibrator. Whatever you care about very much but it must be a physical, tangible possession.

At this point, I was nauseous. I had a really hard time naming people, self selecting my identities, narrowing my hobbies and then picking possessions. I had no idea who I was. I was a year and a half postpartum at this point. I had recently gone through the most violent restructuring of identity and priority I’ve ever experienced in my life. There is a term, Matrescence, that describes this transition and it is said to be as disruptive, chaotic and nearly unbearable as going through puberty again. I’ll include this New Yorker article about a recently published “part memoir/part science writing” for anyone that cares to know more about it…

Mom Stuff (we love a link)

But just know, it’s disorienting and it’s supposed to be. The grey matter in a mother’s brain actually shrinks to reorient activity in the brain toward the care and attenuation to your child. Your biology has evolved to literally hijack itself for the wellbeing of another. This can sometimes make being the “host creature” a lot more fucking confusing.

I had a hard time finding myself in this process which made the next steps… well, horrific.

Looking at your 4x4 grid, a small condensed collection of everything that you are and everything and everyone you hold dear, the time had come…

Please remove and crumple up 1 Post-It from each row.

(if you’re using a grid system, scratch off or erase them but really make a show of it)

One person, one identity, one hobby, one possession. Gone. They are no longer in your life and you cannot get them back. Was that easy? Is there one weird aunt or shitty boyfriend that you didn’t mind getting rid of? Some hobby you’ve been holding on to out of nostalgia? Some version of yourself you’ve been looking to release anyway? Here’s where it might get trickier…

Please remove 2 more Post-Its from any row.

What’s important to you now? When pitted against each other, which could you really live without and which do you suddenly feel yourself becoming more protective of? Are you having an emotional reaction to this in anyway? What is your life looking like now with what remains? How much are you grieving? Are you feeling somehow grateful for the little you have left now that you actually had to choose to keep it?

Do your best to imagine this…

Sitting there, with a flourish, two of the people that work for the training program jump up and start reaching across the table, grabbing Post-Its from people at random. They stand behind, snatching quickly and balling up your wife, your career, your dog, your life long passion and throwing it on the floor. They moved to the next person, and tenderly peeled away just one aspect of identity, slowly, methodically, and carefully laid it beside them. The next person, they took everything but one physical possession and didn’t look back.

As I watched them move from person to person, grabbing and snatching at random, each person losing a different number of things in different ways at different speeds, I could feel my throat closing up. I’m welling up now remembering my palms start to sweat, and my crossed-leg shake and the terror clamp down around my chest as I realized, they could take my baby.

There was the little piece of paper, with his little name, and I could see his little smile, and nothing on that table mattered. I had left him there, all alone. Those hands could sweep down and take my baby and this little exercise had suddenly turned into the emotional equivalent of a bear chasing me naked through Times Square. This is also possibly a kind of cruel thing to do to a person with a tendency toward catastrophic thinking and some postpartum OCD. The room kept getting smaller and the air kept getting thinner until finally the hands had reached over my shoulder and started their taking. I don’t even remember what any more, but in the end, there sat Baby. Certain and still. And the hands moved on. I’m crying even now. Guilt, grief, shock, relief, panic, wonder, agony. And it was just a stack of colorful Post-Its.

It took me a long while to come back into my body, come back into that room. And when I was able to, I realized that not everyone else had made it back yet either. So many glass coated eyes scanning the remains of their lives and those of the lives around them. You could see visible relief on the faces of some as they realized that they faired better than others. You could see a simmer of rage and unfairness too. I read once that emotional tears have a different chemical make up than, say, tears from an irritant or cutting onions. This makes them viscous, staying longer on your cheeks, possibly allowing for them to be seen better by others so that they can then come to your aid. I have no idea if this is true and I will not be researching it right now so it can just live anecdotally with you as it does with me. But wouldn’t that be something. What if one of the purposes of tears was connecting us to others?

Something shifted for the group that day, sharing this imagined trauma. Our next communal meal was definitely a little bit louder. I have no idea if the exercise at home, without the fury and finality of the external hands taking parts of your life away, will have the same impact on you but it’s worth it to try to imagine.

The point of the Post-Its is to illustrate how life can go toward the end. When you’re sick or you start to decline, parts of yourself, people you love, things that are dear to you, can be taken. Suddenly, violently, without warning.

One fall, and you lose your mobility and the trust of those around you. You are no longer safe to live alone, so your social worker or son put you in a nursing home. You do not have a choice. You cannot bring anything but a small bag of your clothing as you’ll be sharing a room with another resident so you lose every knickknack from your years of traveling. You lose the stack of jeans that you swore you were going to fit into again one day. You lose the wedding gown from your back closet. You lose your cat because the home doesn’t allow pets. You lose your favorite cast iron pot and tiny mismatched spoon that’s smaller than the others but you just love it for some reason. You lose your neighbor who would stop by for coffee in the afternoon. You lose your morning stroll past the bodega on the corner. You lose your ability to stroll. You lose your ability to eat what you want to when you want to. To bathe yourself. To privacy. To autonomy. To a timeline of your own. To watch the price is right at any hour at any volume. To make whatever questionable choices for yourself that you otherwise have the right to make because no one is around to tell you otherwise. You lose.

Who are you if everyone you’ve ever loved is dead? Are you still a sister when your brother is gone? Are you still a painter if you don’t paint? What gives your life meaning and integrity outside of these people, places, personas, pastimes and possessions? What is living without them?

In this unthinkable place, you would hope that the people that step into provide your care would be capable of softening the agony of this experience. You would hope that the next home you find yourself in is comfortable, warm, inviting and gentle. You would hope that the transition becomes easier after time and you get used to it all. You would be really fucking sad to find out how it really is.

This kind of thing won’t happen to everyone. The point is, it might. And it’s impossible to know how it could unfold or what systems will be in place for the dying when it’s our turn. If you want to know more about these systems and what happens when a person receives a terminal diagnosis, I would recommend an incredibly moving book called BEING MORTAL by Atul Gawande. I’m begging you, get it at your local library. Or buy it from bookshop.org and support independent book shops, or go to your local book store with your real life body and talk to people about books and dying and other strange things because you never know when you might not be able to.

*Insert cliffhanger here*