To My Firstborn Starting High School
Plus, peanut butter whiskey and my enrollment in the BeyHive
Dear Sweet Girl –
The moment you were born was magical, emotional, and, honestly, gross. You sprang forth into the doctor’s arms like a rainbow trout flopping into a fish monger’s arms at one of those Pike Place seafood stands in Seattle.
I looked at your squishy face all covered in goop and thought, “I don’t know if I can do this.” What was supposedly the most natural thing in the world suddenly felt like Mt. Everest and I was at the part of the climb where there are all kinds of dead bodies embedded in the snow and it was too late to turn back.
As quickly as my self-doubt washed over me, the doctor looked deeply in my eyes as he nestled you in my arms and softly said, “You did it.” It was the perfectly timed answer to my self-doubt. I had done it! I would go on to do it over and over and over again – learning how to nurse, returning to work after maternity leave, potty training, teaching you had to ride a bike, sending you to kindergarten, letting you go to the mall with your friends, dropping you off at your first sleepover, and buying you high heels for your 8th grade dance.
And here we are again, tripping over dead bodies in the snow. I’m officially a high school mom.
My floppy little fish is embarking on a chapter of life that will feel like The Most Important Time until it suddenly isn’t anymore. So many other post-graduate milestones will take its place and you’ll convince yourself that high school was a mere blip on the radar. That is, until you find yourself with an incoming freshman of your own and you’ll remember how consequential this period of time is.
They say the prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully mature until your early-to-mid 20s and that the teen brain makes decisions through the emotional and reactive amygdala and less by the thoughtful, logical frontal cortex. This must have been why I went to homecoming with a stoner in a tuxedo t-shirt and once tagged along on a Smirnoff Ice run in the trunk of a Dodge Neon. I was a dumbass. You, my precious girl, are not a dumbass, but that only takes a person so far when she’s surrounded by a bunch of underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes.
It's why I’m so scared of you driving (STOP DRIVING AND TEXTING, PEOPLE!) and logging into TikTok (NO ONE’S FACE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE THAT!) and traveling for spring break (NEVER GO WITH A HIPPIE TO A SECOND LOCATION!).
It’s not you. It’s everyone else.
I don’t know if I can do this.
But I must. I did it before and I’m going to do it again… and so will you. So, in accepting that you must not only navigate but also thrive amid a sea of baby brains attached to crop tops, I will offer you the following bits of advice:
Don’t delude yourself into thinking you do everything well under pressure. Operating that way in every circumstance is not only a surefire way to eventually fail, but your nerves will be shot from all the unnecessary stress that you’ve caused yourself. There’s a time and place for pressure management – like in dental care, it’s the oral surgeon who is supposed to work well under pressure, not the patient who has had the signs of gum disease emerging for years and is only seeking emergency gum grafting because of debilitating pain. One person is creating pressure while the other person is responding to it. In life, sometimes you’re the surgeon and sometimes you’re the patient. Understand the difference.
The mom who lets minors drink in her house because it’s “safer” is not actually looking out for your best interest. Steer clear of these environments – they’re filled with midlife crises, shady live-in boyfriends who make eye contact with you while they gyrate to Bon Jovi, and no good way for you to get home by curfew… unless you call me, which you absolutely should under any circumstance where you feel uncomfortable or are unable to get yourself and your friends home safely.
Guys who yammer on about preferring girls with that “no makeup look” rarely actually like girls without makeup, but rather girls who spend hundreds of dollars on makeup and skin products that only make them look like they don’t have makeup on. It’s a sham and another pitfall of the male gaze! Whether or not you look like a drag queen or a crunchy granola girl is entirely your choice. Catering to the ever-changing whims of boys is a perpetual hamster wheel. Transcend! Rise above! Just never, under any circumstance, overpluck your brows. This is a hill that your lady ancestors will die on.
True beauty is one-of-a-kind. Unfortunately, high school is an environment that breeds conformity. Girls especially cling to an out-of-the-box type of beauty standard. You’re seen as easy prey for the entities that commoditize beauty, because of that ever-present male gaze hamster wheel and the fact that you haven’t figured out your audience. But think of it this way, would Architectural Digest do a tour of a home that was stocked wall-to-wall with trinkets and furniture all sourced from the same store? No. If you want that kind of vanilla aesthetic, walk around a Restoration Hardware. If you want to be dynamic, be like the AD tour of Zachary Quinto’s home, which is all about a curation of styles and experiences that even includes a “coke dish” from playwright Tennessee Williams. Can’t get that at West Elm! I guess what I’m saying is you’re an eclectic $3M NoHo loft, not a Rooms To Go.
Know your audience. Let’s face it, we’re all performing in this life. Whether it’s your gender, personality type, socioeconomic status, or career, you’ll always be on some kind of stage. Over time, though, constantly being “on” starts to chip away at your spirit. You may start to feel like you’ll never be enough, that someone is always there to judge you or scrunch you into a box that doesn’t feel right. That’s a sign that you need to redefine your audience. There’s a saying, “You can’t make everyone happy, you’re not a taco.” No one has truly universal mass appeal, at least not at this stage in life. Even beloved women like Betty White and Dolly Parton had doubters and detractors earlier on, but they knew who they were and what they stood for. They dazzled the right people who would eventually give them enough groundswell to win over the rest. Find your people and make the investment. It will pay off in the end.
Make room to explore and nurture your passions – and it’s okay if they’re always changing. The process of finding one that sticks is a numbers game. You’ll never know what you’re meant to do until you try… and try and try and try some more. Don’t give up after a day, a week or a month. In fact, it takes AT LEAST six months – if not a year or more – to learn something new and to figure out if you have a knack for it. Get comfortable with the idea that you’ll be exploring new passions and hobbies for the rest of your life. Embrace your inner rookie.
I love the quote “Don’t let people’s compliments go to your head and don’t let their criticisms go to your heart.” Don’t go through life collecting compliments. If you get one, accept it, appreciate it, and then move on. Same goes for criticism – take it for what it’s worth but don’t get lost in it. If you cling to the validation or degradation from others, you create a screaming chorus in your head that is hard to squash as life goes on. It makes it impossible to hear yourself, which clouds your judgement, obscures your direction, and creates a deep dependency on sentiment you can’t control.
Write in a journal every day. Don’t go to sleep without putting your thoughts down on paper. It lightens your spiritual load, provides mental clarity, and is a great way to see how far you’ve grown and evolved over time. Talking to your friends and your dad and me is good, but having regular, deliberate conversations with yourself is the most important thing you can do now and for the rest of your life.
And remember, any time you find yourself thinking “I don’t think I can do it,” remember that even your old mom still feels that way, too. But I did it before and I’m going to do it again. And so will you.
Here’s a short and sweet recommendation for your liquor cabinet – Skrewball, “The Original Peanut Butter Whiskey.” It has a bit of sweetness and a natural essence of peanut that blends perfectly with coffee, apple cider, milkshakes, or even on its own over ice. My lazy girl hack is to pour a shot or two into your Starbucks latte on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Or a rainy Thursday morning, like today. No judgement!
Leading up to this past Saturday at 8:59 p.m. ET, my opinion of Beyonce was, “she’s cool and I like many of her songs.” As of this past Saturday at 9:00 p.m. ET, my opinion of Beyonce is “she is a goddess among women and I will bathe in her sweat.” But seriously, thanks to my beloved friend Eric who called me up on Friday night and told me to get my booty to Atlanta for night two of her Renaissance tour stop, I am officially in the BeyHive.
Here's my advice: if Beyonce ever comes within a 100-mile vicinity of your town, you must go. If you were lukewarm on the Renaissance album, check out videos on TikTok, Twitter, or YouTube to see how she stylized the songs for the show (it will change the way you listen to the record). And never, ever pass up an opportunity to go all out with your ensemble at any pop star’s world tour. As Eric said as we stood in his room staring at his mesh crop top and day-glo shorts, wondering if he was too old to be wearing it… “If not now, when?”
Buzzzz buzz, baby!