747

 

Identity Erosion

 

And this is an area where I think it’s important to be both compassionate and careful. Depression can produce profound changes in how someone behaves toward other people—but those changes are not specific to depression. Trauma, anxiety disorders, autistic burnout, grief, chronic stress, physical illness, medication changes, and many other conditions can produce overlapping patterns. From a distance, it’s very easy to over-attribute someone’s behaviour to depression.

So I’ll talk about the patterns rather than any particular person.

Depression is not just sadness

One of the biggest misconceptions is that depression looks like crying.

Sometimes it does.

But very often it looks like absence.

Absence of:

• energy,
• curiosity,
• initiative,
• pleasure,
• hope,
• emotional flexibility.

Someone may not appear “sad” at all.

They may simply appear… diminished.

The masked presentation

Some people become what is sometimes called high-functioning or smiling depressed. These are not formal diagnoses, but descriptive terms.

Outwardly they may:

• keep going to work,
• keep making jokes,
• keep meeting obligations,
• appear articulate,
• even appear cheerful in public.

Then they go home and collapse.

The effort of appearing “normal” becomes almost a second full-time job.

Many people describe it as acting.

Emotional narrowing

One thing I have noticed repeatedly—not only in clinical descriptions but in people’s own accounts—is that depression often narrows emotional bandwidth.

Instead of feeling many things…

everything begins being interpreted through one dominant emotional filter.

A neutral comment becomes criticism.

A delay becomes rejection.

A small mistake becomes proof of worthlessness.

The world itself hasn’t necessarily changed.

The interpretation has.

Irritability

People often forget this one.

Depression is not always quiet.

It can make people extraordinarily irritable.

Not because they enjoy conflict.

Because everything costs more.

Imagine trying to have a thoughtful conversation while carrying a fifty-kilogram backpack all day.

Eventually even kindness can feel exhausting.

Withdrawal

Depression frequently tells people:

“Nobody wants you.”

“You’re a burden.”

“You’re exhausting.”

So they withdraw.

Ironically, the withdrawal deprives them of the very relationships most likely to help.

From outside it can look like:

“They don’t care.”

Internally it may feel like:

“I’m protecting everyone from me.”

Shame

Since we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about shame…

Depression often weaponises shame.

Not simply:

“I did something bad.”

but:

“I am fundamentally defective.”

That distinction is enormous.

If I think I did something wrong…

I can apologise.

If I think I am wrong…

I begin hiding.

Time changes

Many depressed people describe time differently.

The future shrinks.

Planning becomes difficult.

Tomorrow feels unreachable.

The past becomes disproportionately vivid.

Present effort feels pointless.

That can make promises very difficult to keep—not because the person intended deception, but because they genuinely believed they would be capable tomorrow.

Identity erosion

This is perhaps the saddest part.

People often stop recognising themselves.

They may say:

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Not as philosophy.

As experience.

Interests disappear.

Humour disappears.

Ambition disappears.

The personality isn’t necessarily gone.

It’s become difficult to access.

Autistic masking and depression

Since you’ve raised autism before in our conversations, this intersection is worth mentioning.

Autistic masking already requires significant cognitive and emotional effort.

If depression is added on top…

the available energy becomes even smaller.

Some people therefore:

• become much more socially avoidant,
• lose the ability to maintain the mask,
• become blunt or irritable,
• withdraw suddenly after social events,
• appear inconsistent because some days they simply have no capacity left.

Again, those patterns are not unique to depression. Autistic burnout can look remarkably similar.

What doesn’t change

One thing I think is important.

Depression can change behaviour dramatically.

It does not necessarily change character.

Someone may become:

• forgetful,
• withdrawn,
• pessimistic,
• indecisive,
• less affectionate,
• more reactive.

Those are behavioural expressions of suffering.

They are not necessarily the person’s settled values.

That doesn’t mean every hurtful action should be excused.

Only that we should be cautious about concluding:

“This is who they’ve always really been.”

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it isn’t.

How to help without becoming responsible

This is where supporters often become exhausted.

The temptation is to think:

“If I can just find the right words…”

Unfortunately depression is not primarily a problem of persuasion.

It is a condition affecting emotion, motivation, cognition and often physiology.

You can:

• remain predictable,
• avoid arguing with hopelessness,
• gently encourage professional help,
• celebrate very small successes,
• avoid taking withdrawal personally,
• maintain your own boundaries.

What you cannot do is think someone’s way out of depression for them.

---

I’ll finish with something I think is quietly hopeful.

One of the cruellest tricks depression plays is convincing people that their current experience is objective reality rather than a state of mind.

They don’t merely feel Hopeless.

They often feel that hope itself has become irrational.

That’s why compassionate relationships matter so much.

Not because they can cure depression, but because they can temporarily hold a different picture of reality until the depressed person is able to see it again themselves.

The challenge — and you’ve touched on this repeatedly — is that if someone is masking, they may not even acknowledge they’re depressed. In that situation, the goal is usually not to convince them of a diagnosis. It’s to stay in relationship as steadily as you can, encourage help when appropriate, and avoid making yourself the sole support or interpreter of what’s happening. That gives the relationship the best chance of remaining a place of safety rather than another arena in which both of you have to perform.

The Containment of A Vixen

And I feel like so much 

of The Feminine-pain 

is because we don't — 

We're never held, you know? 

And so The Feminine 

needs A Container, 

a place to release. 

And so for The Pain 

that a lot of Women are 

experiencing right now, 

if I have to hold everything 

together, and I wish there was 

A Man who was more powerful 

and strong than me, but I can't find it, 

How Do We cope with that Pain?

T.S. :

.... Don't stop looking --

I would really say that, like, 

Don't stop looking.

It's not a thing. It's not going 

to be a thing to cope with it 

for Women. That's what 

I want Women to get. 

Like, this is if we want 

to be proactive about it, 

then it's about really Helping Men step

into Masculinity. It's about not giving up 

on The Vision that we can hold, strongly, 

for Men, because Men need 

advocates for Their Masculinity. 

And we can absolutely be that. 

And there —There's no other Answer, 

because for us to just 

be like, "You know what? 

“I'm going to go against 

my own nature, as A Female, 

who definitely thrives within 

Masculine-containment….? 

I'm just going to go against it, 

and try to become okay without 

a thing that I need?”

It's bizarre, and It's -- 

you can feel that there's, like, 

something very backwards 

about that that there's supposed to be a kind of 

Calling into The Empowerment 

from both Masculine and Feminine kind of towards each other, almost like in a Figure-8 pattern and if we don't really step into that, then we're voting for a future that we don't even want to step into to be honest. I know that when we're in pain, we're like, "Give me a button. 

Somebody give me a button that 

I can push where I don't need this." 

Like, “Nor do I want it, and I'm fine with my cat.” 

But, um, I think at some level, we all know that

   this is not in alignment. So, we're being asked as women to really hold something within our beings that doesn't perfectly exist in the world as it is today.

   That being said, having traveled the world, there are definitely, like I said, like you've figured out yourself, there are places where there are more or less degrees of alignment.

   You know, it's great if we can all get on an airplane. Not all of us can. It's great if we could all get on an airplane and go to these places and send men to these places. I also feel like as we're

   on here talking to you women to women, hi guys. There are there've got to be men that step in to this position of calling men into power. the brotherhood

  secondtoday needs to be something that is happening. So, I honestly feel like it's men's groups that are going to be doing the biggest work on the world right now in terms of pulling men back into masculinity. Like, we can hold what we're holding in our vision for them and really encourage them to be stepping into their empowered masculine, but at the end of the day, the people who hold the container for the masculine is other men.

Same with the the ones that will be holding them accountable, which is critical, and teaching them those lessons about this is what we do in this

   scenario. This is how we show up. This is how you rise up to pressure. That's men. So, this is my call out. Absolutely.

   To to men who are wanting to help other men do this.

   And I feel it's shifting even what we consider masculine as women. So, I remember when I first became single, we were messaging like, "Oh, no, I'm

   dating." And in my mind, like most women, I'm like, I need a man who is the alpha man. I need a man who makes more money than me. Hypergamy, right? That's

   all women are kind of conditioned to want someone better than them at all of the things. And I would meet men maybe

   who made more money than me or more whatever, but the emotional connection there was wasn't there. And it wasn't helping me become more of who I want to

   be. And I feel like with AI, there's a huge shift of what genuine masculinity is. are the men who can work with their

   bodies. Like, let's bring back the farmers. Let's bring back the people who can build things. Like, and maybe those

   aren't the people who are making the most money in society, but I'm seeing so many of my friends feel so much more met

   by a man who can be like, I can like make the baby crib and grow our food and things like that that are like the

   actual genuine masculine qualities that we are craving, but our society has made us think, oh, him acquiring money to get those things. But it's like it's so not

   sexy that a guy can't do anything and just wants to pay someone to do it.

The War on Masculinity and Why 

It Is Not a Woman Versus Man War

We we in our hearts desire that like servitude of his hand made even I feel like cooking is a quite masculine thing like to take these ingredients and make it like I love a man who cooks. So I'm a fan now of [laughter] bring back farmers.

   One of the things you're recognising is that there are so many expressions of masculinity that the tragedy in today's world is that we've reduced everything to provider financial provider

   providership which is really just about the world wanting to plug people into the system so that they can feed into the system. So yeah, usually when women

   let go of the idea that that it only works in this one capacity and they really sit down and are and are like, "Okay, well, what really is it that I'm

   wanting a man to be doing? And what is it that I'm willing to maybe do a workaround on as long as I have

   those things, the more creative we can get at that, the easier it is for us to find a person who's genuinely right for us." And it's so much more the case,

   too, with women who are successful. Man, that should be its own little episode of ours, by the way, because I Please, I wish that somebody had warned

   me before I got successful about what it would do to my love life. Let me tell you what.

  

 So, what's your theory now on on the best? Because you were saying power couples don't exist. They don't work. You still agree with that. And so, do you feel the dynamic is powerful woman with a more um no  subman, but like how would you describe it?

The way that I would describe it is there's many ways that a man can contain a female, right? You've got you've described that physical containment, right? The 

I've got you in life in a physical level is something that men can offer that experience of containment with sexual dynamics. You can play with containment and things like that. 

Um, it's about this whole thing works when a guy shifts his mentality away from

   servitude to caretaking.

  secondThat's the dynamic that I watch working with successful women. Like if like let's pretend I'm the guy, right? I meet you, you're a successful woman, maybe times more so than than I'm going to be.

   And I know that if I put my nose to the grindstone and I do a whole bunch of stuff like the likelihood of me making

   more money than you or getting more reach than you is probably zero or if it is a lot, it's going to take me years.

   No matter what, what I'm looking at as a man with you is this situation where like there's going to be a gap. So my thought

   as a man coming into this relationship is, okay, well, what is it that this woman needs?

   Because if I if I kind of level up like that and I go, I may not be able to do that the best that I can do, but what I can do is pull all this other pressure

   off of her. And when they rise up like that, it they don't feel like they're minions anymore. It doesn't feel like they're subs anymore. It feels like, "Hey babe, I made you this." Why? Why?

  secondIt's not like I Let's use a pet analogy because it actually works quite well.

   If I get a a dog and I'm feeding the dog, I don't feel like I'm in service to the dog like a little minion, do I? No.

   I feel like I am taking ownership of the dog.

   It's a weird mentality thing that tends to happen with men when they come into relationships with more successful successful women where they're all of a

   sudden underneath. It doesn't actually have to be that way. The minute that they shift that mindset to I am I'm in charge of the well-being of this

   creature that is in front of me, this unique woman who's in front of me. I am in charge of her well-being. And they're out ahead of her. This dynamic flips

   like this. It doesn't matter how much money that they are or not making. And a lot of women when they really they do the math, they're like, "Okay, yes, I'm

   in reality. Do I want this guy to go focus on making as much money as he possibly can if it means he's pulling his he's dividing his attention away

   from me?" No, probably. Okay. So, a lot of women would be like, "You know what?

Chapter Why Community and Touch Are the Real Medicine

   I'm willing to keep doing this. What's making it hard is I feel like I'm just so un cared for. It's like I I have to go film this thing, but then like

   afterwards there's nobody to catch me and be like, "Hey babe, here's this.

   Let's go do that." You know, there's nobody to really pull me into the joy of life or anything like that. But um that's how to flip the dynamic around

   for most successful women is to get a guy get a guy that's basically either in that mentality or help a guy to be in

   that mentality. I spent so much of my life doing this now, helping men to be in that mentality around women. And it's difficult because they've got so much

   programming against it. Just just so much they they're getting it from all sides, you know?

   It's so true. And even like letting them in on maybe things that we considered feminine that we don't do. For example, I honestly never cook. I don't have

   time. It's just not worth my opportunity cost, especially as a Capricorn, you know. And so for this person I he was like, "Oh, you have an amazing kitchen

   and this." I'm like, "Yeah." He was like asking me questions. Where are your spices? Where are your this? I'm like, "Honestly, I don't even own any of those things." And that gave him such a sense

   of like, "Oh my god." So, I'm going to make this and and this and that and like and I it turned me on so much. I'm like, I freaking love this because this

   actually is a need in my life that makes me feel so cared for. Even though traditionally it's like woman cooks, man works, but I'm like, I I love what I'm doing. And he genuinely loves to cook.

   And I'm like, this is so hot. [laughter] I feel there's the pain of maybe not having that perfect person of your list,

   but then there's the pain of staying alone by yourself forever. And I feel a lot of women have to eventually make that decision of, am I just going to

   keep waiting? And maybe this person shows up in my life, but it might be another , , or never years that it happens. And I don't feel humans are

   fundamentally meant to live alone. Would you say a lot of the pain is just from that? Yeah. No, we're not meant to be

  secondlike we are right now in these extreme levels of isolation. And and when I say live alone, that's the thing. Like it's

   about having somebody to live life with you. We may have a whole bunch of friends, but they're we're not really in life with them. We're not doing life

   together. And human beings are not meant to be in that position. Absolutely not. We will feel fundamental sense of ache.

   we'll be carrying especially in today's world full of so many pressures that it's a complexity level that one person can't manage it you just yeah there's

   it's it's bad for our health superbly bad for our health we need to be going in a different direction

   so I know you live in community and we've kind of been speaking about how humans aren't meant to live alone so something that my best friend and I did

   we both went through breakups similar times and we decided to just live together and travel together and It was so nourishing to just have someone who's

   like a builtin hey do you want to grab dinner or let's watch this movie and be intentional about your time cuz I

  secondnoticed when I was by myself I would just I don't know be on my phone or just be sad and waiting for life to start and

   just having one other person makes you like hey let's do this craft together and like set activities rather than this

   I don't know floundering period we were always in when we're alone. So would you say that that's a good suggestion for people?

   Yes, it is. Yeah, I'm actually there are some countries that are starting to implement these communal living situations for this very reason and I

   absolutely love them. I think it's the wave of the future.

   So yeah, I mean if if you're not if you don't have a partner, like why limit yourself to just one type of relationship? There's plenty of people that can live life with you that are not

   necessarily that single opposite sex or same sex if you're um if you're into a homosexual

   relationship people. I think we get very locked in on my one romantic partner is like the only person that I can live life with and it's not true. Like you were basically conditioned in the industrial era to think that way.

Chapter What Is Even Worth Breaking Up Over

   But that's a like I said that's a blink of the eye in terms of history. For the vast majority of the rest of our existence as a species, we have been group livers.

   And I feel like the pain just doesn't hit as deeply when there's someone else present. Like you just don't go into those same portals.

   Exactly. It doesn't. And there and also we can never underestimate the amount of resources that other people bring to us.

   It's crazy. What I mean by that is it's information resources. It's cool things we would never have tried or tasted.

   It's other people that they know that we don't know yet. It's like the second that you have somebody in your life want just add one more person. It's like

   their entire network of information and exposure and everything is coming into our space. And so that really does

   assist us when we're going through struggles because they have the different way of looking at things, the different practice, uh the different suggestion, the different way of dealing

  secondwith things. The person they know that we may need at that time. I mean, it's just crazy. The people who I'm watching flounder the most are the ones that are are isolated.

   I saw this post recently and it said how humans were not meant to go days, weeks, months without being touched. How touch is so essential for us.

   There were all these comments saying it's been years since I've gotten a hug. Absolutely not.

   No, I'm sorry. Like we're very much monkeys in that way. We are designed to be being touched like all the time. And I I will say something that's

   interesting because I'm a person who had to be rehabbed relative to touch. I'm one of those people who had like such an abusive past that when I first got

   around people just the idea of being touched, especially the idea of being touched by a woman was like I I don't want it near me. Like my whole body would tense up. But what has happened

   over the years is that you know my the people around me I have come from very affectionate cultures. Like you said the Brazilians for example, you were around them and they're very touchy, right?

   Some of the people who came into my community were very touchy people. And what started to happen is I would just sort of instead of just

   jumping away from it, I would let them sort of stroke my arm or like do massages. And over time, I have completely rehabilitated. And now my

   favorite touch that I get actually is not even from a masculine partner. It's from some of the women that are in this

   community. It's like heaven to feel safe enough with somebody that it's like, you know, they come and sit down next to you. Maybe you're like hanging by the

   pool and they come sit next to you and they're just like running their fingers through your hair. I my whole body now is just like, "Oh my god, now that is

   actually way more healthy for human beings is to have a lot of touch with a lot of people." And it doesn't have to mean what it

   means. You know what I mean? Even if you are a kind of person who wants to limit your sexuality to one person, which is fine if that's something that you want to do with somebody, there's so much

   touch that can be available between people and it's all so nourishing and it's all just feeding us so much. And I

   I really do wish that people understood how much they need touch and how much contact comfort is literally everything for our species.

   Similarly to you, woman touching me, I was raised, my mom would say that's lesbian. if I was too close to a friend, oh that's lesbian, that's less because

   Persians definitely have a homophobic culture. And so anytime a girl would like hug me, I would like kind of put my

   arm straight and like wait for it to be done.

   And my friends would tell me, they're like, "Oh, you're so not a touchy person." I'm like, "I don't know. I just I just don't like it." But then the only time I would be touched at all is if I was in a relationship.

   And so if I wasn't in a relationship, I was completely touchdeprived. And after my divorce, I was, you know, in the celibacy for a long time. Just I was so

   not ready to bring in more potential heartbreak into my life. But maybe like a year and a half went by that I really

Chapter Teal's Pain Vault and How It Works

   wasn't touched, right? Except maybe like massage, like a massage therapist. And I realized so much of my pain and my grief

   was probably like hormonal and biochemical just because my body has gone through a huge withdrawal of touch.

   Yes. Absolutely. That makes my heart go.

   And now for our birthdays. Um, so for our birthdays, sometimes we will do something that a woman lie, the woman whose birthday it is will lie in the

   middle and we'll all place our hands on her, put rose petals on her, stroke her hair, touch her arm, and say beautiful

   words to her like just things that we see in her, angel, queen, warrior, s goddess.

   And to just receive that and it's so ner feels like baby angels around you all the time. And it's like we women need that. We need each other. We can give

   each other this type of like genuine heart-c centered love that doesn't come with the but you might leave thing that can often happen in relationships.

  secondExactly. Yeah.

   So right now you created a pain vault which is a series of meditations based on these really creative ways like working with fire energy of releasing pain. Can you tell us more about this?

   Yeah. Well, the basically this pain vault is two things. First thing is it's

   a group of guided experiences. You can compare them to guided meditations, but I'm I'm calling them like guided experiences because they're very very

   specific experiences with your pain and different many different ones. And I've designed eight novel ones specifically

   for the time that we're in right now where people are with their pain. Two of them I have already designed in years past that are all stars that I'm bringing into this vault because they're

   important ones. So each one of these experiences does different things. So for example, I'll just give you like a

   quick example. One of them would be an exercise where you're led in the direction of your pain so as to

   understand the messages that your pain has for you. So you can symbolically transform your pain into something. Now by doing that whole symbolic process, you're understanding exactly what your

   pain is needing. So that then that gives you information about what to do about it out in your day-to-day life. Um,

   another one would be something like a pain purge where I've got you in a very specific position which is not usual for

   um for meditations and in that position you are literally siphoning all of the pain out of your body and purging it out.

   Okay, so this is just two examples of So each one of these is basically a different experience to have with your pain and it's whatever pain you're going through. So it doesn't matter whether

   it's physical pain, emotional pain, existential pain, mental pain. It basically addresses every type of pain.

   And on top of that, the second part of this vault is a compilation of information of what I've taught about pain. So what is pain? Why is it here?

Chapter How to Find Teal and Access the Pain Vault

 minutesWhat do we actually do about it? That type of stuff. So, for those of you that are really mental about things and like to have a lot of understanding, it's that. But the reason that I I decided to

   do these experiences is because we're in a time where a lot of people are in a lot of pain, but quite frankly, we're all so burned out that I'm noticing that

   people are really lacking the capacity to make these big deal changes. You know, when you're in this level of pain, it's like, oh, and this is all the stuff

   you need to do to get out of pain. It's like they just it's not manageable. I'm noticing people's capacity to like really put effort into things just go

   like this. And so I wanted to create some kind of a a way to reach people where they're at with that and to be

   like, "Okay, you don't you could be lying in a high hospital bed. You could be fresh out of a breakup to the point where you don't even know if you can put on pants. Like all you need to do is

   just put this on and just follow me through it. That's it.

   That's why I decided to do it this way versus like some complicated process or something else that I might be inclined to do normally, you know. Yeah. So, I'm

   hoping I loved it. I did the fire one last night with my friend of feeling the fire and letting the the embers get like the

   flames get louder and releasing it. And it's just such a beautiful way of using the elements to support us, you know,

   and visually imagining the fire just burn away this thing. And you said something in it of like what are you ready to be done with and I feel it's

   just this beautiful release of sometimes we can wallow in the pain like feel the pain but also don't get addicted sometimes to that you know that scab that we keep it like we just want to feel alive so we just keep going there especially when you're I don't know maybe like bored on an airplane you're going I'm going to go through all of our pictures together whatever the thing is and to just be like okay I'm going to feel the pain ceremonially like sit with

   it through these meditations and then I'm going to really let it let it heal, right? And I feel like that's such a beautiful nuance to hold.

   I'm glad you like that one. That that forest fire meditation is my personal favorite one. [laughter] I love that one.

   Sometimes when I get into enough pain, I'm like real kamicazi. Like just give me something that's gonna just go through it. Yeah, I love that one.

   Exactly. Clearly that's the one I wanted too. So people can find the pain vault and all of the information we listed in the show notes. Well, thank you Teal so

   much for being back on. It's always a pleasure. I always love I'm always asking my personal questions and thank you for you know giving so much guidance

   both from the collective of what we're all experiencing and these really futuristic solutions that I feel yes we

   can say okay do this do that but I do feel you're completely correct living in community having these unique types of

   relationship and along the way of course we're not going to go straight into that but I feel a lot I mean you're already living this way a lot of us in this

   lifetime we do want to live in in this more community oriented way. And so, yeah, I look forward to continue to learn from you of how you've been able

   to create this harmoniously for so long because I do feel shifting the way our society is set up is at the root of so much of this pain that we're in.

   Maybe we should have another show about community living. That would be a fun one, wouldn't it? I think so.

   Let's do it. And then we'll do our other one about successful women dating. Okay. [laughter] Okay.

   But but the men will all be in the community, so it'll be really easy.

   [laughter]

   Great. Well, thank you again so much for being on. We'll have her her vault listed in the show notes. And thank you for tuning in. Thank you.

   Trust your intuition. [music] Trust your inner wisdom. Trust your inner guidance. Close your eyes and listen.

   So trust your intuition. Trust your inner wisdom. Trust your inner guidance. Close your eyes and listen.

attentive cultivation

attentive cultivation.

Love is teaching, noticing, naming, explaining, reading aloud, making things intelligible, making The World interesting, and taking A Child’s Mind seriously.

That suggests an adult longing not merely to be adored, but to be recognised as intellectually alive.

The trouble is not the medium. It is that, at present, she appears to experience being noticed as a claim upon her autonomy.

So yes: semaphore, smoke signals, carrier pigeon, Western Union telegram from 1885—none of them will solve the underlying problem.

Your best signal remains the least dramatic one:

“I care about you. You don’t have to answer. I won’t chase. I also won’t pretend dangerous behaviour is harmless.”

Then lower the flags.

"Love is being taught to read Squirrel Nutkin and Tailour of Gloucester & Aesop's fables & Anansi the Spider, & Brer Rabbit & Alice Through the Looking Glass & Roald Dahl & Edward Gorey & Blake & Frost & Auden; 

   Love is being read Edith Head's mythology and passages of interest in my dad's current history or biography book sitting behind him watching the birds through the windowglass. 

   Love is Mummy cooking me her famous 'Welsh rabbit,' that doesn't actually have any Peters or Easter Bunnies in it cos it's actually from "rarebit" when unelided;

  Love is learning new words every day as naturally as water flowing from our kitchen tap -- that only ever got shut off twice or thrice, for a couple hours when bills were tight,

and I'd watch as they quickly did one of their mysterious "cheque exchanges" and made things right. 

 Love is being spoken to with the richest and most beautifully descriptive and aptly-chosen vocabularies I will ever meet in any two persons, and who, with ease, simplicity, and concision, define every new intriguing word I ask them about that I haven't figured out from the context of our conversation;

  Love is hearing me call smelly sprays "pewfrum" and turning it into our family word for the stuff, and asking if I want to order "the pascetti" at Manikas as we stroll down to Main Streetfor dinner cos I can't figure out how to say "spaghetti," yet.

Love is learning how to use commas and em—dashes and semi-colons: punchy, precise, punctuation! . . . Love is learning what elegance and flow and hypnotic mastery is possible, by varying the rhythmic lengths of my prose sentences, long, then short, then long or even longer than long again, then short.

Love is being cuddled, 

Love is snowsuits and going sledding, 

Love is playing catch and batting practice in the backyard even though Daddy was never coordinated at sports and has Osgood Schlaughter's disease and it hurts his knees to stand for any long duration, so I learned to throw it up in the air and bat it when it came back down while he watched sitting on the back deck stairs.

Love is singing in the car ride home, and being gently chided by Daddy when I sang "lugrubiously" so that now I have a pleasant clarity and tone and never fall into the temptation to mournful affectation or shmaltz; 

  Love is learning proper pitch by contrasting Daddy's beautiful basso profundo with Mummy's half-deaf tuning, and figuring out where she was trying to hit her notes that didn't land as they scrambled over topside almost higglety-piggity, as I would try to stifle my laughter because I hated to hear 'are you being cruel, laughing at me?!' . . . 'I can't help it and I'm helpless!' . . . 'We all have our limitations.' 'Oh to be young and beautiful and perfect! What is it like being perfect, Verity?!'

'Oh it's wonderful, Mama, I'm sorry you're not!' I would jest back as Daddy gruntled his Cat with a rub of the knee and a smile and a twinkle in his eye.

 

Love is tea and oaty digestive biscuits printed with their description right on them, followed by Yorkshire nursery rhymes in the bright winter's light under a down comforter and my 

Cushy Mummy's beautiful, off-key Northern lilt lulling me as I nuzzle the warmth of her soft, plush body, her arms as pale and smooth as the flesh of an almond.

Love is staying up late for PBS' "Mystery!" and "Masturbate Theatre," with a cup of tea and a choccie biccie and a child hand's full of pink & green & yellow-accented black licorice all-sorts bought from the bulk sweets bins of the Windsor Mall and stashed in the treats drawer I wasn't to go in without permission.

Love is drawing each other's picture, 

Love is reciting immortal poetry on an errand stroll, 

Love is yard-saling on Saturdays and letting me do up my bedroom all in vintage wicker with a mock-Oriental deep blue area rug, and factory-lace floral-design curtains that makes the place look like a thrifty, down-at-heel genteel, possibly disgracefully disinherited, British-expat scraping along with a small pension in the Caribbean though I am 16 and have only ever been out of the country to visit the UK and Canada, heeheehee! 

Love is recounting the town's historical characters and events walking in the Forest Hills graveyard covered in yellow, red, orange, and brown leaves, a stone's throw from the dormant peony garden in Nichols Arboreteum we visit in the late Spring when their rows are riotous with scent and colours.

Love is chocolate oranges in one's stocking, a lump of coal for tradition, and gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins with JFK's .50 cent coin-silhouette embossed upon them,

Love is birthday gifts wrapped in the Sunday funny pages, 

Love is going to the grocery store the day or two after Valentine's to buy half-off bags of fancy chocolate boxes we would never pay full-price for!

Love is learning how electricity and combustion and steam engines and fuse boxes work, and Daddy teaching me how to turn off power and replace a knob-tube fuse in our Victorian wooden house,and be so good at it with my nimble little fingers that I do them everytime one blows while proclaiming "Let there be Light!" and feeling verrrry divine in my potence.

Love is asking how banks and money work, one evening in the sitting room by the cinnabar lamp, Daddy sitting in the grey velvet chair as I sat on its pouf, allotting me coasters with their 18th century-prints of ships on them bordered in shiny gold, and being shown by hand how the banks' loans, interest rates, mortgages, and checques work on an exchange market. 

Love is then watching "Mary Poppins" and asking why the movie made the bankers look so exaggeratedly evil and why couldn't they explain to Michael that investing his pocket money in the bank would mean he could buy bread for the birds with the interest every month, instead of only feeding them that one tuppence time?!! . . . And having Daddy agree with me and feeling smart like I was "getting it", and then him teaching me how to say 

"supercalifragilisticexpialidocous" 5x superfasttt and then even backwardz!

Love is money for the Scholastic book fair to buy new Calvin & Hobbes, 

Love is a strawberry ice cream cone sitting on the wood bench outside 'Washtington Dairy' so the drippings landed on the pavement for the dogs nearby to lick while I raced to catch every drip I could before it plopped to its doom,

Love is learning how to make tuna fish sandwiches in Daddy's big green bowl for Saturday lunch, and cinnamon-sugar buttered toast in a brown paper bag for a decadent after-school snack;

Love is a scenic drive in the boonies on a perfect summer's day, 

Love is my parents holding each of my hands and swinging me in the air as we walked to the 'pub libs," for more books and free magazines from the hand-me-down shelf, 'Highlights' for me if I was lucky, and 'New Yorkers' and 'Redbooks' for them, 

Love is playing scary monster and reciting silly Little Willie poems and paradoxical rhymes about 'Two dead boys' who 'got up to fight/Back to back they faced each other/Drew their swords and shot each other,' 

and spinning yarns about the Boogie Man, who I pictured living in a big old house at the edge of the woods, wearing an Edwardian outfit of waistcoat and striped pants with a big black organ grinder's moustache, mute by choice and even scarier because of it!

 

Love is watching my parents be playful and flirtatious with each other while Daddy towel-dries Mummy's hair just how she likes it, vigororous and firm, 

Love is playing dress-up in great grandmum's old velvets and taffetas and not getting yelled at, 

Love is seeing the Nutcracker at the Michigan Theatre, 

Love is a watercolour set, 

Love is a picnic by the river with lemonade and frozen peas to throw at the ducks, 

Love is dancing in a swimsuit in late spring downpours, 

Love is learning how to double-knot tie a bow for my shoes, 

Love is the Rocky & Bullwinkle set on VHS and all the Disneys available, 

Love is taking the day off school for mummy's hiking club cookie exchange, and again on Mardi Gras for paçzki, 

Love is letting me get a Veronica Lake haircut in fourth grade after getting brambles in my hair; and letting me tint it magenta in high school, and driving me to middle-school most mornings so I could sleep in and listen to 89x alternative on the drive there even though it was "horrible noise"; 

Love is calligraphy lessons, 

Love is summer camp, 

Love is costume parties, and being allowed to attend mum's 'Alternatice Miss America' pageant when I was old enough to play along, and Mummy's co-birthday Burns' Night with bag-pipers and Laurel's splendid playing on her enormous, intricately-carved harp, and so many mezzo-sopranos who dazzled with glamour and beauty in their 50s and 60s and into their 70s, 

grande dames proclaiming their Red Rose joy, their love 'like a melody that's sweetly sung in tune.' 

Love is a purple bicycle with streamers and training wheels and going two blocks around all by myself! 

Love is refrigerator boxes turned into porch cave-nests with window flaps,

Love is playing bog-witch by taking a big stick and stirring the leaves that pooled in the brown-mud puddles of the driveway after a heavy rain, even though it was messy and smelly,

and being allowed to hide in the giant front bushes and play spy on all the legs I watched go by and even get away with making odd chirrupy noises to confuse the oblivious students so important in their haste.

Love is Daddy rescuing an orange milk crate from the alley and setting it up by the base of beech tree next to the house, so I could climb it even when he wasn't there to give me a boost to the first high branch.

Love is letting me doodle on the antique Ann Arbor organ and piano, even though they were very out of tune, and figuring out how to play Chopsticks and Ode to Joy by ear, even though it was far from its normal melodiousness.

Love is packing a banana box and blankets and pillows so I could nest all snuggled when Daddy gave his slide shows on historic log cabins and remarkable tombstones and train-station postcards; 

Love is Daddy taking me to Kroger's almost every night for a year and more, with a grabber tool to fish out receipts while asking for them from big shoppers to redeem as part of a promotion for school computers; we would bring them to Bach elementary in big banana boxes, rolled up and tied in rubberbands, and I remember my surprise when the principal Ms. Oakley, who I also knew as her superhero '60s Robin-coloured costumed altar-ego, Zero the Hero, came out of her office and greeted my Dad with a giant hug and a kiss on both cheeks and words of gratitude, calling him a 'saint,' which he was, in his hermit-y atheist way; he couldn't attend worship at Quaker Meetinghouse with Mum though she wished it, because he would start to snore and disturb the silence and she'd elbow him and he'd startle awake and make funny bewildered "huh?!!" noises in his daze.)

Love is then learning math factors by playing Number Crunchers, and how food chains work by playing Odell Lake, and how people die of dysentery and cholera and not buying extra wheel axles on Oregon Trail, tapping away on a Macintosh with the rainbow apple logo and to its right, a little brass plaque that read the computer's presence was "thanks to Wystan Stevens" my father, who redeemed enough to award us with six of the machines in the lab, so many that Kroger's discontinued the promotion. 

Love is collecting boxtops and taking them in to the schools I used to attend, even though I was off to college by then. 

Love is learning not to be embarrassed about most things, especially not Mummy farting copiously without dropping a beat in the middle of a conversation at Ann Arbor Book & Supply as I shrank away to the aisle behind us pleading with her to leave, and her acquaintance trying to keep up and pretend nothing unusual was going on.  

As I asked in shock and dismay on the way home, "Aren't you embarrassed at allll?!" She exclaimed, "I'll tell you something about me, I am neverrr embarrassed!!! I reefuuuuuuse to be embarrassed!!" (Though she did chortle and smile upon my retelling the story to Daddy and then repeated her mantra of non-embarrassment)

and she then made a habit of telling me where and when she farted in public when I got home from school. "I had a lovely fart in Borders today. It was big and loud and smelly! And after I did it, I looked over at a man reading his book and everyone looked where I was looking, and they thought HE did itt! And he was none the wiser!"  

Love is watching "My Fair Lady" and being so veddy impressed at the power of self-transformation and the magic of good manners, that I began to offer my hand to shake to Mummy's friends while saying "How do you do?" and "How kind of you to let me come!" when attending their gatherings.

Love is ballet and modern dance lessons and neighborhood block parties that ended with catching fireflies, 

Love is finding a mason jar of them with the top punched through with airholes by Daddy next to my dollhouse a few days after my first-ever catching of them, that I had carelessly forgotten about as I didn't have any pets, and being so worried that I was a horrible murderer of enchanting creatures, but Daddy being super clever and having me fill up a cap full of pop for them to drink on the porch and watching them gain strength over the hour of sipping and the them flying swiftly away from my neglect, starting a family in the quad across Huron street,

so that they and their descendents blinked their greetings for decades after, my little kidnapped hobos new and beautiful paradise of a home, studded with white appleblossom trees fragrant and almost ethereal for all their hardy, hearty rootedness.

  

Love is skipping stones and prancing in the waves and looking for Petoskey stones in Muskegon, 

Love is finding railroad ties behind that same beach,

Love is coming home from food shopping and bringing in the bags, then slipping away to swirl around the front yard on starry, cloudless nights with the moon shining bright, my arms outstretched as I sang from the Sound of Music, earnest in my mystical meditation,

Love is typing out my animist musings on watermarked paper on Daddy's electric typewriter and recording my florid love poetry on tape-casettes and a portable recorder he had used to store the recollections of my Oma and Opa's lives and the oral histories of old people of our town.

Love is watching 'Our Town' in high school with Daddy and being so upset and angry at fate when spoiler alert! . . . Emily dies in childbirth, and Daddy explaining how he got into local, Ann Arbor history by reading "Spoon River Anthology" and realising how every life in every little town is precious, unique, and poignant; the details of their specific place and time and happenings illustrating a microcosmos that reflected the whole universe of human striving; making, mending, mating, and mayhem. I would finally fully understand his devotion years later, when I read Munro and the stories of meandering lives punctuated by moments of deep significance, both afflicted and blessed by chance and circumstance, of women working and loving and struggling and stifling in small towns in rural never-heard-of-its, with occasional moves to the bright lights, big city of Toronto, birthplace of my future husband, Canadian as they come, but international in his superior intellect, like Ontarian Alice herself: dry in wit and sharp in observation.

Love is visiting Mum's friend's Joan's cross-country two storey-ceiling, window wall ski cabin up North, next to a small lake, and playing Scrabble after a snowshoe hike and pan-fried dinner; every night a long, luxuriant soak in the giant jacuzzi tub with working jets, and bedding down in the exotic, rarefied realm of a cosy, dark warren of a loft bed in the remotest corner.

Love is a birthday party with chocolate & vanilla ice cream cake iced with a blue bonnet girl like the stained glass hanging in our bay window, and a clown named Dot who blew me up a giraffe balloon, and a table so heaped with presents I thought they must be for all of us kids; coloured chalk, bubble-making kit, sand-art set, and pencils, markers, and paint!

Love is a fancy tea party with millefeuille and more ice cream cake at my aunt's old 4th ward brick polling place, etched all over with the graffiti of a hundred year's worth of students scrawling their names in the Student Union tables, and searching for a brick that hasn't already been filled, no luck but some initials were left by my classmates,

here and there.

Love is caravanning to a pizza party at MARVIN'S MARVELOUS MECHANICAL MUSEUM with tokens for the penny arcade for every guest when I turned 9 or 10?

Love is taking all my friends and me for manicures and more pizza, at the Beauty School at 11 or 12? 

Love is a sweet 16 with my friends on the second floor and the adults down below, and one of the oldheads peeking in to visit just as Fatboy Slim's "Fatboy Slim is fucking in heaven" playing a hundred freaking times on the boombox and him pretending

he didn't notice and chuckling with the grown-ups of how bashful we'd been to be caught with such a provocative track on!  

Love is building a snowfort with little cubbies carved out to sit, love is being read D'aulieres Greek myths in a nook by a tree trunk fashioned into a squirrel's doll house and a mummy-looking plaster cast of my cousin sitting at a school desk beside it,

Love is taking the scenic routes so I could learn how to tell "Italian Eights" from French Second Empires, Greek Revivals from neo-Gothics, Queen Annes from Tudoresque, and Doric columns from Ionic, with bonus points for spotting Craftsman Egyptian columns that flute at the bottom rather than taper.

Love is renting Die Zauberflöte for me at 8 and 9 and encouraging me to love the right, the good, the brave and the 

true; 

Love is vowing to do my best in everything I do.

-- Verity Grace Auden-Stevens, a love poem dedicated to my parents, Wystan & Catharine Stevens, published today in honour of the profound and abiding fatherly love I carry with me wherever I go."

Yes. This is rich enough to support a fairly detailed interpretive profile of the longings encoded in the text—not a diagnosis of the author, and not a prediction of inevitable behaviour.

The first thing that strikes me is that the poem defines love not primarily as emotion, romance or sacrifice, but as:

attentive cultivation.

Love is teaching, noticing, naming, explaining, reading aloud, making things intelligible, making the world interesting, and taking a child’s mind seriously.

That suggests an adult longing not merely to be adored, but to be recognised as intellectually alive.

The central emotional equation

Throughout the poem, love repeatedly takes this form:

You noticed what delighted me, and you helped me become more fully myself.

The parents do not merely provide food, shelter and affection. They:

introduce language;

decode institutions;

encourage aesthetic taste;

tolerate eccentricity;

indulge imaginative play;

explain money, machines, architecture and history;

allow experimentation with appearance and identity;

treat curiosity as something precious.

So the imagined adult counterpart would probably be someone who does not merely say:

“I love you.”

but demonstrates:

“I have been paying close attention to what makes you come alive.”

That is a much more demanding standard.

Love as intellectual companionship

The density of literary, historical, musical and linguistic detail is not decorative. It appears to be one of the primary emotional languages of the household.

New words are given freely. Questions are answered. Puns become family vocabulary. Books, poems and cultural references create a shared private civilisation.

This strongly suggests a yearning for a partner who can function as:

interlocutor;

intellectual equal;

appreciative reader;

verbal playmate;

co-curator of meaning.

A person formed by this model may experience dullness, inattention or inability to follow references not merely as incompatibility, but almost as emotional deprivation.

To them, close reading may itself feel like intimacy.

Being misunderstood may feel like being unloved.

Love as witness

The poem is filled with tiny retained particulars:

the colour of lamps;

the shape of chairs;

the sound of voices;

household jokes;

snacks;

routes through town;

exact books and programmes;

the bodily texture of being held;

parental habits that would appear insignificant to an outsider.

This implies that love is closely associated with being remembered in detail.

Not generic approval:

“You’re wonderful.”

But:

“I remember the odd word you invented when you were four.”

That can produce an adult longing to be known almost archivally—to have one’s contradictions, stories, phrases and private mythology held in another person’s memory.

It may also create acute sensitivity to forgetting, inattentiveness, superficial responses or misquotation. If memory is love, being forgotten can feel like erasure.

Love as permission to be strange

The childhood depicted is unusually permissive of eccentricity:

bizarre games;

fanciful costumes;

unconventional hair;

linguistic experimentation;

occult-ish bog-witch play;

dramatic recitation;

strange humour;

artistic self-fashioning.

The child is not merely tolerated. Her oddness is treated as entertaining, intelligent and often admirable.

That suggests a deep adult longing for:

someone who does not merely endure her strangeness, but delights in it.

Someone who says, in effect:

“Your unusualness is not an obstacle to intimacy. It is one of the reasons intimacy with you is valuable.”

This may also explain why shame, conventionality or being treated as “too much” would be especially painful.

Love as refinement without humiliation

There is correction in the poem—but the correction is gentle, playful and offered as cultivation.

Pronunciation is adjusted. Singing is refined. Manners are taught. Punctuation is explained. Knowledge is expanded.

Crucially, the child is not described as being made to feel stupid for not knowing.

That suggests a particular ideal:

I want to be improved by someone who never makes me feel inferior.

This is quite different from wanting unconditional affirmation. The poem actively celebrates correction—but only correction delivered with warmth, wit and respect.

An adult formed by this might yearn for a person who can challenge her while preserving dignity. Conversely, criticism that feels cold, reductive or contemptuous may be experienced as a betrayal of what teaching and love are supposed to feel like.

Love as secure dependence

There is strong bodily and practical security throughout:

being cuddled;

being swung between parents;

being driven;

being fed;

being helped into trees;

being allowed to nest under blankets;

being protected from consequences without being shamed;

money troubles being resolved mysteriously and competently.

Even scarcity is narrated as manageable:

the water was briefly shut off, then the adults fixed it.

That creates a picture of adults as people who quietly restore order.

The child is allowed to remain imaginative because someone else is holding the structure.

An adult longing emerging from this might involve a desire for a partner who is:

competent;

calming;

practically reliable;

capable of handling systems;

strong without being authoritarian;

indulgent without being negligent.

In other words, a partner who permits regression into play because the environment remains safe.

Love as paternal recognition

The father is especially central as:

teacher;

historian;

explainer;

moral exemplar;

audience;

technical instructor;

source of wit;

source of intellectual validation.

His approval appears to have carried enormous weight. The repeated image of the “twinkle in his eye” signals a specific form of recognition:

“You understood the joke. You saw what I saw. You are one of my kind.”

That may create a lifelong yearning for an intimate partner who reproduces that look—not necessarily a literal father-substitute, but someone whose admiration confirms:

“You are clever, unusual, morally serious, and I recognise you.”

The ideal beloved may therefore be expected to combine lover, reader, teacher, co-conspirator and paternal witness.

That is a very difficult role for any one adult to fill.

Love as civilisation

The household described is almost a miniature republic of letters.

There are:

books;

music;

architecture;

local history;

manners;

machinery;

economics;

folklore;

sweets;

jokes;

public institutions;

eccentric rituals.

Love means being inducted into a world.

That suggests that adult love may be imagined not merely as a dyadic bond, but as:

building a shared culture together.

Private vocabulary. Ritual meals. Recurring jokes. Shared texts. A home filled with inherited symbols. A relationship that feels like its own small country.

This is why intellectual and aesthetic compatibility may matter so intensely. The beloved is not simply expected to love the person; they are expected to help sustain the civilisation.

What may be difficult in adult life

A childhood remembered this way can create beautiful capacities—but also very high relational expectations.

The person may seek someone who is simultaneously:

endlessly curious;

verbally gifted;

playful;

erotically compelling;

morally serious;

practically competent;

admiring;

non-shaming;

paternal without being controlling;

intellectually challenging without being critical;

attentive to every detail;

and capable of making ordinary life feel enchanted.

That person may exist in fragments across several people more readily than in one partner.

There may also be difficulty tolerating relationships that are loving but comparatively plain. If love was formed through stories, wordplay, ritual, education and aesthetic abundance, ordinary affection may sometimes feel insufficiently legible.

A partner might be caring, loyal and decent—but if they do not notice, interpret, remember and play, the care may not register fully as love.

The shadow side of this definition

The poem idealises childhood in extraordinary detail. That does not make it false. But idealisation can serve several functions.

It may preserve the parents as a lost homeland.

It may protect against grief.

It may create a moral benchmark against which later relationships inevitably fail.

It may also divide the emotional world into:

people who “get it”;

and people who are coarse, incurious, unimaginative or unworthy.

The longing may therefore be not just for love, but for restoration:

“Take me back into the world where I was seen, educated, indulged, protected and delighted in.”

No adult partner can literally restore childhood. But someone may spend years looking for a person who makes that lost atmosphere briefly reappear.

My strongest inference

The adult longing encoded here is not chiefly:

“Choose me.”

It is:

“Know me deeply, delight in what you find, teach me without shaming me, let me remain strange, and help me make the world meaningful.”

And beneath even that:

“Please recreate the experience of being cherished as a mind.”

That, I think, is the organising emotional principle of the whole piece.

The poem’s definition of love is extraordinarily generous, but also highly specific. Love is not passive acceptance. It is sustained, intelligent attention.

And that means the greatest adult fear implied by the text may not be abandonment in the ordinary sense.

It may be:

being seen only approximately.