16. And Yet

Kate Baer is a poet and friend of Nora McInerny. And she’s here to share with us, you guessed it, a favorite poem. 

You can find Kate’s work on her website. Her latest poetry collection And Yet is available wherever books are sold.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Kate Baer: Hi, I’m Kate Baer, and it’s going to be okay.

That was the poet Kate Baer. Kate is a poet whose words have often been my okay thing, because Kate writes poems about womanhood and motherhood and personhood and friendship and bodies. She writes poems that have felt to me like a form of literary xanax. And if you’re thinking, oh man, are we going to be talking about poetry today? Yeah! We’re going to be talking about poetry today. 

Kate is not going to read one of her own poems. Kate is actually sharing a poem that makes her feel like it’s going to be okay. It’s a poem by Kim Adonizzio titled “to the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall.” And depending on your taste, this might not be a poem for little ears.

Kate Baer: To the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall, by Kim Adonizzio. 

If you ever woke in your dress at 4 a.m.. Ever closed your legs to someone you loved, opened them for someone you didn’t. Moved against a pillow in the dark, stood miserably on a beach, seaweed clinging to your ankles. Paid good money for a bad haircut. Backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you. Bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon. If you swam across a river under rain, sang using a dildo for a microphone, stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun. Ripped out the stitches in your heart. Because why not? If you think nothing and no one can. Listen. I love you. Joy is coming. 

The first time I read this poem, I physically put my hand on my heart and thought, oh, yes. Not only because it’s beautiful, which of course it is, but because it truly sums up the human, or at least my human experience so perfectly. I read it and thought this, this is taking my entire experience being an adult woman and putting it in this boiled down storytelling way of like a friend, you know. It reminded me that there’s, like, always a woman in the stall next door experiencing, if not the same thing, something similar. 

And it also reminds me of my actual friends and how no matter how bad things feel, they are there. They’re the joy that’s coming. It just brought me so much comfort and I think a lot of women feel the same way. 

This poem has been passed around the Internet, you know, over and over. I see it cycle through every few months, people passing it back and forth, because I think it’s that same feeling like, oh, this is it. This is what I’ve been experiencing for the last decade, or, or my twenties or my thirties or wherever you are. There’s so much emotion in it, and I always find that it’s so wild that these two emotions, joy and sadness can exist in the same human, in the same day, or within the same hour, and how we’re all just carrying around these dueling emotions and trying to act normal in meetings or at the grocery store or at, you know,  school pick up. That so many of us are just walking around with both of these things. And that’s what this poem kind of does to you. It’s like if you’ve ever felt all these ways and you feel that feeling of needing a tampon or, or missing someone or just feeling so lost, and then she kind of gut punches you with that last line, like, joy is coming, which it is, and it always does. 

You know it was like just last week I was feeling so terrible and so, kind of like lost in myself. And I was invited to go on this like group walk with my dumb friends, and they were like, it’ll be so good to be outside. And I’m kind of like, fuck you. And then I got there and, you know, within like 5 minutes I was laughing and like, just in that same morning, I was like, I don’t know if I can get out of bed. I don’t know if I can care for my children. It’s like, how can these two things happen? But joy is always coming. 

It’s so easy to forget in those like low moments, but just such a relief to, to experience that or to just remember that, which is what I think this poem does. There’s this Buddhist saying that says life is suffering and yet. And those and yets, are what remind me that it will be okay.

Life is suffering…and yet. And yet. Today, the “and yet” is the thing. Because sometimes you are the one crying uncontrollably in the bathroom stall. And sometimes you are the one passing toilet paper underneath that little divider. Letting someone know that you are there. That’s they’re not alone. That this is not all that will ever be. Sometimes you are the one who believes that this miserable moment is the only moment that will ever exist, and sometimes you are the one reminding another person that yes, this is a miserable moment, but there will be more. 

I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay. The it changes all the time, and we want to hear yours. You can call us at 612.568.4441 or email us at [email protected]

Thank you to Kate Baer for contributing this week. You can find her books of poetry linked in our show notes.