All God's Broken Children

Amanda Hess. Parenthood. Sinéad O'Connor. New tunes.

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When you have a child, you grow a second heart, one that throbs harder and hurts more, filling up like a balloon or a hydrogen bomb, since it is a reminder that it carries a steep price: grief. Not only grief about your child but every child, especially the broken and battered ones, the ones suffering in silence somewhere. All of them become part of you.

In the first weeks of my first son's life, his hands would reach up to the sky and shake whenever he was lying on the changing table — a classic startle reflex. And he would cry so loudly on his back, so much so that I attempted to put his diaper on sideways a couple of times, but that only upset him more. I was so happy to be sober, finally able to feel all that love, but afraid to be saddled by all his pain. Am I hurting him?

Julieanne, who has a brain that stores information like a supercomputer, explained that babies cry on their backs because, in cave-dwelling times, as their mothers gathered food or built fires or whatever it was that cave people did, the babies would cry so they wouldn't be forgotten when placed on the ground. Adding to the drama was that newborns were frequently grabbed and eaten back then. "Bears, mostly," she said. "The bears would grab the babies." And then my heart ached for those long-gone cave babies.

From then on, I would change my wailing son, hold his shaky hands, and sing assurances to calm both of us down: "There are no bears…there are no bears…no bears, no bears, no bears."

I constantly fight through these thoughts: How do I protect my children? How do I protect myself from all these bears?

I try to escape this feeling every day, with varying degrees of success.

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On this week's pod, we talk to New York Times writer Amanda Hess about her new book, "Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age. "We veer into all sorts of parental anxiety. Plus, we discuss why Amanda stopped drinking and how she manages her mental health.

As a bonus to our paid subscribers, I’ve included an email interview about mental illness we did with Amanda back in 2021 after she wrote a profile of Sinéad O’Connor.

“I did know that [Sinead] had some experience with mental illness, and I knew I wanted to address that in some way. I was interested in thinking about what we mean when we call a person “crazy,” because sometimes we mean that the person is mentally ill, and sometimes we mean that they’ve crossed some social boundary. Often those two meanings are applied to the same person, and it’s assumed that is because being mentally ill makes people act “crazy,” but I think perhaps the opposite can be true, that having one’s behavior or beliefs stigmatized — on a massively public, global scale — is not always helpful for cultivating mental wellness.”

Read the full interview, along with the usual Sunday rundowns, behind the paywall.

If you can’t afford a sub, please email me and we will figure it out. If you can afford to pay for a subscription, know that it helps us support both our writers, editors, illustrators and anyone who needs a little help paying for TSB at this time. Thanks in advance.

So again: Get a paid subscription if you can. Hit me up if you can’t. xo — AJD

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