Vanilla Oat Clusters Cereal/Apple Slices

4/30/2026

Vanilla Oat Clusters Cereal/Apple Slices

Keshav once told me that his favorite cereal is Honey Bunches of Oats. I don't think he is alone in that. It's a super yummy cereal. But I refuse to buy and serve him highly processed breakfast cereal. I suppose getting Trader Joe's Vanilla Oat Clusters is a compromise in that it is less processed, and I admit it makes breakfasts super easy on those days when I don't get up as early as usual. 

He likes his milk on the side, not in the cereal, so that he can put on as much as he likes. It also keeps the cereal from getting soggy until he awakes and is ready to eat. Cereal is a good breakfast to serve fruit with, but I can't put the fruit in the cereal, it has to be on the side. For instance, here I served apple slices, which he likes, but if I served him strawberries, they would have to be whole. If they were cut up and in the cereal, he would not eat them. Go figure. 

I did recently make an awesome granola based on the famous Eleven Madison Park restaurant granola, but as much as I think it's great, Keshav prefers the boxed cereal. Oh well, at long as he has fruit on the side I am happy.

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Keshav is leaving tonight to spend the weekend in Boston with his mother for Mother's Day. I am staying behind, because work is still too sluggish for me to take time off and be purchasing plane tickets. However, don't cry for me Argentina. I will be driving out to Palm Springs on Saturday to spend two nights with Dave at his new condo. The weather should be glorious, unlike what Keshav will have in Boston. I am ready for a little Me Time, to be honest, not because I need space from Keshav, but because I need time with myself. 

After our big fight last week, the two of us have been closer, in the way that a relationship threat can make one value things more. The fight was a reminder that we could lose what we have, a possibility I have no intention of strengthening. I have done a much better job this year of attending to what I need to thrive in this marriage, but I could always do more. I am, as they say, a work in progress. 

Last night Keshav asked me if, after our fight, I felt suicidal. I told him that I did not. I am glad he asked the question, because this is the type of communication I want us to feel free to have with one another. I told him that on occasion I do struggle with my "purpose" for continuing to live, but that is not the same thing as not wanting to live. I also told him that I have done enough work on myself that these days I may dip my toe into despair without falling completely into it. 

But I also told him that what I felt, when I shut down, was worse than suicidal, because unlike suicidality, it felt like there was no escape from the pain I was experiencing. It was a deadness that was not dead, but suicide would have been overkill. But on a positive note, I told him that even in the deep of it, killing myself was never an option because I could not do that to the people who love me. Suicide would not offer relief, only compound the pain for those left behind. And I have healed enough to no longer want other to suffer when I am suffering. 

Isn't this a fun essay? 

But I wanted to write about it because people don't talk about these things! They don't talk about despair, or feeling worse than suicidal, or how love can pull you up to the surface. Well, they don't talk about therapists feeling these things or having these experiences, at least. Or maybe they do, I don't really pay enough attention to what people say unless they are saying it to me. 

It seems that the stories about therapists fall into one of two camps: either therapists are supposed to be above messiness, or they are total messes who have not dealt with any of their stuff. Neither story is thick enough to describe any therapist, I will have you know. What I notice in myself and other therapists is that we are beautifully messy, but not falling apart. Our messiness is both fragile and sturdy, meaning that it needs attending to keep from solidifying into one of the other. 

The gifts I have as a therapist spring from, and feed upon, my messiness--my willingness and ability to see underneath where the pain and joy live. You might say that we are witches in a way, tending to a power that is both ours and not ours, completely. A therapist who is not messy can only offer skills advice, where a therapist who has allowed messiness to take over cannot offer anything at all. 

Messiness works because it is the in-between where everything is available. But the cost of having everything available is a greater sensitivity to things both painful and joyful, and the vulnerability of being totally swallowed by either. It is like riding on one rail, both thrilling and dangerous, where life and death hold hands. 

So no, I was not suicidal, though admittedly I was leaning a little too far of the rail. It was my own healed self, and my husband, who righted me back up. And for that, I am happy to put his fruit on the side.