20: Mixed Frequencies

Hormones, mythology and free parking

We're trying something new this week: less deep dive, more snapshot of what's been holding our attention. Analog obsessions and meditations on mortality. Different registers, same format.

I can’t stop thinking about…

Kate: How fragile things can feel at the exact moment they appear most lush.

The Dark Wizard

When my friend Jen used to take conference calls from a climb, for a while I didn’t realize she meant clipped into the side of a granite wall somewhere in Yosemite, talking through plans hundreds of feet in the air. At first I thought she meant, like, hiking.

At the time I mostly knew Dean and Whisper through videos Jen would show me. Whisper in her little goggles. The videos of them BASE jumping together. It all felt surreal and oddly tender. I don’t think I fully understood then that Dean wasn’t just adventurous, he was genuinely changing climbing and BASE jumping. People spoke about him like this larger-than-life figure, but Jen never did. She was always so grounded and smart and funny about it all, while also having a whole career and identity of her own.

We reconnected after both experiencing loss within a year of each other. I think there was an unspoken understanding there about what happens after someone dies relatively young and somewhat publicly. How they can become even bigger afterward through projection and mythology, and how disorienting that can feel.

So when Danny and I started watching The Dark Wizard, I felt cracked open a little. It’s about obsession, mortality, love. The strange tension between freedom and consequence. The way brilliance and self-destruction can sit alarmingly close together. Even if you’re not into climbing, watch this documentary. It’s really about people, and the impossible task of loving someone who lives that close to the edge.

The Archaeology of Grief

While we’re on the subject, my friend Scarlett wrote something this week that I haven’t stopped thinking about. It’s about grief, obviously, but also inheritance, family mythology, the body, memory, the strange way loss reshapes your identity over time. The essay moves through death and addiction and girlhood and survival in a way that feels completely unguarded and alive.

One line in particular got me: what we don’t grieve doesn’t disappear.

Thankful she wrote about grief as it actually is: deranged, spiritual, embarrassing, funny, ugly, transformative, lonely, communal, deeply uncool. And for making something this sharp from the wreckage.

There’s also something comforting about another woman openly admitting grief made her a little feral.

F-ing Hormones

Anyway, while contemplating mortality and the underworld and all the other extremely relaxing topics I’ve been focused on lately, I also discovered there’s apparently a nationwide estradiol shortage.

Nothing makes you feel stable quite like texting six pharmacies trying to track down estrogen patches. Broadly great for women that we’re finally being prescribed hormones more openly, but personally, right now, yikes.

Somewhere in the middle of this I also added testosterone into the mix and briefly became Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse. Acne. Rage. A deeply irrational level of confidence.

If you see me staring into space at Gelson’s looking slightly haunted, mind your business.

Emma: Things that take up space.

Women in Clothes

Sometimes my love of clothes feels embarrassingly indulgent. Like, why do I care this much about a pair of vintage trousers I found on eBay at 2am? Especially when I’m trying to justify said purchase to my husband, a man who owns the same t-shirt, same jeans, and same shoes in three different colors and considers that a complete wardrobe.

When I spiral about whether this makes me shallow, I return to Women in Clothes—the 2014 collection edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton. Over 600 women (Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Roxane Gay, Miranda July) answering questions about what they wear and why.

It never fails to remind me that clothes are never just clothes. That getting dressed is philosophical, political, and emotional. Sometimes all at once. A form of self-authorship, whether you’re reaching for vintage Margiela or UGGs.

The section “Mothers as Others,” where women reflect on photos of their mothers and their clothing before they had children.

Going to the Mall With Friends

I don’t know if it’s teenage nostalgia or a yearning for simpler times, but I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at the mall lately.

Lunch with friends? Revolving sushi at the Galleria. Free afternoon? Mall movie followed by aimless wandering. (Yes, I tried on jeans at Abercrombie. No, I didn’t buy them. The trauma of 2006 remains.)

I love the free parking, the dopamine hit of a little treat, the blissful anonymity of mall air conditioning. As Alexandra Lange argues, the mall is one of our last true “third places.” Somewhere you can exist without agenda or purchase obligation.

In a world that’s hyper-optimized and algorithmically curated, I feel a small rebellion in wandering a deeply uncool time capsule, eating a corndog, and trying on things I’ll never buy.

Cookbook Club

My closest friends and I have been meeting for monthly cookbook club for two years. What started as an excuse to drink wine has become one of my most sacred nights.

We rotate who picks the book and who hosts, but one rule is ironclad: no men allowed. The husbands stay home while we demolish whole fish, handmade dumplings, elaborate desserts. If they’re lucky, they get leftovers. If we’re lucky, we discover a new favorite recipe or just get three hours to gossip and eat.

Pregnancies have been announced over these meals. Grief processed, milestones celebrated, kitchen disasters eaten anyway.

There’s something grounding about gathering around food you each made alone but brought to share. Tactile, embodied, impossible to replicate through a screen.

Recent highlights: I Sleep in My Kitchen, The Cook You Want to Be, First Generation, The Art of Simple Food, Start Here

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About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com