Best worst day
A recipe for days with unavoidable ick.
A True Life Built is a living photo essay on starting over and building a truer life. It’s for anyone, at any age, who is finding the courage to begin again. Subscribe for free weekly posts.
Last week, I had a second date with the cancer robots. It was a routine follow-up to the lump in my breast, to check if Al the alien was growing or just hanging out. The odds were in my favor, but a boob-alien still amps my anxiety. The date hung heavy on my calendar with the dread of the pending unknown. My mammogram might be totally normal or totally not and there was no way of knowing how the coin was going to land.
So the night before my scan, I baked bread. I picked a recipe at random and lost myself in a flurry of flour. I’m generally not much of a baker, but fresh bread feels like a warm hug. The smell of the yeast and rhythm of kneading sends me straight back to my mother’s kitchen, sitting on the counter as a child and punching down the pillowy dough. It’s an instinctive grasp for comfort when things feel uncertain.
Either way the scan went the next day, I would have cinnamon challah when I got home. You see, I have a recipe for rubbish days: add a dash of delight. It won’t erase the ick, but it will add a reassuring sweetness. I developed this approach during my first divorce court appearance two years ago and it has served me well ever since.
Here’s my recipe for Best Worst Days.
One Part Unavoidable Ick
As far as dreadable days go, facing your former love in court is high on the list. But on that warm May morning I ignored my nerves and insisted that I was fine. I could do this! I wasn’t worried! I set up the camera for the world’s worst Zoom call. I put on my brightest lipstick and blasted Beyonce. Then I worried so hard the room pitched like a ship at sea. Vertigo is my brain’s favorite stress signal when I’m ignoring tricky feelings. It’s hard to pretend you’re fine when you can’t walk in a straight line.
The first ingredient in a Best Worst Day is acknowledging that this situation stinks. I had an emergency call with my therapist who had me draw stick figure pictures of my fears and then scribble them out. Weirdly enough, this worked. “Your brain is making this vertigo, it can also unmake it,” she told me. In other words, squashing my fears was only making things worse. But when I let them live as stick figures, they relaxed.
One Part Asking for Help
Once you acknowledge your fears, you have to call in reinforcements. You have to ask people to show up for you and then—here’s the hard part—you have to tell them what you need. As a perfectionist, I hate broadcasting my insecurities. What if I’m overreacting? What if I seem needy? If minimizing were a sport, I’d win a gold medal.
But on that first day in court, I did something I never usually do: I asked for help. A girlfriend took three trains in from New Jersey to sit off camera and make comically furious faces at the most frustrating parts of the proceedings. Someone else was witnessing one of the worst moments of my life and validating my outrage. It turned an excruciating event into a shared experience, something we could laugh over later.
One Cup of Comfort
To counteract the sour taste of undeniable angst, sweeten the day with some guaranteed comfort. What action or place always sets your spirit at ease? What is your soul equivalent of a hug? For me, it’s gardens in the sun.
After court, my friend held me as I howled with hurt, then we walked to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and flopped down under the cherry blossoms. As the adrenaline ebbed, the sweetness soaked in. My divorce was not done, but for today it was over. As I watched the pale-pink petals shift in the sun, the trees coaxed me out of my private misery and grounded me back in the wider world. This too, they whispered, shall pass.
A Dash of Whimsey
The secret ingredient of a Best Worst Day, the critical yeast, is a dash of whimsey. A downer day must be leavened with unusual delight. What have you always wanted to do but never gotten around to? What feels impulsive and indulgent? Don’t overthink it. I said high tea. My girlfriend said ax throwing. We decided to do both.
We ate cucumber sandwiches and scones with cream and sipped tea from frilly china cups. We hurled axes at plywood bulls-eyes and did high-five shimmies when the blades struck home. It was enchantingly silly and utterly absurd and by the end we were breathless from laughing. We had turned a miserable day into one of my favorite memories of my rebirth.
That’s the magic of leavening dreadful days: no matter which way the coin lands, you can choose to claim some joy. As for last week’s cancer scans, they blessedly came back clear. Al the Alien is just hanging out, a benign boob-pet. I left the doctor’s office light with relief and went home to enjoy my cinnamon bread.
Additional inspiration:
Challah: I used this challah recipe from Smitten Kitchen, filled with cinnamon sugar instead of figs (I am definitely trying figs next time). I didn’t have the brainpower to braid them, so I twisted them like this, may my Jewish ancestors forgive me.
Scanxiety:
had a lovely piece on "scanxiety" recently, which helped me name why I felt so anxious about the scan.Critical yeast: I first heard this term from
in this beautiful essay, and again on this On Being podcast. We think of change happening when something reaches a critical mass, but there is always a long “quiet before” of decades or of centuries where that change was fermenting. Our small choices matter.One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!
Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.
Whimsy!!! That’s my missing ingredient...I hope your scan went well Liz x
One of my favorite memories too!
Love 💕 turning all the best worst days around with you. I’m here for it.