Crying Over Bean Soup

Is this post about...me?

We had a meeting with our financial advisor this week—also known as the guy who gently walks us through concepts we absolutely should know by now.

My husband and I like to think of ourselves as reasonably smart humans with complementary superpowers—but throw us into a conversation about investments, interest rates, or retirement plans, and suddenly we’re two toddlers trying to decode ancient hieroglyphics.

We smile. We nod. We hope no one asks us a follow-up question.

I read that your brain tends to retain what feels important and lets go of the rest. Which makes sense, because I can identify paint undertones in natural light, but I cannot confidently explain our retirement allocation.

Is this normal? Is adulthood just pretending we understand how money works?

These are rhetorical questions, please don’t send book recommendations. I’m not looking to improve. I’m looking to cope.

Well that’s both impressive and horrifying.

Via IG: beingandbecomingavi

“Grief is like glitter. At first it’s everywhere. It’s on your pants, in your hair, under your nails. And then at one point you think it’s all gone but one day you will find glitter in your pocket or in your car and it will bring it all back but in a way that is actually sparkly this time instead of messy because it reminds you of the good.”

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Via TT: jackpetroske

Loved this life analogy:

You are holding a coffee cup when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why’d you spill your coffee? Because someone bumped into me! Wrong. You spilled the coffee cup because there was coffee in it. Had there been tea in it, you would’ve spilled tea.

Whatever’s inside the cup is what will spill out. Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you, whatever is inside you will come out. It is easy to fake until you get rattled. So we have to ask ourselves, what’s in my cup? When life gets tough, what’s going to spill over? Joy, gratitude, peace and humility? Or is it going to be anger, bitterness, victim mentality or quitting tendencies? Life provides the cup, you choose how to fill it.

I just snapped at my son for making noise while I was typing this, which perfectly proves the point about faking it until you’re rattled.

1. Anniversary: This movie (political thriller) was wildly dystopian and scared the shit out of me because of the parallels.

2. Wreck: Okay, so I started this one (I’m halfway through), and then someone recommended Sandwich, which came before this book. Should I stop and read the other one first? Is it weird to read them out of order? I’m really enjoying this one—her writing is so funny.

3. Love Story: I’m really enjoying this—the story, the interiors, the music, all of it—but I also feel kind of guilty watching it. I keep wondering how the family must feel, how invasive this might be, and how much of it is actually accurate. Even during the intimate scenes with his mom, I find myself thinking, did they just make this up? And if so, how strange is that?

Thank you to all of you that filled out the survey yesterday. If you didn’t receive the email, please let me know.

Also, launched this earlier this week….

One of my favorite books, Tiny Beautiful Things, is a collection of advice columns. I love it because even questions that didn’t initially feel relatable taught me something—and I hope I can do the same here. I’ll randomly select a submission every month and see if I can turn it into advice that doesn’t ruin lives.

It’s completely anonymous, ask me anything you want advice on. I’ll keep a permanent home for this button in each newsletter.

I once saw a woman post a perfectly innocent recipe for bean soup and accidentally ignite a civil war.

The video was thirty seconds long. She rinsed the beans. She chopped the onion. She stirred the pot with the calm authority of someone who knows what cumin does. She did not mention politics. She did not mention morality. She did not mention your grandmother.

Within minutes, the comments arrived like raccoons who had smelled a loose lid.

“You didn’t soak them overnight? My Nonna is screaming.”

“This is cultural appropriation of legumes.”

“I’m allergic to beans. Thanks for excluding us.”

And thus I learned what the young kids now call The Bean Soup Theory of the Internet: no matter what you post, someone will find a way to make it about themselves.

I’ve seen it in comment sections, felt it in DMs, and just recently, a post I made on Threads sparked a private back-and-forth with an influencer.

Let’s discuss.