Letter 111: The Space Between
When we gain new perspective
Welcome! This bi-weekly email newsletter is a place where women spanning all ages share their sense of identity and their awareness of our world through personal narrative. Stories shared here come from writers across many generations, cultures, locations, and ethnicities.
A Week of Gratitude!
As we know, Emily Fleming has an incredible way with words. The perspective and insight she’s shared with our readers, for years now, has been a steady hand in a sometimes-uncertain world. Her offering today about gratitude is more of the same. How we choose to think and act on our thoughts defines who we become. As Annie Dillard shares, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” May we continue to spend our days with intention and gratitude, while we focus on empathy for those around us (and afar!) who may be fighting great battles without our even knowing it.
Our longtime readers know that the holidays are not just an important time for Emily, me, and our families; but they are also a time of rest. As we do each year, we are signing off from our letters for the next few weeks to be with our families and enjoy new books and favorite recipes. Emily and I are incredibly grateful for your continued support of our writers and I’m so excited to share several new writers with you in 2024. There is some tremendous writing coming your way! Have a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you in the new year! —Molly
“Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.”
Bob Bitchin
This November, I was asked to be the guest speaker at the annual event our local high school holds to honor our town’s veterans. (My kids’ favorite babysitter put me up for it.) I appreciate that my experience as a veteran may be viewed as unique: as a woman, as a physician who practiced medicine in cargo planes, and as a mom who left her baby for half a year. Nevertheless, I find myself crippled with imposter syndrome when asked to talk about it.
I still feel uncomfortable with describing my military service as a time of sacrifice. I served for seven years Active Duty at the same duty station, and deployed overseas for one six-month tour. Some of my heroes served for illustrious 20+ year careers, deploying multiple times, moving their families all over the world. What I did feels small by comparison. My own family’s sacrifice feels greater than mine.
While I was in Afghanistan, I remember feeling fortunate as I saw Marines and Special Forces teams kitted up in their battle rattle to go “outside the wire” and patrol the valley surrounded by the Hindu Kush mountains. I never once left the protective barrier of the walls surrounding the base—10-foot high concrete barricades topped with spiraled barbed wire—unless I was in a military plane. Even as I wore my own flak vest and helmet, with my weapon on my belt, I still felt relatively safe, compared to the more dangerous situations they were thrust into. We were all at war, but the war zone I was in felt way more cushy in comparison to theirs.
On this side of my deployment, it sounds a little crazy to describe it all in terms of degrees of danger. I’m sure there was an evolutionary preservation mechanism at work, allowing me to find a sense of safety in an otherwise risky situation and give my fight-or-flight responses a chance to downshift a bit. But at the time, I truly felt fortunate to be on the inside of the wire, and was overwhelmed with gratitude for those who risked their own safety to preserve mine.
Actively choosing my perspective also made a huge difference in my mental health. While deployed, I felt like a lot of my life was out of my control. The Air Force dictated where I slept, what I wore, who my roommate was, what I ate, and, most importantly, when I got to go home. Having so little autonomy made me feel like I was going a little crazy, and I clung to every choice I was able to make. I could always choose my perspective and my attitude. And I could always find something to be grateful for, even if it was just that one more day had ended. Most days, I could find a lot more than just that.
Incorporating a gratitude practice into my daily routine helped me shift my perspective during that time, making the days more tolerable. It was very tempting to wallow in despair and self-pity, moping around and missing my family. When I chose gratitude, it helped pull me out of that funk, reminding me that I actually had it pretty good.
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
—Viktor Frankl
I’ve written before about choosing your attitude. We hold immense power, even in situations in which we feel powerless, when we remember that we can control the way we view our circumstances. Depending on who you compare yourself to and how you look at it, there is always someone who has it better than you, or worse than you. This can either serve to send you into a spiral of self-pity, or it can propel you toward gratitude.
As I have reflected on my time spent in military service, I find myself grateful for it all, and for the perspective I gained as a result. My family and I will never again take for granted the freedom we enjoy as a nation, for we bore the cost on our own backs for a time. There are certainly those who paid a much greater price than I did, but my time in service does more to increase my appreciation for them, than diminish my own accomplishments.
It is with an immense sense of pride that I can say I belong to an incredible community of brave individuals who sacrificed their own personal liberties and freedom of movement, set aside their own needs and wants, and said yes to a cause bigger than themselves. We owe them and their families our gratitude, even if we ourselves have also served. There is more than enough gratitude to go around.
Emily’s Five Favorite Things
Zucchini feels like a vegetable that is either feast or famine: you either have it coming out your ears, or it’s completely out of season. If you shredded and froze your extra zucchini, try making something other than bread. These zucchini fritters with tzatziki sauce were a huge hit, both in my home and with my coworkers.
We found a garlic press at HomeGoods recently that was so good, it made us want to gift it to everyone we know. First of all, it’s gold and beautiful. But more importantly, it is so ridiculously easy to use. You don’t even have to peel the garlic cloves if you don’t want to.
I never thought I would be someone who enjoyed reading the fantasy genre. Mythical creatures were never my jam. Yet here I am, a huge fan of Fourth Wing, preordering Rebecca Yarros’s second book. My daughter is really loving the Wings of Fire graphic novels, so I guess you can say we’re both into dragons now.
Sometimes I find the art of mixology intimidating. I have yet to master making the dirty martini at home. But I recently tried this French 75 recipe and found it delightful. It was much easier to put together than it seems, and was downright impressive-looking.
This recommendation will almost certainly not age well, but any of my fellow Swifties are also big fans of what Taylor is doing for the reputation of the NFL with her current situationship, allow me to recommend this piece of attire.
With gratitude,
Emily Fleming
P.S. So many good, past letters from Emily like: separating ourself from our work; leaning into the uncomfortable; and when we fall in love with reading again.
Thanks for sharing this Emily. Lovely and a good reminder that our brains and perspectives are one of our greatest tools.