how to be a balm.

on healing wounds, or trying to.

Last week was uncomfortable and this week isn’t looking good either. For one thing, at the ripe old age of 39.5, I’m fixing my teeth. It is exactly as humbling and awkward and vain as it sounds. I’m trying to learn to talk without lisping or wincing at my tender gums. It’s been thirty-six hours of wearing clear liners on top of my overlapped teeth and thirty-six hours of realizing the grave error I made in choosing to give my second-born a name that not only begins, but also ends, with the letter S. There’s a blossoming cold sore on my lip and socks that bunch in my rain boots, and, allegedly, tiny stones clogging up the works in my gallbladder, for fuck’s sake. Beyond gripes of semi-self-inflicted physical discomfort—and do trust that I could go on—there’s stuff happening in my professional life that has felt not great recently. There is stuff going on in my personal life and in my real-world community that has felt doubly not great. There is violence and chaos and uncertainty in nearly every far flung corner of the globe and in my very own backyard that not great doesn’t begin to adequately describe. I don’t have to remind any of you of this, of course. There’s plenty of not great to go around.

On Friday, when I hit publish on my weekly list of links and objects, I was distracted and frankly, grumpy. I’d cobbled together my letter—a combination of stories I’d read and saved up over the course of the week, and objects that I’d photographed—as I always do. I finally hit publish and then I scurried out into the dark, leaving myself, as usual, with exactly two fewer minutes than I’d need to avoid needing to run/walk to daycare pickup.

Later that evening, I saw this note from a reader:

I know you are just as human as all of us Erin, but thank you for the balm of sharing again.

This made me cry, like all kind things spoken in my general direction, but it also got me thinking about balms. Maybe I am overworking this metaphor, but in a moment when things feel tender in so many different ways, being a balm, or offering a balm, or applying a balm to our own and other humans’ battered bits feels particularly important. A balm soothes and comforts, but it also heals, doesn’t it? A balm isn’t just palliative, but restorative, too. It feels self-important for me to say that anything I do here offers itself as a balm to anyone else, but it also feels hopeful to imagine that it might, and so I’ll just lean in.

What if I strove to be a balm? What if we all did? What if we all could, somehow, reach out to each other and offer something reparative? What if we saw a sore spot and instead of poking it, we set about making it better? What if we accepted that balms are necessary and good—that without them we’d be nothing more than gaping wounds of weeping puss? (Sorry, but!) What if we spent time looking to see what balms are offered to us, daily, hourly, by the people we know and love and the people we don’t? It’s easier, I know, to spot the barbs. It’s harder, but far more satisfying, to spot the balms.

The bus driver who waits while I run to the stop in the pouring rain; a balm.

Turning East on a morning walk and getting hit in the face with sunshine; a balm.

Bumping into a friend after school drop-off and receiving a silent hug; a balm.

A child that crawls into bed and asks for a snuggle before demanding breakfast; a balm.

A text thread of parents working together and speaking plainly; a balm.

People singing together; a balm.

A friend answering a Sunday morning text and meeting for an unplanned coffee; a balm.

A smile from a stranger in the grocery store checkout as my child wails; a balm.

Someone offering my kid their seat on the subway; a balm.

The thing to remember about balms is that they don’t always work at first pass. A smarting burn might not be immediately be soothed by the application of calendula. And the inverse is also true: a balm might offer quick, immediate relief, but it will need to be repeatedly applied and adapted for long-lasting effects and healing. There are false balms, too—niceties or pleasantries that don’t do much more than stop the conversation without fixing anything. Despite marketing that attempts to delude us into believing otherwise, there’s no such thing as a miracle balm. To each her own, can be the way with balms. A particular balm might help one person immediately but conjure a terrible, violent reaction in someone else. Sometimes it’s nice and helpful to apply our own balms, and we should try to remember to do so, but other times, we need help with the application.

A balm, I’ll remind myself, isn’t passive. A balm requires action and attention. Offering a balm—and the balm itself—is productive. A balm doesn’t sit back and watch something fester, a balm does something. A balm gets to work. A balm that goes unused can turn, so best to apply what we can often and abundantly. Let us not be miserly with our balms. Let us try our very best.

PS. It’s January, and so if you want to get very literal, please do. Calendula salve is not a miracle balm, but it’s close.