saying the most
lotsa funnnnn (and crying) in this roundup of movies, podcasts, books, TV, and movement
Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋
In therapy, clients will often recount something to me and then wait. Waiting for me to have a set reaction. But often, they haven’t said what this something meant to them, how they experienced it, what they felt. Which leaves me responding, “Say more…”
This is the third edition of say more, a series I do periodically, recapping what I consumed—TV, books, movies, food, movement, maybe the rogue purchase—and what it made me feel.
Movies 🍿
My two standouts in this round are far from original, but they were funnnnn.
Challengers
My husband, J, and I took advantage of a Parent Night Out at Archie’s school to go see Challengers the night it came out. Starring the radiant and powerful, Zendaya, and the two hot, sweaty messes Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor (who knew Prince Charles was hiding all that rizz. IYKYK). Put simply, our three leads alternate between being obsessed with tennis and each other and hating tennis and each other. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, who you may remember from Call Me By Your Name.
Best I can recollect, Call Me By Your Name is the only movie I’ve watched more than a couples times with J. He’s not out here indulging in repeated viewings like I am. But this one was the exception. There we were—in the theater, on a random Saturday, on the way to our honeymoon 40,000 feet in the air crying our fucking faces off at this scene (Michael Stuhlbarg, you gentle, emotional king!).1
I remember seeing the Richard Linklater film Boyhood pretty early on in our relationship. As we left the theater he looked over at me, teary and stunned.
“The last time I cried at a movie was when Macaulay Culkin died in My Girl.”
And that is how the levy began to crack. Then, it broke wide open at our first viewing of CMBYN. Listen, I obviously can’t prove our love led him to unlock this part of himself, but I also can’t disprove that. This is an abhorrent thing to be proud of. And yet, there I am, glowing with it.
Needless to say, between the cast, the director, and the tennis of it all, I was basically sprinting to the theater. Gosh, was it thrilling. I was grinning the whole time. The music (!!). The outfits. The mischief. The tension. I’ll say it again, THRILLING.
Zendaya’s Tashi is sublime. Yes, perhaps one could say she’s behaving badly (which I personally love in a lead), but she’s also being told to be less of who she is. Her wanting deemed threatening. She wanted to talk shit and talk tennis. Maybe this is an avoidance of vulnerability, or maybe she just loves tennis. Like, you’d have to ask her, rather than confining her to walk the tightrope of being a badass, but also soft.
And what a triangle. A triangle to end all triangles. Unlike say, the Pacey, Dawson, and Joey triangle of yore, this triangle is ELECTRIC on all sides. That churro scene, have mercy.
The Idea of You
Directed by Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer, The Big Sick) who co-wrote it with Jennifer Westfeldt (she wrote, directed and starred, in my opinion, in the underappreciated 2012’s Friends with Kids). They adapted this screenplay from Robinne Lee’s novel of the same name.
When the trailer for this one, about a 40 year-old divorcee (Anne Hathaway) being romanced by a boybander in his mid 20’s (Nicholas Galitzine), made the rounds, I felt vaguely intrigued because I do love me some Annie. I wasn’t, however, convinced the male lead or premise would pull me in. For the second time in a row for these round ups, my instinct born from the first glance was dead wrong.
This is a reminder to always give it a shot because the chemistry between these two is off the charts. Galitzine is—I pinky promise I googled for a better synonym but came up short—dazzling. Hathaway is criminally radiant in this. Making me want long hair and bangs again. She better stop. I just accepted I’m in my bob era.
The age gap between them is clearly meant to be part of the intrigue here.
and from have a thorough exploration on this on their pod so I won’t even try to retread that ground here. It is funny though because lately this has been something on my mind—being an older woman with a younger man. I’ve had a couple moments recently where younger men—best I can guess is mid 20’s ish—express an interest in me.My suspicion around why I’d attract men in their 20’s more now as a married mom, than I did when I myself was in my 20’s is threefold. One, I’m more confident now than I’ve ever been. Two, as I’ve spoken about before, I have the opposite of RBF. Three weeks out of the month, I look perennially ecstatic to be here—alive, and all that. From the outside, I may seem like an easy object of affection. And, finally, I don’t wear a wedding ring.
Not on principle, although that is becoming more and more appealing as it’s been years since I wore my engagement ring. The absence of my wedding rings is far more situational than that. The engagement ring was falling apart and needed some work. In the hectic shuffle that is this season of our life, I’d put fixing that ring down at the bottom of the list in terms of where we want to invest our finances and time. I did have a thin wedding band I wore for awhile, but that went the way of the dodo. Archie always liked to hold my ring finger and twirl the band as we walked. Which was so cute until it slipped off on a moving walkway at PDX last October. V thankful to the former versions of us who bought that off Etsy for $30.
So I haven’t worn a wedding ring in a long time which means sometimes inquiring hearts and minds will shoot their shot. It makes me guffaw each time this happens. Idea of You is exactly right. I seem confident, happy, and single according to any quick metrics you could pull from a glance. When in reality, I’m being perceived in one of the few moments a week I’m not mothering or working.
I daydream of leaning over and scaring them away by whispering,
“I’m a 35-year old married sober therapist with anxiety and a 4.5 year old & my side passion project is to write about my personal life on the internet…Boo” 👻
I know I’m generalizing and maybe there are a few mid-20 year olds out there who wouldn’t be shook by all that, but objectively this is not a beginner-level course we got going on over here.
Which brings me back to the Idea of You. In the film, it’s ultimately his lifestyle that scares her away. We realize her life—simple, mellow, spacious—is the dream, not the fame, glamour and attention he attracts. For me, there was something so profound about watching a mother at that stage in her life—she has a teenager daughter. I suddenly remembered, while I’ll always be a mother, I won’t always be mothering in the way I am now.
While I suspect my life won’t turn out just like Annie’s character in the film in that I probably won’t be sleeping with a pop star in a decade, I will most certainly have a teenager. It was riveting to consider a future in which I won’t be dragging my ass to bed every night feeling like I’ve used every cell of my emotional and physical being to keep this kid occupied. I’m not sure if that was the moral of the story, but that is what I got. That and I’m being tempted by bangs again. Damn you, Hathaway.
Podcasts 🎤
My brain is pretty overloaded from an intensive training I’m doing for work (and trash TV as you’ll soon hear about) so I haven't been diving into informational podcasts lately. Mostly interviews and always Nobody’s Listening, Right? for me.
I found the Chris Pine interview on WTF with Marc Maron to be the most relaxed and delightful conversation. Is Chris Pine the human form of a Xanax? As someone who has taken a few (prescribed) in her day, it really feels like it. For those who have never listened to WTF, Marc vamps with himself in the first part of every episode and this one in particular, where he grapples with his own bullshit, is hysterical.
Books 📚
As promised in my last round-up, I broke out of my reading rut and have finished a few novels since then: The Fury by Alex Michaelades, Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez, and None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell.
Also, big moves over here in that (1) I finished the first book I’ve ever read entirely on a tablet, the first draft of a book of a friend from my writing group,
–AND– (2) also at her encouragement, I started my first audiobook.She suggested Good Material by Dolly Alderton. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far I’m enjoying it. It’s a simple story, which sometimes I really love. It allows for a lot of depth into the protagonist. The audio format met the needs of the part of me that gets restless about not reading all the books I want to. It doesn’t however feed the same feeling as reading a physical book–and that’s OK with me. Now that I’ve tried it, I’m glad to have both options.
I finished Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez this weekend. I really love her work. It’s Emily Henry-esque in that it’s adult romance and immensely readable. What I love specifically about Abby is she writes about mental health issues very, very well. The story isn’t saturated in it, but it lives within the characters in this kind of effortless way. Her other two that I’ve read, Part of Your World and Yours Truly, had the same deft handling. In Just For The Summer our two mains meet in a very sweet Good Luck Chuck meets Reddit AITA thread way. While their meet cute is very, well cute, their real-life circumstances feel very grounded in this simultaneously slow and fast burn rom com.
TV 📺
Not much I want to report here because my husband and I are mostly watching Bravo shows, like VPR and The Valley, which I don’t have in me to discuss. While I am a therapist, my head would damn near explode if I even considered trying to unpack the dynamics there.
One thing we watched that I loved was Taylor Tomlinson’s stand up special, Have It All. She comes out, shot out of a cannon and it never lets up. I was laughing, laughing to this…and even J, who can be withholding of a laugh, was lolzing next to me.
I’m not a diehard Bridgerton fan, but I did watch the first two seasons, so I feel like I’m sort of pot committed now. I watched the first drop of the episodes for season three and very much enjoyed myself. I can’t get my eyes on enough Nicola Coughlan, the actress who plays Penelope/Lady Whistledown. She’s great on the show and just seems to be the sparkliest human, as evidenced here.
I never got around to watching the Bridgerton origin story, Queen Charlotte, when it came out last year and thought why not keep this Regency Era kick going. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was not ready for how much mental illness was centered. I guess I should have been, but wow. There were some moments that really got me.
One where King George is being treated tortured by a physician under the pretense that these “unconventional methods” would help rid him of, as they would say back then, madness. He bellows, “Our goal was to return me to myself -much more of this and I won’t have a self to return to.” 👏👏👏👏
A moment where his guard puts a hand on the king’s shoulder and how this simple act of physical touch brought him back to himself. Another when he shares how he’s lived his entire life in terror of acting incorrectly.
While, shocker, I don’t have any clients who are royalty, these are incredibly relatable themes.
The fervor around hiding his illness and trying to find a cure reminded me of how often I see the desperation to rid ourselves of something—anxiety, depression, trauma, attachment issues—to be well, whatever the hell that means. This isn’t to say some symptoms needn’t2 be treated, but sometimes that rejection of parts of ourselves often can lead to even more acuity of the very symptoms we fear. Anxiety about anxiety. Depression about depression. Sometimes the hidden task isn’t to strip ourselves of something, but learning to live with what and who we are.
As Queen Charlotte insisted, “I care not for his sanity. I care for his happiness. I care for his soul. Let him be mad, if mad is what he needs.”
I love going back into my personal archives for a show or music. Like many, I’m a re-watcher. If I’m sick or sad, I’m probably curled up in bed watching Friends. Last year I randomly re-watched Being Erica—a Canadian TV show where a woman has a therapist with the paranormal ability to send her back in time to revisit her mistakes. The premise, as I’m sure you can imagine, is essentially cat nip for therapists.
The idea for this one from the vault came to me after a call from Archie’s daycare. Anyone who has kids knows the feeling when you see the name of your kid's school flash across your phone.
Terror. Dread.
Thankfully the school staff immediately says, “No emergency, it’s just that ____” This made me think of a time I got that call because Archie had a fever come on quickly and he needed to be picked up ASAP. I went and swept him up from school and brought him home for some cuddle treatment. It was one of the few times he slept on me as a toddler. Stuck on the couch, I stumbled on Love Life and binged as many eps as I could before he woke up.
This anthology series follows one lead—Anna Kendrick for season one, William Jackson Harper for season two—through different relationships. Each episode is a different lover. Both seasons of this show are really, really well done, although I’m slightly partial to season two. Solid television right there.3
Newsletters and Mags 🗞️
“Zendaya Talks Anxiety, Impact, and Her New Partnership With On” for Vogue.com by Christina Pérez
I’m firmly in my Zendaya fandom RN, sueeeeee me. Between her styling for the press circuit of the aforenmentioned Challengers and this Vogue.com article about anxiety and movement, who could blame me?
CRY BABY CRY by
I loved this piece about crying and laughing and then crying again. How crying makes way for laughter and sometimes, vice versa.
You can’t be a therapist and not know the powers of crying, it’s a part of the on boarding. It’s like the Hippocratic Oath for therapists. I basically drooled earlier talking about how I magically got my husband to start crying left, right, and center when we started dating (not really, but let it slide for effect, oK?). I, too, could easily have been labeled a crier growing up, and probably was behind my back. Does this mean I have a perfect relationship with letting it fly? No it does not, but I let it recently in a bizarre setting and gosh, did I feel better after. Also, tired. Tired and purged.
Movement 🧘
As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I hurt my back in a big way this spring so my movement practices have been scaled way, way back. In the last month I have kept it to walking, yoga and pilates. It has been really fulfilling to see the fruits of this listening to my body and going super slow. Slower than I probably even needed to go.
A few short and sweet classics from the last little bit are this 10 minute lower body mobility, a 5 minute mobility practice focused on calves and shins, and a 10 minute full body stretch all from the Peloton app.4
But my all around favorite I’ve done is this one from the YouTube channel Yoga With Adriene. It’s a just north of 20ish minute yoga sequence that I’d describe as robust (e.g., got some heat going) that touches all the bod especially the hips.
Music 🎶
Since my last roundup came out, Taylor’s new album dropped which I went all in on here.5
Every once in a while I get so utterly transfixed by a song that it haunts me. Right now this is my obsession:
This led to a significant deep dive on Darondo. A soul singer who performed mostly in the 70’s before leaving the industry for a variety of reasons and didn’t sing the song for 30 years. The first time he played it again was caught on video here. Apparently this encounter led him to get another record deal and the chance to perform again. I’m saying it now, what I wouldn’t give for a Brittany Howard rendition of this song.
A few weekends ago we went to a free music festival featuring local acts . One of them was Frail Talk.
They were so, so lovely and reminded me of one of our all time favorites—a Chicago band called Whitney—combined with another artist I cant quite place. Help?
Also, I know this is far from a hot take at this point, but credit where credit is due, Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso is so catchy it’s insane. I can NOT stop singing it once I hear it. And her energy when she performs it is just what I need sometimes: a little flirty, a little naughty, a lot confident.
I really slept on the Suki Waterhouse train. Her music is reallllllly fun and not at all what I expected. Speaking of fun…
Lastly, in exploring my new Spotify Premium subscription, I discovered this DJ feature where, according to Spotify, “a virtual assistant…recommends old favorites and allows you to discover new genres, playlists, and artists.” Basically it’s AI radio.
As a personal rule, I try to spend as little time thinking and talking about AI as possible. It’s actually on my no go list, that and talking about space. So much so, I called it “IA” when trying to explain to my husband what this was.
That being said, I’m kind of loving it. It’s how I came across Suki and this banger that is a window-down driving summer vibe if I’ve ever heard one. The “DJ” addresses me by name, “What’s up, Kaitlyn?” and plays songs in sets. This morning it started with songs I loved in summer 2022, then jazz, and as I write these very words, it’s giving me songs to get me dancing.
Is this bad for my soul?
Sorry, I’ll have to leave us all in suspense because can’t hear the answer over Mac and Anderson .Paak.
A friend of mine recently pointed out even though I’m not on social media (Substack is sort of social media, I know), I still come across all the same things. I just do so through YouTube. Which was too true, it hurt. I’m surrendering to this truth. Here are all my little baby links for y’all:
My husband and this man are cut from the same cloth for hide n’ sneak protocol || Solid advice for how to support depressed friends || This one making me cry and groove. || I don’t know what happened to my YouTube algorithm, but I am here for all the pottery shorts I’m being given, like this one where a local potter makes bookend planters || This perfect 5 second visual representation of why marriage is hard || The most wholesome rendition of one of Archie’s favorite jams || Also, more catnip for therapists.
These last few newsletters have been fun to write, but a little less personal. I’m working on a piece potentially for next week that is a little more vulnerable about mothering. Stay tuned.
Questions for you:
What are you watching, listening to, reading, eating, wearing that you’re loving?
Anyone else catch Love Life?
If you listened to that Frail Talk song, I’d love to hear who else you think they sound like. I know it’s someone, but I’m stumped.
What are we excited for coming out this summer? For me, #1 has got to be The Bear season 3.
You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
Any comments, questions, suggestions, please feel free to email me at dialoguingsubstack@gmail.com—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
|*|*|*| Catch my last roundup before it goes behind the paywall soon:
Which is really saying something because Armie Hammer has always given me the ick—the fact that the rest of the movie could have overcome that for me is staggering—and now we know even more of his alleged nefariousness. I haven’t re-watched since the allegations about him came out. Not sure if I could get through the scenes with him, TBH.
A sign of too much Bridgerton when I start saying needn’t.
After writing all this, I found out HBO Max not only failed to renew it for another season, it also removed it from the platform entirely. What gives? Seems extreme to me, but you can still rent it from Prime.
Always my footnote when I link to Peloton stuff is I don’t work for them or anything but just in case, for those that didn’t know, you don’t need to have a bike, tread or rower to use the Peloton app. They have lots of classes for mat, outdoor and strength. They also typically have a free trial for the app workouts if interested.
These were my very initial thoughts and I stand by a lot of them. I learned a lot more about possible references and meaning on
’s pod episode about the album. The Bolter continues to be my fave, But Daddy I Love Him is a close second. I’ve only grown to love it more upon repeated listening.[Collage image credits: William Jackson Harper in "Love Life," Sarah Shatz / HBO Max || Zendaya at Challengers London Premiere, Getty Image || Just for the Summer BOTM image ||DJ Image Spotify || Idea of You: Photo by Courtesy of Prime Video - © Prime Video Image || Yoga with Adrienne || Chris Pine image Monica Schipper, Getty Images || Frail talk logo]
I CANNOT stop watching couples therapy!!!
Re: The Idea of You of it all… My gateway to it was via the Bad on Paper podcast back in 2021 and Becca Freeman is theeeee authority on it.
For a supercharge of delight, I hiiiighly recommend Becca Freeman’s writing about TIOY on Book Enthusiast:
https://open.substack.com/pub/beccafreeman/p/harry-styles-anne-hathaways-collarbones?r=yo8cj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Then, listen to this interview with the writer of the book Robinne Lee *on* BoP:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MQ3OIIOyA873YSZEtCaIR?si=G9g4FbA3T4WsTOXvCXbvNw
Can’t wait to see Challengers! I’m obsessed with Josh O’Connor’s GQ 10 Things video. Rizz is right 🔥.