No Stars, Only Fireflies

I sink longer, hold my breath longer, like if I’m not breathing then I’m not feeling—and that’s all I want: not to feel.

June in fireflies, in bodies like old wooden siding stretched over with poison ivy, in bug bites and calloused feet. June in the Hudson Valley is feral and expansive. Maybe too expansive.

When you’re raising school-age children, September through June has a rhythm—a tight and focused beat. Mondays we eat waffles for breakfast. Tuesdays: quiche. Wednesdays: buckwheat porridge. It goes like this day after day, meal after meal, a rhythm more sweet than suffocating, but the pendulum does swing.

Then June arrives, closing that beat and opening a fresh sheet of music. A dreaded blank page. Possibility, or void?

I’ll tell you something you might not believe, something I don’t prefer to share, but it’s the last day of June and I’ve promised you a newsletter each month and this is what’s present. Since childhood I’ve gotten severe, chronic migraines. Around twelve they took on a pattern, not perfectly consistent but remarkably so. When the moon is brand new, they surface, like demons from the darkest shadows of hell. I dread the new moon. I have a day, maybe two, before the migraine begins. And it lingers—a lover’s too-long glance in a dark romantasy—for a day, maybe two, often three.

But at least there’s a silver lining: I know when it’s coming. I can prepare. Build my defenses.

Yet this June disrupted the pattern. A migraine on a waning gibbous. It lasted two days. Then two days of freedom. Then another migraine—three days this time. The pattern wept, tears blurring blank pages, until suddenly I realized I was having more bad days than good.

The pain moves around my skull, comparable in intensity to unmedicated childbirth. And like giving birth, I tell myself I’ll get through it because it will end—it’s only a moment, a dream. It feels like rupture, like something is deeply wrong, but when it’s over, no visible signs of damage. Like a finger sliding quickly through flame: no boil or burn.

I’m looking for a brand new pattern, a replotted story, because if I keep turning the pages of this one, my arc will end in tragedy. One day I may write a chronic-pain coded fantasy. A heroine cursed to feel excruciating pain for half her life, her quest to find enchantment in the days in between, to alchemize the pain into something beautiful. Maybe she breaks the curse. Maybe she doesn’t. That isn’t really the point.

What has it been like living this way?

A day in the life:

It comes on at midnight.

The day before was a perfect 90’s butter mom day. My friend had just given birth and I offered to watch her older child for the day. He joined my three children building forts and playing water games. I made smoothies and left my phone indoors and we walked to the playground at the back of our acreage where wildflower-meadow meets woods. And there in the woods we forged new paths to the wild bushes where the juiciest blackcaps grow.

That night, we were all tired and warm enough to fall asleep quickly.

The headache wakes me. Shivering and sweating, I hobble to the bathroom and get sick. The night presses on. My husband finds me on the couch in the morning. “Oh no,” he says. “Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry I have to work.”

“It’s ok.”

He leaves slowly. I get sick again. The 9-year-old wakes first. I tell him I had to cancel his playdate. He’s sad but used to this. The two-year-old wakes next. She cuddles on top of me. I wrap us in sheepskin and she falls back asleep. Wow. What a win. The 5-year-old is my longest sleeper. She’s slept 13 hours and wakes hungry.

Sometimes on migraine days I hobble to the kitchen and make something easy like buckwheat porridge or bacon and fried eggs. When I can’t, my son makes frozen waffles for everyone, or if batter is ready, pancakes. He even makes my coffee—offers to. He’s the best. 9-years-old is a wonderful age.

Today I make bacon and eggs. Then I hobble to the bathroom and begin filling the tub with scalding hot water and a sliced lemon. It’s an anthroposophical remedy—a “lemon foot bath,” drawing the heat down from my head, one of the few remedies that helps cut the edge. Conventional medicine is never my first choice but if it would ease my migraines, I would be desperate enough to use it. But I can’t; I’m allergic—tylenol, aspirin, motrin. All of it. My throat closes and I break out into one giant hive. Like my head, my body is highly sensitive, prone to reject.

I soak my feet for 20 minutes. The girls join me, then want an actual bath. We fill the tub and all climb it. I love the way they feel, soft and close like seal pups. They pour empty-shampoo bottles filled with water over me—great fun for all. I close my eyes and sink. When I surface, they can’t tell what streaks my face. To them, it’s only bathwater.

Eventually they grow bored and leave. I sink longer, hold my breath longer, like if I’m not breathing then I’m not feeling—and that’s all I want: not to feel. I could have been an addict in a past life—but only in a cool way like hashish in 1920s Lebanon or opium in 1850s China—because sometimes I wonder at the lengths I’d go not to feel. In this life, nothing dulls these feelings. Substances only sharpen their edges.

I surface in order to open a new package of rice cakes for the five-year-old. I sink. I surface when the two-year-old dumps water on my face. I wasn’t ready for it. My eyes burst open, and I’m choking. Sink and surface. This is the rhythm that works until they want me out.

“Ok. Can you bring me a towel?”

The two-year-old brings it over with such rigor that half of it falls into the bath. “You got it wet!” I say. She starts to cry, a sound that bounces around my vision in purple and yellow light, the colors of the cornflowers and goldenrod that bloom simultaneously in our meadow. The complimentary color pairing naturally draws pollinators, ensuring each plant’s survival. Right now, it mocks me with its total lack of beauty and grace.

home

I apologize for getting upset with her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. You didn’t mean to. I love you.”

I repeat the words as she wails louder. The new rhythm. The new spell. My heart feels each word. It gives a little pulse. Yes—you are sorry. You shouldn’t have. Didn’t mean to. Love.

But her personality is similar to an angry kitten, and out of spite, she pushes the entire towel over the ledge and into the bath.

I pull the bath plug, take her into my arms. She scratches and pinches me. It’s fine. I deserve it.

She calms only when I hold her, sing to her in a voice that resembles a witch’s croon. Then she smiles brightly, kisses my cheek, and goes to see what her sister is up to. Her sister is in the craft corner of the living room making something with birthday candles and twine. Her brother is writing Zelda fan fiction in his room. I dress and take them outside and lie in the hammock and make more simple food and seek out dark spaces.

I’ll tell you the silver lining—not because I think there always needs to be one. I don’t. But because this time, there happens to be one. Because those baths are like cauldrons and I never emerge unchanged. Skin and the edges of pain softened by baking soda and lemon and hot water. Water shapes rocks, after all; of course it can wear away at my own hard head. And pain is a teacher—a mean one, a 1950’s school teacher that slaps your hand with a ruler when you answer the question wrong—but a teacher all the same. And what a gift to be able to change your mind like the moon changes shape.

“I wish I wasn’t so alone” I think as I drift beneath the water’s skin. “I wish I had family nearby. Friends close enough to help. A head that worked, that could think without overthinking. I wish I wish I wish.”

I wish like I’m staring at a shooting star, but the reality is I’m staring at the peeling paint on the bathroom ceiling. Do great stories start with a wish? Maybe I’ve been restarting my story again and again, and I’m still waiting for the REAL one to begin, never quite getting the first page right.

The freedom of getting to begin again and again.

The pain of never leaping past the first page.

Evening brings the light patter of rain. My husband gets home from work and plays with the children while I hop on zoom for my weekly writers group (my migraine has dulled to the sweet relief of a mere headache). When the call ends, night has arrived in full. I step outside barefoot (always). The grass is freezing cold and rain-washed. It’s cloudy, not one star in the sky. But the field and forest surrounding the house: a feast for the eyes. A million fireflies flash through the dark like lightning, like fairies, like tiny stars come down to me direct from heaven. No stars above but you still get to wish.

Of course the irony is that in this moment I can’t think of a single wish. All I can think of is how much I have.

I’m in awe of it. Overwhelmed by it.

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Writer’s block over this letter hit hard this month. If there’s anything you’re interested in reading about here, I welcome your questions or ideas with open arms. I’d also love to hear what rhythms or disruptions are shaping your summer, and if you were a fantasy main character, where would you be in your arc right now?

On that note, each time I plot a new story, I follow the One Page Novel Framework by Eva Deverell. She’s just released a free run-through of the One Page Novel framework, with a focus on how each stage feels in life. You can watch it here and I highly recommend it for anyone new to plotting! And if you want to dive deeper into any of her novel-building courses, you can use this affiliate link for ten percent off with the code HADAS10.

She has three amazing courses: the one-page novel plot development course, a character development course to turn flat characters into your new favorite people, and a world-building course. Diving into her offerings—beginning with a free youtube video like the one linked above—made the single biggest difference in my novel writing. I went from someone who liked writing to someone who could actually complete novels.

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Until next month, I’d love to connect over on Instagram.

My novel Dove in an Iron Cauldron is available now. Thank you for your wonderful reviews. Each one gives me strength, courage, hope, and the warmest feeling in my chest.

I also have an Oracle deck out now, Folklore Oracle

And with that, I leave you until July.

Sending warmth and fireflies like fairies,

Hadas