"it's like pushing sh*t uphill"
notes on the second book to ever make me cry, and how it's helping me navigate a broken world
I am not easily moved to tears.
I’m something like an ‘anxiety’ crier. I cry easily (almost too easily) when I’m frustrated or mad, but hit me with a wave of grief or joy and it’ll rarely reach my eyes. I once asked a therapist if this meant there was something wrong with me, but of course there isn’t. We all just process emotions differently.
Less than five books have ever moved me to tears.
In fact, I can only think of two.
The first was Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.
The second was Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.
As I was reading the last 30 minutes of this book last week, tears were streaming down my face.
Wild Dark Shore is one of those rare books where the ending paid off in such a way that its flaws became immediately insignificant. This book is gorgeously written, the character development is insanely real, and the world is so vivid I felt like I was there. Halfway through I admit I got worried... The plot seemed slow and predictable. Will the ending be worth it? I asked myself, as I have for many disappointing books before.
This book did NOT disappoint.
I won’t give away any spoilers here, but for context: Wild Dark Shore is about a man and his three children who live on an island in the future, when climate change has ravaged the world and sea levels are quickly consuming the island. They are responsible for taking care of one of earth’s last seed banks: a storage bank of seeds for many species that are, or will be, otherwise extinct. They are carrying heavy personal grief when a woman with her own grief washes ashore.
This is a book about love and grief, and how one cannot exist without the other. Love for natural places and love for other humans. Grief for a dying world and the humans we cannot keep safe.
It came into my hands at the absolute perfect time.
There is so, so much grief in the world right now. But there is also somehow so, so much joy around me. In the privilege I have to be able to sit with this dissonance, I have struggled to hold it. I’ve struggled even more to know what to do with it.
There is so much suffering in the world, and I hold this profound desire to fix it while knowing that I can’t. I, alone, do not hold the power to end the world’s suffering. And so, whatever actions I do take never feel like enough.
It would be so easy to fall into pessimism and do nothing but complain about the horrors I see now and the horrors I predict are coming. It would be just as easy to fall into toxic optimism ignore all of it in a quest to appreciate the joy that does exist.
Neither option is acceptable to me.
So where does this leave me?
One of my favorite quotes in Wild Dark Shore wasn’t one of the most moving or profound, but it punched me in the gut.
“I’m sick of trying to make things that will survive this world because nothing can, anymore.” [I say].
At first I think he’s done with the conversation, that he will let that be the end. But then he says, “Most of what I do with my days is repair things that are gonna break again soon. I just fix them and then, when they break I fix them again. It’s like pushing shit uphill.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Because someone has to, or everything just stays broken.”
Something settled in me when I read this quote. Something heavy and true.
Because yes, I am only one person. Yes, I alone cannot change the course of climate change or stop bombs or protect those my country is dehumanizing. Yes, the actions I take don’t feel like enough because they aren’t enough to achieve what I desperately wish they could.
But to do nothing is to cause more harm, and I will not subscribe to that. I will not succumb to the paralysis of the grief.
In perfect timing, I read a beautiful essay from one of my favorite substack newsletters Human Stuff. In it, this quote stuck out to me:
Can I say how wide the sorrow expands I feel when I look at the news, when I process another bomb alongside another bloom, when I witness the continual unraveling of democracy, when I hear of another child lost, when I stay with all that is happening? How this sorrow is slowly feeling less like hopelessness and more like “of course sorrow is here?” How this sorrow is pointing me toward being of service in a way that centers all I long to see more of in the world? How sorrow can become more than itself?
Of course sorrow is here.
Wherever joy exists, so does sorrow.
Wherever love exists, so does grief.
But I think what I’ve realized this week is that I’ve been living in this place of feeling like acknowledging the joy is a disservice to the suffering. And honestly? I think it is, if acknowledging it is all that I do. But this view is wrong. It’s shortsighted.
Acknowledging the joy and love is not enough. It’s just the beginning.
We must continue to act upon love and joy.
We must continue to fight for it, for ourselves and for others.
Especially when it feels futile. Especially when it doesn’t feel like enough.
As the iconic quote from this book states: “Maybe we will drown or burn or starve one day, but until then, we get to decide if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will take care of each other.”
Keep taking care of yourselves, those you love, and strangers less fortunate than you.
Keep loving. Keep hoping.
xo, E
Hey! I’m E.B. Golden. Narrative Threads is a (mostly) weekly newsletter where I share things I’m learning as I write my fiction stories and living a human life. I also share updates about my suspenseful romantasy novels. You can find info on The Crimson Curtain duology here.