Blog — Miss Magnolia Says

Anxiety in the Sky: How to Manage Anxiety While Flying

When people find out that I am an anxious flyer, they assume I have issues with claustrophobia or turbulence. I don’t. I have a very common and unfortunate fear of getting sick, like needing-the-white-paper-bag sick.

Maybe your flight anxiety stems from none of the above and you have a major peanut allergy or allergy to elderly men in homemade head-to-toe MAGA sweatsuits (fair). Whatever the reason, I’m happy to offer up all the tips and witchcraft I use to get through a flight from booking my flight, the week before a flight, to the day of, to the day after (yeah, I mean business).

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be an educational ride.

Goodbye, Instagram (Please Still Send Me Pictures of Your Kids)

I regularly want to get off all social media channels but I haven’t, because I’ve always had one totally rational reason or another not too. Here are those totally reasonable reasons:

1.) I live far away and I want to know what is going on in my friends’ lives/ see their cute kids in their Easter outfits.

2.) I started blogging semi-seriously three years ago and it feels impossible to be found on the internet or considered legitimate without an Instagram (even if no one finds you because you are an “artist” and only “teenagers doing a perfectly choreographed dance” or “dogs” go viral).

3.) I don’t wanna.

But the reality is, I do wanna.

How to Fire Your Therapist (Politely)

The question, “How can I fire my therapist?” has been asked of me several times and I decided it was about time I answered it to everyone instead of just my friends who whisper it to me as if asking

1: for permission to do the thing they already want to do and/or

2: just how to go about it.

So, let’s get into it!

The Origin Story of a Writer: Cardboard Books & A Shadow Career

I’m always interested in the origin stories of the writers and authors whose work I adore.

Some of them, more than one, have stories of living in their cars before “making it.” Some have a Masters in Fine Arts, but were good writers even before they sold their first born to the bursar.

Some were and are regular ole people who love to lament about the act of writing all day until they sit down at their computer at night out of self loathing and a deep need to produce something, and then draft some of the most hilarious and relevant shit I’ve read in my life.

I started to think of my own origin story, and how it is weirder and less romantic but still interesting. I scribbled it down to make sense of it, as I always do.

Emily RoseJune 12, 2023shadow career, choosing a new career, writing as a career, becoming a writer, memoir writingComment

A Writer Goes to the Gym

The sun is rising, my dog starts to stir and stare at me, I open my eyes.

I take a trip to the bathroom and then let the dog out for his turn because I believe whole-heartedly in the directive to put on your oxygen mask before helping others and also I really have to pee, so.

I let the dog back inside and quietly berate myself for not having written anything yet, what with my eyes open and one basic need met and all.

My partner asks if I want to go to the gym and I do not, because I’ve never wanted to go to the gym in my life, but then I remember that three weeks ago I went and felt much calmer and my bones were less crunchy and my creativity was brighter and more accessible and my self critic was delightfully quieter.

So I say yes, I would love to go to the gym.

Emily RoseMay 15, 2023Comment

I Broke a Tooth: No, Not That One

A little over a year ago, I cracked a molar on the right side of my lower jaw. My dentist and I agreed to “watch it” at each appointment, in an aim to delay the eventual crown. In response, I have chewed all my food on the left side for the past year. It’s less sensitive and helps me feel like I’m doing something to help.

I’ve been worrying so intensely about the right-side molar cracking into bits in the middle of the night or during dinner with friends or as I eat and handful of chocolate chips in front of the TV, that it didn’t even cross my radar I may crack a tooth on the opposite side.

You know, the side that I’ve been wearing down exclusively for the past year.

But in the backseat of the truck on our way to a restaurant with my boyfriend’s parents, this is exactly what happened. I had passed out granola bars to everyone in the car because I always am packing, snacks that is. In a truly unfunny plot twist from the universe, I bit into an almond that was sprinkled into the fancy granola bars my boyfriend buys (that somehow also contain egg whites??), and my bottom left molar chipped off like a dramatic National Geographic video of a melting glacier, an entire triangular chunk sloughing off into the ocean.

Emily RoseMay 8, 2023Comment

Aghhhh, I Can't Do It! And Other Lies My Brain Yells at Me

It may sound silly, but sometimes I need a reminder that I can, in fact, write. And not only that I can write, but that I can write well. Maybe not objectively well, considering the fact that I can not even venture a guess at what a gerund or dangling participle is (have I just made one?), but “well” in a way that feels kickass and right when I reread pieces I’ve written.

I can write, and yet nearly every weekend and most nights after work, I beat myself up for seemingly not being able to write. I feel like I just can’t do it in the same way a toddler who technically knows how to tie his own shoes fumbles with the laces in his fat fingers and can’t remember if the bunny goes through the hole or directly into traffic but what he does know with every bone in his body is that he simply CAN’T. DO. IT.

Emily RoseMay 1, 2023Comment

The Trauma Olympics

I want the gold, but what if I stopped exhausting myself from constant therapizing - reading all the self-help books and subscribing to every podcast on healing from narcissistic abuse?

What if instead of striving and continuing to run, I told my descendants about the leg of the journey that I traveled and prepared them for their own leg by making a nice pot roast for the road and loading up their backpacks with all of my favorite books?

What if I thanked myself for my work and trot around Olympic village without a medal around my neck, but with a big fat goofy smile on my face?

What My Hangovers Teach Me About Myself

I am normally a morning person, but I don’t think I need to tell you that when I woke up morning after the Taylor Swift concert for the opening night of the Eras Tour, I decided to go right back to bed. It does not take much to make me feel hungover, and never has. I have the party stamina of a goldfish.

I knew how my hangover would progress and I knew exactly how I would respond to its progression, because we had been here many times - me and the effects of last night’s beer. When I got to the end of the day, I realized many things about myself that I think are worth noting. So here it goes:

He's Not Here Anymore: The Case for Sitting Still

You know, that frustrating endless middle stage of enlightenment and growth where you know exactly what your problems are and why you have them, but you simply cannot stop doing the problematic things and you drive yourself absolutely pistachios?

That’s where I’m at. I’m sitting right smack in the middle of island Can’t-sit-still-but-definitely-really-want-to.

My therapist asked what my self talk sounds like when I sit down on the couch and get right back up after six minutes because I can’t stop picturing the dishes in the sink and also I just remembered that if I throw in a load of laundry now, I can have it finished and folded before bedtime. She asked me what thought runs through my head that makes me get up and do and sit down and then get up and keep doing.

I told her that it isn’t a thought at all. It’s a feeling, a prickle.

An anxious current of have-tos and shoulds and how-dare-you-relax-when-I-have-been-working-all-day? And while I know the prickle is anxiety and guilt and shame handed directly to an unsuspecting child me in a package labeled “HERE!” that was shoved into my arms by my father and his father, still, up I go.

Emily RoseMarch 6, 2023moving on, healing, healing trauma, healing childhood trauma, progress, therapy, EMDR, EMDR therapy, trauma therapyComment

Lunges & Someone Else's Problem: It's Called Growth

When the woman whose personal training appointment was before mine showed up at my time slot, I panicked.

If you do know what appeasing and pleasing and “please don’t escalate further I don’t like to feel scared” feelings feel like, then you’ll know just how proud of myself I was that I did not thrust my TRX bands in her face and assure her it was “no big deal” and that I “didn’t need the appointment” that I had scheduled because I obviously have “way more available time” than her to reschedule.

Even though all those reasons would be fake and I would know it to my core, I once upon a time would go about the pleasing and bowing and retreating and denying anyway, because that’s what I learned to do to deescalate big people when I was a small person and it takes a lot of undoing to undo it.

Emily RoseFebruary 20, 2023trauma response, trigger, coping skills, deescalation, childhood trauma, undoing childhood traumaComment

Our House: A Sentimental Essay on Partnering

Your name on the mortgage, my frames on the wall.

Your tools and time building cedar raised beds, my pole beans vining up day by day by day.

White windowed envelopes arriving each month for you, my chosen emoji sent via Venmo - a brick bungalow with a tree in the front yard.

You taught me how to mow the grass. I told you where we kept the can opener and cold medicine.

It was always ours, you said, when recounting our latest projects or detailing our move to a new state.

Ours even when my self doubt crept in and shouted, “Not mine, not really.”

Emily RoseJanuary 23, 2023partnering, partnership, partners, milennial marriages, milennial partnersComment

Why You Shouldn't Fear the Eyeballs of Your High School Classmates

I don’t care if it feels like I will maybe die if my Spanish teacher from the 8th grade follows me on Instagram or that guy I had a crush on in high school gets out of jail and tells me my blog inspired him to put himself first.

I can’t possibly fear the eyes of the people I went through death-defying trends with, like tanning and dipping our toes into Lake Erie.

I can’t be nervous or embarrassed or afraid of their knowing of my whole self, because I know how I feel when I see theirs. And I love it.

I love your blog about your private struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s so real and human and helpful to other very real humans.

I love your murals and art shows in cities big and small.

I love your music. I listened to it the day you released it and I smiled so big for you.

Emily RoseJanuary 9, 2023fear, high school, high school reunion, vulnerability, how to not care what others thinkComment

On Turning 30

I just turned 30 and I worried the whole way here. I silently and loudly obsessed about this milestone to myself and my friends and my therapist.

And I turned 30 in one of my least favorite places - an airplane. But it wasn't that bad because things are rarely as bad as you've worried them to be.

Emily RoseDecember 5, 2022turning 30, nervous about turning 30, saying goodbye to your 20s, getting older, existential crisis, anxiety, anxiousComment

What is Closure, Really?

Closure is difficult to define and seemingly elusive as hell.

Closure is knowing that the stove is hot, and having less and less of an urge to touch it.

Closure is going two whole hours without thinking about the person or event, then three hours, then four days, then five weeks.

Closure is setting down the baggage one item at a time until one day, you notice that your hands are free and that weird lingering shoulder pain is gone.

Writer's Block, the Tiger, and EMDR

In writing my memoir, I have at times felt re-traumatized in the paragraphs I have produced.

Many feelings have come up that make me feel as if I am back in the ring and I don't think I need to tell you that it does not feel good.

Emily RoseAugust 6, 2022writer's block, emdr, therapy, stress, trauma, healing trauma, trauma recovery, memoir writingComment

Hope, Frustration, and Jolly Ranchers

My partner and I have recently moved to a very red state with equally red dirt.

I was nervous to move here, having spent my entire lifetime trying to distance myself from hateful, aggressive, sweaty men at family dinners and church events and what-have-you.

But alas, the previous state we lived in was reddish purple anyway and I was tired of shoveling snow and trying to feel alive again by taking scalding hot showers and giving bae a heart attack every time he saw the water bill.

My Little Slice of LifeEmily RoseJuly 4, 2022Comment

What it's Like to Grow Up with an Abusive Parent: Hopping off the Merry-Go-Round

I recently explained my relationship with my father with this metaphor: It’s as if I’m putting a piece of my soul into a vending machine, pressing the button for Cheetos, and instead receiving a pile of dusty bran.

Angry dusty bran.

Angry dusty sentient bran that is somehow also a next-level expert in gaslighting.

My journey to understanding my father first began with therapists, then textbooks, then internet rating scales entitled “He might be a sociopath if…”

One More Half Hug

Society asks us to consider others and do our part to keep things chugging along with as few disruptions as possible.

Don’t talk with your mouth full of tater tots.

Offer your seat to someone else who could use the rest.

Definitely don’t microwave fish in the break room.

These things are niceties that generally ensure the comfort and care of our fellow humans.

But sometimes, society and systems ask things of us that are not comfortable and require us to bury parts of ourselves in order to maintain the comfort of others.

Sneak Peak! "A Unifying Blend: A Complication of Stories and Recipes Celebrating all that Makes us Human"

Dayna has written two books thus far, her memoir entitled “Mix, Melt, Mend: Owning my Story and Finding my Freedom,” as well as her first mental health cookbook entitled, “Bake it Till You Make it: Breaking Bread, Building Resilience.”

And now, Dayna is releasing a follow-up version to her first cookbook with a second edition called, “A Unifying Blend: A Complication of Stories and Recipes Celebrating all that Makes us Human.”

Dayna’s cookbooks include a story or poem paired with a recipe that holds significance for the story’s author. How cool is that?

And guess, what? The cooler news keeps getting cooler: I am beyond excited to announce that I will be featured as one of the authors in “A Unifying Blend!”

To awaken your taste buds for this incredible book, I’ve decided (with permission of course) to share my piece in Dayna’s new cookbook with you, along with one of my favorite things to make: fresh rosemary bread.