Natalie
And Nat — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe some of life’s big and small problems. We’re moms, writers.

Rebecca
We have soft boundaries. We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability — together, and with our guests. We like deep dives, so come with us. Let’s reframe something.

This week, we are examining missed moments. I think you came up with that idea, Nat, for missed moments. Didn’t you?

Natalie
Yeah, because I’m interested in reframing every possible thing — even the moments that we have never had.

Rebecca
It’s just an obsession now for you, isn’t it?

Natalie
Or, Rebecca, it might be a reflective praxis for mental health hygiene. Isn’t that kind of the buzzword right now? So take your pick. I know in my own life, for real, there is a temptation to get stuck in the feeling of, “Well, like, what if I had done that thing differently?” So I think because it’s so deeply connected to my leg, and so on my worst days when I’m, like, going down the road of the ‘what ifs,’ I feel like it’s a good thing to really ponder what those missed moments have done for me.

Rebecca
Are we on a mission to release people from their ‘what ifs’?

Natalie
Hmm, maybe. Or at least, I think that it may be if we share them, we might kind of loosen them a little bit.

Rebecca
Ok, so what’s something that needs loosening for you. Is it related to your leg?

Natalie
Yeah, and I actually took a moment to write it down. So I’m going to read it, ok, because I think that if I don’t read it, it’ll get a little bit garbled, because it’s so very deeply personal, and in my body, and all that stuff. So here we go:

My life changed when I got sick. My illness, a decade ago, changed my life. Pain is never very far away in my right leg. I am constantly having to maintain it, even in its reduced state, so both mental and monetary resources are used in all of that work. Small pleasures have been removed: fashionable shoes, beach walks, matching limbs — whatever that means. And it really was a missed moment that brought me to this place. It was a fever and an unwillingness to ask for help. And when the pain started, instead of reaching out to anybody to ask for help, I chose to go up the street to the gym instead. At 10pm at night I said to myself, “I’m going to go run this off.” Had I just looked in the mirror, like simply looked down at my own body, I would have seen a rash that was spreading fast and furious up my leg. And a lot can change in 24 hours. The emerg nurse said to me that — those exact words, as she was putting me in the ambulance. She said, “Well, it would have been better if you had been here earlier.”

So that’s the ‘what if,’ right? What if I had been here earlier? Of course, now all these years later, we all know better. And yet, if it weren’t for that missed moment, I wouldn’t have such an empathetic connection to so many who suffer daily. So it’s another thing to feel with people in their pain. So I guess I can be thankful for that moment in time. It was a fork in the road that I might not have chosen to travel. But we’re here now, and I certainly wouldn’t trade all that’s come with it for a healthy leg. So that missed moment has brought me to this conversation with you.

Rebecca
Wow. Are you serious when you say that — about you wouldn’t trade all that for a healthy leg? Because that’s serious. You’re serious about making meaning out of your pain, Nat.

Natalie
You know, it can make me cry as I think about it, but I wouldn’t trade it because there would be no Frankie. I don’t even think there would be a Clifford. I mean, we had only been dating, like, six months when everything happened, but I don’t know that we would be now 10 years married, had that whole disaster not happened. Like, maybe it just would have been like another relationship to get to the next relationship, right? But trauma does have the ability to bring people really together. I think I’ve shared that story, right? That I remember dad calling mom (and you might even have actually told me about it, I don’t know), but when mom was away when all that was happening as I was in the hospital, and dad said to her, “Well, this Clifford has really shown his true colours,” which was that he was dedicated and sleeping on the emergency room floor with cockroaches. So I mean, like, there was a lot of amazing good that came out of it.

I do wish at times that my leg wasn’t hurting all the time. Like, I don’t long for the pain — I’m not that kind of a self-flagellatory kind of human. But I definitely recognize its value. So, yeah, a missed moment brought me here. And you know, I don’t know, my choices are a bit limited, Bec. I can’t really say, “Do I wish that I could trade it all away,” because then I wouldn’t have what I have. And you know what, this is kind of maybe funny to say, but… so the compression socks that I have to wear, there is actually like a strange new joy found when I crack open a new box. Like, there is joy to be found in very little things. So that is a thing that I would never have found joy in before, had I not been on this very specific path. So yeah, I guess I’m not kidding.

Rebecca
If reframing was a brand, Nat, I would like to call you the brand ambassador.

Natalie
Ok, true. I would love to get paid for this position. So somebody out there… my compression socks company.

Rebecca
I’m not kidding, though — like, when I hear someone else use that word, I’m like, “Why are you taking Natalie’s word?” It’s Natalie’s word, reframing.

Natalie
Yeah, I guess I have claimed it. Maybe that’s it, right? Claiming language — I’ve claimed it.

Rebecca
We asked our friend Jessica about her missed moment. You might remember her from episode 39 — we’ll jog your memory:

I like that your floor is usually dirty.

Jessica
It is.

Rebecca
And would you bother to clean it? The reason I ask that is because I was just reading this morning some artist talking about how he likes the layers of dust — through every artwork that he creates, dust gets created, and he never wants to clean the dust because he just wants all the layers.

Jessica
Sounds beautiful, and true — like if a hair lands in a painting, sorry, I leave it. So I do love the layers of our humanity on things. And I do sweep and vacuum, but I don’t need it to be tidy.

Natalie
And she sent us this story: “Scout was a dog on the lam. He’d been accused of killing a Jack Russell. Dad liked the story the farrier told while he clipped our horses’ nails: a horse killed a yapping Jack Russell with one swift kick. Dad’s neighbour said he’d shoot Scout for his misdemeanour. Scout moved into family housing with me on campus. Scout wasn’t a city dog. He was afraid of children, traffic, cars. I took him for walks hoping he’d acclimatize to college life. On these walks he’d peep into strollers and freak out, which made everyone panic — babies, parents, me. He’d quake until we were in the forest where he (like me) was cool as a cucumber.”

Rebecca
“We’d scoot through trees to get groceries, then I’d tie him to a bike rack. He’d wait for me, shaking. One day, on a quest for nuts, I came out and he was gone. I imagined many deaths before someone ran at me, chest first, sweater caped out behind. ‘Are you looking for your dog?’ A rush of relief. Then fright. Had she creamed him in the parking lot? ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘He’s in my car. He is so cold. Shame on you.’ All I managed was, ‘Thank you.’ I couldn’t very well say, ‘He’s not cold, he’s terrified.’ I put his dirty red leash in my hand. We headed back through the woods with a bag of nuts. This haunts me. I told Scout, while I kicked at dirt and he pawed at things in the woods, what I’d wished I’d told her: ‘I hope you do this with homeless people. Imagine if we gave each other shit for letting other people shiver. We’d change the fucking world.’”

Natalie
You know, when Jessica sent us this moment, I was already struck by it because I think there’s something so powerful in that idea — like if we would just care for humanity the way that we, you know, can feel so affronted by some sort of video but an animal that we see on the internet. So that was already on my mind, but then I ended up having an encounter with someone just recently, and she showed up on Sunday at church and kind of like blurted out this story to me in the kitchen in the basement, and I was just like, “Oh, ok,” because she couldn’t even hold it in. She literally, like, vomited this story out at me, because she had just been picking up snacks for kids at the grocery store and some angry man was yelling at the cashier and that yelling of his made her so angry, but she was all the more frustrated with herself — that she didn’t say anything to the cashier when she left, because she was in a rush to get these snacks back to the kids at church.

And she basically was saying that there wouldn’t have been any use in saying anything to the angry guy, but I could have said something to her, to the cashier, about how wrong it was that she had been treated that way. But because I was in a rush, I didn’t stop to say anything. So I’m telling you, because I need to say it — but it doesn’t fix anything. And I think that’s kind of akin to Jessica’s story. You can’t resay the moment you’ve missed, even though the sharing of the moment does do something — like there’s some sort of release in it, but there’s like that sense of the injustice, right? Just that inherent deep sense of a missed moment, in the face of, like, injustice and humanity.

Rebecca
We’ve all had those — those moments of ‘I could have said something.’ You know, it’s funny, this is bringing up for me… this is kind of a weird tangent, but when I was in London just recently, that I was walking around the Tate art gallery at night, and a homeless man asked me to go get him a tea. And I said, “Sure, I’ll find you a tea.” I mean, I didn’t say, “Sure,” actually, that happily. I said, “Sure.” I didn’t have my do-gooder spirit on. But I swear he sent me on a wild goose chase, knowing there was no tea to be found, because I looked and looked and looked for tea, and nothing was open. You know, I felt bad. I went into a restaurant that was open, and we all tried to brainstorm how I could get tea to him because they didn’t have any to go cups. But in the end, I couldn’t find a tea and nor could I even find the man.

Natalie
Oh, no.

Rebecca
I had wandered so far I couldn’t even meander my way back. So I think that’s kind of funny, because it was a moment attempted, but unfulfilled. So what do we do with that, Nat?

Natalie
I mean, there’s something interesting, right? Like, you’re not left, though, truly with any regret in that you made the effort. Like you made the effort to try and do a thing, because he made the request. Whereas I think in these other two shared missed moments, the missed moment is much more personal, because both people are left with the thing that they wish they had said.

Rebecca
Yes.

Natalie
You did the do.

Rebecca
Well, I did the do for as long as I was willing to do it.

Natalie
Yeah, right.

Rebecca
I mean, maybe a more persistent person might have just said, “I will find that tea, and I will find that man.”

Natalie
Right.

Rebecca
“And then we will talk — over tea, with five sugars.”

Natalie
By a bridge near the Tate.

Rebecca
Yup.

And now, some housekeeping. Hey Reframeables: do you get something from these conversations? Would you consider becoming a supporter on Patreon? For as little as $2 a month, you could help to keep this show going. It’s meaningful financially, and relationally — it feels like a hug. For our Patreon supporters, we do mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. You could also tip us on our Ko-fi account, where Natalie’s recipe book is also for sale. Oh, and tell us what you want to hear more of — listener messages make our week. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Nat and Bec.

Natalie
Here’s another moment that was shared with us by A.J. So some listeners might remember that A.J. is a financial coach from New York who sent in a memory of a reframed missed moment that she sort of shared a little bit of in her episode just a little while back. But so she expands on it a little bit — you’re going to actually get to hear her voice in a sec. She asked us if she could send us this story of what happened in her life because of a conversation that she didn’t miss. So even though she wanted desperately to miss this moment, this was like a terrifying conversation for her to have. She thought it would be an interesting kind of flip on a missed moment that didn’t get missed. So here’s A.J.

A.J.
When I heard that you were doing a missed moments segment, and really looking at how past decisions shape your future, it just felt so in sync with how I’ve been feeling lately, because I am sitting here right now in my beautiful condo that my husband and I own, while my dog sleeps next to me, and a baby growing inside of me. And I am constantly in awe — especially right now, especially at this cornerstone of my life, this new chapter of my life, where none of this would have been possible had I taken any different route in the past, and I’m talking like six, seven years ago. And so when I think of missed moments, I think about what my life would have looked like had I decided not to get my finances in order. I think about March of 2020, when for the first time in my life I had stable work. So when I lost my job, I immediately got unemployment. I was living with my husband. I was, like, in a great financial place — I had savings, I didn’t have any bad debt. I was, like, totally secure. Whereas had I not taken the steps to do that, if I’d missed those opportunities, if I kept waiting for someone to fix my problems, or kept playing the victim of my life, or kept just thinking I was the poor friend and bad with money, I would have ended up having to, like, live with my mom. We would have been fighting, it would have been hectic, it would have been scary, it would have been so debilitating for my self-esteem and my sense of self, and I would have felt so trapped. And I would have been so angry and blamed.

And none of that would have been possible had I not, years before that, been like, “I’m taking ownership of my life. I’m reaching out to people who I realize are good with money, and I’m asking them questions, and I’m getting guidance, and I’m getting help. And I’m going to stick with this because I value and want this future so badly — this future that I’m living right now. This is what I was working for: to become a mom, to have a dog, to find the love of my life — like, all of these things were things I wanted so badly that I was willing to do what it took, even though it was painful and uncomfortable, and not glamorous, in order to make that happen. And so I’m always in recognition of who I was. And that moment for me, when things just really set in, I think, if I am to pinpoint one missed moment where I turned the corner of my life, was I was invited to Sri Lanka with my best friend. We had travelled the world together, we had just gone to Brazil, and I was like: in the past, I could always make it work. I would get, like, a private yoga client, and I would have 500 bucks to pay for the flight, and I would figure it out. But I would be in chronic stress. I would save up all my money to go and then have no money left, and then I couldn’t pursue my other passions. And I was always living paycheck-to-paycheck. And I realized, like, my grandparents were getting older. My friends were starting to get married and engaged. And I was like, “Am I going to miss out on all of this because I don’t have the money, and I’m going to have to work? And am I going to really make the short term decisions, like going to Sri Lanka, and spent all this money, and, like, not go see my grandparents who are ageing and getting sick?”

And I just had this moment that I was like, “I can’t do this.” And she kept asking me like every day — like, “Can we go? Can we book our tickets? Can we go?” And I finally, like, I wrote down a whole list. And we went and got bagels — I think we went to yoga, and then we got bagels. And I was, like, literally panicking. I, like, opened up my notebook and she’s like, “Why are you being so weird?” And I’m like, “I can’t go to Sri Lanka because I need to start getting my finances in order — like, I can’t live like this anymore. No one’s going to fix my problems, and I just need to figure this out. And I can’t do this.” And she like, held my hand while I called the debt collectors, and I cried, and I was, like, so overwhelmed. I had never done that before. I always just said yes to everything. And had that moment not happened, and had I not enrolled my best friend into supporting me on my journey of getting my finances in order, then I wouldn’t be sitting here in this beautiful home in the life that I’ve created right now.

Rebecca
Hmm, interesting. It is actually a missed moment though, if you think about it — she missed her moment to go to Sri Lanka.

Natalie
Yeah, that’s so true. Nice, Becca.

Rebecca
She decided, though, that it was a good thing. But it makes me think there was a whole other life that would have happened if she went.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Dun dun dun.

Natalie
You flipped the flipper.

Rebecca
Ok, and I have one of those, because I find this an interesting one in my life — is I was so determined to go to theatre school after university. Which is funny — after university, I wanted to go to theatre school. I decided that this was the answer to my life, was getting into theatre school. So I worked and worked my butt off to get in — or, in A.J.’s case, to not go to Sri Lanka, so to speak. And I got it, I did it. I chose that moment. And this is the kind of funny twist: I chose so hard, and with such passion, that on the first day, when all the first years, we’d gathered to do monologues for each other, I jumped out of my seat to be the first. I was so excited to be there and kind of proud of my accomplishments. So I got up, started my monologue, and promptly forgot half of the monologue.

Natalie
Oh, Bec.

Rebecca
And then I just sat back down. It’s so weirdly humiliating, if I think about it — but also just, like, I don’t know. I was just standing there, doing my thing, and then just… my mind went completely blank. And I just sat down.

Natalie
Oh, wow. That’s, like, a super-vulnerable share and I’m really proud of you. But I mean, I just think there’s actually something strangely empowering — like is that the word that’s coming to me, with you just choosing to sit down? Like, “I’m not going to fight this?” I mean, I remember it, right? Like, I remember having moments in art school, when I was in high school (so this was a different kind of vibe, I think) — like dance, oh my gosh, like being a music theatre major. I hated dancing. It was stupid. And I didn’t know how to do it. And so I would just try and stay sort of near the back so nobody could really see me. And there were definitely moments when I didn’t know the dance moves. And I just pretended that people in the audience couldn’t see me, even though you could. But I never sat down, like… I like that you just took it one step further and said, “Nope, I’m out.”

Rebecca
I have this friend Sharon in my life who says I’ve always been so clear about what I wanted — so I guess to sit or stand. I’m a chooser. But I think how that theatre school — like, just going there, never mind the whole monologue, but it’s really directed the course of my life, right, for better or for worse. So I don’t regret going, but it hasn’t been the answer. So I think that’s also interesting in this — like, the moments we miss, or the moments we choose, still life of lots of pain. And that’s not ‘poor me,’ that’s just… we all have pain, and we all have lots of it. So, I don’t know, choosing can lead to regret or not choosing. So what do you make of that?

Natalie
Yeah. I mean, we know that line, right, of having to sort of choose the lesser of two evils. Like, when we attach choice to something that is already difficult, I think we expect that there’s just going to be sort of hard on either side — like, whatever path one takes. But there’s something different in the story you’re telling there, because it’s just like the difficulty actually emerged out of the choosing. And that’s maybe way more human, way more authentically lived experience kind of true. And maybe that just means that we all could probably look back and reflect on our own experiences and go, “Yeah, actually.” That’s what this whole missed moments series is kind of about: like, there’s the choosing, and then there’s the missed, and in all of it, life then moves on. But the way that it moves on is going to be different.

Isn’t that kind of like Gwyneth Paltrow Sliding Doors — remember that film? Like, it’s just whatever the life is, whether you made it onto the train or didn’t, it’s still now the life you’re living. But we do have those memories attached to the choices we make. So what do we do with those memories? I mean, I guess that’s kind of what we’re doing here with this conversation — is pondering that. I don’t think we’re coming up with answers per se, but, like, we’re definitely sitting in that.

So you know that we actually had somebody, Bec, send us a poem, which I thought was kind of neat. Like, it’s one thing to sort of share stories with us about missed moments, but Colin James responded to our call and sent us a poem, and his poem is called, “Do, Do, Do The Do Without.” And can I read it to you?

Rebecca
Yeah, read it slow.

Natalie
Ok — yeah, we need to ponder this one. And it’s not very long, so… so here’s the title again: “Do, Do, Do The Do Without.”

“Resting between breaths,
the artist administered
some flickering poignancy to
the clandestinzing of scholarship,
until the mural grew and grew
in its simplicity.”

Shall I read it again?

Rebecca
Yeah, and what’s that word?

Natalie
‘Clandestinzing.’ I kind of want to add an I into it and make it ‘clandestinizing,’ but he wrote ‘clandestinzing’ so I’m going to say it his way. He’s the poet, it’s his poem. Here we go, trying it again:

“Resting between breaths,
the artist administered
some flickering poignancy to
the clandestinzing of scholarship,
until the mural grew and grew
in its simplicity.”

Rebecca
It sounds like he’s seizing the moment with the mural. It grows and grows. Is he worried that he’s missing something?

Natalie
But then there’s that, like, made up word — ‘clandestinzing.’ Like maybe he’s playing with what’s hidden in and under our choices? I mean, in this case, it’s like an artistic choice. Like those painters, right, whose faces kind of show up in their works unintentionally. They find that they’ve painted themselves into their work, and they didn’t even intend for it to happen — they’re just so fully in the work.

Rebecca
What? I didn’t know about that.

Natalie
Yeah. I mean, a lot of painters painted themselves in on purpose — or they painted, like, the face of the people who paid for the painting. But there are examples of famous artists who have all of a sudden shown up in their work and they would say that that wasn’t intentional. So essentially, I guess I would say that it seems like the poem is sort of saying that all the choices lead back to the self in some way. Like whether the choices we make seem purposeful or not, something was in there that led us to that choice. That’s one way of maybe looking at it.

Rebecca
But then we asked him to explain.

Natalie
Like, we emailed him and said, “Uh…”

Rebecca
“Tell us about your poem.” Ok, so here’s what he said:

“I have a relative who was quite a bit different from her peers. She told me that she had to put up with a lot of negativity directed towards herself when younger, yet despite this couldn’t help but be optimistic. I thought this quite wonderful, and in logical contrast to most simmering cynicism, hence the title, ‘Do, Do, Do The Do Without.’ I would have given and gotten more in relationships, if adopting such an attitude instead of internalizing.”

Natalie
I like his answer better, but it still does go back to the self. So I’m gonna take my analysis on that one home — to the bank, so they say.

Rebecca
Yeah — I like it, though. A different way of looking, which I mean, sort of, it’s a nice summary, because we have the choice with how we look at our memories, I guess.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
We can hold them with a tight grip from one vantage point, or we can release them. Even if they were missed or seized, those moments. We have the choice to let them go, I guess. Right?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Face them, and then let them go? I don’t know. I was listening to this one therapist say, “You can’t run from things that hurt.” So we can’t just deny — we have to face our trauma. You love that way of talking, right Nat? You love the idea of working through something, like passing through?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
It’s very journey-oriented language. So journeying through these missed or seized moments, and then starting to skip.

Natalie
I like that idea, not that I’ll ever get to really skip again. But I think that, like, there’s something beautiful about… maybe that’s why I am so focused on the journey, eh? Like I’m constantly obsessing about how much walking I can do, because I just want to move — like I have this leg that I can just move all the time.

Rebecca
But wait, you can skip?

Natalie
Not great.

Rebecca
Oh. Skipping doesn’t feel like skipping anymore.

Natalie
No. I don’t want to end this interview on tears, Becca. But no — there are lots of things that are different. So, you know, those missed moments in the journey that sort of took me to here. Hmm. You know, I think my thinking about it, as you just said that — the idea of, like, not running away from them right? And maybe not running towards — ok, so skipping, whatever is our chosen bodily movement. But I’m thinking of, like, a group trust exercise. Like, you know how the kids have been doing that with Simon and Clifford these days at mom and dad’s? They’ll stand up on a couch and then fall back. But there’s so little, so to fall back into the safety of their dad’s arms doesn’t require that much. But when we share our memories with people, and certainly our missed moments, there potentially could be, like, a bit of regret or shame kind of in them, right? Because that thing that we didn’t quite do, or the thing that we missed out on. So there is sort of a lovely potential group trustfall happening here when people share with us these missed moments, or sharing them with each other and with our listeners. So I don’t know — that’s, like, hashtag relatable. Like, we’re all doing it. So there’s always the possibility for community-building. That’s what I always come back to you right. And I think that in these missed moments, I think that there is something of that here for us.

Rebecca
Hashtag trustfall.

Natalie
Yeah.