Soup and Ladles

In a 2003 essay, Christine Miserandino described her experience when a friend compassionately asked what it truly felt like to be her, dealing with lupus. After some consideration, she counted out 12 spoons and handed them to her friend. She then asked her friend to list off her tasks for the day. Getting ready for work - she took away a spoon, time spent with a friend - another spoon gone. The core idea is that what separates being sick from being healthy is having to make choices and consciously think about things that most people never notice or contemplate. You have a finite number of spoons each day and you need to decide how and when you’ll use them. She called it “spoon theory”, and it has caught on and been generalized far beyond chronic illness - now used in many communities to describe the experience of dealing with disabilities or mental health conditions.

Early in our relationship, a past partner and I borrowed from spoon theory, but we called them ladles. “Do you have enough ladles for this conversation?”, “I’m feeling low on ladles right now” - this is how we would communicate our capacity to engage and it has stuck with me ever since. I don’t remember how we settled on the name - maybe we wanted to show each other that our energy and care came in larger scoops, or perhaps we were just excited about soup that day.

I loved this analogy and having a clear way to communicate when I couldn’t “show up”, but at times I felt it failed to describe an important part of my experience. I would feel that I had ladles available, but they just didn’t apply to certain tasks. It wouldn’t matter how much that thing meant to me, how deeply I felt that I wanted to just do it, the ladles weren’t working. How can something be so important to me, yet be so challenging - I always struggled with this. Maybe I just needed to try harder, or become more disciplined, or become a better person.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to understand this deeper in a way that I could describe. You wake up in the morning and you’re given some number of ladles. Some days you may have a few extra, other days you may have a few less, so many factors can impact it that you might not even know how many ladles are coming your way until you start to use them. The day might have some chores to do, some people to see. Each of these tasks is a pot of soup, and you need to allocate your cherished ladles to them wisely. The problem is - not all ladles and not all pots of soup are made the same.

My ladles have holes in them, which you can imagine would make it challenging to scoop some soup with. The bright side is that some pots of soup are a thick chunky stew, others might be filled with macaroni and cheese (sure, let’s call it a soup). I use my ladle, finish a pot of soup, all is well. The difficulty comes when I come across a pot of consommé. I scoop my ladle in, and nothing. And that’s the best case. Other times I’ll try my hardest, but I’ll just spill some soup on myself, spill some soup on those I love around me. My ladle is empty, and I’m left instead with only my own shame.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just pick which tasks were which types of soup. Maybe something high priority or important to me can be a thick butternut squash, I’d make the chores around the house a gazpacho - a little tougher to scoop, but manageable even with a few holes. Instead, I’m at the mercy of the tasks that come my way and the soups they happen to be. Something seemingly easy and simple like responding to a friend reaching out, following through with a commitment to a loved one, or clicking a button to finalize paying a bill can often be the toughest - my consommés. To be fair to myself, there is some pattern to it - harsh deadlines, novelty, fear - these can all make a soup thicker and easier for me to handle.

It turns out there was a name for the holes in my ladles. A couple months ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. I had always suspected I might have it, but always put off a proper assessment because 1. the thought of medication scared me, and I didn’t want to lose who I am, and 2. I felt a diagnosis wouldn’t change anything for me given (1). Recently, while seeking therapy for entirely different reasons, my therapist convinced me that it might be helpful to get a formal diagnosis. For me this meant filling out questionnaires about my experience, digging up old grade school report cards, having my family answer questions about their experience with me, and spending time discussing my life and the challenges I face with a psychologist.

What I expected to feel indifference about instead turned into an afternoon on the floor crying after I was officially diagnosed. Was it sadness, validation, shame, anxiety? I don’t know, maybe a combination of all those things.

My psychologist recommended that I give medication a try, commit to it for some fixed amount of time and only then decide if it’s right for me or not - thankfully, he was pretty convincing. I started medication last month, and as I’ve seen echoed countless times on the internet, my biggest regret is not doing this sooner. It’s easy to feel a sense of “missed time” throughout my life that I can’t get back - but instead I prefer to be optimistic, proud of myself for this change and excited for the positivity that will come from it.

How has this impacted me so far? Well, medication for me has made the holes in my ladles a little smaller. I’ve learned that who I am can be an organized person. That I love to plan and clean and show up for others around me. I was just struggling. It was validating to hear loved ones tell me that they saw a change in me, a stronger effort to be there, communicate, and offer my compassion - it was what I was trying to be the entire time.

And we’re all trying our best, aren’t we? I believe everyone is dealing with some form of holes in their ladles. They might be in different places and come in different sizes, but that’s also part of what makes companionship so great. What’s a consommé for you might be a tasty vegetable stew for me, and I’ll be ready to lend a helping ladle. I know there will still be times I spill a little soup, but in between those moments I’m just happy to be sitting here and enjoying my steaming hot bowl of consommé.