A few days ago, I listened to a recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast hosted by Glennon Doyle and her sister Amanda Doyle. (Side note – you should listen to this podcast if you aren’t already. It’s amazing.) The topic was fun and Glennon’s wife Abby Wambach was a guest. The episode was interesting in a hundred different ways, but mostly I was fascinated by how perplexed Glennon and Amanda were by the concept of fun and purposelessness. Abby defined fun as experiencing joy, oftentimes without knowing what the outcome will be. Merriam Webster defines fun as “what provides amusement or enjoyment”. Glennon and Amanda shared how they didn’t really understand fun, and Glennon went on to say:

“Can we just get deep for a second? Because I was talking about this with a few friends recently and it made me feel better. Babe (Abby), you were there. We were talking to Karen and Jessica and none of them also understood what fun was. And so I thought, wait, why do women not understand fun? Right. So we’re talking about, is it because we’re mothers? Is it because we’re caretakers? Is it because we have so much to do that we always feel like something has to be productive? And then we decided no, that it’s earlier than that. It’s part of it. I’m not saying all of it. But part of it is being raised as girls in this culture where first of all, a lot of people find sports. You’re talking about competitiveness and sports. People find fun in that, but girls are kind of teased early out of losing themselves in sport. We’re kind of, you run like a girl you’re, you know, you’re teased and you start to feel self-conscious. That girls are trained to care about how we appear to other people or whether we’re looking desirable or looking attractive, or are we fitting in? And I think fun does require some kind of being unselfconscious, does fun require losing yourself and like not worrying about how you appear. And that is what is trained out of girls so early.” 

And with that, I was ten years old, wearing catcher’s gear that was MUCH too big for my small frame, covered in dirt, playing a sport that I loved so much with my friends. A sport that my parents introduced me to as soon as I was big enough to hold a softball. Mom loved to play and even if we girls didn’t enjoy it as much as she did (it would turn out that we did), as she was not about to have daughters that “threw like a girl”. 

My childhood was largely defined by sports. We didn’t have a lot of money, but bike rides, road races, and sports were fairly accessible. I started playing softball early in grade school, basketball in fourth grade, track (and running with my dad) in sixth, and volleyball in seventh. Of the many lessons I learned through sports as a kid, one that I hadn’t recognized until listening to this podcast, was how to have fun. My childhood was filled with fun. I learned to get dirty, to play hard, to compete, and I witnessed my parents – especially my mom – having fun, which was probably just as important. My parents ran road races. They played volleyball at the Y and my mom played in a women’s league when I was in junior high. I occasionally went with her to practices and would silently plead from the bleachers to be invited to play. She also played softball. I remember going to her games and playing with the other kids while our moms were on the field. One game in particular stands out – there was a storm coming and everyone’s hair stood on end, which us kids thought was really neat. But without lightning closeby, the game pressed on. Then my mom went up to bat, in the clean-up spot as always, and just as her bat connected with the ball, lightning spidered across the sky. The game was called before she could cross the plate for what would have been a home run. I didn’t know the term “bad ass” back then, but it was so bad ass. In addition to playing softball, she coached my 13-15 yr old travel team when no one else would. We also camped (not always fun) and took vacations, often to places my parents thought we’d enjoy. I had a lot of books and no shortage of material with which to make art. I borrowed my cousin’s clarinet and started band in fifth grade and ended up playing through my sophomore year in college. So much of my childhood was doing. Doing and being and having fun. 

Until listening to this podcast, I didn’t realize what a gift it was that I had parents who showed me how to have fun, who allowed and encouraged me to have fun. That I had parents, a mom and a dad, who let me see them having fun. Joy wasn’t something we had to earn in my house. As a result, I grew into a woman who never felt that I had to earn the right to have fun. I am not confused by the concept of doing something just because. But so many people are, especially women, for many of the reasons Glennon mentions in that quote above. (As well as trauma, which I’m not discussing here. That needs its own post. I’m probably not the best one to write it.) I don’t know how we help women learn to re-inhabit their bodies, or learn that they don’t need anyone’s permission to have fun, or learn that not everything we do has to have a purpose or an outcome. I don’t know how we help women access the joy they’ve been denied for so long, the joy that was conditioned out of them as kids.

But when I think about the consequences of this fun deficit, perhaps even a pleasure deficit, for all of us, I urgently believe we need to figure it out. How will today’s kids, especially girls, learn how to have fun when they don’t see it modeled by their own parents and the other adults in their lives? I would argue that productivity culture, diet culture, and fat phobia have not only stolen fun from adults, but they’re also stealing from kids. This obsession with outcomes, getting stuff done, being “productive”, being thin, being seen as attractive to others, is sucking the life force from all of us. 

Productivity culture should not be confused with Type 2 fun. Type 2 fun is fun in retrospect. Type 2 fun comes from an activity or experience that is miserable in the moment but provides deep joy and satisfaction later or when it’s complete. Something like training for (or racing) a marathon, or learning a new skill which is often torturous in the beginning, or hiking a steep trail. Type 2 fun is still fun. Racing around to check every item off a to do list, or wearing busyness as a badge of honor is not fun. Type 1 fun can be a bit more accessible as it is fun in the moment. Things such as attending a concert, eating a delicious meal, or snuggling with a pet are all type 1 fun. Both types are important. And both require a measure of presence, a willingness to be fully within one’s body. 

I wonder if simpler pleasures, simpler types of fun would provide a safe way for women who live with a fun/pleasure deficit to begin to explore being fully embodied, to relearn what it means to experience joy. Savoring a good cup of coffee in the morning or cuddling with the dog might feel more accessible than louder/bigger experiences of fun, or fun that involves a lot of physical feedback from the body (anything athletic or physically challenging). Little pockets of joy and pleasure might make it easier to reconnect with a younger version of ourselves, the one who knows how to have fun. Little permission slips can become big permission slips with time and experience. 

This week, I’m going to marinate in those moments of joy, be grateful that I can see them and experience them. Be grateful that because of chronic illness, I’ve divorced myself from productivity culture and recognize that by just being a human in the world, I’ve earned the right to experience pleasure and joy. The too-strong coffee while I write in the morning (early morning coffee = type 1 fun, writing = type 2 fun), the runs in the summer sun (type 2), watching my puppies play in the yard (type 1), the decadent breakfast I made for myself (cooking = type 2, eating = type 1), reading the four books I’m in the middle of (type 1), and so on. I am going to savor every little bit of fun. And perhaps see if my mom wants to play a game of catch.

This piece was originally posted on my new blog earlier today. This will be the last post on this site, but I do hope you’ll join me over at https://www.juniperuscoaching.com/blog. Same stuff, just a new location. Thank you, thank you for reading these last five years!