She Sees Everything: A Reflection Inspired by Beau Is Afraid

Some horror –– if that is indeed the right word –– doesn’t explode through your front door with knives, blood, or jump scares. It lives in the invisible corners of a person’s living, breathing life. It is the horror that comes along with being watched, judged, and found lacking by someone who was supposed to love you completely and unconditionally. 

Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster’s epic absurdist plunge into one man’s terrified psyche, doesn’t just address that horror. It dissects it.

What strikes me the most when I watch Beau Is Afraid is not the feverish chaos of Beau's world. It is the ominous presence of Mona, his mother. Mona is a woman whose love is weaponized, whose legacy is surveillance, and whose gaze never rests or shifts away from Beau. This remains the case even after her alleged death.

If you yourself have ever lived under the shadow of maternal control, then you know what it's like. Even when mother isn't in the room, she's present in uncomfortable and invasive ways. 

Beau Is Afraid doesn’t flinch from showing how love can become a trap –– how being raised to please someone else can result in a kind of emotional paralysis. And it absolutely nails how surveillance, even subtle, turns us into reluctant performers who are forever trying to get it "right."

The Devouring Mother

If you've read much mythology, then the devouring mother is a familiar figure. She appears to offer everything, but she also demands everything in return. Her love consumes. She defines herself by her children, defining them in the process, as well. When they inevitably try to leave or become people of their own, she takes it as the most profound betrayal.

Mona Wasserman is a modern version of this archetype turned all the way up to 150 percent. She is not merely overbearing. She is omnipotent. Godlike, even. A business empire bears her name. Her portrait looms, sucking the air out of the room. Her voice follows Beau through every nuanced layer of his myth-like journey. Even when he tries to escape, she is there, or maybe especially then.

A Legacy Isn't What You Think It Is

The idea of leaving a legacy in life came up on Facebook earlier –– everything it does and doesn't mean (and to whom). I posted a meme I found. Then a couple of friends direct-messaged me to share some of their own thoughts on the subject.

And as sometimes happens with me, the word kept bouncing around in my head throughout the day, long after those conversations were over.

Legacy. 

What does it actually mean to people to have one, and should it mean those things? Why is it so crucial to so many people? And perhaps most importantly, why hadn't it ever been particularly important to me?

When we talk about legacy, most people picture something grand and (hopefully) lasting. They picture having children who grow up to accomplish something great, passing on wealth or a family business, or being remembered by the rest of society in a speech or a headstone. Maybe they even see themselves creating something artistic or inventing something groundbreaking that gets them recognized. 

But the truth is, most of us won’t be remembered that way. 

I've always been a realist. I've also never personally wanted children or cared much about winning other people's approval. It's always been a given to me that I'd probably have my time on earth and eventually recede into obscurity when the time came. 

A lot of us eventually get there. And that's the point where you realize legacy isn't necessarily what we're taught to think it is at all.

The Myth of Legacy

Let’s be real for a second. Most families don’t remember their ancestors or lineage beyond their grandparents. Maybe a great-grandparent, if they were lucky enough to ever meet one. But names, faces, and details vanish fast. Even if your name makes it onto a family tree or you wind up with a grave people can visit, that’s not the same as being remembered as a person.

The pressure to leave some lasting mark on the world has become one more thing we’re expected to respond to, especially in a culture obsessed with hustle, productivity, and legacy-building.

But when you pull back and look at things honestly, you realize:

• Very few people are remembered beyond a generation or two.
• Legacy is often conflated with fame, lineage, or wealth.
• Even famous or otherwise noteworthy people are often misunderstood or reduced to symbols.

So what are we really trying to leave behind? Who are we trying to prove something to, and why?

Soft Armor: A Reflection on Quiet Strength

I never used to think of myself as a strong person, and with good reason. 

As a little girl, I was quiet and shy, the sort of kid who stayed glued to her parents whenever she went out with her family. I didn't want to be anything in particular when I grew up either. In fact, the idea of having a job one day filled me with terror and the closest thing to existential dread a little kid can feel. 

The world just seemed like such a scary place, a place I didn't think I'd ever be strong enough to survive in. But as it turned out, I also didn't understand strength yet. Because not all strength announces itself with a roar. In fact, some of the most powerful types don't make noise at all. 

They don’t show up with medals or applause. They aren’t polished, flashy, or performative. They’re the strengths that live underground and spend their energy producing roots instead of flowers. They're hidden until you look closely, quiet until you really take the time to stop and listen.

Mine is this kind. The kind that waits. 

It waits in the calm pacing of a rational thought when my chest is full of storms. It waits in the decision to keep going, not because the path is easy, but because I refuse to give up on the idea that there's a point and a purpose to my being here in the first place. 

My hidden strength isn't obvious fortitude or impenetrable toughness. It's resilience. 

Resilience is quiet, but it’s also defiant. It’s choosing not to become bitter, even after years of being underestimated, picked apart, or flat-out ignored. It’s telling others that they don’t get to tell me who I am, even when I’ve forgotten how to remind myself. 

It’s lighting a tea light on my altar when I feel powerless. Anointing my wrists with oil meant to invite success, even on days when failure feels more honest. 

It's waking up with my anxiety telling me the world is about to end, but getting out of bed anyway. It's going out into the garden to get some sun when I'd much rather hide inside in a dark room all day (or all year, even). It's reminding myself to drink plenty of water. Answering emails. Whispering hope under my breath when the world’s noise tells me not to bother.

It's choosing to write, create, love, learn, even when the evidence around me says it would be so much easier not to.

This is what most people never notice about resilient people. They don’t see what it costs to keep joy alive in places that feel designed to snuff it out — aging, crumbling, and full of ghosts. They don’t see the negotiations I make with my own sadness, not to banish it, but to ask it to move over so joy can sit beside it. They don’t see how many times I’ve had to build a sense of home out of nothing but music, memory, or a cup of triple Earl Grey tea in the right light.

Joy isn’t something that happens to me. It’s something I conjure, sometimes out of sticks and stones. I don’t lie to myself about how hard life can be. But I also don’t lie to myself about how beautiful it still is, regardless. I'm very familiar with both, because my center is in the space between them, and there it will continue to be. Forever and ever, amen.

* This reflection is part of the Feast of the Wandering Pen, a month-long exploration of writing, thought, and imagination in all its many forms.

Things I Know, Even When I'm Quiet: A Litany

You'll never catch me saying that I know something until I've applied it somehow and proven to myself that it's probably true. Before that, it's simply secondhand information –– likely valuable if it came from a trustworthy source, but not absolutely. 

And even once something makes it into my mental "I know this" file, I still don't necessarily shout it right out for the world to hear. Instead, I let these things settle into my gut and grow smooth, like rocks at the bottom of a riverbed. 

No one knows they're there, but they still serve a sort of quiet purpose. They're anchors that keep me grounded in a saner version of the world where I always know what's real, even if no one else around me does. Silence doesn't make those things any less true. 

I know when someone is trying to manage me with compliments. I know when they’re dancing a stilted jig around the perimeter of a truth they don’t want to articulate. I know when someone's surprised (and more than a little bothered) that I don't fit comfortably into whatever labeled box they've decided to place me in. 

I register these things before I smile and say something polite –– not because I feel polite, but because I know it's expected of me and need to buy time while I wait for the next conversational exit. 

I know what it feels like to walk into a room and read the people in it before a single word is said. The tone of the air, the undercurrents of tension and the way tension always smells like carrots. Perhaps even unspoken resentment. I used to think everyone did this –– figured out the lay of the land before deciding how to proceed by scanning the energy in question. But then I realized almost no one does, except other people who simply don't mention it. 

I also learned that some people hate that this is something I can (and will) do. They don't think they should have to pass a vibe check before I'll interact with them.

I know what burnout feels like, not just physically but spiritually — the ache of having too many people need things from you while you’re scraping the bottom of your own well. I know the hollow feeling that comes when you're doing something that should be heartfelt out of obligation instead of devotion. 

What I Found at the Edge of the Map

One of the biggest myths we're sold when we're all still young and stupid is that life is a straight-shot journey from Point A to Point B. All you have to do is follow the totally real life map we're presented with, and everything will turn out just peachy.

Do this, then that. Be this, then become that. Follow the signs. Never stray. And if you do everything exactly right, you’ll reach your destination right on time. Oh, and there will be a trophy and a pizza party waiting for you when you arrive, of course.

But what no one tells you is this. The destination point keeps moving, which hardly matters, because no one ever clarifies where you're supposed to be going in the first place. The map spontaneously redraws itself the moment you think you understand it. 

And the edges? You eventually find out that they don’t mark the end of anything. They mark another big, fat, blank beginning you didn’t know to expect, and it's even more ambiguous and vague than the last.

I spent an embarrassingly large chunk of my one life chasing the idea of “arriving.” At what, I don't exactly know, although I assume it had something to do with success, love, healing, wholeness –– the four horsemen of the well-adjusted. I thought that if I just kept going, I’d eventually reach a place where things made sense. But that never happened. 

What did happen were curveballs. Detours. Periods of standing still so long that I forgot I was even on a journey in the first place. Eventually, I thought I'd reached the end of the map. But it didn't look or feel anything like fulfillment, and there sure as shit wasn't a pizza party waiting for me. It looked like a blank, white page with nothing else on it. 

I sat with that blankness for a very long time, because I didn't know what else to do. And I think that's when I realized the map wasn't ever meant to be the whole plan. It was a set of training wheels made of inherited ideas, social constructs that really never fit me, and a hefty pinch of generational trauma thrown in for good measure. If you're dealing with something similar right now, this is what I want you to know.

1. The end is rarely the literal end

Certain life events –– divorces, job losses, etc. –– can feel like the end of the world, because they're just that devastating. But they're also the endings of chapters in your life story, not the whole damn book, regardless of how they may feel at the time. In some cases, they might also mark the end of how you pictured your life playing out. 

Realizing that absolutely sucks, so it's understandable if you need to mourn for a while. Let yourself be angry or sad. But know that life also has a way of sneaking in new possibilities when we’re not looking. Releasing the idea of what should have happened (but couldn't for whatever reason) makes space for what can happen now.