#85: Autumn Christian
"We value beauty because beauty is a signifier of a creature full of life."
Autumn Christian (@teachrobotslove) is the author of Girl Like A Bomb (Clash Books) and The Crooked God Machine. She writes the Substack, Teach Robots Love.
#84: Autumn Christian
Scorpio/Sagittarius/Aquarius
Kingfisher, Oklahoma
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
I don’t care about being healthy. I care about being beautiful. It just turns out they are, in almost every instance, the same thing. If I could become more attractive by eating pizza, smoking cigarettes, and sinking down into the center of my couch, I’d do it. It just turns out that aspiring toward health is the way to accomplish this. We value beauty because beauty is a signifier of a creature full of life.
And isn’t it so much more fun to say that you want to be “beautiful,” vs. saying you want to be “healthy”? Healthy sounds like getting a regular colonoscopy and taking a spreadsheet’s worth of vitamins. It’s avoiding death with little rituals of frantic clinging to a heartbeat — and is that heart even worth keeping? But beauty? Beauty is the thing that kings covet and knights die for. It’s the treasure hidden in the Ark of the Covenant. It’s the gold threaded through the eyes of a happy woman when she glances up and looks at you and the light illuminates her.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
I am a writer and a stay-at-home mom who lives on a farm in rural Oklahoma. I’m working with my husband on starting up my grandfather’s old business, Christian Cheese, and I have a novel coming out next year.
Living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but chickens and farms and Oklahoman sky, would probably drive a lot of people insane. But I live a mostly interior life — I don’t desire novel activities anymore like going to high-rise cocktail lounges, skydiving, water skiing — I desire novel thoughts and ideas. Give me a dirty martini with frozen gin and a good conversation partner and I can spend hours just talking. Give me a white wall and I’ll sit there for an hour thinking up stories with imagined shapes.
Every day tends to look different, but everything I do I try to make sure is tending one of my ambitions or goals. Some days I am working on a story. Other days I'm making cheese at the factory. Sometimes I'm going on an adventure with my daughter, or visiting family. I'll go into the city and hit the gym a few times a week. I don't have to accomplish everything I want in one day. That's not possible. But I can accomplish one or two. I pick a few, and run toward them.
How do you start and end your days?
Lately I've been waking up early before the rest of my family wakes to read the Bible, or listen to music, or scroll X, or frantically work on some piece of writing with a deadline. I always make a cup of coffee and a giant 40 oz. water in my pink Stanley cup — with creatine, clear fiber, and electrolytes. Then I'll wash it down with thiamine and magnesium, and an additional caffeine pill depending on how exhausted I am. I'm in my mid-thirties and felt depleted postpartum, but the additional nootropics help with my general energy levels.
People always advise against jumping on social media right upon waking — but I find it helpful. I use it to hone my mind and sharpen myself against influences, to gauge my own levels of creativity and mood and responsiveness. It's just a tool, not a daemon. It's all about how you use it.
At the end of the day I get my daughter ready for bed, she does a monster check under beds and in closets with my husband, and then we both chase her around for a while before she decides to come snuggle and read a book. I make sure all the doors are closed so she can't see monsters in a crack of darkness. I have a red lamp and a blue light filter app on my phone so she can still see without disrupting sleep. Then I turn on the fan and the Hatch for white noise and play “pink music” (I don't know what color it actually is, but my daughter tells me it's pink) until she goes to sleep. After that I'll either scroll, read a book, or hang out with my husband and talk and drink some cocktails. I'm pretty good at getting 8 hours of sleep, but sometimes I have to compromise for less.
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
I spent years indulging in anorexia, then bouncing back to “recovery” with weight gain, only to parse myself down again. I was never happy with myself — I’d either be stuck in an icy, sick body with butterfly rashes breaking out on my face and lips flaking, or I’d feel heavy and bloated and drunken with misery, my discomfort with myself visible in the way I held my body, the way I breathed. One day I was looking at myself in the mirror, up ten pounds, tugging on my shirt and trying to be okay with my appearance, when I snapped. I was tired of pretending that I liked how I looked. I wanted to actually like how I looked.
That week my now-husband took me to the grocery store and we picked out $300 worth of healthy foods. I went to Academy Sports and bought myself a nice workout video. I started exercising every day, and eating regular, healthy meals. I became slimmer and saw the color flood back into my life. There’s something almost psychedelic about eating healthy and exercising — it fundamentally shifts your perspective on yourself and the world. I no longer saw being healthy as a punishment — something imposed on me from an unfair order. It was a constant cycle of nourishment and growth.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
I consider myself a Christian. I used to be an atheist, an amoralist, a hedonist. Perhaps having the last name “Christian” was a kind of fated signal, and not merely ironic.
I was unhappy with my life and I felt like I’d tried nearly everything to try to fix myself, so in desperation one day I prayed to God to fix my life. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but I heard a clear voice telling me to pour all my whiskey down the sink. I balked at this. I didn’t want to waste an entire bottle.
The voice mocked me. It said, “You want my help, you’re asking for everything, and you can’t even do this one thing for me?” I poured the bottle down the sink.
It was my first paltry offering, but it opened the door to being receptive to understanding more. For a while I was able to convince myself I was just hearing my own thoughts bouncing back toward me, a “god” construct inside my head. But at some point I became unable to deny that there was a quiet voice that spoke with the commanding presence of all structural reality, and if you were very still, and very honest, you could hear that voice reverberating through your being with a truth that superseded your own understanding. It would guide you. Heal you. Love you. It would tell you truths you didn’t want to hear, and if you couldn’t handle those truths, show you a path toward being able to.
Look up and there’s God. Look down and there’s God. Look inside and there’s God.
What’s your relationship to self-healing?
I was one of those people who is very lucky to have a healthy body, with no real physical ailments, but I possess a sick mind. And unfortunately, a sick mind cannot be cured with potions and pills and bedrest. Therapists can help guide you, but they cannot stick a needle in your arm and inject you with an antivirus that will destroy the nihilism in your heart and the aching pain in your soul. I found I could not be entirely truthful with therapists, and they often pointed me in the wrong direction. So for the most part, except for the occasional ear infection or tooth ache, I’ve decided to go my own path.
I won’t say I’m alone, though. I always have my husband for counsel, and the surging and silent and infinite voice inside me that speaks truth even when I try to deny it.
Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?
I am a fiction writer and I like to always be reading something new. One of my favorite routines is reading some obscure PDF on my laptop while I walk on the treadmill to try to get my mind and blood working. Some of my favorite texts that deal with health and wellness and nourishment of the soul are The Bible (obviously), Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima, The VALIS Trilogy by Philip K. Dick, The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, and Orthodoxy by G.K Chesterton.
When do you feel the most nourished?
There’s nothing better than a big piece of red meat and a glass of wine after a long day in the sunlight with people that you love. It’s a reward for living a life that is a reward.
How do you reset?
I have a toddler, so my work is near constant. I've learned to let little moments reset and replenish me, as I can no longer indulge in entire days spent in bed reading books and sipping champagne, or long hikes in the woods. I try to structure my day so that I always have something to look forward to and be happy for — whether it be waking up an hour early to drink coffee and listen to music, going to my gym with childcare, playing outside with my toddler in the sunlight, or making roast chicken or a steak for dinner. Sometimes my daughter and I will have a “mental health day” where we go to the park, get our nails done, buy a cute outfit, and watch a movie together.
Other days I like to stay up late with my husband, drinking wine and talking about life and ideas. You should give gifts to yourself in abundance. Each moment is an opportunity to shift and breathe.
What types of foods are you typically drawn towards? Do you have a favorite meal?
My death row meal would probably be a smoked ribeye steak, mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, and a Chianti. I will also never turn down a Chipotle burrito. I like to buy mostly simple ingredients: blueberries, bananas, Greek yogurt, avocado, chicken thighs, peanut butter, ground beef, broccoli, cottage cheese, rice cakes, tomatoes, black beans. I feel the best when my everyday meals are protein rich and the flavor comes from the quality of cooking and seasoning.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Stop being a stupid bitch who stumbles through life with her eyes closed, straining to dissolve into a fantasy. Open your eyes to what is, and not just what you want to see.
To the person reading this?
Health is not just about protocols or regimens or the “right” supplements. There is a profound sickness in overly strategizing your health as it often makes you restrictive and insular and consequently, unhealthy. Do an “unhealthy” thing every once in a while. Drink a beer. Stay up late with people that you love. Eat some fried foods. Skip a workout so you can spend more time doing creative work. You’ll find that not everything in life is so easily calculated, and a good thing for your spirit can bring a healthy flush to your entire body.
What would you like to see or create more of in the world?
We should all be going on more adventures to seek the truth and beauty in the conquest of ourselves.
VALIS on the treadmill goes so hard. In awe of this woman
This whole interview was so beautiful, the highest echelon of health IMO. I teared up and nodded along all throughout. Thank you for sharing all that you have here. Your honesty serves as an example of the medicine we all need right now on this mysterious planet!