what lies beneath

for the adorable smilers

On Monday, I visited my favorite haunt — Jenni Bick, a cozy enclave where paper and pen reign supreme.

I indulged in the luxury of two crisp Leuchtturm journals; their covers emblazoned with my name in glistening gold lettering. One destined to chronicle my professional life, the other to capture the meanderings of my writer's mind.

That night, as I sifted through my “old” journal — turning its dog-eared pages with equal parts fondness and trepidation — readying it for retirement, I came across a note: “A smile is the perfect place to hide.”

Remember — The bigger you smile, the more recliners you’ll sell! Sell, sell, sell!!

All I can think about is that marginal scrawl. It feels like a strike at the core of who I am. “A smile is the perfect place to hide” — indictment and revelation.

Smiling is my default, reflexive. And that’s good, right?! Smiles make people feel comfortable and bring ease. While signs of sadness or struggles lead to tense, awkward interactions. So, no matter what storms are raging inside, turn up the corners of your mouth. It's simply what one does.

But what I do and what I want are misaligned. These actions contrast with the rawness I claim to crave.

Years ago, I learned that always smiling doesn’t serve me. And I think I wrote that note as a reminder: “Be careful, Caroline; it’s tempting to step backward.”

It’s a gentle, honest nudge to recognize that I remain in progress — that I’m intentionally fracturing from the inside out.

If there is one thing I've mastered, it's pretending everything is fine, especially as I fall apart. I remember my first meeting with a psychiatrist, Dr. G, and pouring out all the aches and anxieties and self-destruction that led me to her burnt orange couch. As I spoke, she furrowed her brow with concern and said, "Do you realize you have a huge smile on your face?" The words felt like a slap. "Do I?" I managed to reply shakily. Is this not normal? I’m a woman, aren’t I supposed to smile? Aren’t I supposed to be charming and to impress you no matter the circumstances?

At that moment, I felt the hot flare of embarrassment ignite my cheeks — cheeks still frozen in that rictus grin — because Dr. G was the first person to call me out on my fakeness. The first to tell me my performance was not Oscar-worthy. The first person to cut through the bullshit and say, “You are not okay.” I’m both grateful to her and resentful. I walked out of her office, knowing that a coping mechanism I developed and perfected to “protect” myself had failed to protect me from anything and had done more harm than we could cover in one session.

A burst bubble.

It’s hard to keep up an act when people know you're a fraud. And Dr. G, with her perfect, wiry grey hair, knew I was a fraud. I was left with a choice — to remain shackled to denial or to cast off those rusted chains and confront my truth. So, I stopped saying I was healthy when I was sick. I stopped faking happiness when I was sad. And I got to work staring down reality.

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I can’t think, much less write, about this “smiling conundrum” without highlighting a quote I first read when writing my thesis on Arlene Francis and the complicated intersection of traditional gender roles, domesticity, and happiness. In her memoir, written in her seventies, she confessed, “I wish somebody would have told me when I was a little girl that the whole world doesn’t have to think you’re adorable.” It’s simple, yet the honesty overwhelms me. It cuts right to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? She lays bare the immense emotional labor of living this way.

And it stings because it’s true. If you put all your energy into being affable and agreeable, people will like you and want to be around you. That alone is intoxicating. No wonder the expectation to constantly smile and radiate frictionless agreeability takes such an insidious root.

I find solace in knowing this plagued her and that generations before me feared not being permissible. That there’s a long tail to this experience. That nothing I’ve felt is wholly original.

But I find no solace in the cost, in the emotional repression. Because that unrelenting pressure to “be okay” to “be happy” that we swathe ourselves in can easily become a straitjacket — familiar but suffocating.

Francis' line is an indictment of her performance. And mine and yours. She calls us out for foolishly believing that our humanity could be validated by meeting outward-prescribed standards. She begs us to see just how spirit-corroding it is to perform at the expense of our own identity. She shows us what we lose by failing to embody the full spectrum of human emotion.

With one late-life revelation, I better understand her, and I better understand myself. I don't need the whole world's approval. I am inherently valid and worthy when I’m adorable and when I’m not. I don’t have to make myself palatable. I already am, but not exclusively and not universally.

When I revisit that line, I can't help but feel the deep ache and quiet triumph Francis carried into her twilight years. Its sucker-punch honesty both deflates and reinvigorates in the same breath. For here is someone who sacrificed her life force in service of being likable, of being wanted — until she decided not to. Perhaps that's the most resilient, radical truth of all.

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I doubt that when Arlene penned those words in 1978, she could have fathomed the rippling impact they would have. How a single line, born of hard-won wisdom, would one day reach across decades to awaken a younger woman's consciousness.

But resonate they did.

Life is exhausting and trying, and it doesn’t always get better, but we can. With wisdom from those who walked before and spoonfuls of hope and grace, we can unburden ourselves and live from a place of authenticity.

We can always be better. And we can always do better for others.

I’m better today than ever before.

So, I smile genuinely. And tip my hat to those who took the long haul so I could take an easier path.

PS — To those who have been here since the beginning — you know who you are — thanks for indulging me and reading about Arlene…again. I adore you.

PPS — If being a paid subscriber isn’t the right fit for you, that’s OK. I’m grateful for your presence in any and every capacity. You can always buy me coffee. It fills me with the excitement-induced energy I need to function as a human. Click below!