By Ann Estaki · November 3, 2026
Life hits hard. I hit back, usually in the wrong key. On comedy, music, and a lesson I learned from my mother at the stove.
OvertureThe Joke as a Shield
For a long time, I thought the trick to surviving was simply to make everything a joke. Flight canceled? Wonderful, I live at the airport now. Sink explodes? Guess I’m a plumber. Trip on the sidewalk? Take a bow, you magnificent fool. The concrete has claimed another victim.
And don’t get me wrong: it works. Comedy is a shield. It holds the darkness at arm’s length and buys you a minute to breathe. It is the art of looking a disaster in the eye and saying, “You can’t hurt me. I’m funnier than you.”
But a shield only keeps things out. It doesn’t do anything with what gets through. And plenty got through. Some nights, after I had made everyone at the table laugh about my terrible week, I drove home in a silence so heavy I could feel it in my chest.
Somewhere along the way, I learned the rest of the trick from my mother.
A shield only keeps things out. It doesn’t do anything with what gets through.
Act OneMy Mother at the Stove
My mother cooks the way other people conduct orchestras. Fully immersed. Completely unbothered. I can still see her: one hand stirring something fragrant, mustard seeds popping in the pan, steam rising past her face, and her voice absolutely belting out a song from her youth. Slightly off-key. Totally unselfconscious. Lost in it.
The onions could be making her cry. The day could have been long and unkind. It didn’t matter. In that kitchen, with that music, she turned everything into something more. The food, the sound, the feeling all became one thing. I didn’t have a word for it as a child. I only knew that when she sang, the house felt safer, and that whatever she was carrying, she was carrying it in time to a song.
It took me years to realize I had been doing my own version of this all my life, without ever giving myself credit for it.
Act TwoThe Heavy Heart Gets a Soundtrack
I don’t just joke at adversity anymore. I take the heavy heart, the real weight of it, the disappointment and the grief and the frustration, and I turn it into a soundtrack. I choose the music. I set the tempo. And then, like my mother over the stove, I let the moment take me.
This isn’t about pretending I’m fine. Some days the song I choose is the saddest one I own, and I play it twice. The point is that the feeling finally has somewhere to go. It stops sitting in my chest and starts moving through the room.
The Soundtrack · Liner Notes
Track 1
When bad news arrives
Something sad and slow. Lean into it. Let the weight have its dance.
Track 2
When there’s too much chaos
Something absurd and upbeat. Watch the anxiety trip over its own feet trying to keep up.
Track 3
When everything is too much
Stand in the kitchen, stir something, and sing like nobody’s listening. Maybe nobody is. Maybe that’s the point.
Track 4
When the heart is too full to speak
Put on the song and let it say everything for you.
Act ThreeGremlin Logic
Over the years I’ve developed what I call the Gremlin Logic approach to survival. When life gets weird, get weirder.
Coffee stain on your shirt before a big meeting? Announce that you challenged a latte to a duel, and the latte fought dirty. Lost for an hour? Come back with a story about the raccoon book club that kidnapped you to settle a dispute about the ending. The toaster burns your last slice of bread on the worst morning of the week? Congratulations, you have found the villain of Act Two. Give him a name. Boo him from the kitchen table.
It isn’t denial. It’s active, creative defiance.
Comedy is my first instrument: quick, sharp, deflecting. Music is my second: slower, deeper, transforming. Together they make a two-person band that plays in the rubble and refuses to let the silence win.
A two-person band that plays in the rubble and refuses to let the silence win.
FinaleThe Piano Falls Anyway
Life drops a piano on you from the sky. Some days it drops one every hour. You can let it crush you. You can make a joke about it. Or, and this is my favorite, you can sit down at the keys, right there in the dust with the weight still pressing on your back, and play a silly little tune. Maybe sing along, slightly off-key, the way your mother would.
The heavy heart doesn’t disappear. I want to be honest about that. But it becomes the rhythm section. It keeps time underneath everything else, and somehow, that changes everything.
So that’s my approach. When adversity comes knocking, I let it in, offer it a drink, and put on a record. We dance it out. Sometimes I cry into the soup. Sometimes I laugh until I have to sit down. Always, always, there is music.
Thanks, Mom. For the recipe and the soundtrack.
Ann Estaki
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