u/MyToesAreHaunted

After this latest episode of The Testaments I’m honestly a bit concerned about Daisy.

Obviously we are all worried about Becka right now because she did murder her father in Gilead, even if he absolutely deserved it and they were planning to salvage him anyway. Gilead is not just going to let that go unchecked. She is a woman who killed a man and took away their opportunity to publicly make an example of him. That matters to them.

I also found it really interesting that the people who took Becka away looked like female silhouettes. I’m very curious who they are and what that means.

But while Becka’s danger is obvious, I feel like the episode was also quietly showing that Daisy could be in serious trouble too.

Look at everything that happened

She ripped off her clothes in Dr. Grove’s office and ran out screaming that he touched her. I do think the only reason he didn’t touch her is because he realized she wasn’t naive like the other girls. The girls we see raised in Gilead like Agnes and Hilda are confused, ashamed, and more likely to stay quiet. Daisy was raised outside Gilead and actually understands what’s happening. She straight up told the aunts he made her touch his Penis. The other girls wouldn’t even have the proper terminology to flat out say what happened. We saw Hilda saw “pressed her hand against him” but that isn’t as shocking to hear as “he made me touch his penis” so it cannot be spun in a different direction.

But then we immediately see Aunt Lydia dismiss everyone else to talk alone with Daisy. She does say the details didn’t add up. Lydia clearly knew Daisy wasn’t being fully truthful. She may keep quiet about it, but what happens if someone else starts thinking about it more critically and questioning it? Someone like Vidala or Weston would not be nearly as forgiving.

Then Daisy tells Garth she lied but “had to” because he was assaulting other girls. Girl. Spy code 101. Why are you admitting this to anyone? I don’t care that he’s your handler. Some information doesn’t get shared with anyone at all.

Then Agnes starts questioning Daisy’s actual intentions for being there. She basically asks if Daisy truly wanted safety and a future there, why would she risk all of it like that? And honestly Daisy stumbled through that explanation badly.

And now with Becka doing what she did, I could absolutely see people quietly blaming Daisy emotionally, even if not officially. Daisy arrived and suddenly all of this crazy stuff started happening to them all. At minimum this is probably going to isolate her more from the other girls.

And honestly even without all of this happening, Daisy is still now considered a fertile girl in Gilead. That alone puts her in danger.

They could still force her into marriage even after the accusations against Dr. Grove.

Why did they randomly mention Maddox? Was that setup? Does she get paired with him? Does Becka’s engagement dissolve and they pair Daisy with Garth instead? Does Penny die and Daisy ends up married to Judd somehow? Or does Lydia decide that the safest way to protect her is training her as an Aunt? We can assume Lydia knows Daisy is mayday and wants to keep her around.

There are just too many possible directions this could go now and honestly not many of them seem good for Daisy. I am honestly so terrified for all of them and I cannot wait for next week. What a fantastic episode.

My daughter is 2 1/2 and hasn’t been to the beach yet, we spontaneously planned some thing in June for the three of us to have a few days at Myrtle Beach just so we can be sure to have those memories with her before she isn’t so little anymore.

It has been a couple of years since my husband and I have been, and we have never gone with a toddler because it was always just the two of us before, so I’m hoping to get some good recommendations for some things to do when we are done at the beach.

I would love to eat at the sea Captains house just as a no to one of my favorite dates my husband and I took on one of our Myrtle Beach vacations, but I am unsure if they accommodate children or if there is a seaside restaurant we should try.

Really wanted to do a wine tasting at one of the local wineries, but again if that would be OK to deal with our toddler, even though she is very chill and handles restaurants and public spaces well.

Any recommendations for something that would be fun for us to do as a family would be appreciated. I really want to try to plan something special for us because it is our first family vacation together.

My daughter is 2 and a half and lately I feel like I’m grieving constantly.

I know it probably sounds super dramatic because nothing is actually wrong. She’s healthy, happy, thriving, and becoming this hilarious sweet little person that I adore. We still contact nap. She still sleeps curled up beside me. I still feel incredibly close to her.

But every time I realize another part of babyhood is gone forever, it genuinely feels like my heart aches.

I’ll never breastfeed her again. I’ll never put her in the Moby wrap and walk around the grocery store while she sleeps against my chest. I’ll never hear those tiny newborn nursing sounds again. Never hold a little milk drunk newborn curled against me in the middle of the night. And what gets me most is that most lasts happen without you realizing it was the last time until way later.

One day was the last nursing session and I didn’t know it. One day was the last time she fit in the carrier. One day was the last time she scooted around instead of walking. One day was the last time she looked more like a baby instead of a little kid.

Now every day she looks older and she gets more independent and sometimes it physically hurts to think about. Like actual chest aching hurts.

The confusing part is that I truly love who she’s becoming. I love hearing her talk, hearing her thoughts, watching her personality develop, laughing with her, seeing her imagination grow. I don’t want to stop her from growing up. But somehow I still miss her already while she’s right here.

I do think another layer of this is that I lost my dad when I was 7 months pregnant with her. Sometimes I wonder if that made all of this hit harder. Every stage she grows out of feels like another reminder that time keeps moving forward no matter how badly I want to hold onto certain moments.

I know grieving my daughter no longer being a baby is completely different from grieving my dad actually being gone. My daughter is here with me. Healthy, happy, safe, thriving. I know that. And I almost feel guilty sometimes even comparing the feelings at all. But I think the emotions overlap in my heart somehow. As she grows older, it feels like I’m getting farther and farther away from the period of life where my dad still existed in it. And I think that realization quietly breaks my heart too.

Nobody warned me that parenting would feel like this. Like constantly grieving versions of your child while simultaneously falling more in love with the person they’re becoming. Then it makes me think of the last time I saw my dad in July 2023. I think he knew it would be our last time seeing each other in person and I wonder what memories played through his head then. He passed that October and I gave birth in December. I wish so much he was still here so I could talk through all of this with him. I never thought I would have to do this part of my life without having my dad here to witness it.

Every moment feels so bittersweet and I am unsure if I am ever able to be present enough in the moment because of it which in turn makes me grieve different stages any more.

I am sorry this is so long and basically rambling. It just physically hurts to realize it all goes by so fast.

I’ve been thinking about the latest episode and a few things that feel like they might be setting up bigger shifts.

Penny stood out to me as looking noticeably sick and disheveled. It didn’t feel random, more like a signal that her situation is unstable or deteriorating. In Gilead, when someone in a protected position starts looking like that, it usually means their standing is weakening or something is about to change in their household.

Now that Daisy has started menstruating, that obviously changes everything for her. Even though they are using some loose rags and a stolen embroidery project, that doesn’t feel like something that stays hidden for long in Gilead. Between supervision, laundry, inspections, and the general lack of privacy, it feels like it would be discovered quickly. Once it is, she gets reclassified as eligible pretty fast since fertility status is such a major factor in how girls are treated in Gilead.

We have seen how badly Daisy is wanting to get out of Gilead. She sees how she underestimated just how bad the situation would get for her and I don’t think she truly thought through what would happen if she for her period while she was there. Honestly, this was a huge oversight in the plan. We saw Rita discussing periods with her, but bo one thought this teenaged girl might still get it in the near future? They had no plan at all for something so massively important for her status which is insane. If daisy is caught menstruating she is forced into marriage with whoever they pair her with. That would be the biggest nightmare scenario for her, especially if Judd chooses her. We saw how terrified she is of him.

It also made me wonder about Agnes. If Penny is removed from the picture, whether through death or her removal somehow since she has “failed” to have a healthy baby after three pregnancies does that open the door for Judd to try to bring Agnes into his home as a wife? We do know that is who she was paired with in the book, so I am wondering if this still plays out somehow as a plot twist. Like he somehow plays a power hand and is able to override Weston, or possibly Agnes comes clean about what Dr. Grove did to her and then Weston backs out because she isn’t “pure” in his eyes so Judd swoops in. I’m not totally sure how his rank compares to Weston, but it seems like in Gilead these situations aren’t just about formal hierarchy, they’re also about influence, leverage, and how easily someone can push things through the system.

There was also the scene with Beckah telling everyone, including Agnes, that she was allowed to choose her husband and chose Garth. Agnes clearly looked hurt and betrayed by that, and Beckah came across as a bit spiteful in how she delivered it. I can’t tell if that’s just her personality, or if it’s setting up some kind of divide between them going forward.

It feels like there’s a lot of quiet tension building between the girls and households and I am literally on the edge of my seat waiting for next week.

They truly have done a great job this season.

My daughter is 2 and a half and lately I feel like I’m grieving constantly.

I know it probably sounds super dramatic because nothing is actually wrong. She’s healthy, happy, thriving, and becoming this hilarious sweet little person that I adore. We still contact nap. She still sleeps curled up beside me. I still feel incredibly close to her.

But every time I realize another part of babyhood is gone forever, it genuinely feels like my heart aches.

I’ll never breastfeed her again. I’ll never put her in the Moby wrap and walk around the grocery store while she sleeps against my chest. I’ll never hear those tiny newborn nursing sounds again. Never hold a little milk drunk newborn curled against me in the middle of the night. And what gets me most is that most lasts happen without you realizing it was the last time until way later.

One day was the last nursing session and I didn’t know it. One day was the last time she fit in the carrier. One day was the last time she scooted around instead of walking. One day was the last time she looked more like a baby instead of a little kid.

Now every day she looks older and she gets more independent and sometimes it physically hurts to think about. Like actual chest aching hurts.

The confusing part is that I truly love who she’s becoming. I love hearing her talk, hearing her thoughts, watching her personality develop, laughing with her, seeing her imagination grow. I don’t want to stop her from growing up. But somehow I still miss her already while she’s right here.

I do think another layer of this is that I lost my dad when I was 7 months pregnant with her. Sometimes I wonder if that made all of this hit harder. Every stage she grows out of feels like another reminder that time keeps moving forward no matter how badly I want to hold onto certain moments.

I know grieving my daughter no longer being a baby is completely different from grieving my dad actually being gone. My daughter is here with me. Healthy, happy, safe, thriving. I know that. And I almost feel guilty sometimes even comparing the feelings at all. But I think the emotions overlap in my heart somehow. As she grows older, it feels like I’m getting farther and farther away from the period of life where my dad still existed in it. And I think that realization quietly breaks my heart too.

Nobody warned me that parenting would feel like this. Like constantly grieving versions of your child while simultaneously falling more in love with the person they’re becoming. Then it makes me think of the last time I saw my dad in July 2023. I think he knew it would be our last time seeing each other in person and I wonder what memories played through his head then. He passed that October and I gave birth in December. I wish so much he was still here so I could talk through all of this with him. I never thought I would have to do this part of my life without having my dad here to witness it.

Every moment feels so bittersweet and I am unsure if I am ever able to be present enough in the moment because of it which in turn makes me grieve different stages any more.

I am sorry this is so long and basically rambling. It just physically hurts to realize it all goes by so fast.

I want to start this off with saying I have read the book but am disregarding the material because this show seems to be different enough that they can be considered two different entities.

Paula really surprised me in the latest episode.

When she said “fuck your sorries,” it actually caught me off guard. She truly feels so different from most of the wives we’ve seen in Gilead. Even the way she talks is different. We hear her talk about her velvet strapless prom dress, her old career, and just her old life in general and it makes her sound like a modern woman more than the super polished, controlled wife archetype we usually get.

She mentioned being a therapist for troubled teens before Gilead, which I found really interesting. That honestly doesn’t even seem like the kind of career Gilead would value. Helping people process emotions, trauma, identity, and mental health in a healthy way feels almost opposite to how Gilead functions. I would assume most people in this profession met a really untimely end one of the many stadiums “cleanses” throughout the country at the start if the take over.

It made me wonder if maybe she was some kind of religious counselor or worked in a more conservative setting, which could explain why she was deemed acceptable enough to be folded into the system instead of punished by it.

Or maybe the point is simply that even women who once worked in caring, emotionally supportive professions still adapted to and accepted Gilead if they were given a comfortable enough place within it. Being a wife could be an easier pill to swallow than being a handmaid, Martha, or send to the colonies.

Most wives either seem fully indoctrinated or very careful about how they present themselves, but Paula slips sometimes. She swears, reminisces, gets openly angry, and talks about the past in a very human way. She doesn’t come across as meek in the way wives often do. Paula feels like someone who had a full career, personality, relationships, opinions, and identity before everything changed and didn’t actually give it up completely. You can still see traces of that person coming through in the way she talks and reacts emotionally.

What I find really interesting though is that I don’t think any of this makes her secretly good. If anything, it almost makes her worse in some ways. She clearly remembers what women lost. She remembers freedom, normal relationships, self expression, careers, fashion, dating, all of it. She can reminisce about those things and still participate in the system anyway because the role she gets to play in Gilead is not the ugliest one.

That’s what makes her feel different to me from some of the wives who come across as fully consumed by the ideology. Paula feels aware. She feels like someone who understands exactly what Gilead took away from women and still chooses to live comfortably within it because she benefits from where she landed in the hierarchy.

I also wonder if part of her purpose in the story is to show Agnes that wives are not these morally elevated or spiritually superior women. They’re complicated, bitter, performative, unhappy people who remember the old world too.

Honestly, this show is doing a great job at making intriguing characters. I am excited to see what direction they are going here.

I keep seeing people say that Agnes is going to be upset because Garth gets matched with Becca. We saw that she asked Aunt Lydia to make him eligible but never said it was for herself. I can see why people would think that because of that she inadvertently set up her crush with her best friend. This honestly would make for some great tv moments, but im not totally convinced Becca is the one he ends up with.

Everyone points to her having lower prospects, which makes sense on the surface because her father is a dentist and not a commander, but she isn’t the only girl in the class with a “stain” on her.

What about that tea scene where Paula trips Miriam? There was a lot of emphasis on how damaging that could be to Miriam’s chances. She seemed really concerned that her “failure” at the tea service would end with a bad match for her. They spent so much time on it that it seems like it was intentional and intended to have an impact on events later in the season. They even did have a scene in the last episode, where she was hopeful that the commander she thought was her only chance didn’t pick Jehosheba over her, so the show clearly wants us to remember that Miriams situation is important to the overall plot.

What if Miriam is the one who gets matched with Garth instead? He’s not exactly a top tier Commander since he is so freshly promoted, so it would track if her fall from grace pushes her into what Gilead would consider a less desirable match. It would also add some nice irony and more tension with Paula and Agnes. It would be beautifully ironic if Paula was trying to improve her prospects but accidentally sabotaging them instead.

I also would love to point out how funny it is to me that something that harms your chances of a “great match”in Gilead could get you paired with somebody who is actually your own age. To me it doesn’t seem like that bad of an outcome when you consider the alternative is marrying somebody who’s old enough to be your grandfather. If I was unlucky enough to be a girl in gilead forced into marriage I would probably make a very minor misstep so I can marry the lower ranking men who would be more my age.

Also curious what people think about Commander McKenzie. Part of me feels like he’s too high ranking for the Aunts to seriously consider Agnes for Garth in the first place, but at the same time, McKenzie seems like someone who could be persuaded if it meant Agnes being happy. There are moments where it feels like he is starting to feel conflicted and maybe he’s starting to see the cracks in the system he helped build.

What does everyone else think?