Sh*t To Help You Show Up May 17, 2024
Happy Friday!
Welcome! Happy Friday!
If you missed last week’s newsletter, then you also may have missed that I’m a little over a week past a heavy work season that, despite my unrealistic expectations, I’m still recovering from. Slowly but surely, I’ve been reclaiming my brain— reading for pleasure and curiosity as opposed to necessity and obligation— and feeling my words return to me. Random musings have been popping up, as well as the energy to go on at least one extended, public rant about our local school system, the proposed budget, and our school board elections. This is actually a good sign, in my book. It means I’m awake again in my body, paying attention to my own emotional responses to things, and caring about the world around me as much, if not more, than my endless to do list.
I’m still mostly in recovery and response mode, though— consuming all sorts of content and simply pondering it, or marveling at it, or cackling happily in reaction. Nothing is coalescing yet. I’m not making any big connections, just enjoying having the space and time to absorb it all.
So, today I thought I’d share some of the best bits with you in the list below. I might write about some of this in future. Or maybe you will, and I’ll enjoy that, too.
Have a wonderful weekend wherever you are.
XO, Asha
(All New York Times links below are unlocked so you don’t need a subscription.)
This profile of UK artist Tracey Emin really moved me. We’re never done, y’know? And the most horrible things we go through can be a portal into such incredible good— for ourselves and everyone whose lives we touch.
This essay by Lyz Lenz on Hot Divorcée Summer made me want to jump up and cheer. Oh, how I could have used it a decade ago, when I was in the thick of my divorce! But I still think it’s stupendous.
This New York Times Opinion video about mental health messaging online, and how it’s a double-edged sword, is really thought-provoking. Double-edged as in, more mental health awareness is good, but armchair diagnosis is not. This prompted a really useful conversation with one of my kids.
This manifesto for women on thriving at mid-life is comprehensive, insightful, and will be useful as a reference to come back to again and again. Related, I’m officially in menopause in less than a month and I’m thinking about throwing myself a party. Like a Red Tent party, but backwards. A not-stuck-in-the-tent-ever-again party?
If you, like me, are a writer and struggle with inserting interiority into your work, this guide by author and professor Alexander Chee may be incredibly useful. I found it inspiring.
Maybe you don’t need modeling for how to engage with people you disagree with from a place of curiosity and emotional intelligence, while still holding firm to your values, but I do. Garrett Bucks shows us how it’s done, and I’m grateful.
How does moral perception get dictated and warped by the status quo? This meditation on how the morally unthinkable has (and does) happen in the medical profession can be expanded to so many other areas of our social and institutional reality.
Looping back around to mental health awareness, Therapy Jeff is doing it right over on TikTok. This video is the one that made me cackle this week. For as long as TikTok is available in the U.S., get yourself over there and check out his videos. They are all funny and SMART.
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On a more serious note, I haven’t yet read this deep dive in the New York Times on how extremism took over the Israeli government, but I plan to this weekend when I have the time and headspace. I’m assuming it will be useful to understand the current moment, and function as a cautionary tale for us here in the U.S. Join me?
She is gorgeous—thanks for sharing her with us, Asha.
Also, I love that straw witch and would put her in my back yard!!