Further Reading: Back-to-school edition
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I’ve really been enjoying the pace of publishing one interview and one connected piece this summer on Substack. In June, I shared an interview with the poet Molly Bolton, in which she shared how she had come to an ethic of queerness and permission through her initiations. In July, I reflected on how I had arrived in the same place, albeit via a different, dusty desert road. (In related news: Molly, who also discussed late pregnancy loss in her interview, had a healthy baby boy named Cory this month. I am thrilled that this sweet soul has made it earthside.)
In August, I shared an interview with AI expert and trans dad Das Rush — in which we explored the notion that while AI can help us to create art, it is only human community that can help to heal our wounds of belonging. Now, as many of us prepare to go back to school in some fashion — a place where many of us have suffered wounds of belonging — I wanted to highlight the ways in which my favorite humans are offering up their words and company as medicine.
So, consider this post a back-to-school class newsletter of sorts, full of links and recs. (Note: links to my Bookshop are affiliate links; this is one small way that I try to support indie booksellers and this newsletter.) It features subscribers like you, friends of the newsletter, and other adjacent writers and thinkers I admire, who have helped me to find healing and new insight this summer. I wish the same for you.
“To quote a favorite poem by Andrea Gibson: “Other people feel this too.” It’s a realization that I have since found many times, in great literature, art, and friendships. Each time, it makes life’s initiations a little less lonely, a little easier.” — Das Rush
On finding identity
It obviously sucks to have Long COVID, full stop. There is pain, and fatigue—but there is also a deeply-felt sense grief, common to many initiations, regarding the fact that the way you used to relate to your body, and to your creativity, must change. (Das Rush had a great meditation on this topic last week, if you missed it.)
offers funny, thoughtful commentary on this — i.e., on how she’s prioritizing clean underwear over all else now — as well as many illustrative memes. A helpful read if you or a loved one suffers from this malady, or any other chronic condition.The notion of Body Grief (on which there is now an upcoming book) was also explored recently on
here by . We need more stories like this, and I was glad to see it featured in Jessica Defino’s fashion-adjacent space. Defino and are on a tear this summer when it comes to battling the b.s. beauty standards that keep so many of us stuck in a space of diminished self-worth (around purchasing unnecessary products and being pushed around by outdated fatphobic narratives, respectively), and it’s invigorating to be along for the ride as a reader.Relatedly,
of posted recently about how hard it is to do stuff when you’re sick, and consequently how hard it is to relax when you’re well, because there’s so much pressure to do all the stuff you couldn’t do because you were sick. This can lead to burnout for people with chronic illnesses. Learning to stop, savor, and grieve the prior self that loved the hustle is a big initiation I’m moving through in this phase of life. Highly recommend.Alok Vaid-Menon was interviewed in the NYT and it was everything. A peaceful and incisive trans activist, Alok offers useful language for distinguishing between “innocent confusion” and “murderousness.” A must-read for any journalist under pressure to “cover both sides” of a debate in which one side does not recognize the other side’s humanity, and for all queer/trans allies.
“Why were we never told, ‘You own your own body’? Because it implicates intimate structures in our own families, our religious communities, our traditions, our sense of self. It is easier to create a scapegoat as a repository for all that anxiety. So I have a lot of mercy because I’m like, ‘These things are poisonous for you, too!’” — Alok
On finding belonging
Chiara DiLello, a subscriber and friend, just published a very good poem here about Complicated Parents and Parenthood, a theme about which I’ve written a bit here. This theme has seemed to resonate with many of you. I’m here for it.
It is #RainbowBabyWeek and many people, including myself, are having Complicated Parenthood feelings about that too. It is wonderful and empowering for some, and less so for those can’t or won’t go on to have subsequent pregnancies after a loss. The Dear Therapist podcast with Lori Gottlieb did an excellent episode on that specific dilemma recently, and Hayley Manning of Time to Talk TFMR and RTZ Hope both offered resources on this as well, including a private Facebook group dedicated to this topic.
- of is coming out with a book on divorce next year, This American Ex-Wife. I’ve gone ahead and put the pre-order link in my Bookshop. As I noted in this interview, I tend to view people who have gotten divorced as having special insight into the institution of marriage that I may not have. I appreciate that Lyz points out that all too often women are not given this courtesy. They are instead presumed to have “failed” at something, when in fact they come bearing knowledge of the ways in which marriage as a construct may be failing us all. These are insights we all need to hear.
Relatedly, my friend
and I got to dance together at a friend’s wedding, and afterwards, she wrote a moving piece for about what it’s like to attend a wedding as a divorced-and-newly-dating human. If you’re planning a wedding (or a divorce), it’s worth a read.Also relatedly:
of wrote a rip-roaring reply in Slate’s Ask Prudie to a letter writer who really needs her loved ones to miss her with their pitying responses to her single lady lifestyle. She writes, “Pity is unimaginative. People will always ask single women about being single in a weird, sad way because generally, our culture has no interest in promoting the entire cosmos of ways that a life sans partner can fulfill you… Can they really not think of anything more interesting to ask? We need to be questioning each other more about aliens, in my humble opinion. So that’s one way to react to the inevitable questions: How boring!” Indeed.
“Pity is unimaginative… so that’s one way to react to the inevitable questions: How boring!” — Delia Cai
On finding purpose
I’ve really been loving the writing and community-building work done over at
. Jaouad is a cancer survivor who writes here about mulling motherhood while fostering a new puppy. Many folks who need to undergo chemo, as Jaouad did, do so with the knowledge that their fertility may be put permanently at risk. This topic is close to my heart, as my own brother navigated this when he was first diagnosed with brain cancer. As Jaouad explains in her memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, freezing eggs or sperm before a round of chemo is also cruelly considered an “elective” procedure, thus not covered by insurance in many places. (Advocacy groups have been working to get this changed: click here to see a map of the states that now require fertility coverage for cancer survivors, and ones with active legislative battles, in which you can get involved if you happen to live there!)My writing partner Nicole and I recently talked about what our initiations in writing and in nature have taught us about motherhood, and vice versa. It brought me back to a gorgeous piece she wrote for Catapult (RIP!) in which she reflects on a journey to live on a wolf sanctuary while researching a book, and the twists and turns her life has taken since then. I won’t spoil the best lines of her piece for you — they offer such a well-earned payoff for the reader when you get to them. But I will say that they live together in my mind with a line of Maureen Dowd’s I’ll never forget, from a conversation she has with Ariel Levy in The Rules Do Not Apply: “Everybody doesn’t get everything.”
- , another fellow-traveler in the loss world to whom I’ve linked here before, is pressing “stop” on fertility treatments and “go” on a road trip to Alaska instead. She’s recently turned on paid subscriberships to fund her journey. I couldn’t be happier for her.
Speaking of supporting writers: this writer’s strike business, woof! Many loved ones involved in the strike are making lemonade out of lemons, fortunately. Our babysitter, an actress, gets to dye her hair, which I did not realize was a no-no for people in the biz, and my friend Josh Gondelman is adding new tour dates to his stand-up schedule because he’s not working on his usual shows. Josh’s own newsletter,
, is also one to follow if you’re interested in an insider’s POV on the whole affair, as well as good music recs and pep talks for anonymous passengers of our collective Struggle Bus.Have you recently created something worth sharing along these lines — i.e. finding identity, belonging and/or purpose in unexpected ways? Consider this an open invite to add your links to this list!
Thank you so, so much for the shout-out here, Ryan. So nice to wake up to your kind words of support and recommendation 😊. This post is chock full of great recs; can’t wait to dive into many of them. Cheers!