Initiation Reads: my friend Josh Gondelman's delightful pep talks

"It’s like a pot luck dinner, but for feelings"

This week, I'm traveling in the South, which is having such an incredibly transcendent spring that I'm feeling moved to simply go and be part of it, by eating smoked meats and drinking by rivers and rolling around in the grass under the blooms of the blossoming dogwood trees. (My son feels the same, though unfortunately this has resulted in him having his first unpleasant encounters with both horseflies and what we suspect is poison ivy… another reason why I’m a bit preoccupied this week.)

For weeks like this, I’ll be running a feature I’m calling Initiation Reads, in which I share resources that can help others as they write and live out their own initiation stories. And because my friend Josh Gondelman has written an excellent newsletter this week — one that touches on the same themes as Initiation Writes -- I am delighted to launch this series with his work.

Like me, Josh speaks to his readers this week about the complex task of cultivating chosen family beyond the traditional love-marriage-baby-carriage model, and sometimes the importance of inserting puns into otherwise serious material. (There are no horseflies in it, but there is a whale who has had it up to *here* with humanity's drama.)

Greetings from White Duck Taco in Asheville!

For those who don't know

Josh Gondelman

: Josh and I have known each other for over ten years now, since we were both recent college grads living in Boston. We have each taken turns working as full-time writers and teachers. He has gone from teaching preschool to writing for shows like Last Week Tonight, and is has recently partnered with another one of my Substack favorites,

Anne Helen Petersen

, on the podcast Work Appropriate. Josh's great loves are his very cute pug Bizzy and his very smart wife Maris Kriezman. Josh is also known for his trademark super-cozy sweaters, because you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you cannot take the classroom-ready attire out of the teacher's closet. (Though I would imagine NYC writer's rooms are far better air conditioned and thus Gondelman-sweater-friendly than most NYC classrooms I've frequented.)

Josh, Bizzy, and sweater.

In any case, I repeat: please check out his newsletter this week, That’s Marvelous! There you will find truly excellent jokes about Captain Ahab and The Scarlet Letter, followed by a touching pep talk for a reader who is waiting to hear back about the results from her fifth embryo transfer, after experiencing two early miscarriages. To entice you, here’s a snippet of Josh's “Look, I may mess this up, but I’m going to try anyway” style of support (which is honestly all any of us uterus-having humans can ask of our allies, no?).

"You have a support system of people who won’t fully share these specific ups and downs, but still can be there to lend support like in any intense situation you go through. It’s like a pot luck dinner, but for feelings. Nobody is going to give you everything you need, but everybody has something good to offer, even the friend who brings the emotional equivalent of plastic cups. Look, it’s not exactly a high-effort offer, but without cups…what will we drink out of???"

Exactly that, Josh. Exactly that.