I am swirling in the chaos with all of you. I expand one moment into the intensity of staying informed and feeling at the mercy of the nonstop everything is the most awful it’s ever ever been onslaught of social media, while the next I’m deleting every single app off my phone, laying on the floor, and staring at the wall.
The things I know that help: reaching out to you (being in community), and continuing to create (writing, mostly. But also interacting with other people’s good words, cooking food that makes me feel good, cozying up my treehouse, writing postcards, going on long, phone-free walks with Tater).
Two Sundays ago, the theme of our writing workshop was “Past Lives.” I’ve been hosting these monthly workshops since last December (next one is 9/26 - check it out here) and I am always astounded by the gorgeous writing that can emerge out of interacting with two simple free-association prompts, and then writing for twenty minutes. Our second prompt at “Past Lives” was “Things I Wish I Would Have Learned in High School.” At the end of the prompt, before we start writing again, I often invite people to share the parts of their lists that stand out. I want to share with you what people shared, because it so inspired me, made me laugh and cry, and because like I said I don’t know what else to do in times like these except continue to put words on the page and do my best to create sense and meaning from the chaos.
Things we wish we would have learned in high school:
Even if we don’t fit in, we still belong
How to get high without drugs
How to listen - like really listen - to music
How to find a job and keep it from ruining your life
Why did I not do any sports?
Everything I actually learned I was too young for
You get more than one shot
Everything will actually be fine
CPR
How to dance without choreography
That it’s not normal to drink at 15
Self defense
Meditation and mindfulness
How to tell the difference between people who want to help you versus people who are trying to get something from you
How to survive a rape
Other ways of being successful
Sexuality as a spectrum
You aren’t whining, those *are* kidney stones
May we all listen to the urge to creatively express ourselves. May we remember that though the nature chaos is unpredictable and dislocating that it is also potential and possibility and the precursor to that which at this moment would seem unimaginable. May we find pleasure and joy and beauty inside of the trouble and dark. May we love each other ferociously. May we rest.
Love y’all a stupid amount. All my good everything, tuya,
dani
📖Read: “…if you are engaging in a process of change, the work you’re doing before you get out of the chaos still counts.” I appreciated this interview between Maia Szalavitz and Tracie Gardner about the history of harm reduction, and for introducing me to this slogan: “Recovery isn’t just abstinence, it can be ‘any positive change.’”
👀Watch: My new Enneagram 4 anthem (also I don’t understand how Sharon Van Etten can sing like that while barely moving her mouth also Angel Olsen inspires me to grow a mullet, words I thought I’d never type).
🎧Listen: Stay with me: last week (two weeks ago? Three? Forty-Seven? Time is a squirrel) a friend posted this playlist in her Instagram stories which turned out to be be whimsical and delightful and great to listen to while working from home. On that playlist was this song, which cut through and the mostly background noise and wrapped itself around my spinal column and downshifted my entire nervous system. The whole album is a meditation.
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You could totally rock a mullet. But I love your shaved head too....