✍🏽 June writing workshop is live! Register here (Sunday, June 26, 10am - 12pm PST). Please sign up in advance.
❤️🩹 Lots of shifts to my professional life recently (oodles of details forthcoming!) has me rethinking everything, including how to evolve our Recovery Club space. Meetings are on hiatus for the month of June; stay tuned for updates which will be announced here and on Instagram.
Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
This morning I woke up to George Saunders’ newsletter in my inbox where he wrote about an exchange he had with a high school teacher and his students. Reading this lifted my spirits, and the whole thing was a delight to read on many levels, not least of which the fact that the below sentiments are the same thing I sought to convey (albeit far less eloquently!) in this week’s essay.
I am finding this world we’re in increasingly confusing. Sometimes it feels like our systems are breaking down, generosity is fading, the bad people are winning, and so on. And then something like this exchange happens, and I realize that goodness – however we want to define it – is profoundly incremental. We make this choice rather than that one; we believe in something and live into it, even in the smallest way; we err in the direction of caring and trust. I might, on a given day, have a feeling that our educational system is going downhill. Then someone like Mr. Lewandowski and his students appear. And I think: Well, all systems (any system) are only kept afloat by individual acts of care and heroism and engagement - a kind of viral transfer occurs of the essential values. Mr. Lewandowski’s students have found out, I’m betting, wonderful things about themselves and their minds as they worked through that ambitious curriculum, things that Mr. Lewandowski is not bringing into being, but affirming, or blessing, by his attention - and now his students get to move into their lives in that switched-on state, awake to their own abilities to analyze and discern – to their innate compassion and alertness and interest.
And yes, I cried like a baby—a full-on, 6am spurt cry—staring at the photo he shared of the students.
I hope you are taking good care of your hearts and bodies, of your people, of your creatures, your plants, and your teeth.
In love, xxoo dani
📖 Read: Ok here’s the full thing from good ol’ George (please adopt me if you read this kind sir).
🎧 Listen: Design Matters! This podcast has been around forever but I only recently started listening. I love how deep Debbie goes in her interviews with guests, and how the conversations aren’t interrupted by ads. Some recent delights: David Byrne (another dream uncle); Cheryl Strayed (a much needed jolt of inspiration as I swim in unfamiliar waters); and—somewhat unexpectedly—I ADORED this conversation with Jack White and Ben Jenkins.
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That picture of the students made me cry! Thanks for sharing. ❤️
Hi Dani, Are you taking coaching clients? I wasn't sure how to reach you! Tx!