One does not simply send out a second, sadgirl Special Bonus Edition Newsletter!
For those of us about to have what Dolly Parton would call a Hard Candy Holiday Season
I barely managed the emotional energy to send out that first December newsletter, so imagine my surprise when I sat down today with a list of things I need to be doing and instead of doing any of them, typed out another one instead. I don’t know, I just felt like this had to be said. There is some good in the world, and it IS worth fighting for. Samwise Gamgee wasn’t wrong. But just a warning, this will not be about books at all. So if you are here just for the books, that’s OK! I’ll see you in 2026 back on topic. This one is for the strugglers. It’s me! I’m struggling. This might be heavy. But I hope it's helpful, too.
In case anyone else needs it, I’ve been surviving this season with the poetry of Maggie Smith, libraries in general, and the reminder to myself that if I feel helpless in my own life, literally the only thing I CAN control is how I choose to help others. Seriously, I have been going through Goldenrod with the voracity of a woman who took her two small children to the library just this afternoon and let them play on the computers for an hour so she could read a whole book of both heart breaking and heartwarming poetry.
When I read those poems, gosh do I feel seen. It turns out there are a lot of us (here, on planet earth) going through some tough shit right now. And understandably our own suffering always seems most urgent, even though there will always be people who have it worse. So I thought I would try to make this mini special edition extra newsletter a brief guide to how to deal with life when you are in absolute agony. That whole advice to write because someone has a wound in the shape of your words (another poem!)
Anyway, here is a brief, incomplete, and imperfect list of things to do when you feel awful.
Item one. Try to help other people. This was honestly the most pressing reason I decided to send this second December edition out; I had set up this MD Food Bank fundraiser that I meant to share in my December letter, but I forgot. There are plenty of other food drives and food bank fundraisers, too, if you’re looking for something local to you. One thing that I have been trying to do to mitigate my depression in the past five years is when I am able to, if I have the funds for it, when I feel at my lowest, I try to help someone. Just like, as a little ok my own pain is a reminder that if the universe is hurting me so much, it’s hurting others, too, so maybe I can try to make life a tiny bit softer for someone else.
For a variety of reasons I do not have a whole lot of extra funds at the moment. I’m FINE (if I say it over and over again it sounds even more convincing, I swear) but things are tight. So this season, I set up the above fundraiser, and then just set it in my instagram bio, and here now in my newsletter. It won’t cure your sadness, but trying to help when I can and encouraging others to help when they can does make me remember all the people who have got my back if things take a downturn. It doesn’t have to be my food bank, go ahead and donate to any food bank, any thing that helps. It would be ideal if we taxed the wealthy at much higher rates and used that money to make sure no one was hungry, but we don’t have ideal, we have what we have, and so we keep going, doing the best we can to help each other.
Item two. Find reasonable gratitude. I don’t mean toxic positivity; we don’t have to be grateful for people treating us poorly and we don’t have to make the best of a bad situation. But we can look for people whose presence is a light in dark times. This will be the most liberal millennial thing I write, and I am writing WHILE WEARING my active listener support NPR sweatshirt, but I’ve read several NPR articles about how writing down things or people you are grateful for is good for your health. Plus I saw that one episode of the Office where Jim writes down what he is grateful for and I used to do that at an old job, write down my family and my health, and sometimes other things like Beyonce and strawberry flavored Chobani yogurts.
So this is what I am grateful for at the moment.
My sisters & my children & my friends
The roof over my head
The little box of chocolate covered pretzels with holiday sprinkles that I bought on sale, which is a little bit stale but still delicious
You, my reader, reading this newsletter, maybe reading my book.
Item three. If you write books, or make art, keep writing. Keep making your art or your music or your craft, because no one else is going to make your version of it if you don’t. For more on this, see the above “Why Bother” poem. It’s always good advice.
Item four. Find a safe place.
A library, if you will. As a child I walked myself to the local branch of my library every other day. I walked there to bring home shopping bags of books and I walked there to sit and read quietly and I walked there to talk to librarians, who were always kind grown ups. I walked there to play Oregon Trail for hours, crowded around clunky computers with all my friends, naming each person in the party after someone there and howling with silent, library-voice laughter when they got dysentery, or failed to ford the Oxen across the river. I walked there for things I didn’t even realize until I got older, like the sign on the inside of the bathroom stall with instructions for performing routine breast exams, or the deep lore of the world hidden between the pages of the books on the shelves. I lived a thousand lives, scattered across both coasts of the country as a child, stretched across six elementary schools and two middle schools and two high schools. College was the longest time I ever stood still at one place of learning, unless you count the times I taught in the same place for much longer. But every place, every one of them, had a library.
Some days I have found myself on autopilot, driving to one of those old libraries, sitting outside in the parking lot even though it is closed, just so that I can feel that old sense of safety, just so I can shut my eyes and say listen, you are not dead. It could be worse. Maggie Smith would say this place has good bones. You have good bones.
Listen. We have already survived so much, it’s true, but the thing about surviving is it doesn’t stop a person from having to survive more. We can make something beautiful out of things, even out of sadness. Find the helper or be the helper. Find the things worth your gratitude. Make your art. Find your safe place, find your people. If those little hobbits can brave the fires of Mordor, my gosh, I can make it through the year 2025.
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