had somehow not been in my orbit until introduced us last month—and I’m so glad she did. Eric also does interviews and I love his approach both to interviewing and, well, to life. He holds a gentle, earnest curiosity and a stalwart desire to help. No doubt because Eric was once in a vulnerable place himself. At twenty-four, he was on the streets, with a staggering heroin addiction, and facing prison. A combination of meditation, 12-step programs, deep-deep inner work, good music, tenacity, community, some good fortune, and time, landed him where he is today: clean and thriving with a burning interest in human transformation and resilience.

His award-winning podcast—The One You Feed—has more than 75 million downloads, and he’s a sought-after teacher, speaker, life coach, and author. His new book was just published: How a Little Become a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life.

I’m so happy Eric wrote this essay for Beyond, chockful of wisdom we could all do with at the moment. It’s a beautiful illustration of how a little and a little more becomes a lot. Enjoy!

xJane

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

I related very much to Jane’s recent essay about being a fighter. Just this morning I listened to one of my favorite songs from The Alarm called “Without a Fight” and it is a very vociferous declaration that I will not be giving up without said fight.

However, in that odd way that our best traits often become our worst traits, I’ve also had to realize that fighting is not the tool for every job. But when is fighting to change something versus accepting it the wiser move?

Back in my heavy 12-step days you would hear this in meetings a lot: “Four forty-nine, man, look at page four forty-nine,” or “You need to apply some four forty-nine to that.” People even had bumper stickers that said “449.” Now, 449 is not a cleaning solution like 409 or a lubricant like WD-40.

It’s a page in the AA Big Book. And what was on page 449?

This statement: “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.”

Rebellious young me heard that line and it drove me crazy more often than it brought me serenity. Because, of course, as I would point out to whatever well-meaning soul dared speak those words, acceptance isn’t the answer to all our problems. Nothing is an answer to all our problems.

But then again, as with any spiritual truism, there is wisdom at the core of page 449. Not all “problems” are things we can change today—or, sometimes, things we can change at all. They might not even be problems, strictly speaking.

Our biological hardwiring tells us that pain, discomfort, or loss of any kind are enemies to be fought. The fight-or-flight responses that helped us survive as animals on the savannah are still right there, ready to flood us with adrenaline. But as humans, we face the unique challenge and opportunity of rising above these automatic impulses. We can pause. We can reflect. We can recognize that sadness over the death of a loved one is a different kind of pain than a persistent backache, which is a different kind of pain than a sense of injustice, which is a different kind of pain than existential dread. (The downside to self-awareness as a species: lots of feelings.)

The starting point of acceptance is to do the simple, hard work of agreeing that whatever is happening to us is actually happening. My back hurts. My dog has passed. An injustice has occurred. The next step is to answer a simple, hard question: Can I do anything to change the source of this pain? Not “do I want to change it”; not “do I wish I could.” You already know the answers to those.

This is the confusion for which the Serenity Prayer seeks clarity.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr

And for centuries, thinkers have tried to make it easier than it actually is. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus framed the ability to know what is and isn’t within our control as the cornerstone of a life well lived. He drew a neat division: our judgments, choices, and attitudes on one side; our health, reputation, wealth, and the actions of others on the other.

As brilliant and timeless as that central insight is—that it’s worth focusing your time and energy where they will have the most impact—you may have some qualms with those lists. I do.

I can agree that we can’t control the fact of aging, for example, but I’d point out that we can make choices about our health today that give us a better chance of aging well. And yes, we can’t control the stock market, but we can make choices about how to save and invest.

The Serenity Prayer, Epictetus, and all sorts of other thinkers—they all want life to sort into two columns. Things you can change, things you can’t. But life rarely supplies obvious answers in the “wisdom to know the difference” department.

It asks us to balance conflicting truths and invites us to wonder whether to blame the world around us or our own perspective. Am I unhappy at work because my boss is actually a jerk, or because I’m being triggered and there’s something in me that needs attention? Is this business not working because it’s not a good idea, or do I need to hang on a little longer? Is my phone glitching because it’s truly outdated, or is the universe trying to teach me patience while I Google “how to fix slow phone”?

I dislike binary, simple answers. Our actions, judgments, and choices—which all these thinkers put in the “we can control” bucket—come from a complex stew of motivations, not all of which are even conscious. “Control” itself is a slippery concept as soon as you stick “self-” in front of it. And what even counts as a “choice”?

Is it a choice to drink, when you’re deep in the patterns of an alcoholic? Not exactly, I would argue, but at some point, there is some choice to say “no more.” So which column does that go in? The thing I can change, or the thing I can’t? I spent years living inside that question. The answer, when it finally came, wasn’t one or the other.

I think that’s closer to how most of life actually works. We often need to learn to both change and accept the very same thing. Which is harder than picking one. But I think it’s also more honest.

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If you enjoyed this essay, you might also enjoy these deeply moving paintings by , (pretty much my favorite living artist):

I can’t hear the Serenity Prayer without thinking about Sinéad O’Connor (though it might be clear to most of you by now, that it doesn’t take much to make me think of Sinéad.) She recites it at the beginning of Feel so Different, the first song on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, my favorite album of all time.

Stunning live version of the song, but, alas, no Serenity Prayer.

Thank you for reading! I love hearing your thoughts!

Do you struggle with the change/accept binary? What, if anything, has helped you find the balance? How easily do you accept what is actually happening? What’s your relationship like with control? What are your thoughts on the Serenity Prayer?

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spent more than three decades working in and around the capital markets, including over a decade on Wall Street where he organized and managed several securities trading businesses. His career in finance gave him a front-row seat to the inner workings of markets, institutions, and power.

After leaving the industry, Weems turned to writing, producing essays, white papers, and research reports on financial markets, economic systems, and American culture. His work has been quoted in major financial publications and cited in academic research. In 2022, he authored a report on blockchain use cases in healthcare for STAT, the digital health publication of Boston Globe Media.

In 2020, he founded , a newsletter exploring the intersection of economics, politics, culture, and race in American life. The publication has since grown into a multi-platform project that includes livestream programming and collaborative journalism. Weems is also the founder of The Journeyman Media Network, a creator-owned collective of independent writers and journalists.

He is currently completing a memoir about his thirty-year career in finance. An essay from the manuscript, “How Starting an Investment Firm Almost Landed Me in Federal Prison,” received wide attention when it was published in 2023.

Always interested in new forms of storytelling, Weems made his theatrical debut in 2023 in the role of Uncle Ben in a local production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

1. What are you reading now?

I tend to read several things at once. It’s usually a combination of economics, history, and journalism. Lately I’ve been revisiting books about financial history and global economic systems because they provide useful context for the strange period we’re living through now. The older I get, the more I find that history is a reliable guide to what markets—and people—are likely to do next.

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

As a kid I used to sneak comic books into the house—mostly Spider-Man and Batman. I also read a lot of mythology and was really fascinated with the stories of the Norse gods. You know, Odin, Thor, Loki. Looking back, those myths led directly to my comic book habit. Superheroes are just modern mythology. That’s why M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakableis one of my favorite films.

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I’ve reread Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, half a dozen times. It’s gripping storytelling, but it’s also about power, corruption, and justice. Those themes never really go out of style. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and Simon Vance is one of the best readers in the game.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

It used to be my French-cuffed shirts. When I worked in Manhattan, there was a tailor several of us used. He’d come to the city and set up in a Midtown hotel like a pop-up clothing store. We’d drop in, get measured, and place our orders.

I still have about a dozen of those shirts, but these days it’s very different. I collect T-shirts with logos from movies or television shows, and I wear hoodies a lot. But my favorite piece of clothing is my Converse sneakers. They’re the Jack Purcell edition, which is difficult to find. Folks mistake them for Chuck Taylors, but Purcell was a Canadian badminton champion. I’d never heard of him, but when I saw the shoe, I had to have a pair.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

The older I get, the more I’ve come to believe that life is less about certainty and more about judgment. You rarely have perfect information. What matters is how thoughtfully you make decisions with the information you have.

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild.

We’re cat people, and we’ve had several—always rescues. All of them were special, but there was one named Kibbles who was particularly memorable.

Kibbles had heterochromia, a genetic condition that causes deafness in cats. Cats with it are snow-white and have different colored eyes. He made the move with us to North Carolina and was part of the family for many years. When he passed away a few years ago, it genuinely felt like losing a family member.

7. What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

Leaving Wall Street. At the time it felt like the end of something I had spent years building, but in retrospect it opened the door to writing, storytelling, and a completely different way of thinking about the world.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

Neither—but does chair dancing count?

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

To keep learning, keep writing, and build something that outlasts me. Right now, that means continuing to grow The Journeyman and the community around it. I’m also working on building the Journeyman Media Network, a collaboration of independent writers who believe audiences increasingly trust people more than institutions.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

Throughout my career there have been people who took chances on me—mentors, colleagues, editors, and readers. Those moments matter more than people realize. Sometimes a single act of belief can change the trajectory of someone’s life.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

I’m not always successful, but I try to do the right thing. Most of us already know the difference between right and wrong. The real challenge is having the courage to act on that knowledge when it matters.

If you enjoyed Marlon’s answers, you might also enjoy this one with :

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I first came to ’s work through Design Matters, one of the longest running—and most uplifting—podcasts in the world. I fell in love with her interview style: wise, thoughtful, probing, kind, deeply prepared, and deeply curious, Debbie guides her subjects through the arc of their lives with care. As it turns out, she’s also a gifted designer, illustrator, educator, curator, brand consultant, philanthropist, and author. It’s impossible to capture even a corner of her accomplishments here; believe me, I’ve been trying! So if you want to know more, check out her full bio.

Clearly, there was an abundance of potential questions for Debbie, given the breadth of her work. I kept our conversation largely focused on her interviews and writing and how the heck she pulls all this off (I am now in possession of a paper calendar and, wow, does it help!).

Debbie is married to Roxane Gay and together they recently purchased the much beloved The Rumpus. The two of them and their three furry babies live between New York City and Los Angeles.

If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it here.

I learned a lot from Debbie’s vision and organization. I think you will, too.

xJane

❤️ Gigantic gratitude to all the paid subscribers whose support for Beyond also supports The DeTommaso Dogs. Ana has gotten over 800 dogs and kitties off the streets and into safe homes. She’s also spayed and neutered over 3,000 animals. Her heart is as big as her determination. I’m so grateful for your support in keeping these sweet babies safe. Thank you! ❤️

Where do you write and design and plan coursework and create?

In New York, it’s a tiny little office. I like it, though. It’s very cozy. In LA, I have a beautiful office, which is actually featured in the New York Times article that came out in April of last year. It’s one of my real happy places. And then I have an office at the School of Visual Arts. In any of those places, I will absolutely work. If I’m working on something and I know I’m going to be in for the long haul, I’ll tend to work on my sofa with my laptop.

I don’t really have a process where I go to one place and write. I can work on airplanes. I’ve been known to, when I’m scrambling to get something done, work in a moving car. I’m not picky. I go wherever I have to, to get something done.

You’re not bothered by noise?

I can tune it out.

You do such deep dives with your interviews. Are you doing all that research yourself? And what methods are you using?

I do have a research assistant, but I still do a lot of my own. I’m finding that ChatGPT is a very good research tool. Sometimes better than Google.

Oh, interesting. Do you just enter the person’s name?

No, I can ask a question, like, I’m interviewing Jack Schlossberg tomorrow. So, Tell me about Jack Schlossberg’s upbringing. You have to check everything. But you have to check everything with Google also. I always like multiple sources anyway.

I’ll start with a big document that my research assistant has given me, and then I’ll add my own research into that. Then I start to pull things from the different documents. If they’ve had interviews with other people, I’ll have those transcribed so I can read them, because I listen differently than I read, and when I’m reading, I can highlight. If they have a book, or books, I certainly have to read at least the most current. I will often read on Kindle, because then I can highlight and export the things that I highlight very easily without having to transcribe. I put it all together, and then I organize it chronologically. Then I will pick out the things that I want to ask about.

How long does it generally take you to do all that prep work?

It depends on the person. If they are really accomplished and won an Oscar, or a Pulitzer, or a Peabody, then there’s a whole body of work I have to spend a considerable amount of time in. If it’s somebody that’s a little bit younger, and they don’t have a book, and maybe they are an artist, or a performer, then it’s a little bit different, because I don’t have to immerse myself so much in reading. I would say generally the very minimum is ten hours.

Do you get nervous before interviews? If so, can you describe the pre-interview rush?

I always get nervous. I don’t know that I would call it a rush, it’s more like pre-interview worry. Insecurity that I haven’t done enough, or that I won’t get something right. I interview so many people that I admire. And I want their approval. I want them to think I did a good job interviewing them.

Same. Is excitement also mixed in there?

I feel that more after, if I’ve done what I think is a good job. Then I get a rush.

Are you working your questions right up until the interview starts?

Yes. What about you?

Yes! How do you land upon whom you want to speak with?

Mostly it’s people that I reach out to that I admire. In the last couple of years, I’ve been surprised by some of the people that ask me, or have their people ask me, to be on. I love that. There might be people that I wouldn’t necessarily have reached out to because I wouldn’t have even envisioned that they’d be interested.

You often speak about being shy. I am, too! I think people who aren’t shy don’t understand, especially with someone with a platform, how you can be shy and still do public things.

When you’re up on a stage, doing a presentation, or a talk, or a lecture, it’s removed from intimacy. You’re not one-on-one with someone. So, you can, in many ways, disassociate, or at least I can. It feels as if you are performing, as opposed to being.

I find that the one-on-one—not when I’m doing an interview so much, because I’ve got a lot of prep—but in general, I don’t like small talk. I don’t like that sort of performative exchange; like, I hate the question, “How are you?” Really? I am in despair.

Has doing so many interviews shaped you and your view of humanity?

Yes. I do feel that highly accomplished people are continually needing to reinvent themselves and make things. That’s allowed me to discover that I’m happiest when I’m making things. I have a TED talk coming out at some point about how quickly the feeling of accomplishment dissipates. That is something that came about through the interview series I do on Print Magazine called What Matters, and my Design Matters interviews, where it seems like the joy and the excitement of making something is what propels people. But that feeling when you’ve finished something, that sense of needing to fill that up—people think that it’s addiction to achievement; I actually think it’s the fuel that we’re needing to replenish to make something else.

Also, I don’t know that I’ve interviewed anyone other than three men over eighty who weren’t insecure about something, about what they do or how they do it. Only three in the decades now I’ve been doing this.

Do you remember who those three are?

Yes. Milton Glazer, Massimo Vignelli, and Richard Saul Wurman. Maybe when you get to that point in your life, you’re like, “I’m good. I’m okay.”

Dang, that would feel good.

Right? There’s an aspiration.

You do so much—both professionally and the tasks involved in being a human. Can you talk us through a typical day, if such a thing exists?

I have a lot of lists. I have a paper calendar in addition to a calendar online. I write everything on it. Lists of who I’m interviewing, and lists of invitations that I still have to send out, or things that have to be done by certain times. And when I’m teaching, and when I’m not, and spring break, and podcast times, and all of that. I keep everything as organized as possible, and this comes with me everywhere.

What time do you get up?

It depends on the day. Roxane and I are both night owls. She’s even worse than I am. I generally shut down around 1 a.m. I like seven or eight hours of sleep. Can’t always get that, but I don’t like less than six and a half. Roxane doesn’t need anywhere near as much sleep as I do. I think probably because I do so many different things, and I’m kind of high energy, I do really need a lot of sleep.

It’s also hard for me to go to sleep: I just want to do one more thing. Unless I’m really tired, and then I have to go to sleep. But it’s hard also for me to get up. Some people pop out of bed. I’m not one of those people.

Once you are up, do you just go?

No, because I don’t like that kind of a morning. I mean, sometimes, I have to, especially if I have to go to an airport, but my preference is to putter around for a bit. I usually have therapy at around 11, or my workout at around 11, and then the day will get started after that. When I’m at school, my program is in the evening, it goes from 6:30 to 9:00. So I’m there later in the day. Everything for me is later.

Do you enjoy resting? Do you take breaks during the day?

I love resting! But not in the middle of the day. That changes the momentum of things, but I am a champion sleeper.

That’s amazing, Debbie. Given everything you’ve lived through, you would think that your nervous system wouldn’t calm enough.

Roxane has said if there was an Olympics for sleeping, I would win the gold medal.

When it comes to your writing, where are the ideas coming from?

Two of the ideas for Time Magazine I was asked to write about. I met the editor of the opinion and essays column when she was at the New York Times. She worked in the op-ed area. I think she was an intern. She reached out to me then but I didn’t have anything that I felt either qualified by or motivated to write. So I never gave her anything.

Then she went to the Philadelphia Inquirer. About five or six years ago, I was on an airplane coming back from Europe. Roxane always buys the internet and she said, “Oh my god, they did it. They overturned Roe v. Wade.” I was stunned and wrote a piece instantly about what I was feeling. I sent it to this editor, and they published it. That was my first op-ed piece.

Then I had written something, I don’t remember what, that I was going to put up on Print Magazine, and Roxane’s like, “I think that you should send this to the New York Times.” I did. They rejected it, but the editor had an idea for me, and that ended up being the piece that I wrote about the White House and the ballroom.

After that, my friend that was working at the Philadelphia Inquirer had gone to Time Magazine. And she said, “I’d love for you to write for us, too,” and asked me to write about Maduro’s Nike tracksuit. And then the MLK sneaker.

Then she asked me to write about the visual language of Liam, the little boy that had been taken into custody, and what did it mean when we saw things like that? I really tried to write something but I think because it’s about children, it felt too raw, and I couldn’t. In the meantime, it was the same week as everybody was writing about the Melania documentary, and I was like, “This is not a fucking documentary. This is a puff piece. This is propaganda.” So I wrote to my editor, and said, “I don’t think I can write that, but I just wrote this.” She liked it, and they published it. I’m feeling itchy; I want to write something again, but I have to wait till the ideas come, or till they ask me to.

When the ideas come, are you puttering around the kitchen, and all of a sudden, you have a thought? Or something else?

Typically, it’s when I’m walking, I’ll get something. But it’s very much like that Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk, where she talks about waiting until the muse comes through you and you just have to be there, ready. That’s a lot like what it is for me.

When the idea comes, are you a fast writer?

Yes, I am a fast writer. Then I agonize.

With the edit?

Yes. Then I have Roxane, who will look at it and make recommendations.

Do you do that with each other?

Oh, yeah.

That’s wonderful! As I said in the beginning, with these articles, you’re weaving together everything you’re so good at. In my notes to myself I wrote, all her various wisdom has come together here.

That’s the way I feel, too. It’s something that I want to keep doing in a really big way; it feels very momentous for me to be doing this right now. I hadn’t really thought about it in the way that you described it, but it does feel like an intersection of a whole bunch of different paths that I’ve been on and have reached a place with.

So many readers of Beyond are writers, so for the last question I always ask for a treasured prompt. But you do so many things—is there anything that comes to mind?

Yes, there are two things. One thing that I used to say all the time, I say less now, because it’s been replaced by this other one. So, the thing that I would always say, to my students, to people that worked for me, and myself, is the statement, busy is a decision. Because I’d have students say, “Oh, I’m too busy to do that, or to put more time into that.” I’m like, “Yes, that’s your decision. You’re determining what your priorities are. Unless you’re a single mother, you have more time than you think.”

I would also hear myself saying, “I’m too busy to do that.” People use busy as a badge. It’s not a badge, it’s a state of mind. Again, unless you’re a single parent. You make the time. You don’t find time. You make it.

But now, as I’m aging and really worried about an expiration date, and also, my cognitive abilities, what I say all the time now is, if not now, when? Which is what prompted the colonoscopy, which is what’s prompting trying to be in better shape, which is what is prompting making some harder decisions about what I want to be doing, because maybe if I’m lucky I have another twenty-five or thirty years. And twenty-five or thirty years ago is like yesterday.

Those are wonderful, Debbie! These are usually writing prompts, but I love that you did life prompts that also apply to writing.

Is there anything we didn’t get to that you really wanted to share?

No, this was wonderful. It was fantastic. Thank you, Jane.

Thank you, Debbie!

If you enjoyed this Craft Advice with Debbie, you might also enjoy this one with :

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is a designer, author, podcaster, teacher, curator, and philanthropist—and she’s also an exceptional human. The underpinning of all her work is kindness.

In her podcast Design Matters, Debbie thoughtfully, often with humor, and always with breathtaking research and grace, walks her guests through key moments of their lives. Originally focused on interviews with her design heroes, Debbie broadened the scope to encompass the way we design the arc of our lives. No surprise it’s the longest running podcast in the world, consistently appearing on Best Podcast lists.

Debbie is also the author of eight books, including three collections of her beautiful interviews, two illustrated essays, and most recently Love Letter to a Garden which Debbie and I spoke about here.

Lately, Debbie has been writing pieces for Time Magazine and the New York Times about how to be a compassionate, engaged human in this increasingly troubled world. This one about Nike launching a new shoe to honor MLK Jr in the same shade of turquoise as the motel in which he was shot really got to me.

Debbie is also a board member of Joyful Heart, an organization founded by Mariska Hargitay which works to eradicate sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, image-based abuse, and the rape-kit backlog. They have already helped pass 130 bills in 46 states and the number of untested rape kits nationwide has decreased from 400,000 to 100,000.

Does this sound like a lot? It’s not even half of Debbie’s brilliance. She co-founded the first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, led major branding initiatives for, amongst others, Hershey’s, Haagen-Dazs, Star Wars, and the No More campaign to end domestic violence, is the co-owner and Editorial Director of Print Magazine, and she and her wife, Roxane Gay, recently purchased the much beloved online literary magazine, The Rumpus. And there’s more! For Debbie’s full bio, click here.

Debbie lives between NYC and LA and shares her gorgeous homes (check out this New York Times spread on their LA home) with her wife Roxane, and their three furry babies: Max, Theo, and Lew.

It was a delight to speak with Debbie! I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

❤️❤️❤️ To celebrate the relaunch of the legendary The Rumpus, Debbie is generously gifting three subscriptions: one month, six months, and one year. If you’d like to be one of the lucky recipients, please add “RUMPUS” after your comment. The winners will be chosen at random on Monday, March 23rd and notified by Substack Direct Chat. I’m excited for all of you! ❤️❤️❤️

Preparing for this, I listened to and read everything I could on you, and the thing I kept coming back to is how devoted you are to helping others. So I want to start there. Would you agree that this is a driving force in your life? And, if yes, can you talk about why it feels important to you?

I don’t know that it’s necessarily a conscious thing. I am fiercely loyal to the people that I love. Almost diabolically so. So it might be a way that my personality has filled itself out over the decades. It’s hard to say because I wouldn’t self-identify that way, so it’s not something that I’ve given a great deal of thought to. But it’s a really interesting and provocative question that I have to spend more time with.

You seem to often be helping people sort through things, or achieve things.

There are certain things that I do that propel others forward and that I really love being able to do. Whether it be giving voices to young people on Print Magazine. And certainly teaching. I do a lot of jurying. I often will say yes to being a jury for a competition mostly to be able to stay abreast of the trends that are happening, and get to see the best of the best. It’s a balance of wanting to help other people up a step, or two, or more. but also getting the benefit of knowing them and seeing their work.

I have students now that have been out in the world for ten or fifteen years that are successful, and making a difference, and doing really good work. That does make me happy in a way that very few other things do. I’m not claiming to have any responsibility for that success, but it’s wonderful to watch a trajectory like that. And see someone so young grow into themselves as an artist, or a writer, or both.

Do you tend to yourself in the same way you tend to others?

I haven’t been historically good at taking care of myself. That’s not uncommon with people who have had early childhood trauma. It’s certainly not selflessness or anything noble. It’s just avoiding facing myself in certain ways that make me feel too vulnerable. But, all that being said, that tends to work better when you’re younger and don’t have as many ailments or body breakdowns. When your hip is bothering you to a point where you can’t walk, you’re forced to do something about it if you want to keep walking, and that’s what happened to me.

That ended up jump-starting a whole new commitment to physical fitness, because I ended up getting very lucky with a physical therapist who was able to understand a lot of the issues that I brought to any kind of physical fitness. Not only did I have a full recovery for a hip replacement, but then that folded into a full-on practice of working out. I now do that with him two or three times a week, even when I’m in California, because I can do it online. If I’m here in New York, I do it in person at his studio, which happens to be across the street from my house. I very purposely picked somebody not for their personality, and not for their rating on Yelp, but literally the proximity to my house so that I would not be able to use, “it’s raining, it’s snowing,” as an excuse.

You’ve shared the ways that childhood sexual abuse has impacted you mentally and emotionally, but I’ve not heard you mention ways it might have physically impacted your body. When you’re mentioning your hip and other things happening now, are you connecting that back to the trauma, or are you thinking that’s just part of aging?

The hip is aging, and genetics. I’ve also spent my whole life walking on concrete. I hate taxis and Ubers and all of that. I have no issues with public transportation, I just prefer walking and having that time to think and observe.

But I’ve always been very cut off from my body, and so everything was cerebral and in my head. Anything from the neck down didn’t really exist, except maybe my hands. That was solely caused by the early childhood trauma. And inasmuch as all the therapy I’ve done saved my life emotionally, there was still this giant roadblock to my physical body. That started to change in my very early fifties, when I came out. Suddenly, my physical connection to others was much more in line with what I was imagining for myself. Up until that point, I’d lived more conventionally, and in a lot of fear and inner homophobia. It’s one thing to come out in the 2000s. But quite another thing to have come out when I first suspected that I might be gay, which was in the 70s and 80s, when you would suffer tremendous discrimination, and that scared me.

When you came out, and became friends with your body, did that connect you with ways that you might have been storing trauma in your body? Like, maybe you were having pains or stomach issues that you weren’t acknowledging.

I’ve had stomach issues since I was fifteen, at times, debilitating. I had all kinds of tests and exams as I was growing up into my twenties and thirties, and no doctor ever found anything. No one took me that seriously.

But back to your original question about self-care, it became increasingly important for me to face the fact that I had not at sixty-four years old, ever had a colonoscopy. And a lot of that was fear of the results, and fear of what would happen when I was put under anesthesia and not in control. The whole vulnerability of it. But because my stomach aches had been increasingly getting worse, I felt that it was time.

I got very lucky. I found a doctor who spent over an hour with me talking about my stomach issues and my body, and his feeling was that there was a good chance that I had a brain-gut dysfunction. So we’re doing a bunch of things to figure it all out. Thankfully, the colonoscopy and the endoscopy were normal. Taking the time to even way late, take care of myself has been a brand-new thing.

Everything you’re saying is so beautiful, Debbie! I just want to add, I share that fear of anesthesia!

I mean, Gisele Pelicot, and then Sarah Polley’s movie, Women Talking. So many things seem to happen when you’re out, and just being that vulnerable.

So with this coming out and getting to know your body better, you, in part, started addressing issues, and then I’m imagining also experiencing more pleasure.

Yes, and also finding a soulmate. That changed everything. Finding someone who opened up my heart in such a profound way, allowed so much else to happen. I didn’t meet Roxane until I was fifty-seven, so I was well on my way to considering the possibility that it might never happen. I’ve been with some people that were really magnificent and I truly adored, but the soulmate thing was elusive.

With Roxane, do you feel like your body knew she was safe. Or was it your mind, or both?

Both. Prior to Roxane, I joke that my love life was almost as if I were a taxicab driver. Somebody would hail me. They’d get in the taxi, I’d drive for a while, then they’d get tired and jump out. Sometimes somebody would be coming in one door as somebody else was leaving through the other. It was very haphazard. I mostly waited for people to choose me. I never really put myself out there. With Roxane, it was the opposite: I pursued her, politely.

If you feel comfortable, can you share what your relationship with your body is like these days?

It’s much better than it’s ever been. I work out several times a week now. At the very beginning, it still happens occasionally, when I would do something that was hard for me—like, my first pull-up—I started to cry. Involuntarily. Not having that control in my body, I burst into tears. That would happen whenever I was struggling through a plank, or a certain number of sit-ups. It would be so hard for me. Not necessarily hard because the sit-up was hard or the plank was hard—more that my body was awakening in a lot of ways.

I wonder if in those moments your body was releasing some of the past trauma as this beautiful connection formed. They almost sound like tears of joy.

Yes, and relief.

I was so moved by the three pieces you wrote for Time Magazine. I feel like you’re combining your branding knowledge, your design knowledge, your knowledge of humanity, that big heart that I was talking about, your sense of justice and injustice, all of it is funneling into these in a way that I haven’t seen happen in your work in quite in this way.

Yes, I would say that’s absolutely correct, and I’m loving it so much.

The one about Nike launching a turquoise sneaker to “honor” MLK, in the same hue as the Lorriane Motel where he was shot really got to me.

It really could have been a one-line article: What the fuck were they thinking?

So true! You write, “This sneaker is not a tribute, rather, it is a symptom of how capitalism sanitizes and commodifies moral struggle. By collapsing Dr. King’s moral authority into a consumer product, Nike and Lebron James are missing the plot. At a moment when protest is criminalized and civil rights are under attack, turning justice into merchandise doesn’t honor history; it empties it of its meaning.” And later you add, “When Nike ties Dr. King’s assassination to a consumer product, it makes light of his sacrifice. This is not commemorating his life. It is commodifying his death.”

Can you speak to ways corporations might work in support of human rights rather than being part of what we’re fighting against?

Publicly traded companies have a very specific legal fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize profit. So, doing anything that risks any kind of backlash or boycott is just too much for them to bear. You can see how fast, when corporations make a change or support a cause, that is used as a reason to abandon that brand. You saw that with Cracker Barrel. I mean, when was the last time anyone you knew went to a Cracker Barrel? Who cared about their logo? But it became this giant brouhaha over nothing because someone decided that taking the old guy out was somehow woke. As opposed to, if anything, ageist.

I can only think of one instance where a brand took a big risk in supporting a controversial political topic and came out on the other end looking good. Aside from Patagonia; Patagonia is the only brand that is always about standing up for what’s right and doing good. The only other time that I am aware of, and if anybody that’s reading this knows of others, I welcome to hear from them, is when Nike supported Colin Kaepernick.

Now, Nike has a lot of problems, but when they supported Colin Kaepernick, initially the response was one of outrage. Consumers were filming themselves running over their Nike sneakers with their cars, burning them in dumpsters, tearing them up with scissors. And what happened? Three or four months later, they posted their results and their stock price actually went up.

What that was showing us was that they were standing up for something that other people felt was important enough to put their money behind in acquiring more sneakers. But it was risky, because consumers might have responded otherwise.

How do you feel about being alive right now in these times that we’re in?

I feel very despairing. I feel like my marriage could be vulnerable because of the laws that have allowed for the federal recognition of marriage between gay people are in jeopardy. I don’t see enough of a pushback from Democrats. I don’t know that anybody really knows what it means to be a Democrat anymore. I have almost zero faith in the Supreme Court. I’m scared for the midterms, because I’m worried that if Trump and his cronies have stated that the election software is rigged then they could use that in their favor.

Do you feel like there’s a particular role that creatives and artists and writers and designers can be playing right now?

Well, we are all the messengers. And, yes, we do have a responsibility to stand up for what’s right. But when you can’t get the Supreme Court to stand up for what’s right and make a difference, I don’t know how much power art has. I don’t want to sound pessimistic. I’m just saying things as realistically as I can.

Are Max and the kitties helping you through?

Yes. I’m an animal person. For the last twenty-five or thirty years, I’ve had cats and dogs, and mostly at the same time. Theo and Lew, my kitties, have been with me seven years. They’re both grey tabbies. I was told they were brothers, but I don’t really know that they are. Other brothers that I’ve observed in friends’ houses have always been cuddlers and sleep intertwined. These guys don’t, and sometimes they brawl. Theo is a love muffin, and seven years in, Lew is becoming a lot more friendly and cuddly.

And then Max, our dog, we got five and a half years ago. One of my two dogs prior to Max, her name was Duff, was my soul dog. We fell in love at first sight. I think everyone should have the experience of having a soul dog. Roxane picked Max out—and Max is her soul dog. Roxane and Max are imprinted on each other.

You often speak of the importance of metabolizing our emotions. How is that actually done?

Humans are metabolizing machines. Our bodies metabolize our food, and temperature, and sleep, and so forth. If we’re hungry, we eat, and we might be full, and we’re like, “ugh, can’t eat another thing,” and then four hours later, we’re picking through the refrigerator.

We live on a planet that is full of metabolizing elements. We could put three glasses of water on a table, one boiling, one with ice, and one room temperature. Leave for a few hours, come back, and they’ll all have metabolized into the same temperature. People talk about how time heals all wounds. It’s not really time that’s doing it, it’s our brains that are metabolizing that grief, which some people can do better than others.

We metabolize love. That butterfly, fluttery feeling, as much as we’d like it to last forever, tends to, on average, last for about eighteen to twenty-four months, and then you settle into something much deeper.

What I’ve discovered is that one emotion that we can’t metabolize is regret. Because with regret, there’s no closure, there’s no, “okay, I got rejected from that, or I failed at that, or I did poorly in that, so now I’m going to move on and do something else.” It’s a constant fantasy of, “I wish that I had done that.” Then you play out the fantasy and all of the ways in which something, if you had pursued it, could have happened.

To be clear, you’re talking about literal brain chemistry.

Yes.

So, let’s say we have terrible heartache. Are we then doing some protocol to metabolize the heartache, or is the brain just going to metabolize it without us doing a thing?

That’s really the interesting thing about the way we metabolize anything in our bodies. We don’t will our bodies to blink. We don’t will our hearts to beat. We don’t will our lungs to inhale or exhale. These are all happening involuntarily, and I believe that the metabolization of these feelings happens involuntarily as well.

That’s very interesting! Your work with Joyful Heart is so beautiful. Can you share a bit about that?

I got involved more than ten years ago. Mariska [Hargitay] saw some work that I had done for No More [an organization dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence], she asked me if I’d be interested in doing work with Joyful Heart.

So I started working with them, redid their positioning and their identity, and then after that work was completed, Mariska invited me to be on the board. I was on the board, and then I was chair of the board for five years, which was amazing, and I loved it, but a lot of work. Now I’m on the board, but no longer the chair.

Those Survivor Story podcasts you did are extraordinary. Will there be more?

Yes, I just recorded the trailer for another three episodes.

Yay! I was so moved by the first woman you spoke with I googled her, and I was so sad to learn that she died. Have the Epstein files impacted your work at all?

When these situations become public and things are in the news, then we are often asked to comment. Our work right now is centering on ending the rape kit backlog, which we’ve done substantially. And working to reposition and then eradicate what we’re calling image-based abuse, which some people refer to as revenge porn, but that’s not what it is, it’s image-based abuse, and that is rampant. There are very few laws that protect people in this regard. We’re also working on several initiatives, that fall under our Heal the Healers efforts, which is about caring for the people that do help the people that are healing.

It’s such potent and needed work, Debbie. So much is hard right now. Where are you finding joy?

Being at home with Roxane and the furries. Being in my garden when I’m in LA. Walking around New York City when I’m here in New York. Being with my family.

If you enjoyed this interview with Debbie, you might also like this one with :

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I have always been a fighter, though for most of my early life I didn’t view myself this way. Rather, I thought of myself as shy and awkward and never saying things out loud as sharply and meaningfully as they were in my head. And this is true. But my friends would routinely describe me as a scrappy junkyard dog. Friends from all walks of life, friends who didn’t know one another so couldn’t compare notes, saw me this way. One said, “If I were ever in a dark alley, you’re the person I would most want to have by my side.”

This delighted shy, insecure Jane. But I had no idea what they were talking about.

When I took up boxing, I began to feel the physical fighter in me rise. It happened the first time I slipped on the gloves. I was with one of my best friends in the basement of World Gym on Lafayette Street taking some aerobics-ish class from a firefighter. For part of it, we shuffled round in a circle doing jumping jacks and other calisthenics, in the middle of which the firefighter held the pads. One by one, we put on the gloves, stepped into the circle, and hit.

Due to my profound shyness, being the center of attention panics me. I avoid it whenever possible. Yet, with those beat-up, stinky, red gloves, I was completely unaware of eyes on me, of doing anything right or wrong, of how foolish I might appear. I just punched those fucking pads with everything in my soul. The sound, the vibration, made me feel whole.

Afterwards, my friend said, awe in her voice, “You’re a fighter.”

She was a top-tier trainer at the gym, in phenomenal shape, and knew a thing or two about athletes.

The firefighter, wiping his brow, nodded. “Dang,” he said. “You’re small but powerful.”

I experienced myself that day in a way I never had before. It would be another fifteen years before I took up boxing seriously (and my coach, ex-light heavyweight champ, said, “If you weren’t forty with a head injury, I’d be training you for the Golden Gloves”). But it was the first time I met the fighter in me. And I liked her immediately.

When it comes to healing, fighting often gets a bad rap. I get it. It can exhaust our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our souls. It takes a lot of energy. But it also saved my life.

I’ve written a lot about my health, and it’s hard to cram a neat summary of the nearly three-decade-long journey into each essay. Suffice to say, about sixteen or seventeen years ago I was tremendously unwell. Staggering, nonstop head pain; daily flipping and spinning vertigo; memory issues so severe I couldn’t find my way home again from a block away; inability to follow conversations; racing heart; staying awake for days on end; and so much more.

I’d just moved to Michigan, after twenty-five years in New York City. The accident had happened in New York and whilst it had taken far too long to find proper care (in the days before the football players were all over the news, little was known about head and brain injury), once I found it, the doctors laid out a plan of treatment in keeping with the injury.

But in Michigan, with symptoms that had expanded and escalated, these new doctors did not want to talk to me about treatments for head and brain injury, they wanted to talk to me about Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Indeed, my anxiety was skyrocketing: I was terrified of what was happening in my body. But the anxiety was not causing what was happening. It was a result.

The only doctor to agree that the myriad symptoms were not caused by anxiety but rather by my injury was a sports doctor. I was so relieved to at last have someone who saw the truth of my body and could offer help. But rather than help, he said that I’d better enjoy where I was now because when he saw me in a year, I would be much worse. “These sorts of things only progress.”

I never went back.

This essay isn’t about all that I’ve lived through. Rather it’s about how when I was living in a state of terror—and I’m not saying this lightly, what was happening in my body was terrifying—I fought like hell to find help and to get well.

Many of my friends were telling me I needed to accept what was happening. They even suggested I sell the house I’d just bought, quit my job, and move in with my parents. I needed to take all the pressure off myself, I needed to let my body relax and recover, I needed to surrender. All the advice was delivered with kindness and great concern. It made sense to me. I recognize the wisdom in surrendering to what is. I understand fighting creates strain and pressure. I know acceptance can bring untold gifts.

And yet: I was incapable of any of it.

My parents grew up in London during WWII and they passed along to me their they can bomb us but we’ll still go dancing attitude. They were indomitable. As it turns out, I’m indomitable, too.

I kept teaching, I kept writing, I kept searching for a doctor who believed me, who could help me. I kept working on ways to heal myself. I started a garden from the broken, neglected backyard soil that I inherited from the previous owners. I mended my rundown house in whatever small ways I could muster. I began walking my neighbor’s dog. I talked to myself endlessly—deep down into my guts—to stave off the fear, the isolation, the utter overwhelm.

Churchill famously said, “Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished.”

Many of you may well be thinking that I’m completely misunderstanding acceptance and surrender. That it’s not at all like what Churchill proposes; it’s not passive. That may be true. But what is even more true is that it was not a matter of understanding properly or not understanding properly; it was that I constitutionally could not do any version of it. And the deepest truth is that I could not do any version of it because my parents’ war lives in my blood. I was incapable of not fighting.

But I tried! I journaled, I prayed, I confided in therapists, in deities, in myself, I poured my heart out to friends in spoken words, in emails, in texts. I beat myself up about it, putting more and more intense pressure on myself to accept and surrender, accept and surrender, until I’d driven myself into a panic over the inability to do either.

It wasn’t just my friends urging acceptance and surrender, the same was being put forth by doctors and people who’d been super sick and had gotten well, whom I’d found through research and grown to admire. I was doing something wrong.

Then I met Dr. Lu. He was a monk from the oldest healing monastery in China and a highly regarded doctor of Chinese Medicine. Under his care, I began to heal immediately. In fact, my healing was so quick and so profound, I thought within a handful of months I would be completely well again. This didn’t happen. But I did pull out of the terror symptoms and found footing on sturdier ground.

About a year into working with Dr. Lu, he said to me, “The only reason I took you on is because you’re a fighter. If you weren’t a fighter, you weren’t coming out of where you were.”

His words reverberated through my mind and body. They were in direct opposition to what I’d been willing myself to do, and certainly didn’t seem to align with his monastic practices. And yet, at last, I had something I could accept and surrender to: I’m a fighter. It’s my blood. Once I accepted that was a driving force of my personality, a huge ease swept through me.

I’m not saying that acceptance and surrender are a bad thing—or that being a fighter is the way to go (probably a combination is best). Whilst I am wildly (wildly!) better than I once was, I still struggle with my health. Perhaps acceptance and surrender would have produced better, faster, more fully realized results? I’ll never know. What I am saying is fighting gets a bad rap in the wellness world. But once I accepted that’s who I am and stopped trying to make myself into somebody else, it saved my life.

(I googled “songs about fighting” and this was the first to pop up. And, honestly, who doesn’t love Tubthumping!)

In her Questionnaire, mentions that she went through a long period of rereading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh every year and I felt my soul burst into song! Both the book and the glorious BBC adaptation live deep in my heart.

I came to it first in 1982 via one of my dearest friends. He’d made a home recording of the eleven-hour series and knew almost all the lines by heart. We’d play it over and over again, drinking every time they drank (anyone who’s familiar with this story will know we were quickly wasted), and soon enough I, too, knew most of the lines, lines that are still with me.

It’s safe to say, I’ve read the novel at least a dozen times. And watched the series sixty times, quite possibly more. A few years after introducing me to Brideshead, my friend was killed in a car accident. I inherited the tapes and every year on the anniversary of his death, I would watch the series in its entirety and drink away my grief. In my thirties and onward, the space between both viewing and reading grew but it was never more than a handful of years before one or the other took place. And Alice’s mention of this beloved book prompted another watching!

There are so many many reasons I love this story, so many nuances, so many insights into human behavior and religion and class and gender and family and friendship and love and charm and basic kindness, so many many breathtaking lines (“a blow upon a bruise” is one I use regularly), but here I will mention only one: Evelyn Waugh’s magnificent portrayal of addiction. Two friends, Charles and Sebastian, meet at Oxford and their exuberant youthful drinking habits are indistinguishable. But over time, with great care and sensitivity, Waugh reveals they are, in fact, quite different. This evolution from youth into adulthood has always felt very true to me. And it’s not lost on me that whilst in college my friend and I appeared indistinguishable in our own robust drinking, yet by the time he died, in our mid-twenties, I was largely sober and he quite drunk nearly every day.

If you haven’t read or watched Brideshead Revisited and feel keen to, let me share that I often used passages from the novel when teaching at The New School. Some students would be swept up in it, eagerly buy the book or watch the show, and report back that it was “very English.” Clearly not meant in a complimentary manner!

For me, it remains one of my greatest loves.

Monday, March 9th, was the anniversary of the tabletop falling on my head and changing everything. Normally, I blast through this day barely acknowledging it even to myself. But this year, I shared it with a couple dear friends and was deeply touched by the love and tenderness they showered on me. All these decades later, that day remains traumatic. There is a clear Before and After Jane. I love them both! But I do miss Before Jane greatly.

It felt nourishing to be so cared for by my friends so I’m spontaneously sharing this anniversary with all of you. I tend to keep tight on things like this but perhaps it’s time to hand some off to the universe! 🎈

More essays about my healing journey:

This one originally ran in O, The Oprah Magazine. It’s about how my father helped me when I was so ill.

This is about the accident and intuition.

This is about asking for help (is anyone good at this?).

This originally ran in Creative Nonfiction. It’s about the impact my parents’ war lineage has had on me.

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How about you, are you a fighter or an accepter? Or maybe both? What’s helped you with whatever challenges you’ve faced? Are you a Brideshead Revisited devotee?

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is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. She is a professor in the English department and the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Rutgers-Newark. A standalone edition of her short story, “In the Gloaming,” with a new afterword will be published in the Scribner Shorts series in September ’26 and a new novel, Wherever You Are, is forthcoming from Scribner in April ‘27. She writes the newsletter .

1. What are you reading now?

During the semester I am occupied with the writing of my MFA students, and also with reading books for blurbs. However I read a book of my own choice in the tub at night and often drop it into the drink. Right now I am rereading Elizabeth Strout novels. I have waterlogged copies many times over the years and have had to buy new ones. If Liz is seen driving a Bentley, I think we can blame me.

Before this I read Art Work by Sally Mann. She is in her seventies and looking back on decades of her photography practice and habits of mind. It’s a wonderful depiction how much work it takes to realize your vision, and much work exists around the work in terms of organization, contacts, and so on. She details her hundreds or thousands of failed pictures, rejections, disappointments…it’s so important for aspiring artists to know how much of this will inevitably come along.

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

I never had to hide books; the adults in my world didn’t monitor my reading. My grandparents had a bookshelf at the shore filled with Reader’s Digests and paperbacks by Ian Fleming and James Michener. I was obsessed with the Michener novels and embarrassed by and curious about James Bond. That was when I was nine or ten. A bit earlier I loved A Child’s Garden of Verses and memorized many of the poems. In Sunday school I memorized many psalms and loved them too. I imagined a fate that might have me captive or a prisoner when it would come in handy to have many writings memorized.

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I went through a long period when I reread Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh every year. I loved the sentences so much, their rhythm and evocation of young love, glamour, and the beauty of the English countryside. I have reread Howard’s End by E.M Forster often in recent years, for pleasure and for teaching. The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts is another I reread every couple of years. I am taking notes on a future novel and am writing about an experience such as Jane had with the entity, Seth, channeling knowledge through her. I reread Alice McDermott to remind myself of where the bar has been set, and every Christmas I reread A Christmas Carol to prepare for another go round of trying to be good. Each summer I read The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford and laugh my head off.

The book I give most is Upstream by Mary Oliver. It sits on a shelf I have of personal writing by women, all short, brilliant books. I dip into these out often, read a few pages, and feel glad to be alive. I am in two reading groups, one fiction and one non. In the fiction group we read a lot of Forster during the pandemic but not Where Angels Fear to Tread, which we are reading now, and I am laughing! The last time I read it was before I read The Ambassadors by Henry James; this time within a few pages I recognized Angels as Ambassadors’ fan fiction. Fun stuff!

In the non-fiction group we most recently read The Price of Democracy by Vanessa S. Willliamson about the history of taxation in this country starting with the Boston Tea Party—who knew the patriots were protesting for taxes? It’s a really great book arguing that democracy cannot exist without a healthy and fair tax system.

I don’t think anything has helped me through a hard time but time passing.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

I have a ratty old ripped up cotton nightgown that is so soft I can’t part with it. Whatever is continuous about myself becomes cherished when I put it on and get in bed, under either heavy covers or in the summer, under only a sheet. I have bought new pajamas and nightgowns but they end up in giveaway boxes while my transitional object nightgown is washed and worn again.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

In the documentary “Meet Me Under The Good Light,” Andrea Gibson, wise beautiful person, says to call “everything that you are feeling love” when you are in a painful situation. This hit me so hard; I have taken on the practice, and every time a guilt or regret pops up to chastise me for how I fell short of my expectations as a caregiver, I now call it love. I wouldn’t feel regret and guilt without the love being there in the first place, and this practice makes that the important focus.

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

So many. Animals are central to my life and why I am a vegan. Right now I have two cats, one called Mama Newark who is an indoor feral—she has lived with us for nine years and I have never touched her, we communicate through long blinks—and the other is Holly who I adopted from a local shelter to be a friend for both me and Mama after we lost three animal housemates during COVID. Holly is a dogcat who can sense me coming home from work when I am a couple of miles away and goes to the door to greet me. She is a content, happy creature who doesn’t want much affection, but every so often she plops on my computer seeking a long session of compliments and stroking.

I live on a very busy street but have a yard full of animals; deer, possum, racoons, squirrels, birds, chipmunks, cats, bats, and more. I love them all, especially the squirrels. They invent ingenious games, getting the crows involved when they come through.

7. What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

I went for a long time when I was young thinking marriage wasn’t for me. Turns out that learning one person over decades is humbling, compelling, and a great grace. Turns out, marriage teaches you who you are.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

I don’t let myself do the things my body loves very often. I know, I know. It’s a work in progress. I love to swim and have always thought of myself as a sea creature rather than a land animal.

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

Retire at 75 in 2028, live by the sea, more cats and dogs, write a few more books, help a few people, read and reread, resist, see the whole California coast, fingers crossed for a grandchild, a painless death. And—I want to put on the red dress, fly over the pond, and go to Folkstone for the Wuthering Heights reenactment.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

I saw a therapist for 15 years who was only and consistently kind. That’s all she did; she kindly validated my feelings. I would get frustrated with her method and want something rigorous and challenging, but her way helped me. She wore me down! I started being kinder to myself.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

My grandfather had a code that covered just about all areas of life. I carry those sayings in my head. Example: Never lend money, instead give it freely and never think of it again. This applies to so much.

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Friends!

We need each other!

Massive Love to Each and All of You!❤️

The people united will never be defeated.

A World of Peace and Kindness

I can imagine that! That’s something I’m hopeful about in the present tense, believe it or not, because I think we’re seeing it. For example, queer identity and trans identity and non-gender binary identity in the bodies of people who are younger than us. We’re watching an evolution/adaptation in front of us. And it is a story change, a sea change. It’s like an avant garde or a vanguard, and there’s no stopping the fact of their existence. And it doesn’t matter what old, white, cranky people think. I mean, they’re getting a lot of airtime, but they won’t forever, they’ll die.

— [read Lidia’s full interview]

There Is Enough for All of Us

We’ve had several centuries or millennia of patriarchal rule: everything from the witch burnings to clitorectomy to arranged marriage; everybody has been suffering under patriarchy. This is a time where women are talking and connecting and telling their stories and writing and starting to wake up; starting to learn how to claim our power back. I can feel it in the conversations that I'm having with women. We've been trained to be in competition, and at each other's throats and to feel there isn't enough. Women are now realizing there is enough for all of us. All of us together, together, together. I hear women saying over and over again: I feel like I'm coming out of a sleep or out of bondage or something.

— [read Naomi’s full interview]

Covering for One Another

For me, that's how life is. It’s always covering for others and hoping that they'll cover for you. And in some way, we muddle through. Some of the most transformative moments of my life have come because my friends have shown me great kindness and great love and great understanding. Their love for me has helped me understand myself better. We think of friendship as being nice to the people that you love. But to me, it is also a system of discernment and inquiry; it's this powerful meaning-making engine, both in life and in story. Without friendship, I don't know that I would have a subject to write about.

— Taylor [read Brandon’s full interview]

Stand Up, Make Art, Be Heard, Take Risks

So much is hard right now. And it hurts every day. And still we do, hopefully feel joy. We can’t help it. The taste of morning tea. A hot shower. As we speak, I’m looking out my window at the leaves turning, and I find joy. I find joy outdoors, in being out in it. So I walk and look and feel the wind and listen to the raucous of birds.

Another key joy is in knowing that there is a community of people who are standing up, making art, being heard, taking risks. Saying: Yes! and also saying: No! Being part of a community. I believe we find strength together. And we need to connect and collect in the midst of what are scary times.

— [read Victoria’s full interview]

We’re Not in Enough Gangs

I’m a person that’s always wanted to be in a gang. One of the reasons I like having a family is it’s a little gang, it’s our little crew. I’ve always wanted to be part of something a little bit bigger than me. I have a bike gang that I’m in that’s just a bunch of old dads and we ride around Austin.

I think that part of people’s problem is they’re not in enough gangs. There’s this great tension in life where you desperately want to belong to something else and you want to stand apart at the same time. You want to be special, but you want to be accepted, too.

— [read Austin’s full interview]

Dang, I miss her.

One of the most beautiful songs ever.

Here it is again, live.

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Beyonders! How are you getting through these days? Where are you finding community? Kindness? Your gang? Are you making art? Are you in conversation with others? Let’s share our experiences!

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’s prose is this fantastic combination of elegant, intimate, deeply curious, deeply informed, and badass. Her debut novel, Up Through the Water, was edited by Jackie Kennedy—yes, that Jackie Kennedy (read Darcey’s delightful account of the experience here). After that came four more novels and three memoirs, the most recent of which is This is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith. With tenderness, humor, openness, and keen insight, Darcey traces the history of her own experience with pain, alongside that of the hundred people she interviewed, and weaves them together with massive research into the spiritual and medical history of suffering.

Darcey’s essays have been published widely. She’s a frequent contributor at Vogue (this one on the summer she worked at the White House is a personal favorite). She recently published an essay on the heart in the New York Times. And you’ll be forever changed after reading this one in Granta about the death of her mother. Her web story "Blindspot" was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She’s been a Henry Hoyns Fellow, a Stegner Fellow, Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, and on the long list of the Independent Book Award and the French Arles Author Prize. She currently teaches at Columbia and New York University.

In other words, we could all learn a thing or two, or actually much more, from Darcey on writing well.

If you missed Part One of your conversation, you can find it here.

Speaking with Darcey always inspires me! I think you’ll feel the same way!

xJane

❤️ Gigantic gratitude to all the paid subscribers whose support for Beyond also supports The DeTommaso Dogs. Ana has gotten over 800 dogs and kitties off the streets and into safe homes. She’s also spayed and neutered over 3,000 animals. Her heart is as big as her determination. I’m so grateful for your support in keeping these sweet babies safe. Thank you! ❤️

Where do you write?

I write in a few different places. I’m in my office right now. I did have my own office when I first bought my house, but then when my husband moved in and he needs to have a room of his own. So I had to wait some years until Abbie, my daughter, left so now I use her bedroom as my office. This is the first real place I’ve made my own. I bought red Indian bedspreads, and I have all my plants and I have the same desk that I wrote Suicide Blonde on. My dad had a rectory, so I took it from there.

I work a couple days a week at the library. I’m a twenty-minute walk from the big Grand Army Plaza library. I really love it there. There’re lots of little kids there for story hour, and unhoused people reading theology. I go in and I’ll see the things that are happening that day, and it’ll be like, start your own marijuana dispensary class or queer knitting group. Occasionally, I’ll go to a coffee shop. My husband works at home, too. He’s a reporter, so if he’s there, there’s a lot of energy in the house.

During this hard time we’re in, I have found it really hard to concentrate to the level that I want to concentrate. Partly because I’m slightly disturbed all the time, like now I’m freaked out about the friggin’ Epstein files. But also the phone. I was late to getting hooked on social media. I’m not terrible, but I’m enough where when I’m writing, I’m going to pick it up a couple times. I actually will sometimes put it in the basement, so I have to go two stories to get it.

Do you still feel it when it’s in the basement?

Yes and no. I’m starting to think about my next book. To write a book, you’ve got to really sink down in there, and I worry about being able to get to that deep place. I bought myself a battery-powered Walkman and a rain CD and headphones.

While you’re writing, you’re listening to rain sounds?

Yes. Not when I read, but for writing. I’ve lived in so many noisy places, it helps me to focus. Also, my favorite weather is rainy weather, so it’s very soothing. It draws me inside.

I think a lot of writers have back pain so I’m curious how long you’re able to sit now? And do you get up every half hour and stretch, that sort of thing?

Yes, I definitely get up. I mostly like to sit, but I will work in my standing desk sometimes, too, particularly if my back is bothering me. I get up at least every half an hour, maybe even, twice in a half hour. I’ll get more water, sometimes I’ll go into the bedroom and make the bed. I break it up with little things like that.

In the afternoon, I either go swim in the pool, or the ocean if it’s the summer. Or I’ll do mat Pilates. Sometimes I go to the gym to lift weights. Then I’ll come back and do another two hours of work. I do softer work then. I might do research. Or I might be reading something or prepping for teaching. I have a daybed in here, so I would do that lying down. It’s a combination of all these different ways.

Do you write every day?

I try to. It’s very rare for me to completely take a day off. For a while, I was taking Fridays off. because I have therapy in the morning, and then I go to my Pilates class, and I’m like, “I’ll spend the afternoon and go to see art, or I’ll meet a friend for lunch.” Occasionally I’ll do that, but usually I have to come back and work on something.

What’s your chair like?

I use a wooden thrift store chair. I know it’s bad, but then I use a lumbar pillow. I try to sit up pretty straight.

You interviewed about a hundred people for this book, and I think the same for your previous memoir, Flash Count Diary. And some of these books you’re reading are in the library, so you can’t mark them up. How do you keep track of all this research? And how do organize it so you can easily go back and find what you need?

I use notebooks. This was when I was at Lourdes. [holds up a notebook with myriad tabs] I probably have about twenty of these. I wouldn’t start my chapter until I had about three full notebooks. When I was at the Rare Book Room, you can’t bring a pen in there, but you can have a pencil. They have books there that cost $50,000 and sometimes it’s the only copy from the 1600s. So I would sit there for hours and take notes. Sometimes if there was a longer passage, I would take a picture with my phone.

Then I would make an index in the front of the notebook, so I knew which books were in which notebooks. The three notebooks on the skin, I would title “skin” and have a picture. I always like to put pictures on them, somebody with a terrible skin disease or something. Or my books for Lourdes, I put a picture of St. Bernadette on there.

I would take all these notes and I read through them. Then I would take notes of those notes on legal pads—and that would be fifty pages of legal pad notes. Then I would take notes of those notes--and that would go down to maybe twenty pages. From that, I would start to get a feel for the shape of the chapter, for what was the important information. Then I would do a very rough outline of the stuff I wanted to include. Sometimes because I was so familiar with all the notes, I would remember, “Oh, in this notebook, there was something that didn’t make it to the legal pad that I want to put in here.” That’s how I did it. It was very arduous.

How long does that process take?

Two to three months per chapter. I try to do a month of research. Sometimes you have a feeling when you haven’t gotten the right books yet so it would take me a little longer to find the good books, up to six weeks or even eight weeks, but I tried to keep it around a month.

Once I completed that process, which took about ten days, I would start writing. I wouldn’t worry about the beginning. I would just start writing the parts that I thought were going to be compelling. Then I would feel a shape for it, and I would see “oh, this could go with this.”

So you decide you want a chapter on, say, the heart. That comes to you intuitively. And then you do all the research you described. Then you weave in the interviews.

Yes, during that month or six weeks, I’m also doing interviews. I’m putting up on Facebook: Has anyone had a heart attack? If so, I’d like to talk to you. Or sometimes I’ll do questionnaires. For menopause, I did a lot of questionnaires, because I had so many people that were interested in talking to me, and I didn’t have time to do all of them. But for this book, I mostly talked to people live.

Are your own stories the last thing to get woven in?

Mostly what happens is, when I was working on, say, the head chapter, I’m not a person who has migraines all the time, but I’ve had about six migraines, so I thought, “well, one of those could work.” Sometimes it wasn’t me; it was my dad or my mom. It was like, how can the bodies around me and my body interface with the material? To understand the phenomena that much more, I would put myself into it.

Eventually it feels good. It takes a while, because I really rework it. I don’t want it to feel heavy; I want there to be a poetic lightness to it. So I make sure the ideas are moving in ways that are exciting.

How many drafts do you usually do?

A lot. Maybe fifty.

Wow! One of the many things you do so beautifully is each paragraph is a mini-story. And there’s a space break. Then there’s a mini-story. And so on. How do you do that, Darcey? Is that all intuitive? Or is it what you’re talking about now: it’s all part of getting whittled down?

I’m just trying to get down what the idea is. I love this form of the space breaks. I always remember when I was in college, a professor wrote on my paper: it’s not enough to have good ideas, Darcey, you have to connect them. And I was like, “fuck you, I don’t have to connect them.” So this is better for me, because I am connecting them, but in a very intuitive way. I’m always thinking about the mortar between the pieces, how can I make it feel whole and connected, even though it’s not in a traditional narrative form.

How did you land on which body parts you wanted to write about?

I chose the body parts that were the most evocative to me. I have to say that when I was talking about it with my editor, she really wanted me to do knees, and I was like, “ugh, knees are so unpoetic. How am I going to do knees?” But as I worked on it, I liked that knee problems are so prevalent, so I knew people would react to it, but also I thought, “well, I can do prayer and kneeling.”

I think it would be hard for me to do the spleen. Maybe somebody can do the spleen, but I’m not that person. I tried to choose things that I had an angle on, or I wanted to say something about. At the end, I really was excited to do, well, of course, suffering, which I wanted to write about, but then also the soul. And then healing. The Lourdes Chapter. I wanted to do a body part that isn’t a physical body part. That was something that I wanted the book to move toward.

I loved the whole book, but I loved it most further and further in.

I’m so glad, because I sometimes it’s hard to get a good ending.

Oh gosh, I loved the closing line. “I wish you to have in your heart the wound of divine love,” wrote Bernadette, “which will never heal here below.” Why did you land there?

I was very moved by her story. This very poor girl that had TB. I don’t know if she saw the Virgin Mary or not, but something meaningful happened to her, which I’m willing to definitely get behind. Then she spent the rest of her life at the convent there, and they didn’t treat her that great because she had seen the Virgin Mary. I mean, you would think that the Catholic Church would like people seeing spirits, but they really don’t; they prefer if people are more normal. So the other nuns weren’t that great to her. She persevered.

I like that quote because it embodies the whole book: the idea that the wounds that we have are the things that connect us to each other. They connect us to our truest self. Everyone thinks that your pain or your wounds or your illness is not you, you should get rid of it, it’s separate from you. But in some ways, it’s the most you, because it connects you to the body, to the true reality of life.

You started out writing fiction. What drew you to these heavily-researched investigations of bodies, with your own as the starting point?

I will say I want to go back to writing novels, maybe even next time. Novels are really about embodiment, too. You’re basically inside a body trying to explain what it’s like. I’m always aware when I read novels written by nonfiction writers that they have trouble with the somatic details of making the character feel like they’re actually living, and they’re telling you what it’s like to be alive like an announcer would, rather than being the embodiment. That’s such a beautiful thing about a novel, is the way, you live inside another person.

But what happened. It was right around menopause. I love being a writer, I love reading, but I started to feel like I wanted to have expertise on some subjects. I got a little bit jealous of scientists who spend their life studying a certain breed of bat. As a writer, emotions are your subject, and mood, and tone. and you’re doing material detail all the time. I remember wondering, “should I go back to school and get a master’s degree? I love flowers; should I study flowers?” Then I thought, “No, I don’t have to do that. I can write a nonfiction book in which I try to make myself, as much as possible in my laywoman way, an expert on it. That was the menopause book. I read tons about menopause. I learned about my own body, I learned about what was happening during menopause.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to write another non-fiction book. I thought I wanted to go back to the novel. Then the editor and I started to talk about this idea, and it so clearly was something I could do. She came with some ideas, I had some ideas, so I thought, “here we go again! The body!” But it was also a way to expand out the body. I did the female body in this specific, time. If I did this book, I could learn about the body in a different, slightly broader way which appealed to me because I really didn’t know very much about my body at all when I started the book.

Do you think writing these books will influence your next novel?

Yes. I definitely love the form of the shorter sections. I think in a novel, you might have to have a few more longer sections, but many novels do that now.

Did you read Heart the Lover?

Yes. Very similar. She’ll do a longer part, and then she’ll have a break. And then shorter. That’s a form that I really like. The reader’s used to reading shorter things online now, so it goes along with what we’re already doing. Which I think art does. Art is always made out of things that are part of the world. But I also think that it lends itself to a lot of authenticity, because you don’t have to worry about connecting everything. Sometimes the connecting can be really false.

So many of the readers of Beyond are writers. Is there a writing prompt you find helpful for yourself or your students.

I teach the writing of artists to studio art graduate students at NYU. One of the things that works the best in that class is I have them interface with some sort of online writing, like a restaurant review, or even a sequence of tweets. They interact with writing that people do regularly in a non-creative way, but they push their story through that; have a specific voice and point of view in the Yelp review; make it clear to the reader that something more is going on on this date than you just don’t like the hamburger. They come up with the most amazing things. It’s a weird prompt.

Weird prompts are good!

It’s a way to use our common parlance: to use review language, but also use narrative language.

The other assignment I do in that class that works really well is I have them go online and pick a video and then write something over the video. So the video has to be silent. I mean, if it’s a song, it can be on. And then they write a text, usually it’s a page, because the video is usually between three and five minutes.

Last year, this woman who’d had this abusive boyfriend when she was living in Poland, got a video of Polish folk singer that he had liked. She turned the music down, and she read about this tough relationship, and it was so moving.

It doesn’t have to be a song; it could be a video of nature or birds in a nest, and then you write something, it doesn’t have to be about that but it’s going sideways into it. It’s the background for the thing that you write.

Writing is so hard, and you’re by yourself, I like prompts that bring in the world in a certain way. They can be really exciting.

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was my first writing teacher, way-back-in-the-day at NYU. Brilliant, stylish, achingly cool, beyond-gifted writer with a dollop of mischief, she intimidated the hell out of me. Which is funny to me now that I’ve gotten to know her: she’s still brilliant (possibly more so), still with the coolest style, still ridiculously gifted—and she’s also gigantically kind and funny and thoughtful and wanting to help. In short, Darcey is a deeply lovely soul.

I’ve read everything Darcey has written, from fiction to memoir to personal essays. Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life, an extraordinarily tender and singular deep dive into menopause, is one of my most treasured books. In fact, the moment I hit post on the list of my favorite nonfiction books, I realized with despair I’d left it off.

Darcey’s latest memoir, This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith (preorders help writers so much!), weaves together personal stories, research, and nearly one hundred interviews to examine the impact pain has on our bodies, spirits, minds, and souls. The daughter of a Lutheran minister, Darcey’s life was turned upside down when she ruptured a disc scooting over in bed to make room for her husband. With exquisite prose and insight, she guides us through ancient teachings on pain, pop culture’s take on it, Frida Kahlo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Kurt Cobain’s experiences with it, novels and memoirs and physicians’ archives on it, her own back surgery and healing, a revelatory trip to Lourdes—and so much more. This book is pain as suffering and pain as transformation.

In addition to her two memoirs, Darcey has written five novels: Sister Golden Hair, Milk, Jesus Saves, Suicide Blonde, and Up Through the Water. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Review, Vogue, Spin, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Guardian. She was a Stegner Fellow and currently teaches at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Columbia University's School of the Arts. She lives in a wooden house in Brooklyn with her husband and cat.

Interesting Tidbit: When I first interviewed Liz Gilbert, I learned she writes all of her books to someone, and she wrote Eat, Pray, Love, one of the bestselling-ever memoirs, to Darcey!

Speaking with Darcey always lights me up. I think you’ll feel the same!

xJane

Your book is called This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith. And you write about how doors are a passage. Can you talk about what doors you went through with your pain and how it changed your relationship with yourself, your body, the world?

Maybe six years ago now, I herniated a disc. At that point, I was still wearing backpacks with ten or more books in them, so I think my spine got compressed. I went through about eight months of really, really terrible pain. It was at the height of the opioid crisis, so my pain wasn’t treated or medicated. A few times when I went to the ER, because it got so bad, they acted like I was a junkie who wanted pain meds.

In the morning, it was so painful to get up from sitting or lying that I would stand all day long at my kitchen counter or at my standing desk. I would work, I would watch movies, and then I would lie down at 9:30 and sleep. It was a tough time. But it was also fascinating. It slowed me down. I’m someone who’s always on the move, and I couldn’t be out and about the way that I usually am. It definitely isolated me. I remember being at a dinner party once, they were talking about risotto recipes and tarot cards, and I was like, “fuck this.” I felt alienated even in groups of friends.

I eventually got spine surgery, which was successful, so I was very lucky in that way. But I feel suspicious of those medical narratives where they say, “then I healed myself, and I was better.” I still have nerve damage in my right leg that bothers me. It’s nothing compared to what it was. But that year of pain made me understand that when I see people on the street who have mobility issues, it’s not just that they have mobility issues; they’re also in terrible pain. It opened up my empathy.

As to the door, Zola says, “the door on mystery has to remain open.” I thought, “my pain is really mysterious. No one knows exactly what it is, and I’m in a place that doesn’t have a lot of definition.” My title This Is the Door is based on the part of Macbeth where he’s about to kill the king, and one of the fools says something like, “this is the door, if you go through, your life has changed.” That is something that I did feel: once I had gone through the pain, I was a different person, and I was in a different place in my life.

How do you feel, if at all, it has changed your relationship with your body?

I’m 63. This happened six years ago, during menopause, which I also wrote a book about.

I was just thinking that!

I wrote about my body then and this came right on the heels of that. I have my various aches and pains now, as an older person. But the main thing I would say is that I prioritize my health: I eat crazy well, I exercise almost every day, I’m really on it.

I don’t consider myself old; I’m at the beginning of old age, but I’m starting to understand that my corporeal embodiment is not going to go on forever. That’s something that period of pain brought me closer to.

The last time we spoke, around the time of Flash Count Diary, you were getting steroid shots. You got two shots, they didn’t work. But you felt obligated to do the third because you felt responsible for the failure of the first two.

Well, my doctor acted like I was responsible for it. On steroids, you feel great for about six hours. But the pain comes back, as the numbing wears off. Steroid shots work for a small percentage of people that have back pain, but it’s kind of a racket. People are desperate for pain relief, and nobody wants to give opioids anymore, which is completely understandable. So there’s this idea that the steroid shot is going to be this cure-all, but for most of the people I talked to, it didn’t work. One guy told me that his doctor insisted that it had worked even though he was saying, “I’m in the same amount of pain I was in before.” That’s how much people don’t want to hear about pain, even the doctors don’t.

Connected with that, you write about how you have this shame of having an unhealthy, broken, painful body. I think a lot of people will relate to that, especially if you have chronic health issues. We feel shame we’re not healing the way we’re “supposed” to.

I definitely felt shame that I was broken. It’s like the idea of how a hurt rabbit pretends that it’s not hurt. It’s very common that animals will pretend that they’re not hurt or sick, because it’s dangerous to be seen as hurt. My guess is there’s something based on that: to be ill is a dangerous position to be in, because you’re so vulnerable.

I also think the culture doesn’t really like people to be sick. They prefer people to be doing great. There’re all these stories about the woman who comes back from her mastectomy, and the day after is playing tennis, and all this bullshit. The culture loves stories like that; they don’t want to hear about people suffering. In some ways, I don’t blame them. I had a really difficult mother that wanted to tell you about her suffering all the time, and it was tough. I think the way you talk about your pain, it might also be like talking about your sex life… you have to be careful in the way that you talk about your body to others.

Careful in what way?

I think in order to be heard, you can’t talk about your pain like you talk about going to the grocery store. Maybe somebody is very sympathetic, and you can lay it out for them, but in general you don’t want to be laying out every twitch in your body. That’s tough on people. I’m not saying that it’s okay that they feel that way. I’m just saying that they feel that way.

Did your pain change how you receive other people’s stories?

Totally. As a younger person, you hear older people talk about their aches and pains and you’re like, “oh my god, that’s so boring, let me out of here.” But now, I really like it. When I meet my friends, the first thing we do is go, “How is your tense neck? How is your diabetes?” We go through all that stuff. It seems to me very intimate. It doesn’t seem to me like something that’s depressing at all. It seems really human.

You write: “Pain always has meaning, not because it is good but because bodies always have meaning.” And later: “People are destroyed not by suffering but by suffering that is devoid of meaning. Meaning is bigger than a diagnosis or a cure.” What sort of meaning are you suggesting? And how do we find it?

When I was going through my back pain, people were saying that all pain is about is getting over it. There’s no intrinsic meaning in it. There’s nothing worthwhile to be learned from it. I don’t think that’s true. When people think about the more meaningful things in their lives, they’re often really painful things.

It’s both hard to express your pain and hard to hear people’s pain. That’s a given. But also the idea that people are afraid of it, that’s going to happen to them. So they want to push you and your problem outside of what humanity is.

What meaning do you find in your pain? I struggle with this with what I’ve lived through. I’ve definitely grown and changed a lot. But I don’t know if that’s the meaning of what I’ve experienced.

When I say meaning, I don’t mean “it means that God loves you!” or “it means we’re all going to die someday!” I mean it the way that the things that you do have meaning. For me, swimming in the ocean is very meaningful. I do open water swimming. So it’s more like that. I think about it as thick places in your life that have more meaning than other things. When I walk in the park, that feels meaningful to me, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what it meant. It’s just a thicker place.

That’s beautiful and makes sense! You write of Jesus: “He makes people who are damaged feel healed not by curing them physically but by expanding the definition of what it means to be whole.” I love this! And you say that you can’t go back to your former sense of wholeness. What does wholeness and health look like to you?

I read this really great historical novel about all the people around Jesus. There was an incredible scene where Jesus goes around to heal the lepers, but he doesn’t really heal them. They still have all their things, but they feel healed. That was helpful to me, because it’s not that there’s actual healing…well, there is actual healing! But it’s healing the sense of self, healing the soul.

Since my back stuff, I feel sometimes like I’m barely keeping it together. But I also think that’s okay. I’m never going to go back to being thirty. I think that it’s kind of good; it’s like the Leonard Cohen song, the crack is how the light gets in. It makes me more empathetic to not feel invincible. I really don’t feel invincible anymore. I mean, I might occasionally feel a lot of strength from my reading and my intellectual life but as far as physically, I definitely am very aware of my frailty.

What do you do with that?

It definitely bothers me. But if someone said, “would you go back?” I would say, “no.” I sometimes will see these young people striding down the street, and they seem so arrogant to me. They can throw themselves down the ground and then jump back up, and I would not want to have that kind of arrogance about my body anymore. I want to be connected to the greater suffering of the world and understand my own position in that. To me, that’s very valuable. It’s extremely valuable as a writer, because writing is a lot about empathy, so having an expanded empathy for other people is important.

So is that a piece of how you view wholeness?

I feel the wholeness the most when I have an idea. Or when I’m writing well. Or even when I’m teaching well. I’ll feel a sense of, “wow, there’s a completeness here that’s really lovely.” So that is good. And then, I’m vulnerable. But I can be a complete person with no more bodily perfection. I don’t need to feel these certain things in these certain categories to feel like I’m okay.

Your answers are touching my heart so much.

Oh, I am so glad!

I have so much health trauma from things I still struggle with and also things I’ve healed from but am afraid will come back. You experienced that as well but it sounds like you’re largely in a better place.

Yes I had it both for my back, and then recently about my heart as well. For my back, it was so painful and so relentless that it took me about a year of working with my therapist to get over the fear of it coming back. My therapist said, “why don’t you get a pain management person in case it happens again?” So I talked to somebody and he told me what we would do if I had a relapse, the stages we would go in, and he gave his phone number. That was really helpful to me to have somebody in place in case it did happen again.

Then with my heart, I found out that I had heart disease, and I had basically two years of being scared, like every twinge in my heart, I’d be like, “holy shit, is this happening?” In the last six months or so, I’ve been able to move past that a little bit, too. Maybe some people don’t feel this way. I’m always confused. Do some people find out they have heart disease, and they’re like, “So what?” Or they had their surgery, and they’re like, “Fine!” But for me, there’s a haunting, and it takes a while to dispel. As I say in the book, my friend said to me after her breast cancer, “I have to live with the Death Star inside of me.” My heart’s a little bit like that.

You write that in this phase of your healing, rather than solitude, you need other bodies or the memory of bodies you’ve known. So beautiful! And you also write about pain as a vehicle to greater intimacy with your husband and creating a more empathetic community with those around you. The belief that pain connects us, particularly women.

As I was working on the book, I was talking to a lot of people who were in pain, which felt like a powerful experience; it was very intimate. Then I was thinking about my own pain. And that people tell you that pain is isolating. But is that really true? Like, I did feel isolated, but it was also my first experience of pain. I was a pain newbie. And I wondered if going forward there was a way that I could use the things that happen to me to be connected to people, not feel isolated from them.

When the pain was at its worst, I really got sick of myself. I was thinking about it all the time; I felt like that’s all there was to me, and that I was a weight to other people. I had a little cabin then upstate, and I went out there by myself, thinking, “I’ll be healed in the woods.” But I realize now there was a sense sometimes that would I want to live if the pain continued? I didn’t do anything, but I kind of wonder in going up there, if that was a step in some ways toward the final isolation. It was not a great move. I should have stayed in Brooklyn and had my friends come over.

Your father was a Lutheran minister, and you share some of your experiences of attending church as a child and praying. You write: “My body, as small and weak as it was, could be a conduit to the ultimate power source. The idea that religion comes not from a supernatural being in the sky but from people’s bodies thrills me.” There’s so much I loved in your book, but this really went deep into my heart.

People forget that people made religion. People made God. I’m not saying that there couldn’t be God; I like to keep the door open on mystery, but people are the ones that did that. People forget that the meaning of religion is the body, is your body, and the bodies around you.

I was thinking about this recently, because I went to Lourdes, which is how the book ends, and there’s a grotto and a spring—and then this huge Catholic church is built right on top of it. And this building, which is the most powerful symbol that the Catholic Church has, can’t crush out the power of the spring and the earth. The first thing we worshipped was groundwater. And then bathing our children, bathing ourselves, very meaningful. Honoring the dead, kneeling on the ground when we’re sad, these are things we’ve always done. Before Jesus was born, we did these things. And frankly, I think that when no one on Earth remembers what Christianity was, people will be doing these things. These are the bedrock of the rituals that we think are meaningful. And they’re real. They don’t come from a magic force in the sky. They come from the elements, and the Earth, and our feelings about those things.

You examine the lives of writers who struggled with pain: Frieda Kahlo, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche. You write: “Creativity itself is nurtured by suffering.” Images of the troubled artist, probably drinking too much, flashed through my head.

Well, you shouldn’t force yourself into suffering. Clearly that whole idea of the bohemian suffering writer, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that every life is going to have some pain and suffering. I mean, art can come out of joy, too. But really, I feel like it’s the metaphysical impulse that goes hand-in-hand with suffering and pain that creative work comes out of. I don’t think it’s that you need to suffer to work. I think life is going to have some suffering. That’s your job as the artist to communicate that.

When people suffer, they make art, and that helps other sufferers. I know in my own work, it’s those painful moments, I may not even be writing about them directly, but the emotion and the feeling of them, they’re like a hot coal that’s underneath the text.

I love that! So much is hard right now. Where are you finding joy?

Let’s see, well, I love Brooklyn. I really like the interactions you have with people on the street. I had to run to the grocery store and, on the way home, I helped a guy with a walker get over the ice. And then sometimes people help me. Or I have this crazy wolf hat and sometimes dogs will be like, “Are you a big dog?” Those little things give me joy. I actually heard that there was a scientific study that said that they used to think that long-term relationships made people the happiest. But now they are saying that these kind of communal relationships with strangers also lead to a lot of happiness, because it makes you feel a part of something bigger.

Then two years ago, right after my dad died, I started to do open water swimming in the ocean at Brighton Beach. It’s right on the Q train, so I can be from my house to the ocean in thirty minutes. I got myself a wetsuit and got trained and joined the open water swimmers. It’s always great, but July, August, September into October are the most beautiful swims. I get so high when I get in the water, because I’m like, “I’m in the ocean! I live in the city, and I’m in the ocean!”

Of course, my friends and my daughter and my husband. Also, literary culture. I really like literary culture in Brooklyn. I have so many students that I’m asked a lot to be in conversation with younger writers, and I enjoy that a lot. And then I’ve been trying to eat really well and make nice dinners. Since things have gotten pretty bad—I mean, I go out and protest—but I’ve also been a little bit more home-based, trying to soothe myself. I don’t cook every night, but a couple nights a week I’ll cook for my husband and myself.

My cat. I have the best cat in the world. Also writing. The time I’m at my desk is really a beautiful time for me. I’d say I write between two and six hours a day, depending on how hot the project is and whether I have a deadline. So that’s a constant place of joy for me, too.

NOTE: Darcey wrote this week’s and there’s an excerpt from her book on ! Both are wonderful!

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is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the national bestseller The Queen of the Night. His essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel was named a best book of the year in 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, and Time. In 2025, Kirkus Reviews named it one of the hundred best books of nonfiction of the 21st century. Chee is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction, The Whiting Award, The Guggenheim and The USA Artists’ Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. He writes the Substack newsletter .

1. What are you reading now?

A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken, her long awaited book on fiction writing, a perfect companion to the work of finishing my new novel draft. And by long-awaited I mean I have wanted it ever since she suggested it could exist. I just finished This Is Where The Serpent Lives, by Daniyal Mueeneddin, a novel about social class in contemporary Pakistan that I will be absorbing for a long time, I think.

2, What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

God, I loved so many. I’m pretty sure I wrote my second novel, The Queen of the Night, because I read The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin and it lay in my imagination like a stowaway. I loved the Susan Cooper Dark Is Rising novels also. And the poetry of T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings, whose poems I used to memorize for dramatic interpretation on my high school debate team.

I didn’t start really hiding books until they were gay books, and also stolen—I often shoplifted to avoid paying for a book I wasn’t “supposed” to be reading and so I avoided being denied or exposed at the register. So, The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault is one of those. Also Perfect Freedom, by Gordon Merrick.

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I do reread in dark times. But as I’m a teacher of writing, it’s a bit of a professional thing. I have taken to listening to favorite novels on audiobook also for consolation. I recently listened to The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and was spellbound by it. The actor reading it was also able to do all of the different British accents, it occurred to me, and so it was a treat and also a bit of a salve on how much I miss London after my four months there in 2023.

I remember during the first year of the COVID pandemic it was very hard for me to read anything or to write. But what brought me out of it was listening to an audiobook of Maurice by E. M. Forster, which then got me to reread it next, and the spell seemed to break. It was terrible to feel shut out of the only solace I’d ever really known besides wandering the woods or swimming. I’ve reread it three times now in the last six years along with A Room With A View, Howard’s End and Where Angels Fear To Tread. Also Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin, a good novel to also read aloud from.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

There’s a navy canvas Carhartt zip front hooded jacket I’ve had since… I don’t even know how long actually. It’s one of my oldest jackets. The sleeves are fraying near the cuff, and it’s still warm. I just replaced it with a new one made of denim.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

That the answer to political paralysis and despair is to do more, not less, in the service of your beliefs. This was in a recent Tessie McMillan Cottom talk she put up on her Instagram, but I think it was for PBS Newshour.

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

We took care of a friend’s dog a few years ago now, a sweet French bulldog rescue named Freya with a beautiful brindle coat. She had just been rescued when our friend needed surgery on her leg and so we offered to take care of her, a difficult gesture because she barely knew our friend and now we were taking her off to Vermont from Brooklyn. Our friend’s recovery and rehab was long, and we cared for her for about two months. I remember she used to sleep with us sometimes, and when she did she insisted on having her head up near our heads, between us. But if she succeeded, then she snored quite loudly. It wouldn’t wake my husband up for some reason but it woke me. I’d have to leave the room and sleep in our guest room. So we arranged to sleep in a position that didn’t allow her to pull even, but she would try, a kind of inexorable push to the top of the bed. It was so funny, really. She was never frustrated, just so determined.

It was nice for a while to be a professor with a dog and to take her to the office, where she was very popular. She’s back with her owner and has a girlfriend bulldog whose tongue sticks out in a very funny way. They’re really very cute together. But in a way she taught us we didn’t want a dog. Not for now at least. I never want to say never because that’s the next thing that happens. But we love her.

7. What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

I have lived a life I never imagined possible and that no one ever told me I could hope for. So really, all of it. I was told I would never have a lasting relationship, much less a husband. That I couldn’t get published if I wrote about queer lives. That I couldn’t be a teacher if I did that. A lot of my life has been listening to people telling me what I can’t do while I go off and do it.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

I have returned to low impact aerobics, which I used to teach in college. I do the warmups as the coffee brews. It cheers me up. It’s like dancing in the kitchen, I guess. But my favorite way my body expresses itself is of course sex.

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

I have a sabbatical that begins in June, a year’s sabbatical. I’m dreaming big. I want to go to Seoul, and to take my husband, to tour Korea partly for research and partly for fun–he’s never been. I want us to to Big Sur, a dream we keep putting off as we’re terrible about taking trips just for us. I want to go back to London, back to Barcelona, back to Mexico City.

And I want us all to live in a free country, freer than any we’ve ever known. There’s a lot of writing in here too but I’ll keep that to myself for now.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

There’s so many, I barely know where to begin. But I can think of one: Elizabeth McCracken writing a note to me after I was rejected for the Provinceton Work Center back in the 1990s. She said some nice things about my sample, and she really didn’t have to. It helped me through a difficult time of uncertainty over my writing career, mostly due to my self-doubts but partly due to very real homophobia and racism. Many years later we are friends.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

My love for my husband, and his for me. Last year I went back to the place where I was living when I met him and was doing some research. I remembered enjoying my life there but what I understood as I sorted through those memories was how I was lonely then in a way I never recognized before I met him.

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Daily Chats With My Body

I’ve shared before that I talk to myself a lot: kind, tender, supportive words that nurture and nourish my, at times, beleaguered, soul. I never deliberately set this up as a practice; rather, I woke up one morning, in the throes of the extremely-bad-health years, saying to myself over and again, I love you, Jane. I love you, Jane. This conversation has never stopped.

In keeping with this, I also talk directly to my body. A lot. If I almost slip on ice or teeter on a basement stair but catch myself in time, I say, “Thank you, body.” On challenging days, which are myriad, I gently acknowledge the challenges out loud and once more offer gratitude: “I know the vertigo is especially bad today, Body. I can feel how hard you’re working to keep us stable. I know we can get to a better place: we’ve been there before, so we can get there again. And maybe even beyond.” And so on.

Likewise, on days when the vertigo is improved, even just a little, or the pain has let up, or any other symptom has shifted, I celebrate it. “Body, we’re doing well today. Thank you for that. It feels really good to not struggle so much and to be able to enjoy more pleasure. Thank you!”

I’ve been acknowledging and soothing the challenging days for years and years now, but celebrating the good days is fairly new. For so long, I took those for granted, almost didn’t notice them. The moment my body was functioning better, I simply moved into doing more without a sense of thankfulness or grace, as if this is what my body should be doing so there was no need to pause and acknowledge as much. When I slipped back, that I would notice!

I’m not suggesting that, on good days, moving into more pleasure or fun or adventure or work or whatever the case may be is bad. I long to resume a fuller, richer life. But I’m happy this new practice arose in me; it allows me to feel even more connected with my body and to recognize expectations I’ve put on her that have been perhaps unkind. It also gives me the opportunity to thank my body for all the health I do carry. Which is myriad. Putting aside all the head and brain injury challenges, I’m one of the healthiest people I know.

I hug myself in gratitude throughout the day, kiss my inner wrists, for all that my body has accomplished even if it’s super small. I thank my body for her strength, flexibility, ability to digest food well, to sleep, to walk, to bend and stretch, to hold things, take on and off stubborn winter boots, zip up jackets, step in and out of my soaker tub, and all the rest. Not to sound too Pollyanna-ish, but these days I take very little for granted when it comes to my body and her capabilities.

I thought I was alone in this until I interviewed Alua Arthur who shared that each night she silently thanks her body for carrying her through the day. She added, “Sometimes I say [thanks] out loud, especially when I’m doing something ridiculous and I don’t slip and fall and injure myself. I’m like, “Oh, thanks!””

And Andrea Gibson shared that they, too, spend the day conversing with their body: “I say, “Hey there, body. How are you doing today, body? I love you, body. Hey there, face.”

Half Hour Daily Rest

For most of my life, I’ve been terrible at resting. I’ve always had a lot of energy, off-the-charts curiosity, and a willingness to try almost anything (unless it was obviously ridiculously dangerous!). My personality would best be described as go-go-go. Even before my time was taken over by my healthcare needs, tending to elderly animal beloveds, running my own business, resistance meetings, and the seemingly endless (endless!) responsibilities and chores of living alone, I was not one to pause. (Although, I was an avid-avid reader, which I’ve now learned is a form of resting: thank you, !)

About two years ago, I gave myself the challenge of taking a half-hour break once a day. I say “challenge” because from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I’m engaged in something that absolutely has to be done. No wiggle room. I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I made it all the way through a to-do. (Is this even possible? Does anyone?). In fact, my to-do list has usually grown over the course of the day.

But, holy kamoly, the days I am able to rest, to put down the list for half an hour, my nervous system calms more than I ever imagined. I read books that aren’t work-related, I paint my watercolor birds and flowers, I’m attempting some sort of felted embroidery wonderment, a few times I’ve even napped! In the warm months, I lie on the grass, watch the squirrels race across their highway of tree branches, listen to the birds as they chat with one another, build nests, feed their young, stare into the sky. Sometimes, I just gaze at Delilah and Rudy Lu, study their sweet fragile eyelashes, marvel at their firm, capable bodies, inhale their lovely paw smell. My body and soul deeply need this sort of nourishment. Afterwards, I feel grounded, happy, better able to be in this troubled world.

Alas, this doesn’t happen every day. Or even every week. But when it happens, I feel so lucky and revitalized and hopeful. If you’re not already, and can incorporate this practice of rest into your life, I highly recommend it.

Donna Eden Energy Medicine

Since the head and brain injury, Chinese Medicine has been the backbone of my healing. So it’s no surprise that Donna Eden’s energy work, which is based in part on the meridians, has helped me tremendously.

From the time she was a little girl, Donna could see energy: nine different systems, from chakras to meridians to auric field to ones you might not have heard of.

Born with a heart murmur, Donna contracted tuberculosis at five, had severe food and environmental allergies, and at sixteen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At twenty-seven, she had a heart attack, and given that the MS was progressing and she was now experiencing multiple organ dysfunction syndrome as her body’s systems broke down, she was told by five highly respected specialists to get her affairs in order. Western medicine had no way to stop the progression.

It was then that Donna realized that in addition to seeing the body’s various subtle energies in the human energy field, she could shift the energy into healthier flows by using her hands. From her wheelchair, she began experimenting and, within a few days, felt some relief. She could walk within several weeks and was completely symptom-free and healthy after two years. Her doctors were astounded.

I was instantly drawn to Donna’s work, and yet also cautious. Firstly, despite most of my healing coming from alternative protocols, I maintain a skeptic’s mind. So the notion that I could move my own energy at home to facilitate my healing was a bit of a stretch. Secondly, Donna is positively giddy! And being the Capricorn I am, raised by two British parents, I was wary. Luckily, I soon enough understood all that giddiness was pure joy and radiant health.

I’ve been doing Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine for well over a decade now, and it’s been abundantly healing, nurturing, and nourishing. I cannot imagine what my health or my life would be like without this. You can do it lying down, sitting, standing, walking, or have someone do it on you. My day starts with a short routine I created that I do in bed. They’re easy exercises that boost energy, relieve stress, strengthen the immune system, and more. I usually do them as I say my morning prayers and instantly feel any agitation I may have awoken with (which, lately, is happening more often) ease away. Every other morning, I have a standing and seated routine I do for more a in-depth balancing of my energy systems; it takes me about fifteen minutes. Using my hands to move my energy, I can feel my body shift into a calm, grounded state, one that offers sustained energy throughout the day Before bed, I do two exercises that help with sleep. I’ve also been seeing a local practitioner, and she’s incredible. If you’re able to find someone near you and can afford a session, I highly recommend it.

Here are links to a few favorites exercises:

Triple Warmer Smoothie: Triple Warmer is the meridian that’s in charge of fight, flight, or freeze. Donna teaches this in a few different ways. This version helps protect the heart while also reducing stress. You can also smooth around your ear, across your shoulder, down the back of your arm, and off your fourth finger, one side at a time. This helps relieve stress so much!

The Hook Up: I do this one the moment I open my eyes. It connects the central meridian and the governing meridian and helps the whole system synchronize and settle. The slight upward lift combined with slow breathing activates the vagus nerve, shifts the body toward parasympathetic calm, and helps organize scattered or overwhelmed energy.

The Zip Up: Here you’re tracing up the Central meridian as a means to protect your energy field from any difficult energy that’s out there—which is a lot these days! When I remember, I do this before entering challenging situations.

Taking Down The Flame: I do this a couple of times just before getting into bed, after saying my prayers. It calms my whole body.

Connecting Heaven and Earth: I also do this one before bed—but it’s great to do during the day, too. During the warm months, I love doing it outside between the spacious sky and verdant land.

Friends, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Donna’s work is so expansive and can address so many issues, physical, mental, and emotional. Hospitals and doctors worldwide have adopted her protocols, including Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. If this work interests you, just start googling and you’ll find a wealth of information. My favorite is Radiant Circuits! Many years ago, I discovered Prune Harris, who studied under Donna and later formed her own programs. She’s also wonderful.

Humans have this odd habit of comparing the worst of us to non-human animals, the most common of which is pigs. In recent years, on social media, I’ve seen Trump, Epstein, Miller, et cetera labeled as pigs, as if this is the most horrible insult imaginable. I’ve taken to leaving comments reminding people that pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive, kind, curious, playful, loyal, social, marvelous beings. Do any of those traits describe Trump and his goons? I wish we would stop this practice and simply call brutal, cruel, sick humans what they are: human. Leave the non-human animals out of our horror!

I’m pretty sure I started watching Queer Eye on Season One and instantly felt kinship. Yet I still found myself fast forwarding through stretches of it. With each season, that lessened until I discovered I was kind of madly in love with the lot of them. I don’t know if they changed or I changed but this show consistently brings me to tears. Kindness is its driving force. And whilst most of us can’t offer the level of support that comes with a big television show budget, it highlights what a life-altering impact deep listening, kindness, and practical help can have at any level. Mr. Rogers said to look for the helpers. Well, here’s five of them!

Also: It’s their final season!! 😿❤️

In case you missed them, here are two prior newsletters about things that help comfort, nourish, and strengthen my nervous system as well as the rest of me!

❤️ Thank you to everyone who’s joined this beautiful community devoted to bringing as much light as possible into this world of ours. If you enjoy what I publish, I’d love your support. Beyond is my heart’s work and it’s also a lot work; plus, I pay guest contributors. If you find yourself here often, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. And deep gratitude to those of you who already are. ❤️

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How about you, what practices are helping you through these dark times? How much rest do you get in? Practices that calm and invigorate you? Do you talk to your body? If so, what do you say? Has your heart been moved by Queer Eye?

I have someone in my life who tells lies about me. A handful of them I can prove aren’t true. Most of them I cannot. And undoubtedly, there are many that I don’t even know about.

These lies cover all aspects of my life; no stone is left unturned. For decades, I did my best to fight them, sometimes directly to this person, sometimes by attempting to correct the record with those I cared about, and sometimes just in my own head. To be clear, many of these lies were spread with the intent of undermining my physical and mental health, rattling the foundations of relationships with family members, and negatively impacting my financial well-being. And in some cases, they succeeded. Being on the receiving end of relentless and ever-changing lies is exhausting. It’s also dispiriting. In truth, it nearly broke me.

As with much of what I write about here, I feel certain many of you have some version of this lie-defense scenario in your life. And now it’s happening to our entire country on a grand government scale.

Lies are a form of violence. They’re a shock to our nervous systems and wreak havoc on our hearts and minds. Even when there’s no doubt that what’s being put forth is untrue, when there is irrefutable evidence (such as the video of Alex Pretti being executed by Border Patrol), our bodies are programmed to flip into fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop mode in order to protect us. And our minds—especially those of us with trauma backgrounds or raised with the belief that others (in particular, straight white male authority figures) know better than we do even about our own experiences—may wonder for a split second if what we absolutely know is not true is true.

I’m not talking about white lies, telling someone you like their sweater because it clearly brings them joy (and doesn’t make them look ridiculous). And honestly, these days, seeing the joy an unfortunate sweater brings someone does make me like it. If it brings joy, it’s a good sweater!

I’m talking about lies told with the intent of cruelty. Kristi Noem stating that Alex Pretti approached Border Patrol armed and with the intent to cause harm when multiple videos clearly show that, in fact, he was murdered. That lie is violence against Alex Pretti and his parents and his friends and his family. It’s also violence against each of us, demanding that we defy what we know to be true.

The liar in my own life has gone from lying about me to others to lying directly to me about myself. Are they delusional and actually believe the things they’re saying? Are they texting them so that if others were to read it they would look like a good, kind, supportive human (the latest lie stating that they helped me during my most challenging health years in concrete ways when in fact not only weren’t they helping me, they were admonishing other people not to help me)? Are they attempting to gaslight me? I don’t know.

Lies shoot out beyond their target. Once a lie is out in the world, it has the potential to plant the seed of doubt in anyone who’s exposed to it. We don’t always know what to believe, so in an effort to be fair, “good” people are trained to look for equivalent behavior from both parties. I get it. I too have done this. But when it comes to liars like Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, JD Vance, and the rest of this crew, there is no equivalent behavior. They are lying with the intent to cause harm. Sometimes there aren’t two equal parties. Sometimes one party is just fucking lying.

This isn’t to say I’m a perfect person who hasn’t said or done things that have hurt people. Hurting people is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of being human. And when I do, I try my best to take responsibility for my words or actions, as do those with whom I choose to surround myself. This is the normal scale of human interaction. We are not acting or speaking with the express intent to harm others. What’s happening in our country and by many abusers is not on the normal scale. But they want us to think it is.

Growing up, I had a mad crush on Paul Newman (he and Sidney Poitier were my lifelong heartthrobs) and saw Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at far too young an age. It’s a story about family and love and getting older and dying and class and dreams and hopes—and the toll lying takes on this fragile human existence. The damage lying does to every character’s soul is palpable. It was the first time I heard the word mendacity, which isn’t surprising as I was probably six or seven! Mendacity is the habit of lying. The moment when Paul Newman and Burl Ives’ characters, after much scraping and belittling of the other, share their most tender, fiercely-protected truths with each other in the basement of their home, their broken world, heals them. Not completely. But it is the beginning of hope.

I, too, have been in the basement, not of a Southern manor rather my own beleaguered soul. The lies against me reached a fever pitch when I was at my sickest and continued during the years of recovery. Some piece of me believed the lies must be true, otherwise why were they being told? And that piece, tiny though she was—vulnerable, confused, heartbroken, scared—wielded a lot of power. Yes, I was out there sticking up for myself. Yes, I was taking steps to correct any wrongs I could. But inside, despite knowing the truth, that tiny part of me was still accepting someone else’s reality over my own.

Until one day I sat on the couch and said the first lie aloud. I breathed it in, felt it vibrate through every cell and organ in my body, breathed it out, and said, “That’s a lie.” I felt the truth of my words, the truth of my knowing, the truth of the fucking truth resonate through me. Then I moved on to the next lie. For weeks, I did this while walking the dogs, washing the dishes, gardening, in the bath, before bed. I also took to shouting the truth in my back garden, my living room, with trusted friends. The longer I did this, the better I felt. I grew stronger, healthier, more confident.

These experiences brought me closer to myself, allowed me better insight into who I am, what I value, how I want to be in the world, and what it means to be me. They also helped me recognize when those around me, especially my college students, were likewise struggling with bullies and to help them move into their truths. I’ve always been tough, but this practice created the toughest structures to safely hold the truth. It also softened me. Soft is not something I have always been, at least not outside of my own heart. Having someone else attempt to force a false narrative onto your life provides laser-sharp clarity on what is true. As well as the power of rage, which is sometimes required to create boundaries. I used to feel that boundaries were unkind or inappropriate or overreactive or overly sensitive, but really, I just hadn’t been raised to tell liars to back the fuck off.

Author Amy B. Scher, who helped me heal my nervous system tremendously, cautions that making excuses about the liar’s behavior or ‘trying’ to have a relationship around those lies sends our nervous system into disarray, forcing us to stay on guard rather than living in a relaxed and safe state of being as we deserve. I wasted so much energy defending myself against decades of lies, a loss of energy I now believe slowed my healing. My own liar has been out of my life for a while, but the imprint they left remains, and such imprints can haunt us.

America is likewise acknowledging her lies and shouting out her truths; we only need to look at Minneapolis (and pretty much every corner of this country) to see the impact. It’s an understatement to say we have a mendacious government. Watching the global resistance grow and thrive, speak truth to the relentless lies, share energy sources—when one of us flounders, another rises—does my heart good, as my mom would have said. And it helps diminish the haunting.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the resistance grew up with a bully, with a liar, and with no one protecting them from this form of violence. And now, our country is deep in the trauma of lies—and here too, those who should be protecting us aren’t. So we’ve become our own protectors. By healing ourselves, we heal our country. By healing our country, we heal ourselves.

I often see people self-identifying as Christian whilst supporting the brutality of this regime being asked, “What about the teachings of Jesus? What about ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’?” I wonder if they are loving their neighbor as they love themselves. Perhaps they hate themselves. So they are hating their neighbors. We are up against self-hatred. And self-hatred is a violent, contagious rot.

The antidote to self-hatred is self-love. This leads to love of others, and love of the planet and her animals. Love is also contagious.

Lies aren’t just words; they’re energy that exerts a powerful gravitational force. The cruelty is the point. The violence is the point.

But love is also an energy that exerts a powerful gravitational force. I don’t mean to sound Pollyanna-ish. I’m struggling with the audacity of our government to tell outlandish, violent, cruel lies, even when incontrovertible evidence exists to counter them. I’m concerned and sometimes (often) terrified about what will happen next. I’m heartbroken. I’m furious. I’m exhausted. I’m deep in grief.

But the power of love is something to behold. And it’s happening. It is happening.

On a seemingly unrelated, yet very much related, note, I finally watched Heated Rivalry. For the first two or three episodes, I was more caught up in it out of craft curiosity: time moves quickly and the writer in me was fascinated by how they were developing character and moving the plot with these snippets and these fairly large jumps in time. And, also, how it was a show revolving around two athletes that wasn’t focused on the tension of winning.

Then everything shifts. The pacing slows way down and it becomes so tender and so beautiful. Oh my heart. It renewed my hope in the enormous power of love. Above everything else, that’s what we see exploding in our country right now: love.

My niece encouraged me to follow the two leads on IG and they’re wonderful; they always put a smile on my face.

And another seemingly-unrelated-and-yet-it’s-not note, this poem always gets me, and gets me deep. Maybe it will get you deep, too.

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

By Kim Addonizio

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

I was lucky enough to start listening to Bruce Springsteen with the release of his first album. A friend of a friend lived in Asbury Park and turned all of us onto him in the early days. We saw him play clubs right up through arenas. We almost always had front row and we often made our way backstage. Although over the years, I’ve not always been madly in love with a particular album, I’ve never wavered from holding Springsteen in the very very very highest esteem. He’s a decent, kind, compassion, intelligent man who does so much to help people. I feel lucky to be on this planet at the same time he is. If you haven’t yet heard this song, here you go!

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is the Publisher of Empress Editions, an award-winning independent press distributed by Hachette Book Group and dedicated to amplifying the voices, stories, and cultural authority of midlife women. A writer, editor, and media entrepreneur, she is the author of Gotham Girl, Interrupted and the forthcoming novel Ellery Goes Dark.

In addition to her books, Alisa writes Newsletter and the comedic Substack , where she explores culture, creativity, ambition, and midlife reinvention with humor and candor. Through Empress Editions, she is building a bold, multimodal publishing ecosystem spanning books, audio, AI-driven reader experiences, and film- and television-ready IP. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes in pajamas whenever possible, and believes—fiercely—that stories can still change lives.

1. What are you reading now?

Mostly submissions—which is its own genre, honestly. One in particular has that quiet, uncanny Emily St. John Mandel energy that makes you sit up straighter and whisper, please let us get to do this one. The truth is… I could find a way to edit, fix, and sell almost—just out of love for an author’s voice. It’s the voice we invest in for a lifetime—over any type of media.

I just finished The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett. Her entire backlist is a delight, but this book is pure chef’s-kiss dopamine. There’s a cat named Pancakes who is—spoiler alert—an agent of death. I loved it. Everyone gets to mess up repeatedly and with real abandon, and yet there is so much forgiveness. It’s almost holy. I half expected Josh O’Connor to wander in from Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (required holiday viewing in our house) and absolve everyone on the spot. I missed these characters immediately. I wanted to keep hanging out with the lovely randos of Pondville, Massachusetts forever.

And because I believe in balance, I’m also listening to North Woods by Daniel Mason, which I somehow missed when it first came out. It’s hypnotic—like wandering through a forest where time folds in on itself and you’re very happy to be lost.

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

A Wrinkle in Time was everything to me—Madeleine L’Engle was my spiritual north star. Add The Chronicles of Narnia, The Secret Garden, Mary Poppins, Little Women, and every single Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mystery ever written.

I definitely snuck Judy Blume’s Wifey and Forever past my parents, along with a highly adult biography of Edie Sedgwick, the title of which I’m completely blanking on—but it was not age-appropriate. I think I snuck it out past the librarian under my plaid skirt.

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I Capture the Castle. Cassandra’s voice—hopeful, sharp, and hilarious in the face of utter ruin—never fails to steady me. The bohemian stepmother is one of literature’s great unsung comic achievements. That book reminds me that despair and humor can coexist beautifully, often in the same paragraph. And I love their solution to writer’s block. Truly inspired nonsense.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

Pajamas. Specifically white cotton, old-school Diane Keaton pajamas à la Something’s Gotta Give. I own multiple pairs. I live in them. If I could make them formalwear, I would.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

Even when everything feels like it’s going completely kaflooey, I’ve now lived long enough—and seen enough—to trust that I have the discernment and resources to handle whatever comes next. This is deeply comforting and also mildly annoying, because it means I can no longer pretend I don’t know better.

6. Tell me about a special relationship you’ve had with an animal.

We once had a chicken at my father’s ranch who survived a brutal bear attack that wiped out her entire flock and almost ate my brother. (Which was a shame) The bear was named Gwyneth Paltrow—I don’t know why—but she was very bossy about territory and had consciously uncoupled with two cubs she was quite fond of.

The chicken survived but was never the same. She followed people around like a dog, stationed herself at windows, sang back if you sang to her, and developed an intense love of sourdough. We called her Needy, because she had what can only be described as an attachment disorder. One Thanksgiving, I made pumpkin pies and realized—mid-bake—that the eggs I’d used were Needy’s eggs. Tiny, anxious eggs from a deeply traumatized bird. I panicked. Could I serve trauma pies? Was this a karmic violation? The internet weighed in. Poems were written. Art was made. Needy achieved cult status. We even recorded Have Yourself a Needy Little Christmas together in the garden. Watching strangers bond with a scrawny, anxious chicken who refused to be invisible was unexpectedly—and genuinely—moving.

7. What’s one thing you’re happy worked out differently than you expected?

Empress Editions. The women who’ve come together because of it—their brilliance, generosity, and shared sense of building something that actually matters—none of that could have been planned. It’s been the great surprise of my professional life. I’d love to name them all right here, but I’d mess it up.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen?

Both. Loudly. With a heavy rotation of musicals. I am a complete ham and have made peace with it (even if the neighbors have not). I usually perform the whole of Once Upon a Mattress in the shower from beginning to end, all the parts—even the cheesy Minstrel, which makes for insane hot water bills. I’m sure the co-op board is going to set the dogs on me at the next meeting, but I love Carol B. and I’m no quitter.

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

That my kids finally forgive me for maybe 85% of my f*ckups? And see that (much like in The Correspondent) “I was just a girl.”

That Empress Editions thrives and outlasts me. And that I finish my next novel—ideally tomorrow—without inventing new and creative ways to procrastinate.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

Someone once looked at a lost, ragamuffin child and thought, Oh—this little girl belongs with us. That simple act of recognition changed everything.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

Stories. A story can save you. I’ve seen it happen.

If you enjoyed Alisa’s answers, you might also enjoy this one with Mesa Fama:

⭐️⭐️Beyond is a reader-supported publication that pays contributors. Thank you to everyone who’s joined this beautiful, growing community devoted to bringing as much light as possible into this world of ours. If you would like to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Beyond cannot exist without you! ⭐️⭐️

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Hello Beyonders!

I know we’re all struggling with the chaos, cruelty, insanity, gleeful abuse, staggering lies and so much more whirling constantly around us. It’s a lot. Like, a lot-a lot.

In light of this, I decided to share some of the practices that have helped me through extraordinarily difficult and sometimes terrifying health challenges. Not the same as one’s country being controlled by a madman and his minions, but both situations benefit from the calmest nervous system we can conjure.

Initially, I thought I was going to write out everything I do, but it quickly became apparent there were too many. So today I’m sharing three. I must admit, I feel a bit vulnerable sharing the first one in particular, and the second to a lesser degree as well. And I’m concerned that they’re of no help to others. But a dear friend read them and swore on her much beloved bunny that they may very well be of benefit, so here they are. Take what serves you and ignore the rest!

xJane

Bedtime Prayers

In the aftermath of head and brain injury, for nearly a decade, I was lucky if I slept two to three hours a night. Once a champion sleeper, the blow to my head, amongst other things, messed up my nervous system and my endocrine system, and I was often awake for two or three days straight—even through some major drugs.

I became terrified to go to bed—because bed was a terrifying place to be. To help calm myself, I began saying two prayers every night that I still say to this day.

The first came about when my naturopathic doctor suggested I call my spirit back each night, in keeping with the shamanic practice of calling back lost parts of ourselves. Now, usually as I climb the stairs to my bedroom, Rudy Lu in my arms and Delilah at my side, I still say, “Spirit, spirit, spirit, I call you back into my heart that I might sleep and heal, sleep and heal.” And I do feel pieces of myself that have perhaps stretched out too far during the day return to me.

Over time, I added a second prayer, inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dedicating any virtue we generate for the benefit of others. After calling back my spirit I say, “I dedicate any virtue I generated today for the benefit of all sentient beings, in particular Rudy Lu, Delilah, and Cookie. And all the animals everywhere of the land, sea, and air, especially those suffering or in danger. And myself on my healing journey.” Then I add by name any person, animal, place, fauna or flora who may be in immediate need. Granted “all sentient beings” covers, well, everyone but it feels poignant to acknowledge each beloved, including myself. I end with “jai,” Sanskrit for praise or victory, a closing Sharon Gannon taught me back in my days of Jivamukti Yoga. Together, these prayers signal to my body that it’s time for deep, restorative sleep.

These days, I sleep quite well, and these prayers were among many things that helped me get here.

I’ve never shared this practice with even close friends, so sharing it with 20,000 of you feels a bit vulnerable—but I’m hoping it might be of help in these difficult times.

Self-Forgiveness

Ages ago, when I was still in the thick of the terror health years, a beloved healthcare practitioner taught me ho’oponopono, an ancient Hawaiian practice for forgiveness and reconciliation.

You repeat four statements: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

She shared the story of Dr. Hew Len, a psychologist who recited this prayer every day whilst reviewing the files of the patients under his care. Over time, they all healed, and the facility was closed.

I took to it immediately, reciting the mantra whilst imagining someone I sought a more peaceful relationship with. I was moved by the practice. Taking responsibility for myself has always uplifted me.

Lately, I’ve been saying this prayer to myself and my body, and it’s been one of the most glorious and transformative experiences of my life. My body and I have been on quite a journey. The same is probably true for most of you.

It began a couple of months ago, after Delilah and I got ourselves into a precarious situation that required going down a hill of pure ice, with me doing a crab walk. We made it safely, though I messed up my already messed-up back, but the reason we landed in that tricky situation at all was that I’d made a bad decision on one of our walks through the woods, a decision where I knew better. I replayed that bad decision over and over again in my head whilst watching myself scoot down the hill on my butt. I work diligently to stay as healthy as possible and to avoid situations that might present unnecessary physical challenges; I was devastated and shocked that I put myself and D in these circumstances. On the thousandth mental loop through, I heard myself saying, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. My body simultaneously relaxed and plumped up with love. And then I couldn’t stop saying it.

My back was pretty bad, but I recited the mantra over and again that night and the next morning, picturing myself inching down the hill, filling that Jane from a few hours ago with love words from deep within the deepest part of my being. By the afternoon, I was in good shape. Would this have happened anyway? Or had I opened a tender and much-needed communication? Who knows. But once I began, I couldn’t stop. I remember times when my body and I have been in challenging or scary or unkind situations, I draw up that Jane in those circumstances with as much precision as I can muster and I recite the mantra to her; I do so until I struggle to hold the memory which is how I know something has shifted. Sometimes, it’s from decades and decades ago. Sometimes, a handful of years. Sometimes that morning. It doesn’t matter. My body perceives it as an act of self-recognition and self-love, and it melts into the sweetness.

I continue to also use it in relation with others. For instance, I did quite a few rounds on my sweet girl D, who was physically fine getting down that hill, but was undoubtedly flooded by my anxiety and self-blame!

Every time I do this practice, I feel happier and healthier and more connected to myself and the world around me. No doubt, there will be naysayers! And that’s okay. We all have different approaches to being a human on this crazy, mixed-up planet of ours. This is one that helps me.

Happy, Joyful Algorithms

When I interviewed Martha Beck, she shared that, through careful use, she’d turned her social media algorithm to almost exclusively dogs and otters, and suggested we all do the same to keep growing light within the chaos of darkness.

As you may have guessed, my feeds were already full of animals, but I added some more. Here are a few that keep me hopeful, grounded, and grateful.

Aloka The Peace Dog

The Asher House

Simon Sits

Niall Harbison

There are more I could include, but these are my favs as of late.

I would love to find the cat versions of these; if anyone knows of any, please drop them in the comments!

I previously wrote about how Stinging Nettle Infusions, Magnesium, Passionflower, Saying My Name Out Loud, and EFT have all helped me tremendously, especially with sleep.

❤️ Thank you to everyone who’s joined this beautiful community devoted to bringing as much light as possible into this world of ours. If you enjoy what I publish, I’d love your support. Beyond is my heart’s work and it’s also a lot work; plus, I pay guest contributors. If you find yourself here often, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. And deep gratitude to those of you who already are. ❤️

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What techniques or practices do you have to calm your nervous system and stay grounded? Anyone you follow on socials who inspires you, grows your heart, makes you laugh? Anyone else have experience with ho’oponopono? How are we all sleeping at the moment? What sleep practices help you?

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Friends,

Things are bad right now in so many ways. We’re scared and exhausted and full of fury and anguish, and hope is hard to come by. Those of us with abusers in our lives, people we have fought against with every drop of our being, see abusers being celebrated for their outrageous, unfathomable cruelty on a national scale, and it’s triggering. Many of us see parallels to atrocities in the past and are frightened for what lies ahead.

I don’t know the way out of this, but I do know we need to hold each other close and not be divided by those who desperately seek to tear us apart.

I remember the first protest I attended in Washington, D.C., when I was eighteen: US out of El Salvador. For hours, tens of thousands of us marched through the streets toward the Capitol, over and again declaring: The people united will never be defeated!

I have attended countless protests since, with countless slogans, but none of them has resonated with my heart as deeply as that one. Probably because it’s true.

I am heartened by the people holding onto the good in this country. The people rising in kindness and determination and vision. What we are up against can feel insurmountable; they want us to feel that. But the web of justice and compassion and devotion that runs through our communities is potent and indestructible.

Don’t let them divide us.

*
I often scroll through the library of Beyond interviews I’ve been lucky enough to build, searching for wisdom, guidance, and insight on how to get through this world.

Today, I went in search of kindness. Of course, I found it. And a few other nuggets that, while not explicitly talking about kindness, are doing so implicitly.

Reading them both comforted and inspired me. It’s my hope they do the same for you.

xJane

The Person on the Other Side Is Just As Real as You Are

For me, [kindness is] the practice of trying to believe that the person on the other side is just as real as you are. You happen to be seeing things through these eyes. But theoretically, you could flip around and see them through the other person’s eyes, and it would be the same universe.

That has a lot of moral implications, but it also has aesthetic implications. Meaning that story is like a snow globe that you can walk around and go, “Oh, if I imagined these events from this point of view, it would look like this. If I change the perspective, it looks like that.” In the end, the holographic view of the story would be infused with total compassion because you’d know every angle and they would all seem completely reasonable.

— [read George’s full interview]

Tenderness and Warmth in Community

I think that it's a challenge to find tenderness and warmth on a day-by-day basis, to say nothing of an hour-by-hour basis. Often, it's wildly dependent on your personal circumstances: your geography, your degree of ableness, your degree of marginalization. But insofar as I found tenderness and warmth, it has been largely in community, whether that's with one person or many people, in person or virtual. That’s what I keep coming back to: what are the many different forms that warmth and tenderness can take? And what are the many different forms that community can take? What are the things that people have to do to be okay? And what happens when that changes for them?

— [read Bryan’s full interview]

Move Out What Doesn’t Belong to You

I'm able now to call something out and say, “Oh, that's white supremacy. That's their mental illness. That's capitalism. That's their mental illness.” And move that out of me. That has nothing to do with me. That's everything to do with them. I don't want to engage in that because that blocks my own abundance. I'm not advocating for silence. We should be loud about injustices. We should call out injustices. We should advocate to end injustices. But I'm not arguing with the folks who are committing the unjust acts.

— [read Nicole’s full interview]

Still This Light at the Center

It's always important for me when I write about the kind of people I write about, who could be members of my family or people from my community, that there's an element of hope there. There's still an element of joy. There's still this light at the center. Because when I think about my maternal grandmother, my dad, my mom, when I think even further back about my great grandparents and all the things that they lived through, without hope or without that presence of that light in their lives, whatever that meant for them, they wouldn't have survived what they survived. And they wouldn't have thrived in spite of whatever they survived.

— Jesmyn Ward [read Jesmyn’s full interview]

Kindness Is the Way Out

If I said to an anxious person, “Be calm,” there’s no way they could do that. They could pretend they were calm, but they could not be calm on command. But if I gave them a shivering, trembling, wet puppy that somebody tried to drown in a ditch and said, “Be kind,” then no matter how they were feeling, they would know how to be kind to the puppy, even if they felt frantic inside. Kindness is the way out. It’s the thing that stops the spin of the anxiety. Even if you do nothing more than learn to speak kindly to yourself in your own mind.

It makes me realize why the Dalai Lama says, “My religion is kindness.” I have a friend who goes to all his speeches, and she heard him say once, “It’s very rare that I can be completely kind for a whole day.” This is a man who literally does nothing else. He knows that the brain is set to spin and react to the circumstances of our lives, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, by getting into fretful places. And he knows that it is a commitment and a discipline to respond with kindness to the self. Don’t even bring in other people for a while. Just try responding to any stimulus around you by being as kind to yourself as you know how to be. Your life will change in such positive ways.

— Martha Beck [read Martha’s full interview]

These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you

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How are you getting through these days? What’s bringing you comfort? What’s grounding and steadying you? Possibly even bringing joy? Where are you finding support? What sort of support are you needing?

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I am full of want, I thought as I sat on my couch last week, an urgent list of everything I wanted rushing out of me. Desire and longing so strong, so vivid, I thought the intensity might stop my heart. But I also knew that stifling it—as I’d done for so long due to health challenges that render much of my longing unattainable—would cause my heart to shatter into a million teensy, weensy pieces. And that seemed worse. A stopped heart can be cajoled back into life; a heart in a million teensy, weensy pieces cannot. So with Delilah curled on one side of me and Rudy Lu curled on the other, I shouted out my longings.

It was wonderful to expose them to the light of the world. I felt like Alice after she finished the “Eat Me” cake and was suddenly too big for the room.

I won’t bore you with the list. It went on for a while. Some wants for me. Some for loved ones. Some for the animals and planet. Some for all.

I know I am not alone in wanting. Our world is driven by want. The want of materialistic desires, yes, but also the want to relieve suffering for ourselves, others, the planet and her animals. In many religions, want or desire is considered the source of the very suffering we want to relieve, or even evil. But good or bad, what came to life for me that day on the couch was how much I had suppressed mine.

I can trace how I got here. When I was at my sickest, I was in nonstop survival mode, the deepest and thickest of which lasted well over a year. Even now, I have not completely left it behind. I face daily health challenges. And I have trauma from all that I’ve lived through, which can be triggered far too easily (don’t get me started about my sleep trauma, so vibrant in my body still, even though I’m largely a good sleeper these days).

I imagine many of you can find yourselves in this, even if your survival mode wasn't triggered by physical health issues. Survival mode, by definition, does not allow for wanting or desiring; your focus is simply on getting yourself from one moment to the next. It’s an exhausting and often terrifying way to live. Your nervous system, your adrenals, your hopes for yourself, your dreams, your desires—they all get blown up. Boom!

I talked myself through so many seconds and minutes and days and weeks and months and years: Put the bread in the toaster. Push the lever down. Put the kettle on the ring. Light it. Entire days spent narrating to myself that precise moment because the chaos in my brain and body was so extreme, I couldn’t have functioned otherwise.

In a sense, the force to stay alive is a form of wanting. The most primordial want there is. But I’m thinking here of more pleasure-oriented or even ego-driven desires that are necessary for a rich life: companionship, stability, travel, sex, success, romance, mischief, recognition, adventure, community, et cetera. Survival mode offers no space for these. When you are trying to simply make it through the day, it’s not possible to imagine birthday parties or weekend trips or publishing a book or having dinner with friends or falling in love—and the unfathomable pain of knowing this is too devastating to consciously carry, so better to go without wanting.

Of course, I’m not talking about the Buddhist practice of freedom from attachment to the stickiness of life that requires acknowledging your desires. I’m talking about a masterful suppression of want in order to survive. A necessary denial. I’m grateful I was able to achieve this; otherwise, my yearnings may have eaten me alive.

All these decades later, my health is much improved. Though I still struggle, I’m far more engaged with the world. This can be a delicate and confusing balance. In the opening paragraph I wrote, “as I’d done for so long due to health challenges that render much of my longing unattainable.” And this is true. And yet, it’s not the same truth as the years in which it was laid. Has my want-suppression become a habit? One I’m not entirely sure how to break?

That which saves us in one phase of our life can inadvertently harm us in another.

I need far less shielding from my longings than I did in those dark days, when my eighty-year-old father had to move in with me to help me—which is a joyful sentence to write. Yet embracing my hopes for myself, hopes that aren’t solely regarding physical improvements, has proven to be a complicated matter. One complication is what if I am healthy enough to want again, to shout my dreams from my couch, and none of them come true? Have I lost my excuse for failure? Over the many years, have my health struggles become protective?

Whenever I write about my struggles, I always want to mention how deep my gratitude is for all that I have. I have so much. The What I Have list far outweighs the I Want list. Even at my darkest, I never lost my gratitude: it’s my root system from which all else grows. I am lucky to be so blessed.

And yet, the lack of many of the things I desire would chalk up points on the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory: companionship, romance, success, financial stability, and, of course, good health. I’m guessing many of you would score points, too. Gratitude and wanting can co-exist.

So what do we do with our wanting?

Growing up, if I wanted something I couldn’t have, my mom would remind me of what my grandmother, who died before I was born, used to say to her when she wanted something she couldn’t have: “Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which gets filled first.” It’s a vulgar old Cockney adage that popped into my head as I contemplated how to end this essay. Whilst wish and want both address desire, they’re not the same. I knew my own perceptions, but looked up various definitions: a wish is a desire that is unlikely to happen, whereas a want is something that is actually possible. And in truth, as I sat on my couch and shouted out my wants, they did seem possible, with some action behind them. And that possibility filled me with hope. As we enter this new year, leaving behind a year of mangled wants, maybe hopeful wanting is a good first step.

recently shared in Notes about Walk For Peace and Aloka the Peace Dog. And I’m so glad she did. Pam wrote, they are “a reminder that there is still so much good in the world even though those in power would have us believe otherwise.” I couldn’t agree more. The monks and Aloka have already soothed my soul considerably and reminded me of the potency of kindness, determination, and putting one foot in front of the other.

I love this version of This Little Light of Mine sung by the incomparable Odetta & The Holmes Brothers.

Friends, let’s let our light shine in 2026! And shine and shine and shine. Our planet needs us, the animals need us — and we need each other!

❤️ Thank you to everyone who’s joined this beautiful community devoted to bringing as much light as possible into this world of ours. If you enjoy what I publish, I’d love your support. Beyond is my heart’s work and it’s also a lot work; plus, I pay guest contributors. If you find yourself here often, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. And deep gratitude to those of you who already are. ❤️

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If you enjoyed this essay, you might also enjoy this one about music as a form of hope:

How are you feeling about the new year? Any hopeful wanting? How does it feel to want? How does it feel to be hopeful? Let us know in the comments!

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Due to an unexpected change in plans, there is one final space now available. If you’re interested, please sign up here.

Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please become a subscriber!

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is a novelist, poet, forest therapy guide, life coach, and single mom of three. She lives in the rolling hills of Central Kentucky, where her best days are the ones she spends in the woods. Her debut novel, “All Is Well,” was published in 2025, and her not-yet-published poetry collection was a finalist for the James Baker Hall Book Award. Lisa writes Wild Ground, where she shares poems, writing prompts, and essays inspired by her moments of deepest aliveness. She came to Substack for a place to share her writing, but she stays for the magic of community.

1. What are you reading now?

I tend to read several books at once. I’m slowly savoring Margaret Renkl’s “The Comfort of Crows,” Joanne Dobson’s “The Nurse Who Came from Away,” and Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Fall Apart,” and I’m rapidly devouring Andre Dubus III’s “House of Sand and Fog.”

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

I read and reread “The Little House on the Prairie” series and the “Anne of Green Gables” series again and again. The only book I remember reading on the sly, though, and it was juicy, was my older sister’s diary. If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it!

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I don’t reread books all that often, but Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Falls Apart” was a good friend to me when I first got sick with long Covid in the spring of 2020. I’m reading it again now and appreciating how the author’s wisdom—and the wisdom of my past, in-the-thick-of-breaking self—are both speaking to me through the pages.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

I have a pair of coral and purple and black fingerless gloves that I wear in the colder half of the year. They’re thick enough to feel cozy, but they still let me touch the smoothness of a rock or the roughness of bark. I like to pluck a sprig of Eastern red cedar on my way into the woods each morning and roll it between my finger and thumb, just for the delight of smelling it. The gloves smell like forest—and like my dog Jeff, who is with me on every walk.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

I recently encountered this line from Rumi, which I’d never heard before: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” Being a writer (or a parent or a human) demands openness—to the blank page, to the words that come, to the words that don’t come, to revision. Sharing my writing here on Substack sometimes makes the creative process feel pressurized, though. I start to worry about how I appear—to the detriment of how I show up. I want to show up with my bewilderment intact—always. With my sense of wonder, which if I’m honest and present, will always wildly outstrip my cleverness.

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

It’s hard to choose just one—and I don’t want to hurt my dog Jeff’s feelings by telling you about a different animal, but since he can’t read and also has a really forgiving disposition, I’ll chance it. Early this summer, I went for a hike in a nearby nature preserve. It was a weekday, so there was no one else around, and I sat on a limestone cliff overlooking the Kentucky River for rather a long while, when all of a sudden, there was singing. A summer tanager was perched just feet away from me in the low limb of a very tenacious tree. After a while, I got the hang of his song and began singing it back to him. I would sing, then he would sing, over and over again. We must have spent around a half hour together, much of it in this strange duet. Eventually, another hiker arrived on scene and the tanager flew off. I know this little sliver of time may not seem like it adds up to a “special relationship,” but for me, the feeling of the experience was that we are all always in relationship. It’s not relationship that’s rare of special. It’s the noticing.

7. What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

I’m almost scared to say this, like it might be some kind of jinx and propel me back into more disabling illness, but here goes . . . In the fall of 2019, I worked up the courage to leave a very unhealthy marriage. I was full of excitement and plans for my next steps, but in March 2020, I got Covid and did not recover. My whole life flipped upside down and inside out. My existence felt whittled down to the essentials—which means I gained a tremendous amount of clarity about what matters to me and what does not.

This clarity feels like a superpower. I’d been a chronic people pleaser my whole life, but suddenly I became allergic to that pattern. It would be disingenuous to say that I’ve fully recovered from my people pleasing impulses, but I’ve grown by leaps and bounds—or rather, by carefully paced walks and sips of nettle tea. This growth and clarity and the connection and redirection they’ve brought about feel worth all of that unexpected suffering. Of course, that’s easier to say right now than at other times because as far as my health goes, I’m doing startlingly well at the moment. (I still can’t say that without knocking on wood.)

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

I dance in my kitchen if no one’s around, but I sing . . . everywhere. My parents had to enact a no-singing-at-the-dinner-table rule thanks to me. One of the great and unexpected surprises of parenthood is that my children (10, 14, and 17) have not yet told me to shut up.

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

I could make a long wish list of the external things my mind likes to grab for, but my deepest, clearest hopes are about my inner life, not my outer one. I’ve had so many experiences of intense, seemingly nonsensical joy in the middle of difficult and definitely-not-wished-for circumstances that when I’m fully honest with myself, I have to admit that I don’t know what the hell is going on here. How could I know, really know, what to hope for on the surface of my life? Here’s what I hope for on the inside, though . . . the courage to be deeply rooted and the courage to be swayed, to drop all my leaves and start over again. For the wisdom to know when it’s autumn and when it’s spring and feel the beauty in both. For the softness to welcome the wind when it comes, to let it scour me of everything that isn’t love. For the presence of mind to remember that everything can be that wind.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

When I got sick, my older sister started calling me every single morning. There are 2,316 miles between our front doors, and in that first year of illness and pandemic lockdown, it felt like the whole world was thousands of miles away. But every day, for a little stretch of time, distance collapsed, and my sister—my soul sister, best friend, writer of juicy diaries—was right there next to me. I grew and learned so much during that first year of illness, but I don’t think I could have done it without that backdrop of love and support. As my health has improved and our lives have picked up speed again, we’ve dropped the frequency of our calls to every third day, but they are still the same alchemical cocktail of laughter and lifeline.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

I was walking through the woods a couple years ago, anxiously fretting over whether I’d ever be well enough for a “normal” job when these words rang inside me like someone else had spoken them: “Your job is to love the world.”

I’m not all that good at my job. I’m an entry-level assistant, bringing coffee and possibly spilling it. But love for this world—the one inside me and the one around me—is the work I try to show up to every day.

If you enjoyed Lisa’s answers, you might also enjoy this one with :

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Hello Beyonders!

People often ask me what my favorite books are. Well, do you have a couple of hours?! Like most of you, I would imagine, they’re far too numerous to list. Especially if I bring in books I grew up on or that got me through my life right up until this moment.

So I figured I’d focus on nonfiction books that have shaped me in more recent years. Which is still plenty! But let’s give it a go.

(After I compiled the list, I was delighted to realize I’d interviewed all the authors—such an honor—so I’ve included those links.)

Before we delve in, I want to share how deeply touched I am by this community. You have nurtured me and my heart in ways you may not realize. When I launched Beyond, it was with the sole intention of offering in-depth interviews with as many of our greatest, wisest, most heart-centered, most gifted writers as would say yes! And I’m so proud of the collection of Interviews and Craft Advice that has sprung forth. Thank you for supporting me on this journey. It means the world to me.

But what I didn’t expect was that so many of you would email me or leave comments encouraging me to share more about my life. I’m quite shy and feel most comfortable behind the scenes; plus, the daily health issues I face present writing challenges. But you all have so lovingly and steadfastly stood by me as I muddled toward sharing more of my writing. Your kindness means more than I have words for. Thank you.

The community that’s grown and thrived here brings me great joy—both the friendships I’ve formed with many of you, and the friendships you have formed with each other. As my mom would say, “It does my heart good.”

This will be the last post of 2025. I’m taking two weeks off for the holidays. But, of course, I’ll still be working. Lots of wonderful plans for next year, including The Heart-Centered Writing Intensive! The response has been lovely and the Intensive nearly sold out in the first four days! There are two spots left—which you can sign up for here.

Join Heart-Centered Writing Intensive!

Happiest of all happy holidays, my dear Beyonders! Wishing you all the joy and comfort and adventure and pleasure and love and chocolate your tender spirits may be hankering for. See you in the new year.

So here we go with my (Incomplete) List of Recent to Recent-ish Books that have inspired me to see the world with greater insight, to see others with deeper compassion, to understand myself and my place on this planet with greater love. To have my heart and mind shattered into an electric, undeniable truth grounded in suffering and joy and wisdom. And to learn craft from some of the most exquisitely, astoundingly beautiful writing on the planet.

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Anyone who knows me even the tiniest dollop knows that Heavy nourished every cell in my being, and kept going right down into my soul. It’s about having a body in a world that is not accepting of bodies. And about being a tender, kind, sensitive, loyal, wise human in a world that does not welcome tenderness, kindness, sensitivity, loyalty, or wisdom. It’s about intergenerational trauma. It’s about healing. And the writing is staggeringly glorious.

On the surface, Kiese and I are nothing alike. Yet he somehow wrote my story. I’m not alone in this experience. If you haven’t yet read this magnificent book, be prepared to be changed. This is one of my favorite all-time books.

I was lucky enough to interview Kiese twice. He’s brilliant and gentle and so funny. I’ve read this book numerous times, and also listened to the audiobook, which Kiese narrates. Each time, my love for it deepens.

Tiny Beautiful Things by

What would I do without this book? I don’t ever want to find out! It helped me through one of the darkest, most terrifying times of my life, when I was so ill I wasn’t sure I would ever lead anything resembling a normal life again. And it still helps me.

It’s a collection of letters culled from Cheryl’s advice column, Dear Sugar. But this is not your standard-fare advice column. Cheryl draws on her own experiences, and her words vibrate with a magnetic, far-reaching, wildly contagious love of life—that not only makes space for suffering but also greets it with kindness. Her prose is wholesome and so deeply supportive of the human journey, but it’s also dirty and unflinching. It’s a rare combination, and one that deeply moves me.

I’ve read this book more times than I can count. I also have it as an audiobook, narrated by Cheryl, which gets me through tough nights.

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

This book wrecked me, in the best of ways. It’s astoundingly beautiful. The prose, good lord, it will bring you to your knees. And it’s astoundingly sad. Jesmyn has summoned an elegy for five beloved young Black men, her brother, cousin, and three of her friends, who died violently within a five-year span. She guides us through each of their lives with care, respect, sorrow, and celebration, generously using her family history to reveal how race, class, and gender shape her life, her community, and all of us. And by doing so, she guides us through how to love more deeply and begin to heal.

Jesmyn has twice won the National Book Award, the first woman to do so.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by

If you want to learn how to craft an impeccable, heart-burstingly beautiful essay, this is the book for you. Alexander writes about queer love, racism, activism, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley, death, childhood sexual trauma, writing, teaching, tarot card readings, AIDS, and, well, roses. Each time I read this book, I am bowled over by the precision, elegance, and fucking gorgeousness of the language. And I learn new things about the world. Reader, this book is a masterclass in writing, as well as in being a human.

Wintering by

I love this book. It makes my soul happy. Katherine views the world with such curiosity, such joy, such tender humor; she doesn’t shy away from the darkness but manages to find true, sustainable light within. Katherine defines wintering as a time when life falls fallow, forcing us to retreat and wholly care for ourselves. Something I know a thing or two about, as do many of you. Through a series of adventures, some taking place at home, Katherine explores the ways wintering can manifest from the literal season of resplendent snow and cold to near-death experiences, cold water swims, health challenges, sleep, wolf trackers, sauna births, and so much more. It’s a celebration of being alive.

As a side note: I always get a kick out of the part where Katherine visits her friend Hanne from Finland and is astounded to learn that the average temperature in winter there is 2 degrees Celsius, which translates to 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Born and raised in Michigan, where a typical winter day is in the teens or more likely the single digits, 36 degrees would be positively balmy. Come January, we’re often below zero (below -18 Celsius). She is also surprised to learn her friend has a separate summer and winter wardrobe. As I write this, it’s 7 degrees outside, and I am ready to live somewhere where two separate wardrobes are not required!

Deep Creek by

Oh my heart! This book is exquisite. It’s hard in places, but so deeply hopeful. A breathtaking collection of essays about Pam’s relationship with her 140-acre ranch, 9,000 feet above sea level in Colorado. It’s also about all the animals, domestic and wild, who share the land with her, her losses, her loves, her hard work to protect endangered lands at home and around the world. Needless to say, this book will nourish your heart. And inspire you to be the change we so desperately need.

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

I love everything Lidia writes, but this book goes to the marrow. And I’m not alone. Pretty much every memoirist I know (and I know quite a few) has a copy on her desk, and probably a second copy on her bedside table. It’s a touchstone, a talisman, a blueprint for a new way to share our stories. A lifelong competitive swimmer, Lidia guides us through all the ways water has impacted her life, from sexual abuse to her stillborn daughter to becoming friends with herself. At times, this is not an easy book. But it’s wise, thoughtful, spirit-opening, and scorchingly necessary.

Kristen Stewart optioned the book for a film, starring Imogen Poots, and fought for nearly a decade to make it the way she wanted. And the result is currently out in the world, conjuring the best kind of ruckus—and garnering rave reviews. I cannot wait to see it.

Also: Beyond wouldn’t exist without Lidia. She was our anchor in waters new to me. ❤️

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

I’ve already read and listened to this book (Omar reads it so beautifully!) quite a few times, and it was only published in February. Yes, it’s about Gaza, but it’s also about trying to be a compassionate, thoughtful, engaged human in this deeply troubled world.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear that a book won the National Book Award!

One of my favorite writers and also one of my favorite people, Rene Denfeld, started a newsletter, . If you’re not familiar with Rene’s writing, it’s truly exceptional: somehow tender and lyrical whilst also edge-of-your-seat driven. In addition to being a bestselling author of four novels, Rene is a licensed death-row investigator. Live Man Walking offers measured and behind-the-scenes insights into the criminal justice system and its impact on all Americans. I always learn from Rene. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe!

On a non-book note, I am obsessed (obsessed!!) with this song by Charli xcx. It’s from the upcoming soundtrack for Wuthering Heights (well, I guess there is a book involved!). Perhaps you will enjoy it, too!

**I’m not super crazy about the video, but it allows for easiest access for all.

I finally watched the Jeff Buckley documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. Hold onto your heart! Another bodhisattva taken too soon.

Jeff and my then-husband released their first albums around the same time and were on some big panel (I cannot remember what??), so we spent the entire day together. In my recollection, Jeff was shy, playful, and a bit eccentric. The perfect combination!

❤️Thank you to everyone who’s joined this beautiful, growing community devoted to bringing as much light as possible into this world of ours. Beyond is a reader-supported publication that pays contributors. If you find yourself here often, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.❤️

Subscribe now

If you’d like to support my work without a subscription, here’s my link to Venmo and Paypal. ⭐️

How about you? What are some of your favorite nonfiction books? Any songs you’re currently obsessed with?

I’m thinking of doing a fiction list next. Then maybe poetry. And then spiritual. What do you think?

Let us know in the comments! Happy Holidays, sweet friends!

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Dr. Tamara MC is a memoirist, poet, and cultural critic whose work appears in The New York Times, Newsweek, SLATE,Salon, HuffPost, and 90+ publications. She is the 2025 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year. She has two forthcoming books: Poetry for English Language Learning (University of New Mexico Press, 2026) and Oldest Tucson(Reedy Press, 2026). She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics and attended Columbia University’s MFA program in both poetry and creative nonfiction. A U.S. Department of State Fellow and Arizona Commission on the Arts grantee, she has attended residencies including Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Ragdale, and received a fellowship from the Highlights Foundation. She founded Muslim Jewish Love nonprofit and serves on the steering committee of the National Coalition to End Child Marriage, contributing to legislation ending child marriage in 16 states and counting.

1. What are you reading now?

Publishers Weekly, Poets & Writers, everyone’s Substack—how wildly consuming keeping up has become—social media posts, submission guidelines, my own manuscripts in revision, friends’ manuscripts. And essays—always essays—in lit mags like The Rumpus, Electric Literature, The Sun, HuffPost Personal. Personal essay reading is my absolute favorite. I love slipping into someone else’s body, feeling what it might be like to live a life not my own.

As far as books, the last one I devoured was Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River. I couldn’t wait for it to come out—finished it in a night or two. I used to read Liz for joy and story, like Eat, Pray, Love. This time, I read her for craft and curiousity. How did she pivot from Eat, Pray, Love to All the Way to the River? How does a writer make that leap? But life lifes. Our stories change as we change, so how could two of our memoirs ever be the same?

Perhaps more revealing is what I’m watching. That’s where my joy lives. At the end of the night, when my eyes are tired and my wrists ache from carpal tunnel, I need my brain to rest. So I turn to reality TV—TLC shows especially. 90 Day Fiancé, Sister Wives, Seeking Sister Wife, Three Wives, One Husband—anything featuring polygamy. I grew up in a polygamist community, so I watch with fascination and in horror. What are these women thinking? That it’s God’s plan when really it’s men getting to have multiple partners while women can’t?

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

Dr. Seuss was my first love. The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish—I read them until the pages softened. The rhymes, the rhythm, the way language could dance and surprise. These books taught me writing could be joyful, playful, rebellious.

But my absolute favorite was Encyclopedia Britannica. I’d sit for hours in my yellow bedroom, reading entries from A to Z, mesmerized by how much knowledge existed in the world. It never occurred to me that humans wrote encyclopedias. I thought God sat down and wrote them. That’s what writers appeared to be to me as a child—gods. Dr. Seuss was God.

Full circle: I’m now an encyclopedia writer myself. I was recently featured in the Encyclopedia of Gender and Politics through Sage Publications, writing entries on such topics as child marriage, polygamy, trad wives, temporary Islamic marriage, and domestic servitude.

The Diary of Anne Frank has always been among my favorites. My grandmother, Bubbe, was a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor, so I felt deeply connected to Anne’s story. I’m also a lover of diaries—a diarist myself and a scholar of diary and journal studies for my PhD. I love examining women’s diaries: what is said, not said, and hidden between the lines.

And Judy Blume. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was a secret between us. Just Judy and me. She taught me about bodies, periods, all the things I couldn’t discuss with anyone else.

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

I don’t generally reread books or rewatch shows. I’m a novelty seeker—my ADHD brain craves constant newness.

But reference books are different. I return repeatedly to Story by Robert McKee. It’s incredibly dense, the bible for craft. I can read it multiple times and still not fully grasp it.

Picture books are different too—they’re meant to be reread, reconsidered, felt again and again. I’ve begun writing children’s picture books, and I constantly study them for craft: how to compress emotional universes into 32 pages, how to trust rhythm and repetition. I love Love You Forever. I can’t wait to have grandchildren so I can read my favorites to them.

I remember reading Dani Shapiro during a difficult time—moving through her books from first to last. This is something I love: reading an author’s complete body of work in order, from their earliest book to their most recent. One of my true joys.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

Skorts, leggings, cotton t-shirts. I live in Arizona and I’m sensitive to fabrics, so I live in these basics. Natural fibers, super soft cotton. I always have something pink on somewhere, without any planning.

But what really makes me feel like me? My earrings. I collect them—huge and bright. I just bought a pair of pink alligator earrings in Louisiana. Ridiculous and perfect.

And always flip-flops. When I lived in the Republic of Georgia during the dead of winter, I wore flip-flops. In New York City in January, flip-flops. Always.

My signature: MAC Candy Yum Yum lipstick. I have a collection of fuchsia lipsticks and could have long conversations about each brand.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?

I’m watching All’s Fair, Ryan Murphy’s new legal drama on Hulu with Kim Kardashian as a divorce lawyer. She runs an all-female divorce firm with Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close. Judith Light’s character says, “You know what a woman’s best friend is? Not diamonds. Her lawyers.”

I don’t even like diamonds or divorce attorneys (especially divorce attorneys!), but I thought it was clever. I’d rewrite it as: “You know what a woman’s best friend is? Not diamonds. Her dogs.” Duh!

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

I love all of my dogs: Li’l Guy, my Yorkie-Wawa and Latka, my Chihuahua, who hated men who wore boots; Blazer, my Boston Terrier, who I’m both grandma and mom to; and my grandpup, Willow, an Aussie.

Desert animals are my constant companions. Spiny-tailed lizards sunbathe on my patio and dart across the asphalt during my daily bike rides, alongside roadrunners. Beep. Beep. I observe ants building their intricate cities and welcome ladybugs that land on my arms during the summer. I carefully scoop bees from the pool and delight in watching them dry their wings and fly away.

Then there are the prairie dogs. They pop up from their burrows and stand on their hind legs, watching and chirping warnings to each other. Their little towns spread across the desert floor.

7. What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

I’m not sure I’m happy about this, but I’m learning to sit with it: the quiet. The aloneness of aging.

I grew up with a large community on my dad’s side—full of people, noise, constant presence. Then I spent a lifetime building relationships through educational programs, marriage, my kids’ friends. I thought my life would always overflow with people, with noise. I thought I’d have many more children. I always wanted six. I thought I’d be married to my forever person.

But now, at 53, I find myself mostly alone in my home. The quiet is often surprising. My adult sons are in their late 20s, living their own lives. The house I thought would overflow with children and chaos, and a partner, now holds just me, my collections, and my walls.

Maybe that’s what I’m working out differently than expected—learning that without more children and people, I have time to write and leave my legacy. I have time to tell the stories I’ve been waiting a lifetime to tell.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

Dancing in the kitchen to 80s music—Madonna, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson. I blast “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and dance like everybody’s watching because in the community where I grew up with my dad, we weren’t allowed to dance. Movement was controlled. Music was restricted.

Pickleball too—my pink ASICS shoes, pink balls, pink everything. I play when I can.

And cycling. I ride daily. My body moving through the Arizona desert, feeling the heat, the wind, the freedom. On a bike, I control where I go, how fast, how far. I still feel like a child when I ride.

Swimming too—pools, oceans, lakes. Water heals everything, but then again, I’m a Cancer, a water sign. When I float, I remember I’m made of stardust and saltwater. I’m obsessed with stars and space. And could forever discuss: When we’re up in space, are we still human?

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

The Nobel Peace Prize. As someone both Jewish and Muslim, bringing peace to the Middle East has been my dream since childhood. I want the Pulitzer too—for memoir. And I’ve always wanted to be President of the United States, so maybe at 70?

My other hope: wake up every morning at 4 AM (like I do naturally, always), make my Nespresso, write until I can’t write anymore, take my bike ride, eat well, love on my animals—the ones I can touch and the ones I love from afar—breathe in my desert air, watch my boys grow into the beautiful men they already are, and see my mother age with her health intact.

Oh, and I want to be Dr. Seuss. A picture book author writing and speaking to kids about choice and questioning—each of us with freedom to make our own decisions.

And becoming a glamma!!!

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

With animals and the desert, I can be myself. They can be themselves. We can respect each other—either closely or from a distance. My dogs—Li’l Guy, Latka, Blazer, and Willow.

The Arizona desert itself has been the kindest presence in my life. The saguaros standing sentinel. The mountains. The monsoon rains that smell like creosote and promise.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

Curiosity. Questioning. Asking why. Always asking why.

Questioning is central to everything I do. There are no right answers. We all have our own answers. It’s in the questioning, not the answers. That’s how we learn about human nature, the natural world, the universe, animals, ourselves.

If you enjoyed Tamara’s answers, you might also enjoy this one with

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To the best of my (and Cathy’s!) recollection, Cathy Alter and I met somewhere in the wilds of Substack. She left such thoughtful comments, and soon a kinship formed. I knew Cathy had written mesmerizing essays and articles for everyone from O, The Oprah Magazine and The Cut to Oldster and The Washington Post, amongst many others. I asked if she might be game to write something for Beyond. To my delight, she said yes!

“How about bullies?” Cathy asked.

“Yes, yes!” I said.

I’ve been wanting to write about bullies for a while now. I have one in my life whom, for various reasons, I’m not able to discuss. But it’s such a vital and necessary and widespread topic—magnified by the abject bullying running our country at the moment. Cathy’s essay explores the often long-term toll bullying takes, the way it undermines your self-worth and makes you feel that you must be the cause of your own abuse—and how, in Cathy’s case, facing her experiences with honesty and openheartedness allowed her to land somewhere unexpected.

In addition to writing gorgeous essays, Cathy is the author of VIRGIN TERRITORY: Stories From the Road to Womanhood, the memoir, UP FOR RENEWAL: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over, and CRUSH: Writers Reflect on Love, Longing, and the Lasting Power of Their First Celebrity Crush.

She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband Karl and their son, Leo.

Enjoy!! Let me know what you think in the comments!

xJane

There’s Something in You

I was in the middle of taking off my coat when a woman strode up to me with great purpose, holding up a book—my book, in fact—like the raised torch of the Statue of Liberty.

“Is this really you?” she asked, staring hard. I had just arrived at my friend Charlotte’s house in Alexandria, Virginia, about to meet the ladies in her neighborhood for my first book club event since the launch of my memoir, Up for Renewal. Obama had just won the presidency and all of DC was ecstatic, hugging strangers and wearing shit-eating grins.

Figuring this woman was questioning the authenticity of my author photo (which is, ahem, a few years out of date), I assured her that, yes, it really was me.

“I know the photo is you,” she responded with impatience. “You look much more tired in person, though.”

There were 12 other women, already seated in a semi-circle, books on laps. Suddenly, all eyes were on me.

“What I want to know is,” she continued, “is this really you in the book?”

“It’s a memoir, “ I reminded her. “It’s really me.”

“Oh,” she sniffed. “I don’t like that character at all.”

In what has to have been my proudest moment of all time, I flung my coat on a chair, took a step closer, and replied coolly, “Well, maybe there is something in me that you don’t like in yourself.”

I’d like to take credit for that sick burn, but this particular bon mot originated with Dr. Phil. Yes, that Dr. Phil. There was a brief moment in time, after Jerry Springer but before Maury Povich, where I was a dedicated Phil watcher. Especially the shows where the bullies—passive aggressive mothers-in-law, controlling boyfriends, and cafeteria Queen Bees—all got their comeuppance, delivered in the southern parlance of ill-fitting britches and dogs that won’t hunt.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own bullies, past and present. Of the scars they’ve left behind on my psyche even though they have long ago forgotten about inflicting them. Was there something in me? I wondered. And if there was a vulnerability, how was it so detectable to everyone else but me?

“You always looked like something bad was about to happen to you,” said one of my high school tormentors, a football player, when I asked him what he remembered about me from back in the day.

“Because something always did,” I told him, shocked that he didn’t remember once placing a teammate on my back, piggyback style while everyone else laughed their heads off. The weight of that kid, a sleeping bag filled with sand, clung to my body in a way that was both unfamiliar and sickly intimate.

“I did that?!” he asked incredulously.

Of course, for me, it was like it happened yesterday. Back to those fraught years when I idolized my teachers, clipped a little koala bear to the strap of my overalls, and desperately tried to force my curly hair into a Farrah Faucet flip. I was nice, too, obeying substitute teachers and always standing up for the kids that had it worse off than me.

If you’ve ever been bullied, you know how easily it is to wormhole back in time. A grim backslide even when it happens to me now. After all, those mean girls grew up to be mean women. And as victims in the past, we are so sensitized to this unpredictable aggression, that when it happens again—in the office, on I95 during rush hour, and, in my case, at a volunteer job where the manager held her bit of power over me until I cried—it’s not a new experience. We bullied ones go right back to that place of being young and scared and defenseless.

And if you’ve ever been the bully, you may have skipped beautifully along in life to become an oncology nurse in Boston, or a mother of 4 boys in Orlando with a big, fat diamond on your ring finger (I know, because I’ve tracked you both down like a bounty hunter), but you were also the source of my unhappiest days.

Being bullied robbed me of my confidence. And even though I was a good foot taller than most of my schoolmates, I bowed my head and rolled my shoulders, folding into myself like a piece of origami. I kept my good grades to myself and saved my sense of humor for the weekends. Unless I wanted a life of solitude, I had no choice but to forgive my best friend come Saturday. I understood her abandonment at school; we were all just trying to survive until we could (please, god) leave town and reinvent ourselves in college.

I realize now that the thing that these bullies saw in me that they didn’t like in themselves was weakness. They needed me to feel as insecure and fearful as they often felt, walking down our school’s hallways hoping that the right brand of clogs would secure them some momentary popularity, or pushing through the doors of the auditorium, desperately praying that one of their friends had remembered to save them a seat.

It’s the way of the world. The true binary of power dynamics. I had to be the pariah in order to spare my tormenters the mantle. It’s one of the many reasons why they continued their attacks, refocusing everyone’s attention on someone weaker so that their own deficiencies—in the form of second-rate clogs or failing grades—weren’t detected. We all carry our injuries, even if they’re not of the same making.

These days, my real power comes from writing. And lately, I’ve been on a bit of a rampage, chronicling my life, bully by bully. The process has allowed me to regain parts of myself, to resee parts of myself, that once made me a target. My mother always worried that I was too sensitive, too nice, too trusting. “I don’t know how else to be,” I remember telling her.

It’s those very traits that predicted what shape I would take as an adult. The same attributes that once made me a target for bullies—kind, tenderhearted, more observer than actor—that have now manifested as a nurturing and sensitive partner and mother. “You are the emotional center of our family,” my husband often tells me. “Without you, me and Leo would roam around like untended animals.”

But what of my bullies? I recently bumped into one, on the sidewalks of the small beach town where my father keeps a weekend house and where I was spending 3 weeks of my summer. I hadn’t seen her since elementary school and my instinct was to run away. We hugged instead and she invited me out for coffee.

“You used to be so mean to me,” I told her once we parked ourselves at a table.

Even though I can’t recall her words, I instead see a snapshot from those days. Her body language was all offensive line, physically blocking me from wherever I needed to go—the school bus, the lunch line, a bathroom stall. Wherever I was, she was there waiting for me.

“I don’t remember,” she said as if awakening from a dream. “But if I was, I am so sorry.” Then she burst into tears. As you all might have guessed, she was also suffering. Built like an Olympic swimmer, she was teased relentlessly for her broad, muscular back and hair tinted green by chlorine.

Hearing her talk about those days, punctured by a collection of cruel older brothers and “lost” invitations to birthday parties, made me want to forge a friendship from scratch. While our shared history remained fixed (Remember Mrs. Babic? What about Grand Central Disco?), we used the long stretches of our summer days to upend the archives.

We signed up for a string of yoga classes together, showing up daily for ourselves and for each other. While my son Leo was fishing for porgies at camp, she and I met for happy hour across the street, trading stories about our earlier divorces and ecstatic remarriages. We walked the historic streets, pointing out our favorite homes and peeking into windows so we could judge the decorating abilities of the inhabitants.

Spending those weeks with my friend was like taking a small smudge stick to a large part of my past. Did befriending my former bully make me want to rekindle relationships with the rest of them? Not one bit. I had been friendly to the few I saw at hometown bars, and they were still the same douchebags; their eyerolls letting me know that I would never be one of them. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, who’d want to be a member of their club anyway?

Marx may have made those words famous, but it was my mother who most often repeated them as I was growing up, perhaps managing her own disappointments rather than steeling me for mine. And even though she worried constantly about me becoming a doormat, I’d argue that I was actually a welcome mat, steadfast in my knowledge that, eventually, the right people would walk in.

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If you enjoyed this essay, you might like this one by Amy B Scher:

Thank you for reading! I love hearing your thoughts!

Have you had any bullies in your life? How have these relationships changed you? What have you learned about yourself through them? Have any shifted into friendships? If so, how? Let us know in the comments!

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