If you’re a part of my private women’s page, you are no stranger to my Weekends are for Women updates and my sharing of links to what I’m reading that week or what has my attention lately.

After some inquiries about a collection versus a disappearing story, here is what I’m reading lately – articles that were in my reading, shared with friends, or made an impact + poetry I’ve enjoyed lately and the books I’m sitting with.

This is an extra-long entry, complimentary start. After this, I’ll be sharing with my paid community <3

In Defense of Despair, Hanif Abdurraqib

“The propulsive moments that some might consider signs of hope I have renamed necessity. Hope means both everything and nothing at all, and yet it is always purported to be within reach. Hope is the fluorescent bird. The bird makes no sound. It is in a cage. No one can find the key, and no one has seen the key in a very long time, and they aren’t sure that they’d even free the bird if they found the key. And yet, collectively, people must keep asking for it.”

“I am trying to stitch together enough small moments to have a life for a little bit longer.”

The quiet grief of adult friendship, Pranav Jain

“And perhaps this is why adult friendship feels increasingly radical. It resists the transactional logic modern life rewards everywhere else. Because a real friend offers something profoundly rare: unoptimised presence. Family is structured by blood. Marriage by institution. Work relationships by utility. Friendship survives purely through mutual choosing. Nobody has to stay. And yet some people do.”

“The Love of My Life”, Cheryl Strayed

An essay from 2002 about death, sex, and losing a mother.

“What was there to do with me? What did those around me do? They did what I would have done — what we all do when faced with the prospect of someone else’s sorrow: they tried to talk me out of it, neutralize it, tamp it down, make it relative and therefore not so bad. We narrate our own lesser stories of loss in an attempt to demonstrate that the sufferer is not really so alone. We make grossly inexact comparisons and hope that they will do. In short, we insist on ignoring the precise nature of deep loss because there is nothing we can do to change it, and by doing so we strip it of its meaning, its weight, its own fiercely original power.”

The Burnout No One Is Talking About: A Sexologist Explains Intimate Exhaustion, Juliet Allen

“Women slowly stop relating to themselves as sensual beings at all. They become functional and efficient, needed by everyone.”

The ChatGPT Symptom Spiral: Be careful asking chatbots about your health, Sage Lazzaro

“Meanwhile, in the health-anxiety communities I’m part of, I saw people talk more and more about looking to chatbots for comfort. Many say it has made their health anxiety worse. Others say AI has been extraordinarily helpful, calming them down when they’re caught in a cycle of unrelenting worry. And it is that last category that is, in fact, most concerning to psychologists. Health anxiety often functions as a form of OCD with obsessive thoughts and “checking,” or reassurance-seeking compulsions. Therapeutic best practices for managing health anxiety hinge on building self-trust, tolerating uncertainty, and resisting the urge to seek reassurance, but ChatGPT eagerly provides personalized comfort and is available 24/7. That type of feedback only feeds the condition—“a perfect storm,” said Levine, who has seen talking with chatbots for reassurance become a new compulsion in and of itself for some of her clients.”

Therapy Needs to Get Help, Daniel Duane

Therapy needs Therapy, Opinion piece.

“As for how this can help therapy out of its identity crisis, it would start with why people seek therapy in the first place: for deeper self-awareness and perspective and for adaptive new ways of thinking, as I mentioned earlier. Put in predictive processing terms, people seek therapy because something about their internal generative model keeps constructing reality in ways that cause trouble. Therapy, then, looks like a way of getting your predictive model to update. On the question of how, exactly, therapy does that, predictive processing theory tells us that model updates depend on two key factors: safety and precision.”

How to become the person you want to be, Eike Buabang

“Mastery, then, is not about putting your entire life on autopilot. It is a continuous, deliberate dance between your two cognitive systems. You use goal-directed effort to build a habitual foundation. That foundation gives you the stability to survive your toughest days. But when you are ready to grow, you step back into the friction using the deliberate mind to push the boundaries of what your habits can do. The two systems are not in opposition. Used wisely, they thrive off each other.”

What Do I Owe My Severely Disabled Parents? Kwame Anthony Appiah

“Your life matters, and part of the challenge of making a good life is to balance your own needs, projects and interests against your obligations to others.”

The Ethicist is one of my favorite NY Times columns, as therapy is not just the practice of understanding psychology, but is so often also a mix of philosophy, humanity, and looking at how humans live lives collectively together.

Sometime in 2024, I started to fantasise about being hospitalized, Amantha Imber

“What struck me, when she said it, was how much the fantasy revealed not just about me, but about the culture we’ve built. We’ve created workplaces (and personal lives) where catastrophe is more acceptable than rest.”

*This comes up a lot in my clinical practice. Typically, women who have been socialized to do it all, while not having support, end up with burnout but are unable to accept they need rest for the sake of rest (and survival), instead assuming it needs to be earned or justified by illness.

Our Plastic Surgery Nightmare, Jia Tolentino

Her writing is so good, over and over again. She also wrote Trick Mirror (great)

“About a decade ago, the most visible faces on Instagram—those belonging to famous white models and influencers—began to resemble one another. They already had full lips, catlike eyes, high cheekbones, flawless skin; Botox and filler made their lips more plump, their eyes more catlike, their cheekbones more pronounced. They began to look like cyborgs, their faces contoured by the algorithm, perpetually glinting in the light of digital approval. Looks, particularly for women, have long been a capital asset, and smartphones systematized this neatly, providing users with digital tools to make themselves appear more beautiful in photos and videos, and monetized platforms to broadcast those edited faces, which, back in the real world, could then be retrofitted, via cosmetic intervention, to match.”

“Of course, no one understands quite like a model, or maybe even like “any woman in general,” that beauty involves labor and performance. The comically tangled impulses here—the admiration of women who organize their lives around their looks, the disgust toward women who could be so superficial as to organize their lives around looks—can only develop in the absence of real intimacy, of regular exposure to women in their actual natural state. Such thoughts also make real intimacy increasingly impossible. The corporeal self—the face and the body that respond to the presence of another—retreats into the shiny carapace of the commodity, and wonders, from this hidden vantage point, if it will ever be known.”

An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson

Review of the latest Odyssey film by Emily Wilson, the first woman to publish an English translation of Homer’s Odyssey.

I See All the Accomplished Women in My Life Suffering Through the Same Thing With Their Boyfriends. I Don’t Want to Be Next. Advice by Steffi Cao

The Cure for Body Dissatisfaction that Doesn’t Involve the Body, Céline Leboeuf

Poetry around this week:

You Are Who I Love, Aracelis Girmay

Book in my bag:

Communion: The Female Search for Love, bell hooks

Current Audiobook:

Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power, Rose Hackman

Books on my radar:

How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell

Unbound: A Woman’s Guide To Power, Kasia Urbaniak

It is Mother’s Day 2026, and the emails began weeks ago about what to get your mother. Mother’s Day 2024 was the last time I saw my mother alive. Mother’s Day 2023 was the day my texts to her turned green, and calls went unanswered, signaling something was wrong.

She had had the final stroke that would mark the beginning of the end. With strokes, you know once there is one, there not only can be more, but there will be more. It is not a question of if, but when. I could say the summer before my brother died is when the strokes began, but that would be a lie.

It was another summer decades prior; I was in high school and baking a bundt cake. She was 40, and we were all at home. I found her and called an ambulance. That is when the first stroke happened, followed by over two decades of nothing.

Reality drifts away, and fear lessens with that much time.

Distance also has a way of changing things. I took a one-way flight to New York at age 18 and never looked back. The role of carer and mother’s mother I took on drifted away as I forged a life for myself.

I had packed my hopes and dreams, searching for a life and path of my own.

And in many ways, I am still searching for a place and space of my own, but there is so much more life, and death, all over me now.

To say the past few years have been covered in grief would be an understatement. My brother, whom I had dreamed of losing numerous times, died tragically. My mother transitioned after watching her slip away for years. A past lover died, dear past clients died, and my longtime friend took his own life. The world and I suffered the collective grief of the pandemic, watching numerous genocides, and an economic landscape that has changed how many of us get to be adults.

Every loss would trigger a hypervigilance to more loss. I began to fear endings, I couldn’t and can’t hold onto anything or anyone long enough. It is all slipping through my fingers. I tried to be everywhere all at once.

How I walked, talked, and slept changed. Yet, as anyone who has grieved anything knows, life goes on around you. There is work to be done, bills to be paid, relationships to nurture, and the animal of one’s own body to care for.

Before all this loss, I didn’t know about grief or its many flavors. Grieving people who died also showed me I was grieving so much more alongside it. I was grieving the life I thought I’d have, loves not realized, and who I thought I could and would be in my late 30’s.

So, what have I learned about grief, now, so many years into the wreckage? Some might say the dust has settled, but the dust is still there, isn’t it?

Grief is a sticky thing, and it gets on everything. Even without you realizing it, it starts to appear in places, and you wonder how it got there, unnoticed but ever present.

Like gum on a shoe, it’s on the carpet, and your fingers, and then it’s on your shirt. Some days you don’t notice, and others, it’s all you can think about.

Even when you busy yourself with living, it is still there.

There were points at which I became numb to grief. It was on everything. I’d watch myself from the outside and hope I did ok for the day. As I look back now, there are seasons I barely remember. I know I was somewhere doing something, but I couldn’t tell you what without looking at my iPhone photos.

I do know I was in many beautiful places, with beautiful friends, watching sunsets, laughing, and loving. I know all this coexists alongside all the loss. I’ve often said expansiveness goes both ways. The more open I am to my hurt and pain, the more open I become to joy and pleasure, or simply being able to be with the present moment more fully.

I do know I try harder to solidify the moments of my life into memories now. I listen with more intention to my friends’ voices, their laughs. I linger a little longer laying on the skin of a lover’s shoulder, a smell I know by heart. I watch the sky and the moon even more. I walk without music or a podcast. I try not to multitask, and I let myself rest…truly rest, without judgment. I’m quicker to hold hands with my friends and make a phone call.

I’ve stopped rushing. I gave up the false urgency that marked my young adulthood.

I started being more direct with what I want, how I feel, and what I think. Gone are the days when I avoid a conversation I fear might be uncomfortable. I tell everyone I love how much I love them, often. I go after what I want. I try things. Because what do we have to lose?

All this grief quickly brought home the finite nature of life itself and how fleeting it can be. I started to think, what would I want to look back on life and regret if I didn’t try?

I’ve also learned grief gets on things you might think are unrelated. Any time I notice myself fixating on my face or body or wanting to change things, I know grief has been around. Looking for control is one of the ways we try to navigate when things out of our control happen. For women, especially, the project of oneself becomes an easy place to try to fix. It is also why people get impulsive hairstyles, tattoos, and do things they would have never thought about before (even having affairs), all to feel something or to cling to aliveness when death was so close. Yet no amount of change brings back the people, places, or time I lost.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of something or someone that is gone.

But not in a way that makes me overly sad or overwhelmed or lost. Grief has changed me into a more real and honest version of myself. Perhaps this was me all along, and loss simply stripped my being of any false or censored selves.

Mother’s Day is weird for me. It has been, and it will continue to be. Weird because I think of my mother but also of women collectively, motherhood, the roles we take on as women, the labor we carry, the lives we create and nurture, and all the hopes and dreams we carry with us. I think of my brother and the maternal love I had as an eldest daughter.

Grief is also weird. There’s no one shape to it, and there is no one way to experience it. I have tried to avoid it many days. If I don’t think about it, it’s not there. I make plans, I craft new visions of the future, I find new hobbies, I fall in love again.

But it is with me.

I recently read about a mother who lost her adult daughter, where she wrote about the description of grief as a heavy stone:

It’s common to compare grief to a heavy stone, but that’s exactly what it feels like. I carry it everywhere. Now and then, I’m able to set it down and enjoy a moment of beauty: the sparkle of winter sun on freshly fallen snow; a full moon’s silver path on the lake. Sometimes a joke makes me laugh so hard that I drop the stone. Soon enough, I will stoop to pick it up again. Those who have walked before me assure me that the stone’s weight will lighten. I’m not sure I want it to. Sometimes I miss the intensity of early grief—it meant I was closer to her in time; I could almost touch her still. That intensity has been replaced by something harder to name. Not acceptance, never acceptance. Resignation, maybe. Adjustment—better.

I can’t tell you how to make grief go away, and I certainly do not think we have to see a bright side in loss.

But I can tell you I’ve learned to live alongside a broken heart. I bring it with me everywhere; I love on it, I pour care onto it, I let others help me hold it sometimes, and most days now, it doesn’t feel so broken.

If you’re looking for another resource to be with your grief at your own pace, I made a workbook just for that: Tending to Grief.

I’ve been doing this wellness thing for as long as I have been able to conceptualize “wellness.”

In high school, I attempted to develop a wellness plan to get through an eating disorder that nearly killed me (a story for another day). I read books on being a strong vegetarian, worked in a local co-op, studied supplements, looked to sustainable and conscious foodways, lifted weights with a trainer, took yoga three times a week, did meditation, went to therapy when I could, and journaled daily.

I started eating meat again in my mid-20s for my health and hormones, but not much has changed in terms of the practices I still lean into. I have a much deeper knowledge of all the areas I deem important for health.

I’ve been asked over the years repeatedly about my workouts and diet. I’ve always hesitated to share this in full because I’m well aware that no two people are the same, and if your goals are purely aesthetic, genetics play a huge role in how your body will look. I care about how I get to feel in my body and in my mind more than how my body ends up being shaped, but I, like anyone, do have physical things I like about my body and enjoy maintaining that as I can.

In terms of what I actually do, I am also not someone who likes extremes or rigidity.

There are soft, compassionate ways to approach discipline, commitment, and (as I see it) devotion to life itself. I am deeply consistent and loyal to my own well-being.

Read more

In a box, that used to be a drawer, that turned into shelves in my closet, sit numerous tech and wellness wearables that I have been sent or purchased over the last decade. This box now also includes outdated headphones, meditation balls, battery packs, and cords that are no longer compatible or products that only worked with apps that did not carry over to new operating systems, rendering their use impossible without outdated software.

Sex toys that won robotics awards, three VR headsets, and multiple microcurrent skin devices are packaged in a box next to these items.

Tech has always seemed like the promise of a better future, and for many of us, the promise of a healthier, happier, more beautiful, and well-managed, optimized life.

In August 2022, Oura ring partnered with Natural Cycles and did a massive PR and social media marketing campaign to get girls and women off birth control methods and to use the Oura ring.

Oura ring has also partnered with American Express to offset the costs of the health tech wearable (that requires a subscription to even be used), all while data privacy is questionable, and people wonder about the true value of the subscription.

This is not by mistake.

I could see this propaganda coming a mile away. But in the land of fear mongering, and the righteousness of health (a status symbol and sometimes not obtainable with the basic American way of living…also all by design...) it is easy for us consumers to fall into the proposed perils of toxins, mistrust of science, and the false promises of optimal health all while our health data is being mined (and a war on women and our bodies is rapidly increasing in America.)

It is a story as old as marketing time, especially with female consumers, that it is not sex that sells, but fear. Fear sells. Your insecurities, worries, and fears are needed for capitalism.

The control of women and women’s bodies is now taking on a more sinister nature, but going about it through the guise of wellness seems to be working.

As a wellness professional, who has long tracked trends and watched the now trillion-dollar wellness industry unfold, I am certainly concerned about the surveillance state (why are we putting delicate health information into ChatGPT?) and aggressive data aggregation almost all these health tech platforms and wearables collect, but I am more so concerned about how these very wearables take us even further away from ourselves and our bodies and the very lives that make us human.

On top of the disconnection created by the reliance on an app or data collection, wearables can also create stress, induce worry, or decrease mental well-being.

We have become connected to tech and deeply disconnected from our bodies and ourselves.

I recently read a comment about the Oura ring, and a woman wrote – I don’t even have to think about how I slept when my boyfriend asks me. I can just look at the app!

Not only are we now outsourcing thinking about how we slept, we are also completely detached from the felt sense of what sleep might have felt like. How do you feel? Do you know how you feel?

Even before wearables, I saw firsthand how much we were disconnected from our bodies. Teaching yoga and being a personal trainer, I would ask someone the level of difficulty or how something physical felt for them to be met with an “I don’t know.”

And I genuinely believe….many don’t know.

Being able to check in with our bodies takes being able to listen to them.

Before wearables, we were already a checked-out and numb society, kept distracted by noise, media, chaos, unrest, and the manufactured drama on our TVs, phones, and computer screens.

Embodiment is hard enough in a modern world.

First, a quick refresher on embodiment. It’s common to think embodiment is just to be in the body, yet it is more akin to being aligned with the body, attuned to the body, and able to notice the body through the senses.

Here is an excerpt from my book (TBD on publishing, but stay tuned)

We live in a world that separates us from our bodies. To be grounded in our bodies, requires awareness and attunement. Though I believe embodiment is our truest nature, modern society has not been structured to support embodiment. With a workday set on hours and not bodily cues, there are values placed on stress, busyness, and rest becomes a reward, not a necessity. I often say, how can we live, laugh love in these conditions?

Combine all of this with the ways bodies have become a commodity or a space to control, manipulate, and alter; it’s no wonder many of us struggle with embodiment. Embodiment allows us to be with the intelligence of the body, which fuels more intuition, presence, inner knowing, space for pleasure, and creates a deeper connection to the earth, to nature, and to the experience of living as a whole.

Embodiment is a way of bringing all parts of the body into alignment.

Worse yet, health data can create fixation, rumination, obsessive habits, and overall anxiety.

When wearables gamify data, we get caught in loops of self-surveillance and a fixation on hitting certain numbers or measures, assigning morality to our own numbers.

Miss your 10K steps measure, and your mood can shift. Monitoring sleep scores (which are not the most accurate) can affect how we think we feel. Wearables can actually make us feel worse, not better. The aim of getting “better” scores or results may lead us to punishing ourselves, in thought and in action.

Obsessive tendencies can show up in being overly conscious of data that is variable and changes, such as our pulse, which can vary. A fixation on numbers and understanding them can lead to anxiety, irritation, worry, and a preoccupation with your personal data. For those already prone to anxiety, this compounds quickly. There is a particular cruelty in the image of someone opening ChatGPT to process fears triggered by data generated by another device, using one machine to manage the anxiety created by another, all while drifting further from the felt sense underneath it all.

It is not that I don’t think wearables have their place. I know my own family members who rely on wearables for managing heart rate, mapping heart irregularities, and being able to stay ahead of potentially dangerous heart rate changes such as AFIB.

Wellness tech is a tool, an accessory that isn’t necessary, nor is it the right fit for everyone.

A fixation on needing to know more about our bodies and trying to optimize these bodies has gained popularity, but it is simply too much.

There is no moral superiority in tracking more or knowing more about one’s health data or having the business of being alive optimized.

Sure, someone will say, this or that wearable alerted me to an illness before I felt sick, or, recently, I saw a video of a woman who went to urgent care when alerted by a wearable reading to make sure to catch something early.

This false sense of control is an issue in many areas of life. Also, belief is a powerful thing…if you begin to believe oneself sick after seeing your wearable data, how do you actually feel? You won’t know anymore, as how you feel is now being influenced, or maybe you will know, but it will become harder to parse out what is true felt sense and what you and your body actually feel vs what you’re being told you feel.

I also worry deeply about the implications of such data collection and who has access to such sensitive data. So often, we forget we are cogs in the machine of capitalism, and data is king.

Tech is now embedded in every area of our lives, but moving away from the reliance on health tech or wearables will create more space – mental space, actual space in the world of time we take back for ourselves, and psychological space from judgmental thoughts about our bodies, health, and morality or value. It will also decrease interruptions in your life and, hopefully, give you more time to find your way back to your own body, felt sense, and intuition.

What is Analog Wellness?

I see analog wellness as any form of managing health and wellness that doesn’t require a device, a phone, or an app. It does not require social media, it does not require a computer, there is nothing to charge, wear, update, or sync to input.

Workouts, periods, and other personal data can be kept in notebooks. Meals can simply be enjoyed rather than tracked. Meditations can be music or the sound of the world around us, or the noticing of our own breath. Walking, running, or hiking can be tracked by natural landmarks or by how we feel in our bodies.

I am aware it takes more space, there are more things to carry, and it’s not as easy to quickly aggregate data over long spans of time. Yes, tech has gifted us a few things, and seeing patterns over time we do not have to manually compute is one of them….

But is manually looking at your own data that bad?

For decades, people found ways to more quickly look at their own data…color notes, highlighters, specific stickers or codes in a notebook, paper with different sections or lines.

Furthermore, do we even need all this data about ourselves?

We see ourselves more than ever with social media apps, and with wearables, we know more about our bodies in ways we never have, yet we are drifting further and further away from the very bodies we are tracking, and the feelings we have always had embedded in ourselves that tell us all we need to know.

An analog lifestyle is one of intention and a deeper intimacy with living. We become more connected to ourselves when we are not outsourcing our experience or running our data to interpret how we feel.

Even I cannot be fully analog. I like to keep my workouts in my phone app, but if I’m growing tired of having to type on a little keyboard and scroll with my face in my phone to see my workouts and miss the index cards I used for years with my workouts written on them.

It is February 2026, and I use no fitness trackers or health wearables. I love my meditation app, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice the days in a row I’ve meditated using this app, as my meditations are not always in the app. I use my notes app consistently as a writer, but my writing is scattered between multiple notebooks and the app.

However, embodiment has been a companion for years through my own healing and a constant in my work.

I know my heart rate by feel. After checking it a few times against cardio machines over the years, it’s easy to know when it shifts from 145 bm to 151 bpm. I know by how I am breathing and the exertion needed. It is not even aligned with a certain speed or pace, but more so with how my body feels at any given moment in exercise.

But I’ll be honest, I do not track my heart rate during exercise. I do not think about zone 2 cardio vs simply moving at a moderately challenging pace. I do not track anything at rest. I don’t track sleep and care more about how I feel upon waking, which is generally more connected to pillow quality, room temperature, and what time my neighbor starts walking before work. When I hear steps, it’s 7:45 am, and it's time to turn up my sound machine.

My life is not better or worse knowing how many steps I take a day, or what quality my sleep is. Sure, walking and sleep usually make me feel better, but I can assess how I feel as a metric to inform my choices. I can tune into my body that holds all the answers. I appreciate the intimacy I have with my body and how it feels inside and out.

It has been said we are drowning in information but starving for knowledge*. In the same way, we are saturated with and consumed by health data and optimization culture. Yet, we do not actually feel any better, and we continue to lose connection with our body and its senses – the very things that make us human. In that way, we lose touch with our humanity and that of others.

Tech promised ease, and yet we are dying to be free.

As Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Wild Geese,

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Put down the wearables and health tech. Stop treating your body like a machine, made of numbers, sleep scores, and step counts. Reframe the belief that you or your body is a project to be fixed.

Protect the sacredness of your body and the precious data that big tech wants to own and use to make more money. Remember who your body belongs to, and as I have always said, keep coming home to yourself.

* Adapted from the quote, “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson.

There is little that makes me happier than having a high muscle mass. I recently learned I’m about 74% muscle mass (58kg) and metabolically about 25. With almost all my workouts, I’m thinking about how I can build and maintain muscle. Over and over, it has been shown that muscle mass is the biggest predictor of health and longevity. Especially for women, muscle can help us have a better quality of life.

So why does muscle matter so much to me?

· The higher your peak muscle mass in your 30’s, the longer it takes to decline in your 70s and 80s. Muscle is a major predictor of health & longevity with aging.

· Muscle plays a major role in metabolism.

Metabolism not only helps with weight management, but poor metabolic health is associated with depression & Alzheimer’s.

· Muscle is metabolically alive and burns calories while at rest.

· Muscle is essential for everyday activities, from stairs to picking up groceries to being able to safely move around or get up from a seat without pain or instability.

· Muscle prevents future injuries.

· Muscle mass reduces the risk of diabetes.

· Having muscle maturity helps me feel confident and capable.

· Strength training improves my mood and increases my self-resilience.

· Women lose muscle faster than men (especially after 35), yet women fear putting on size or ‘getting bulky,’ which will not happen.

· It is a long-term investment plan for the brain (as increased muscle mass and strength reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s)

· Muscle mass plays a significant role in fertility.

Muscle helps fertility by supporting metabolic health and insulin sensitivity. Building muscle does to require vigorous or intense exercising (which can hurt fertility.) Strength training can be low impact, challenging without being disruptive, and trauma informed overall.

· Muscle can help to balance hormones.

· Strength training helps promote bone density.

This is massive for women, as hormonal changes across our lifespans (think pregnancy and menopause) can weaken bones. Weak bones put us at risk for osteoporosis and subsequent fractures. Approximately one in two women over age 50 will break a bone because of osteoporosis. In a woman’s 60’s, hip fractures increase early death. It is imperative we build muscle in our 30’s and 40’s to protect us for the rest of our lives.

· It shows little girls in my life their bodies can be strong and take up space. Hearing my niece talk about being strong, taking pride in her strength, and appreciating how strong I am makes my heart so happy.

· Muscle is incredibly sexy. It gives the body the toned shape many women are striving for, adding curves and shape to the body.

· Muscle helps me feel enormously capable, as I do not fear having to carry large bags or pick up things as needed.

How do you begin to strength train?

Only about 30% of adults strength train twice a week, while the majority do nothing. The biggest changes you can make are not from optimizing a program, but from simply finding a program that you can stick with and doing it consistently.

According to a recent analysis that reviewed over 137 studies and over 30,000 participants*, what was found to matter was training all muscle groups at least twice a week with 2-3 sets of each exercise, using a weight that feels challenging by the end of the set, and moving through a full range of motion.

It also found any form of resistance worked – from traditional weights like barbells or machines, but also bands and bodyweight. These all added to strength, mobility, power, and balance.

Despite many different ways to strength train, the body responds to many forms of resistance. Yet the biggest impact was found to be consistency over time.

Simply showing up again and again was what really mattered for long-term health benefits.

Pick something you enjoy and can stick with, and keep showing up.

Of course, I believe, for women, progressive overload is incredibly important. This simply means gradually increasing the intensity of workouts or the challenge of workouts over time.

Women need to be lifting heavy weights! This is not a negotiable thing when it comes to building strength and bone density. Sure, body weight can be challenging and effective if you are starting from scratch, and it is important to work on moving weight safely, but with time, the resistance needs to increase. We lose 3-8% of muscle each decade after 30, but the work we do in our 30’s and 40’s can help protect us over our lifetimes.

The other aspect for muscle building is to appropriately fuel our bodies. This means not undereating. Women are chronic dieters due to societal norms, but to build muscle, we also have to feed the muscle. Good nutrition is a well-rounded diet of protein, vegetables, healthy fats, and minimally processed carbohydrates.

We definitely need carbohydrates to fuel muscle, so do not fear these as you work to build muscle. The main goal here is not to undereat. Even if you are trying to lose weight, without strength training, when you lose weight, a meaningful portion of the weight is likely lean mass.

I’d love to link Build&Bendy 1 and 2.0 here, as it is still a solid routine, but there are lots of options to create a training program available now.

Subscribe to stay informed of when I post my own routine (My Personal Wellness Pillars that help me look and feel my best), and feel free to let me know if you’d like more strength training direction or advice.

I love muscle, and I hope you do, too.

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* ACSM Position Stand on Resistance Training, 2026

This is also what I see in session, and what I’ve felt in my own personal journey with love, relationships, and matters of the heart.

If you are currently dating or have even tried a dating app, you are well aware it has become the nonchalant Olympics, with many people deciding the only way to navigate this dysfunction is to blame and shame their own feelings, while attempting to become detached, apathetic, and aloof themselves. It’s a battle of who can care less, and who can show less of themselves in the exchange, as no one wants to feel the shame of being the one who cared more.

This numbing of oneself and embarrassment about one’s heart is the last thing we should be doing.

There can be no future of deep love and connectedness if we lose the ability (or desire) to connect, and the willingness to be vulnerable or be seen trying to find love.

The reasons we shame ourselves for caring are often rooted in the pain of being vulnerable; the pain of one’s own heart being laid bare. We shame orselves even more intensely when our vulnerability was not held with care, or our love was unrequited.

This is especially sensitive for anyone whose emotional needs were neglected as a child or by their family of origin. If we learned we shouldn’t have needs or that those needs did not matter, admitting we care can be devastating. Admitting we want to be loved and we desire reciprocal interactions, rich with care, dignity, and respect, can feel mortifying, especially when those desires or actions are not mirrored or returned.

We often blame ourselves if something does not work out or if a person does not interact with us in the way we had hoped or the way we designate as the loving way. We blame ourselves as if there is something lacking in us that made the person behave in this way. Popular online rhetoric doesn’t help this with phrases like “if he wanted to, he would,” which can partially leave many women thinking if I was just enough, or this or that (fill in the blank with any insecurity), he would treat me better, communicate more, and care more.

This blame can also exist when we begin to care, as it becomes our own explanatory fodder for why something didn’t work out. ‘I was too much, too soon, I asked something deep and made him/her uncomfortable, I was needy – no one wants a needy person.’

Humans, especially those engaging in a potential relationship, are needy, and that is not a bad thing. Having needs is appropriate. Needing a willingness to and ability to communicate. Expecting reciprocal interest, effort, and openness. Those are not extremes.

In my own experience, and those I’ve seen in my office, we cannot be ashamed of our hearts. We cannot shame ourselves into caring less.

It’s cool to care. It’s cool to love. It’s also cool to try. When did it become cool to play with people’s hearts? To lead someone on? To treat them with anything less than human decency? To be overly cold?

It also seems there is an epidemic of everyone wanting something casual. Nothing where we are sharing ourselves (heart, mind, body) with another person is that casual, and even relationships that do not or will not ever evolve into a long-term exclusive partner or marriage deserve respect. I have always disliked the notion that things are either serious (destined for a pre-determined end of partnership, exclusivity, or marriage) or casual (which is often used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for not caring, and any behavior that is unkind). People use the guise of casual to not have to care, to not have to be vulnerable, and even to not have to engage in honest conversations.

You can be a serious, intentional person even in interactions that are not going to turn into a long-term partnership.

I fear this has not been many people’s experiences, and for that, I am very sad. I am sad so many now believe there is nothing “friendly” in friends with benefits.

It should not be, nor does it have to be, like this.

As Alex, the creator of the viral TikTok noted, it is the intentional daters that are having the worst time, but also the ones who will tap out of these nonchalant, disrespectful interactions where communication is inconsistent and fractured. It is a worse case for those who lean more anxious or avoidant, and the very mechanics of bad behavior in dating (the inconsistent, vague, or unclear communication, for example) trigger the anxious and reinforce the avoidant, rendering them both stuck in the cycle of pain and disappointment.

Many daters who once had open hearts seem to be closing themselves off to dating altogether, not wanting to deal with the pain (or perhaps shame) again of these, lackadaisical at best, and traumatizing at worst, interactions.

Keep loving despite that.

Dating apps have gamified our desire to be in relationship and created an atmosphere of unkind treatment, where we see people as disposable. We are removed (or blissfully ignorant and consciously oblivious) from the fact that there are real people on the other side of these apps.

It is a reality that you will meet many people you do not like in the same way they might like you, and many others you do not want to date or be involved with in certain ways. You will ghost and be ghosted. However, these realities do not mean that we have to be ashamed of wanting love, trying to find it, or pursuing those we are attracted to in open and vulnerable ways.

Even if it doesn’t work out. Even if the feelings end up not being mutual or never were.

Do not be ashamed of your emotional availability, your desire for something deep and meaningful, or a connection that is rooted in care and kindness.

So how do those with open hearts navigate the current dating scene?

From my own personal and professional experience, it is not about cutting oneself off or writing dating off altogether, but it does take an ongoing flexibility – a holding of curiosity and appropriate expectations.

I say curiosity because some have used “standards” (often mislabeled as boundaries) as a means to quickly cut someone off at the first sign of inconvenience or mismatch. This has its place as (sadly) dating is a numbers game, and we have to get good at failing fast. However, perfect partners don’t exist.

You will have to be in consistent communication with yourself – what works for me? What does not? Where am I willing to lean into a difference, and when is it simply too much?

This conversation is also important as many of us have internalized the mainstream dating advice that is steeped in toxic, bad relationship dynamics (and often mired in misogyny and patriarchy as well). This means we sometimes believe relationships are supposed to be hard work. This is not the entire story.

Creating and maintaining a life with someone is challenging, but especially early on, relationships are not meant to be a slog. You should not be trying to convince yourself or your friends of someone’s goodness or intentions. Once we start making excuses for someone, we have lost the plot and would do ourselves best to choose another path.

So we balance curiosity with appropriate expectations.

Expectations are needed in relationships, but appropriate ones. Someone you just met is a stranger, and we might treat each other as strangers – with dignity and respect, but the priority you might eventually develop is not present at first – and that is ok and appropriate.

How much time you give to someone, how much you share, and what parts of oneself you share with someone also grow and increase with time….as is appropriate as we learn someone.

As I mentioned in a TikTok on this subject, discernment is needed. Remaining open is one thing, but knowing how and when to gracefully remove ourselves is also needed.

“The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being” – Teilhard De Chardin

There is no exact science to dating or how to never be hurt, or how to never feel overly vulnerable. Perhaps it is far more worthwhile to get comfortable with one’s own desire for love, and learn to be with any discomfort that comes up for you with vulnerability or in conversations.

This past October, I had a birthday.

A special birthday, but not one I treated with more reverence than any other. Birthdays are special, no matter the year, and worth taking a moment to honor (I even offer birthday reflections here on clairefountain.com; I think so highly of birthdays).

I barely believe aging is real, and as long as we believe we are ageless, we are. I do not identify with the stigma of forty, but I’d be lying if I said I did not become more reflective during my late 30’s. I did, and with that, I compiled a list of forty things I know for sure at forty.

Some life advice, and some simple reflections, I hope this list is a reminder for you at any age about what to keep front of head, and front of heart.

If you’d like a more thorough walkthrough, please listen to the audio component included below.

1. Washing your hands

2. Saying I love you

3. Strength training

4. Music as medicine

5. Humans need art & beauty

Read more

I wanted to write a companion piece, not to respond, but to offer what I can from a woman, a similar woman of dreams and creativity, facing the same need to remind myself of dreams, some 20+ years into the journey.

Having dreams was all I felt like I had at times. I don’t think my convictions about them were strong enough in my college years like Giulia, but I knew at my core, in my essence, what was for me, how I wanted to be, who I wanted to be, and where I could go.

Though it was not as loud as I wish it was (my regrets as I look back at my early adulthood are not believing my inner knowing, not trusting my intuition, trying to mold to other’s opinions, and not telling certain men to fuck off sooner,) but the inner knowing of a dream, many dreams, kept me alive and kept me moving in the direction of those dreams.

And one day, the dreams do start chasing you. Much of the last few years has had moments of me thinking, I dreamed all of this.

But the path here is dotted with challenges, moments where our belief in something better being possible is really quiet (if not gone altogether), where we have to survive. I cannot begin to imagine how it must feel to be a young adult right now. I went to college in 2004, and times were hopeful. Sure, we all had terrible body image and could not be thin enough, but there was no sense of collective grief and pain and suffering that I, and many others, feel now that lends itself to a sense of hopelessness, confusion, and existential dread. We were not on little screens all day, and only social media technology at the time felt clunky but fun (I was an early adopter of platforms, and my Myspace was Myspace.com/joinmyfanclub.) Content was not king. We lived with disposable cameras, less inflation, and hope.

So I write to also share how we cannot give up on our dreams, no matter where we are. I think the feeling of holding on even though everything feels hard and it all sucks can apply to anyone, at any age, especially right now.

A manifesto as reminder.

If nothing else, we need to have a manifesto to live by.

It can change, but to hold onto something is to hold onto anything. A manifest grounds us and gives us something to always be returning to.

Write yours somewhere you can read it over and over. It can even help to write it over and over every morning until it sticks. I write mine most mornings or often during a journaling session. I repeat it like a prayer.

Career dreams are actually more than a career.

We can get really hung up on this idea of a “career” as if it is something we choose and settle into. Certainly, what we pick to “do” or use as a means to survive in a world that requires we work and pay to exist colors a great deal of where we go and who we get to be.

However, it’s not as tightly wound and concrete as you think. A more fluid, amorphous idea of what one desires is usually better suited, as it allows for many flavors of the same theme. Themes are something most of us have, no matter where we are or what we are doing.

My themes have always been thoughtfulness (sub themes: art, creativity, innovation, and being human), whether it was in the food work I was doing, my yoga work, clinical therapy, or my writing as an author.

I will say, what we choose to do encompasses a lot more parts of how we want to live a life. What you want to do or the industry you want to be in might dictate what city you live in, who you are around, what work/life balance you are afforded, how much financial success you have, how much creative time you are allowed.

So when we think of career dreams, everyone has to decide if the career dream will carry the rest, or will you select for the other parts that matter to you, and allow the career to come? For example, it was more important for me to live in NYC after college than it was to find a job, and allow the job to take me where it was located.

What we prioritize is who we are. It is also who we become.

You get to decide what you prioritize at any point in your life. So much more comes on the other side of those choices.

You will redirect and course correct, over and over.

People will change their “work” in many ways and careers over and over. It is never too late. We have one life, and we get to choose how we want to live it, so be as many people as you would like.

You get to evolve. You get to change. Give yourself the freedom to revise time and time again.

Find beauty and meaning in the mundane; it will save you.

I’ve found the business of having dreams is often the work of something out there, beyond our current reach. By being focused on where we are going, we sometimes forget that life is happening for us, right now. Your day-to-day might not be what you want, but it is your life. It is yours more than anything else, and honoring it as sacred will take you far.

As Giulia also notes, the process is the work. I would add to that, noticing the present in the process is a big part of how we go on.

I can’t say it gets better or easier.

It might actually get worse and better, all at the same time.

Without fail, bigger, more horrible, and more painful things will happen. The losses will be greater, the grief heavier, but the joys, the stability in oneself, and being grounded in who you are will also increase. You learn to care less about flippant things and, if you’re lucky, hone in more on what matters.

There is not some magic place we arrive at with age. The longing for something else doesn’t leave most of us, and yet, we learn to live alongside it.

We become more expansive, and expansiveness goes both ways. Pain and pleasure are waves on the same ocean.

Age can cause many of us to shift from hope and optimism to regret and sorrow. We think more of days gone by than the time we still have left. This trap keeps us from claiming what is right in front of us.

It was not until I experienced an untimely and tragic death that I realized how important taking action on your dreams really is. Your dreams will not come to you, no matter how much manifesting you do. I have always believed fate only takes you so far. There will be doors life gives you.

The real work is learning to recognize the doors and to walk through them when presented with them. It is also about being kind to former versions of yourself that did not see the doors, wasn’t confident enough to walk through them, or did not believe such lives were possible for them.

We humans have a way of looking back and assuming we could have known more than we did at any moment. We believe we could have done better or chosen better, and yet, the you that was in that moment, could only do what they actually did. There are factors beyond our immediate comprehension that play into what we do and why or how we do it.

A Toni Morrison quote comes to mind: “sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. but the grandeur of life is that attempt. it’s not about that solution. it is about being as fearless as one can & behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances.”

You don’t have to do this alone.

The work of having dreams and working towards them can be lonely and difficult, but you cannot (nor should you) try to do this life thing alone. I know I mentioned that things get better and worse all at once sometimes, but the way we navigate life and uncertainty, pain and difficulty, is to lean into the care and love of those around us. We have to keep coming back to the people and spaces that hold us.

I’ve lost enough to tell you that love is a salve for the struggling in the journey. I fear we have too often thought of love only in a romantic sense. In A Therapeutic Journey, Alain de Botton wrote the word love “is so fatefully associated with romance and sentimentality that we overlook its critical role in helping us keep faith with life at times of overwhelming psychological confusion and sorrow.”

Go where the love is. It is always the place to begin again.

Dreams can keep us going.

So yes, many things might be bad, for many people, in macro and micro ways right now.

I hold space for existential and collective dread every week in my office, and sit with individuals as they work through the grief. Grief from loss, but more often the grief of dreams that didn’t come true, of lives they didn’t live.

This is a particular type of grief. There are ways to cope with this grief (mentioned here.)

I cannot write this as someone who just wants you all to believe and keep a dream. Life is random and unfair. It is filled with loss. It is also filled with wonder and awe.

I hold them both. I hold the sad days and the losses and the injustices as tenderly as I can. I’ve learned to live with love and to see what is working and what we do have. I’ve learned we often have to do the best we know, as we know, with what we have at any given time.

I keep making vision boards, I keep writing new ideas in journals, I keep revisiting my manifesto, I keep turning my face towards the sun when I can, and I work really hard to look for hope even in the most hopeless of times. I’ve found friendships, and the people around you will help hold you when you feel you cannot hold yourself.

In January of 2024, I shared, “this year has not taken us and that alone is enough to celebrate.”

To still be here, to still be dreaming, is the win. That is how we keep going. So, season after season, year after year, we keep showing up for ourselves and each other.

In reality, 2024 started in a deep depression, where I was clinging to trying anything and everything to keep the life I knew moving forward. I recall mentioning a darkness and a sadness hanging around in my previous substack, welcoming 2024. The year continued on with the job of caring and caretaking for my mother, protecting her in the ways I could with the resources and ability I have. It turned into a job that asked so much of me, and took my time and much of my heart.

I would think – is this what loving someone means? Is my tenacity in caring for her, not taking no for an answer, and fighting for her care, her dignity, and for peace and comfort in what I knew was the end of her life, the ultimate, final act of love? All while in my own grief, my own complicated relationship with being her daughter, and being a woman in the world; aging, living, and loving as I could.

Looking back, it surprises even me how much I had to do, the challenges I faced, the nights I would work until the wee hours of the morning, taking calls, sending texts, organizing paperwork, making to-do lists for her care, and being the communication center for the entire family. Yet, in the moment, there is nothing more than what is happening right in front of me. I go into work mode. I go into handling business mode. Things simply have to be done, and I was the one to do them.

And I do them well. I carry heavy loads well. I do not take pride in this skillset, but I do feel thankful that I am able to hold myself at the same time. I am grateful I have resources; I know how to take the best care of myself even when things are hard, when things are heavy. So much of life is not about fighting what is, but simply being with it. How can we hold all feelings, all realities, at the same time? How can we be kind to ourselves when we fail at handling things well? How can we allow ourselves to fall apart sometimes? To have bad days? To lean into social networks, our friendships, and love (no matter what it looks like)?

I spent the last two years telling people my mother is dying. I said it not for shock but to be with the reality that was mine, and reality as a whole. Death is a part of life. She was dying. I was grieving. It was my reality, and to fight what is, is a recipe for even more pain.

As I reflect on the start of 2024, and my attempts at this substack, it was perhaps the heaviest in grief I was in. I spent the end of 2023 with a broken heart, believing my mother was going to die rapidly, and grappling with my own age as life continued onwards. Last year started, and even though she was still here in body, in need, and in feeling, so much of her was gone. I slept and slept and slept those months. Gone were the days of caring to wake up and be productive. I’d spend entire days clinging to a positive thought, a meditation, or sitting in the park weeping. I’d close my eyes and feel the wind on my face. I’d walk without a map or a direction, just anything to keep moving forward. A long season of holding on.

She continued to slip away from me, from us, from her own life. The pain of watching someone wither away is a practice in sitting with one’s own helplessness, and the grief that is already present around what is already lost, what is being lost, and what you will ultimately lose….while still holding onto the reality of a life still being here.

By mid-2024, I’d isolated enough to tend to my heart and finish my manuscript for what will be a book I’m so eager to share with you all. I’d planned time with friends and family, to whom I owe so much. Their love and presence keep me here. To know love and care like this is what life is actually about.

Summer is healing with an energy only sun can provide. My mother was still dying. But somehow I became easier on my heavy heart. It simply was there. My tasks for her care grew in intensity and complication in ways I will not even highlight as they are just things I had to navigate and are not worth belaboring now. They are done.

My mother died on January 4^th of this year, after the longest December of touch-and-go wellness, uncertainty, and admittedly more suffering. I’d like to think she was comfortable those final weeks.

I said my goodbye to her on a Friday evening, my brother sitting beside her. I felt her spirit cross over on Saturday, and the next six to eight weeks were a blur as anyone who has planned a memorial service and been the most important person/contact person / first in command can attest to.

I say all this not only to share where I’ve been (and why this substack has been collecting dust,) but to acknowledge the very human experience of grief, and the even more overlooked experience of complex grief, care taking, and the many roles we assume in our lives and in the lives of those around us. The invisible labor of women spans time, place, and age.

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So often, we do not see the intensity or depth of what we live through until we are on the other side. We look back and can finally acknowledge just how much was on, or just how bad situations were in retrospect. To survive is to not fully know while we are in it.

Recently, I saw a lecture Dr. Becky asked what resilience feels like. She mentioned that being resilient doesn’t feel resilient while we are in it. She went on to mention that the space between knowing and not knowing is the space of learning, and the “learning space” has one feeling associated with it: frustration.

Building frustration tolerance is how we weather seasons of resilience.

“People think resilience and success is getting to ‘knowing’ as soon as possible.” Resilience and success come from how long we can tolerate being in the in-between.

The last few years had to play out in the way they did. I simply had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, alongside a timeline that was undetermined in all ways except for the reality being that it would all end with my mother’s death.

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When I say, always be coming home, I mention it often as a way to remind myself I am always returning to myself. No matter how far I drift, or how long I’m away, my efforts are to always be coming home.

I’ve returned to more literature and more poetry, and as much nature as I can touch. Art can save us, if you let it. In these moments, I find myself again. I get back into my body. I find hands to hold and people who give real hugs. I listen for my friend’s voices and laughter more. I focus on nourishing myself, from the inside and the outside, with new information and more tender approaches that are enriched with the reality of my current age, my current goals, and my current needs. In some ways, I’m meeting a new version of myself, rich with new wisdom and maturity, and a deeper understanding of love.

The last four years have confirmed much of what I felt, but one of the many lessons is that we have to take the time to make the time. It won’t often be convenient, but much of what is important is not.

People work hard on all the wrong things. We hustle. We grind. We pull all-nighters for education or (gasp) jobs. We pour money into our personal upkeep or material items to satisfy our egos, but do not show up for our friends’ special events. We spend time scrolling, but say we hate being on our phones when it comes to a phone call, or leaving actual voice memos, and checking in.

Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art

― Margaret Atwood
(from You are Happy, 1974)

To love is an art. Thus, to caretake is an art, but a discipline one must have the capacity to engage in.

This year of 2025 felt like it began in May for me. Mourning season had started to lift, spring was in the air, and now summer is upon us as we close this month.

For those who have extended their care during all of this, I feel all the love. It is deeply appreciated. The Women’s Community has been a sweet refuge to share.

We all get a turn with grief, and most of us will also get a turn with life not going according to how we planned.

May we all always be taking care of each other, and always be coming home.

I have found many of us use this time to assess or review our previous year and ourselves while putting forward what we’d like to achieve or focus on for the next year. I do love reflections from a place of simply reflecting, without judgment or criticism of ourselves or what we did to get through the last year of our lives.

I typically do The Year Compass (a free download you can print off,) which offers prompts and space to dream about the year ahead.

From my reading over the last two weeks, I have noticed a theme of happiness. So many articles (some linked below) are discussing happiness. And I have to think if we are all searching for happiness, maybe 2023 was a trying year for many of us; perhaps most of us. 2023 did not leave many of us feeling good, from global unrest and collective traumas to personal struggles with cost of living, the lingering effects of a pandemic (while still dealing with Covid,) and a general sense of being unhappy overall.

You are not alone if you feel this way. 2023 was a confusing year for me. Though I’m used to a manageable melancholy hanging, things felt heavier and darker this year. I have projects I never started, barely worked on others, and some I avoided completely as my attention was needed elsewhere – family, loss, and tending to my heart. I did not think on happiness, though, or wanting to chase happiness as a panacea to what ails me or ails any of us.

I have thought about happiness many times as I have thought about sadness — aspects of a human life that are guaranteed to come and go over and over again. I think we want happiness, but more so, I think we want safety, stability, love, consistency, trust in being, and an ease in living. Happiness does not protect us from pain, but being able to find joy, pleasure, safety, and love in the midst of pain is what we can become better at doing.

Another theme that certainly connects to happiness is the idea of meaning and purpose in life. I often hear this in clinical work, where people follow the rules to be “happy” or content and find themselves unhappy, apathetic, or completely void of any motivation or enthusiasm for the day-to-day. So maybe we aren’t trying to find happiness but what we think happiness will help us feel. And sometimes what we want to feel is rooted in meaning. What is meaning for you? What makes life special? Purposeful? Where do we find meaning?

Given my propensity for sadness, I have often clung to small things I did have control over. Micro-moments of happiness do add up, and sometimes, that is all we have. I know I have had seasons where the smallest things meant the most, not because they were overtly amazing but because I gave them meaning. Meaning is personal, and yet it enriches our experiences.

Rituals, making the mundane special, and creating or looking for beauty in every day. I do this with my practices (journaling, meditation, movement, sensory noticing) and surrounding myself with things that feel nurturing instead of numbing (and I am so good at numbing. I admit, most of Q4 2023 was spent doom scrolling to manage or escape pains of grief and overwhelm.) I now have a bit more space to feel with life and be in my practices. I’ve also started a “Small Wins” note on my phone where I collect little wins – say, a free tea, a compliment, or an unexpected kind gesture or bit of goodness.

Anything can be meaningful if we give it intention. The same goes for making something magical; all you need is intention.

I’m giving myself January to rest and nest. I’m not sure what the future months of this year hold, but I, and many of you, might need a quiet, dark, wintering season to allocate our resources to our own care and keeping. I have energy for my work and myself these days, and that…is ok.

I have a deep aversion to the shame, blame, and rigid, intense culture of hustling, pressure, and success as a measure of how much we can push ourselves or abandon ourselves (which is what a lot of previous New Years and their “resolutions” have felt like. I have a history of not liking resolutions.) Gentleness with myself accomplishes far more good than harshness ever has.m

Spring will come, the days will be longer, and happiness will take on different forms with different seasons of life.

My practices keep me afloat in these seasons. There is a saying – When we hold to our practices, our practices hold us. What are your practices? Perhaps it’s as simple as taking a moment of gratitude upon waking as we open our eyes and take our first stretch in our body.

Here is a simple practice I really like that you can do any time of day: a tea ritual.

Tea Ritual: 

Make a cup of your favorite tea. Holding the cup (safely,) close your eyes. Notice the warmth of the mug on your hands and give yourself a moment to be with this warmth, letting it radiate through your hands and body. Opening eyes as needed, bring the cup closer to your face and allow yourself to smell the tea, or notice the steam coming from the cup that might meet your face, nose, lips. Breathing in this moment, and as temperature allows, take a sip of your tea. Notice the warmth, the flavor, how it moves in the mouth. Continuing to be with this moment, noting your senses, and allow yourself a few minutes here; continuing to be with with and moving through the sensory experience of tea.

Perhaps you follow this tea ritual with a few lines of writing in a journal.

What I’m reading

9 Women Philosophers To Inspire You In 2024

Happy Books (all about happiness)

Don’t Wish for Happiness. Work for it.

Breaking the Cycle of Body Shaming as a Mother

Books: Revisiting Questions for Ada, a poetry book I’ve always enjoyed, and reading Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood.

Teas of the month

This Restoring Roots blend from Clipper is so good for winter seasons.

Big fan of the quality and health benefits of Pique Matcha.

Updates

+ Nothing to report now, but I will use this area in the future for book news, social posts (like this new share on TikTok,) or other things that have a timely nature to them.

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Social Media changes, and I evolve.

As some of you know, I’ve been creating content of one form or another online for over a decade now. Writing has always been one of the ways I liked to share. Though I was never consistent with blogging, I shared many of my thoughts on different topics, from Sustainable Self Love to Thoughts on Privacy & Discretion to a series on Nourishing + Nurturing. These could all use a good edit and update, but platforms for sharing writing have changed over the years. All social media has changed and continues to change. And maybe I’ve changed, too, but this evolution feels appropriate.

Why this

I haven’t thought much about this past wanting to have a place to share a “newsletter” and other musings with a more intimate community than some branches of social media. Maybe this will change with time, but for now, it’s simply a place where I can share writing, links to what I’m reading, prompts for journaling or reflection, and a bit more of how I think about “wellness,” along with tools you can use for movement as medicine and the body as our nearest home.

In a saturated internet, I’ve always been honored that anyone would let me or my thoughts or resources be part of their healing or well-being journey. If you’re here from Instagram or even TikTok, there are probably so many aspects of how I work in wellness or think about wellness that I don’t get to show or share. I have a holistic approach, with deep importance for mind, body, and spirit approaches, centered on a love ethic.

So here we are with Head, Heart, & Body.

Why now

From the little I share online about my private life, I think some of you gathered that I tragically lost someone close to me and, perhaps less obvious, that I was going through other heavy family and relational experiences. Traumatic bereavement and anticipatory grief were not on my bingo card for my late 30s.

I had no idea how these would affect my work online or how I could show up. Everything feels unreal and unimportant when these seasons come to us. Living through these experiences (which I am still wading through,) I’ve touched the deepest parts of my depression and have also learned more about myself and this whole process of being a human than any work in “wellness” could have taught me. As the fog continues to lift, I’m called to show up again.

I am ready to return to my world of creating and sharing, of dreaming and doing, of magic and meaning, within the wellness work I get to share with you. I’m ready to share more of what I’ve learned and am learning, along with musings and thoughts from my professional work (I’m a licensed therapist and soon-to-be-published author, y’all. I know, I know. A girl doing yoga in her apartment in NYC listening to SoundCloud playlists to here, but I’m grateful for all of you who knew me then and who know me now,) and, hopefully, more tools and resources for mind, body, spirit and thoughtful living rooted in love, hope, and togetherness.

I promise this side of the internet won’t be heavy think pieces but something more simple, gentle, honest, and me.

Thank you for being here.

With love,

Claire

A note on posting cadence & content

I will be sharing once a month, but maybe, just maybe, I will share more often if specific updates and timely reflections come to mind. As much as I’d like to say this will be on a more regular schedule, I cannot commit to that, nor do I think creativity follows such rules.

I’m also open to anything you would like to hear about here. Drop a comment or email to let me know what’s on your mind.

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