How do you write about a woman who, over her 80-year life, became more illustrious than the language used to describe her?

Dolly Parton, the American icon who passed away two days ago, effortlessly bridged contradictions. Dolly simultaneously carried the mantle of both icon and underdog, entertainer and entrepreneur, deeply private yet impossibly familiar.

In honor of Dolly Parton, consider making a donation to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. As little as $1, $5, or $15 would make a world of difference, providing books to young children in underserved communities. Giving is good. Dolly sure would agree.

In her moving tribute for The New York Times, Lindsay Zoladz beautifully described Parton as an “earth angel”. Parton was no stranger to the hardships of American poverty or the grit required to make it as a woman in 1970s America. Yet, she always chose to balance her driven nature with a soft touch, radiating joy and making a difference in causes that were important to her.

The more I read about Dolly, the more I learn she encapsulated so much more than her fabulous look and her iconic laugh. Beyond her celebrated kindness and generous philanthropy (like funding COVID-19 vaccine research and donating millions of books to children), she was a brilliant businesswoman who never undersold her worth. She was the definition of self-respect and actively chose joy as a discipline. As she once noted: “Happiness is hard work. But… so is dejection, so!”

Dolly lived her life from a place of empathy, without ever losing her boundaries — a masterclass on life beautifully captured in her 2023 conversation with Jad Abumrad below:

As Abumrad points out, Dolly was, in many ways, a walking juxtaposition. But I’d argue hers was a rare kind of contradiction in that she never felt contradictory. She was as empathetic as she was remarkably self-possessed. She was both generous and fiercely protective of her privacy. In another person, that kind of adaptability might read as ‘chameleonism,’ or the ability to bend yourself into whatever shape will make the people around you like you. But Dolly never seemed to bend. She simply possessed a remarkably broad emotional and social range, with firm values on either side of the power spectrum. She had enough empathy to make people feel seen, and enough self-possession to command a room without needing to overpower the people in it. Perhaps that was part of what made her so likable; Dolly could hold power without weaponizing it, and she could radiate warmth without surrendering herself.

That’s why this video, in particular, stopped me in my tracks yesterday:

Interviewer: “Biggest mistake?”

Dolly: “I haven’t made any.”

Interviewer: *laughs genuinely*

Dolly: “I’ve tried to look at my life as a series of events, and what other people would call a mistake, I wouldn’t. Sometimes what would look like to be my biggest mistakes turn out to be my biggest blessings. I’m not one of those people that … I don’t go back, I don’t regret things, because I never done anything that I didn’t feel I shouldn’t have done exactly that way at exactly that time, so how can you say that it’s a mistake?”

What Dolly is really presenting is the idea that it’s honestly silly for a person to call something a mistake when none of us (not a single one of us) has access to the future knowledge of what that action will become or the true meaning of what it may unlock for our lives.

Whether she knew it or not, Dolly had stumbled onto a question that philosophers have been asking for centuries: How much authority should we give ourselves to decide, in the moment, whether something is good or bad for us?

Her answer called to mind an old Daoist parable called, “The Old Man of the Frontier Loses His Horse,” translated from Chinese below:

Old Man of the Frontier Loses Horse

Good luck and bad luck create each other
and it is difficult to foresee their change.
A righteous man lived near the border.
For no reason, his horse ran off into barbarian territory.
Everyone felt sorry for him.
His father spoke [to him]:
“Who knows if that won’t bring you good luck?”
Several months later,
his horse came back with a group of [good, noble] barbarian horses.
Everyone congratulated him.
His father spoke [to him]:
“Who knows if that won’t bring you bad luck?”
Now his house is rich in horses
and the son mounted with joy/loved riding.
He fell and broke his leg.
Everyone felt sorry for him.
His father spoke [to him]:
“Who knows if that won’t bring you good luck?”
One year later
the barbarians invaded across the border.
Adult men strung up their bows and went into battle.
Nine out of ten border residents were killed,
except for the son because of his broken leg.
Father and son were protected/both survived.
Hence: Bad luck brings good luck
and good luck brings bad luck.
This happens without end
and nobody can estimate it.

— Claude Larre et al. Les grands traités du Huainan zi, 1993, p. 208–209.

The lesson is simple, though living by it is anything but. Bad luck can become good luck, and good luck can become bad luck. We rarely know which is which while we are living through it.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about this philosophy because, as humans, we desperately want to know, even though we know that at the end of the day, we cannot truly know. We want the horse to be good luck, and we want the broken leg to be bad luck. In our own lives, we want to know why we were too tired to go to the concert with our friends, why we got stuck in traffic, why we lost the job, or why a relationship ended. We want to know which experiences belong in the Thank-God-That-Happened column and which ones we’d take back if we were granted 9 wishes from the genie’s bottle.

We shame ourselves for choices whose consequences we could not possibly have known in advance. We love to look back in time with information and wisdom our past selves didn’t have access to and judge them for failing to make decisions with knowledge that hadn’t arrived yet.

But the farmer refuses to decide.

Dolly refused to decide, too.

In today’s world, it feels harder and harder to make mistakes. Cancel Culture, helllooo?! If you don’t know what I mean, take a stroll through conspiracy-theory TikTok, and you’ll see what I mean. We are constantly searching for evidence that an event was either meant to happen or never should have happened at all.

Dolly seemed to have a different relationship with uncertainty.

Her answer about mistakes feels different when you look at the life behind it. She grew up poor in Tennessee as one of 12 children, before leaving home young to build an extraordinary career as a songwriter and performer. In little to no time, she became one of the most recognizable women in America. But what interests me most is what Parton did with the power and wealth she accumulated. She repeatedly turned them outward, using the bigness she had built to create big opportunities for other people.

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Dolly Parton knew the difference between believing that everything happens for a reason and believing that you can make something from whatever happens.

I have never found the first idea particularly convincing. Sometimes terrible things happen, or people hurt us for reasons that have nothing to do with some larger lesson. Sometimes we make choices that we genuinely regret. Dolly’s philosophy leaves room for all of that.

You can regret something without allowing it to become the defining fact of your life. You can acknowledge that something hurt you without deciding that it ruined you. And you can look back at a younger version of yourself with compassion for acting on the information you had at the time. None of that requires you to turn the pain into a lesson or the mistake into a blessing. Dolly wasn’t insisting that every painful experience secretly contained a gift. She was fully leaving the verdict open.

At 80, after a life so enormous that it seems almost impossible to summarize, Dolly Parton could still say she hadn’t made any mistakes. She likely wouldn’t say this because everything had gone according to plan, but because she understood something the rest of us spend a whole lot of time resisting: we are not always qualified to decide what our lives mean while we are still living them.

Some things need time before they can be understood. Others may never make sense at all. Dolly’s gift was her willingness to keep going anyway.

When does a life become a legacy?

Why does it sometimes take somebody dying for us to really look at them?

Does Dolly know that she’s being called an ICONIC EARLTHY ANGEL by everyone on the planet right now?

Since Parton’s death, I have spent hours watching old interviews and reading about her life. I keep discovering things I could have discovered at any point while she was alive. But it wasn’t until the world’s collective grief somehow turned me into a little historian that I began an in depth look at who she really was.

I was quick to learn that in Dolly’s case, the more you look, the more glamorously complicated the picture becomes. A woman classically known by her image spent her life using her image to help other people. Her larger-than-life persona was hell-bent on making other people’s lives larger, too.

I think that is part of why her death has landed so strangely for me. I didn’t know enough about to grieve her as a person. What I am grieving, in some small way, is the realization that I didn’t pay enough attention while she was here.

There are so many people we think we know because we know the version of them that has become public. We know someone’s job, their Instagram, their sense of humor, their role in our family, or the story everyone else tells about them. We rarely know the entire person. We don’t know what someone has survived, what they believe, what they are quietly building, or what they have spent a lifetime trying to become.

Dolly was right in front of us for eighty years. Her life was enormous enough to become familiar, and private enough to remain unknowable.

Was this tension just part of her particular genius?

I keep coming back to that little video.

“Biggest mistake?”

“I haven’t made any.”

Dolly freed herself to make the best out of situations, to keep moving forward despite the many obstacles she faced along the way.

I’d like to learn how to do that, too.

<3 Delaney

This past Saturday, we did exactly that.

For our first (and certainly not our last!) NYC Substack Meet-Up, we gathered in Central Park under a shady oak tree near Wollman Rink.

Wait a minute.

Central Park? On a sunny, non-humid Saturday afternoon?

A day people could’ve been anywhere, doing anything, in all of Manhattan?

Bold! We know.

Successful? Yes.

You’d be surprised to hear that 25+ writers showed up, all of them now an official part of our real-life writers’ circle.

For 3 hours, we sat on grassy blankets, reading each other’s work and using our writing as a launch point to get to know one another. We brought snacks, merch, a mascot (Honey Bee Ween, pictured above), and 20 printed copies of a favorite article each of us had written.

And that was it! We didn’t create an elaborate agenda beyond reading, talking, and spending an afternoon together. As it turns out, we didn’t need one.

People came to connect, read in peace, and talk under the hot afternoon sun, with oak leaves falling around us, pens in hand, and Stevie Nicks’ voice emanating softly from a nearby speaker.

Afterward, and I debriefed and noticed something that made the afternoon feel especially special: everyone came from a different corner of the city, ranged in age from 24 to 54, and had very disparate careers and visions for what their lives as creatives in NYC could look like. We had people working in film production, studio painting, public relations, editorial writing, and more. And still, there was an immediate sense of familiarity. It was palpable.

At one point, someone began asking the other guests, “How does NYC make you feel?”

The answers varied more than expected: “Excited.” “Overwhelmed.” “Inspired.” “Lonely.” “Energized.” “Exhausted.” “Motivated.” “Connected.”

It was a pretty perfect snapshot of the New York experience. How you can feel lonely and connected, exhausted and motivated, somehow all at once.

The question, too, captured something about why the afternoon worked so well. NYC can make you feel like you’re constantly becoming someone new. It was nice to sit in a circle of people who are doing the same thing, to be reminded that everyone is figuring it out, even when their “figuring it out” looks completely different from yours.

More than anything, the meet-up reminded us that community doesn’t have to be tiring or complicated. Quite the contrary: it can be refreshing, energizing, and incredibly simple.

A few people sitting around on lawn blankets, talking about their work, their lives, what they’re reading, what they’re writing, and what they’re trying to figure out next.

Who knew this was the key to happiness?

A Spotlight on Our Writers’ Circle

We spent hours lounging in the sun, drinking Trader Joe’s seltzers, trading printed articles, and highlighting standout sections with multi-colored pens.

We wanted to share a few of our favorite quotes from the pieces writers brought:

“There is an expectation for women to grow old and quiet. To become invisible. To sink entirely into motherhood. To become totally unselfish. To wear frumpy, age appropriate clothes. I never want to be this type of woman. I want to be loud and bold. I want to wear chic clothes, and I never want the words “age appropriate” to cross my mind. I want to make people laugh and cry and feel things. I never want to be accused of being lazy. I never want to stop learning.”

• Logan, “The Woman I Want To Be”

“The future makes me forget the present. Gives me an anxiety that I can keep in check if I try. I just need to try. I need to get out of bed. I need to do things, meet people, have fun. I live in New York City, the greatest city in the world, a place of possibility and chance. I want to explore. I want to find the new and exciting in my life again. Climb the highest mountains, yell out to the sea. I just want to scream. Scream as loud as I can, telling the world that I am here and I am ready.”

• Rachello Films, “52 Days Post Graduation”

“On a chilly Tuesday night at Night Club 101 in the East Village, Avery Cochrane performed a set worthy of Madison Square Garden. As the redheaded rising star strutted across the stage, belting out hits like “Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night,” every element of a pop supernova was on display: songwriting prowess and vocal range, a dazzling cutout bodysuit, an endearing backstory, an insatiable hunger to “make it,” and gays crying in the front row.”

• Ilana, “Avery Cochrane Is Shapeshifting Into a Superstar”

“My boss thinks that my New Year’s Resolution should be to “expand my palette.” At least that is what he jokingly told me as he cut me off a piece of his medium rare steak when I ordered my filet mignon well-done. After chewing at his raw steak bit for 10 minutes with the taste of the scallop I ate for an appetizer still lingering in my mouth, I think my palette is about at the end of its rope.”

• Callie, “Eating raw meat at The Occidental”

The support and excitement after the weekend has been so encouraging to see. Sharing some of our favorite comments here:

Couldn’t make this first meet-up or wondering if there will be another one?

Don’t worry – there are definitely more to come!

We will share details for our next meet-up once finalized, but sign up here to add your contact information to our invitation list – that way we can send you the invitation directly via email or Substack next time!

As always,

Thanks for reading <3 we LOVE this special community we’re building!

<3

Delaney & Daelyn

If you’re in NYC tomorrow, meet us in Central Park with 20 printed copies of a favorite piece you’ve written to swap and share with other Substackers. and I are hosting, and 35 of you have already RSVP’d. Come hang with us!

RSVP here!

Today’s newsletter includes (for less than the price of a Sweetgreen salad):

• Every ‘influencer-approved’ nervous system tool I’ve tried… that did nothing.

• The 20 tools that DID help me rewire my nervous system, brick by brick.

• A nod to the New York Times’ timely investigation of who’s selling you the tale of “nervous system dysregulation” + why it’s not who you think.

$10/month gets you the toolkits that changed my life, plus a behind-the-scenes look at my writing and life as a Culture + Health Writer. The good stuff lives here and only here, for less than the price of one Sweetgreen salad. Upgrade to join the ride <3

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Two Novembers ago, I woke up and could not get out of bed. Not wouldn’t… I physically couldn’t.

That morning came at the end of weeks of brain fog, when my easily agitated body flinched at the smallest city noise or moment of uncertainty. I was 24 going on 80! I knew I needed to make some changes.

Back then, I found the phrase “nervous system regulation” and thought it was the answer. After 2 years of trying hundreds of supplements and influencer-touted tricks, I’ve learned it’s not that simple.

But first, a quick poll.

One more.

Most of us have lived at least one of these. And the wellness industry has built a business model on selling you “dysregulation” as a diagnosis and “eternal calm” as the cure.

The New York Times just ran an investigation into this kind of racketeering, culminating in the video essay here: The Fake Influencers Selling Wellness on Your Feed. The report found swaths of AI-generated ‘doctors’ and ‘healers’ commandeering the minds of social media’s most health-conscious consumers, each flaunting faux diplomas on the walls of their utopian offices, all touting miracle supplements as miracle drugs. The ads are too…perfect… to be true and, unfortunately, mostly aimed disproportionately at women over 50. One woman with an autoimmune condition bought a supplement called “Rosabella Moringa” off a fabricated endorsement. The pills turned out to be contaminated, and her health symptoms worsened. Ads like these would be ILLEGAL! on American television. Online, almost nobody is checking.

I wasn’t surprised by the NYT’s findings. After all, I’ve suffered the consequences of buying into supplements touted by “Big Wellness” at the cost of my own health. It’s clear that the aforementioned fake doctors aren’t reinventing the scam wheel. From what I’ve observed, they’re running the same play that plenty of real influencers already run. As I dug deeper into the NYT’s findings, I wanted to see where else I may be getting scammed. That’s when I realized the term “nervous system dysregulation” in some ways fits the bill.

“Nervous system dysregulation” has become one of wellness marketing’s favorite invented diagnoses, glommed onto everything from a bad night’s sleep to an even rougher work commute, then paired with a $300 gadget positioned as the cure. I was listening to the Good Noticings podcast (I’m aaallllwayssss listening to the Good Noticings podcast), and host Claire Parker said something like, “When are women going to realize that the wellness industry profits off keeping women convinced they’re operating from a place of lack, and that our ‘wholeness’ somehow feels like it needs to be purchased externally?”

Dr. Abbey Houde, a brain health leader specializing in functional neurology and brain rehabilitation, thinks the word “dysregulated” gets used far more than it should.

“I actually do not love the word ‘dysregulated,’” she told Poosh Magazine. “Most of the time, your nervous system is not malfunctioning.” In fact, folks with legitimate neurological disorders or autonomic nervous system dysfunction comprise only 2-3% of the global population, according to the Cleveland Clinic. To be clear, I’m not discrediting the fact that dysautonomia and POTS do seem to be on the rise post-COVID (including amongst family of mine; there needs to be a post-COVID study on this!!). But, what MOST people experience, Houde explains, is adaptation, which occurs when a person’s brain almost can’t stop sending them extreme signals about their current needs, based on past experiences and their environment.

“Feeling overwhelmed, emotionally reactive, or having trouble focusing does not automatically mean your nervous system is dysregulated,” Houde says. “More often, it reflects a brain that has adapted to repeated stress.” Such stress almost rarely comes from somebody’s workload alone. Relationships, bad sleep, environmental noise, living in a nation of constant information, and the perpetual pressure to perform! perform! perform! all shape how our brains respond. I can relate to this heavily. I’m sure you can, too.

The difference between Parker’s read and Houde’s is that neither one justifies selling you a supplement. What does? Telling consumers, “You’re dysregulated.”

None of it needs fixing the way they’re telling you it does.

There’s another lie the wellness-guide industrial complex sells you, and it’s the idea that you should feel zen at all times, or you’re doing life wrong.

I hate to break it to you, but a completely stress free life is impossible. And it’s also not what I, personally, would want. I want to be able to handle it when life isn’t calm, because life not being calm is most of the job description of being alive. A stressful text from a friend or boss at 6:30 am can send you spiraling. Training your body to notice that trigger without treating it like a bear chasing you — THIS is the rewiring we’re looking for. Buying a $600 device that promises to erase the spike entirely is not.

Most people don’t have the money or time for outlandish nervous-system routines, and they shouldn’t need them. We have jobs, responsibilities, and days that rarely go how we planned. That’s just what having a life is.

SO! After trying every $300 gadget on the market myself and becoming fluent in sorting woo-woo from the factsss, here’s what worked for me.

This is normally where my paid subscribers’ content starts, so consider this your one free look in:

I’ve spent two years testing the below strategies on myself, cross-checking it with people who have ~medical degrees~, and cutting the list down to what’s repeatable on the days nothing goes as planned. None of what’s below has been posted anywhere else - not on Instagram, not in my Slate article, nowhere. Below the paywall you’ll get the full list, the exact two-part breathing pattern I use mid-meltdown and repeat hourly, the products I have paid for and would buy again, and the journaling method that gets me out of any spiral for good. For less than a Sweetgreen salad (or that supplement you almost bought off a fake AI doctor’s Instagram ad), you get the version of this that’s wholly my own.

I sincerely hope it’s a helpful set of tools for anyone who needs them <3

My morning anchors:

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What?

What?

Enough people support a sexual predator and misogynist that it has facilitated his rise to the top of a bestselling newsletter list? The same newsletter platform that hosts THIS newsletter?

I was dumbstruck. I thought I moved on with my life, but it’s been nagging at me in the back of my mind for some time.

This week, I saw the following news fill headlines, including this BBC report:

“Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been arrested in the US after British authorities issued 38 new charges against the pair.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Andrew was being charged with seven further counts of rape, as well as charges relating to sex trafficking and indecent images of a child.

Tristan’s charges include two counts of rape and three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation.

The total number of charges against the brothers is now 59, police said.”

I felt sickened. Both men were arrested in Miami on July 18, and both men have assured their devotees that they’ll walk free soon enough.

Many people hope they won’t.

Unfortunately, there are also many people who hope they will.

I want to be clear here (because precision matters when the charges are this serious) that these are charges and not yet convictions. The allegations against these men span many years and many more women, and they arrive on top of a UK prosecution that was already 21 counts deep before this week.

The kickboxer → reality star → toxic-manosphere-kingpin pipeline needs to be studied.

Please Google “Jake Paul” for example.

As you all know, I write about psychology and relationships for a living. I’ve spent a long time thinking about the factors and behavioral context behind Andrew Tate’s ascendance in popularity.

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I’ve come to realize that Tate’s messaging has caught because of the way he packages his claims (however extreme they may be). Tate says, “You will have bigger biceps if you lift weights every day.” True enough! Tate says, “You will focus better if you eliminate distractions.” Also true. Then, Tate says, “You will be less of a man if you show any semblance of emotion, especially in your romantic relationships with women.” Also tru…wait… whatttt?

He lost me there.

But he might not have lost that impressionable fourteen-year-old boy, who, at that age, absorbs Tate’s toxic messaging like a sponge. Kids like these (Many of whom subscribe to Mr. Tate’s media) do not have the ability to discern between the good advice (Go to gym, eat healthy, have more self respect) and the bad messaging that it is wrapped up in (Women are the root of all your problems). Which means he’s also buying into Tate’s claim that feminism is to blame for male loneliness, and that the primary solution is to dominate women and never show them they’ve emotionally affected you.

Do you see the problem here?

By packaging his misogyny alongside otherwise quite generic motivational speak and discipline tips, Tate makes it seem like – in order to become the kind of man he’s selling, you’re required to buy into all of it, misogyny included.

It’s a tactic I’d like to call “moral bundling,” and it’s used by many marketers …. but many marketers morally bundle us enough to buy their protein powder, not enough to buy into their belief that men can never show emotion lest they become less manly.

Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and a vocal critic of the manosphere, sat across from 20 pro-manosphere guests on this week’s Jubilee debate. From what I gathered, Manson’s summary of the ecosystem went as follows: “The manosphere is a billion dollar business that profits off of keeping men angry and insecure.” Manson rejected the idea that feminism is the main driver of young men’s struggles, pointing instead to structural and economic shifts, tech-driven distraction, and a gap in male mentorship. He argued that healthy self-improvement content (fitness, discipline, self-care) gets bundled with domination and anti-feminist anger because extremity performs better online, which is close to my “bundling” idea from earlier.

During the debate, Manson arduously tried to get across his belief (a belief I share) that looks and “being an asshole” on the first date really only get a guy so far. Manson argued attraction isn’t a binary between “nice guy” and “bad boy,” citing research that women broadly value kindness and intelligence for the long term even when short-term attraction skews differently.

Side note: if you’re curious about the other false claims pro-manosphere figures make, I highly recommend watching the full debate. But prepare to grind your teeth the entire time, lol.

Tate has said, in various forms, that men are losing because of the rise of feminism. And that in order to gain their territory back, they need to be the most domineering versions of themselves possible. He basically says: those who show emotional openness will lose, and therefore they are not men.

Thanks to Christopher Nolan, and the marketing of his new film “The Odyssey” I have been thinking a lot about Greek mythology. These ancient tales can teach us a lot about modern problems…So now I want to take you all somewhere older than Substack, older than the manosphere…

The Primordial Myth of Persephone and Hades

May I interest you in a Greek mythology lesson, friends?!

Let’s travel back in time to approximately the 6th century B.C. Persephone, goddess of the spring, was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter and by most accounts, the most beautiful of the young goddesses. Aka, this girl had suitors… One of them was Ares, god of war, and one of the purest expressions of aggression the Greek pantheon ever produced. Where his sister Athena represented strategy and restraint, Ares represented sheer bloodlust. He courted Persephone through force, dominance, and spectacle.

Spoiler alert! This did not work out well for him.

To everyone’s surprise, Hades, ruler of the underworld, won Persephone’s heart. The way Hades is remembered by most people today, thanks largely to Disney, is as a scheming, fire haired villain who tricks and traps an innocent girl. That is certainly one interpretation, but does not really align with the ancient story. In fact, according to many ancient texts, the Greeks didn’t consider Hades evil. He was gloomy and widely feared for his (at the time) unusual expression of emotion, and he was rarely even depicted in classical art out of sheer reverence.

Hades wasn’t cruel, though. His job was to receive the dead once they’d already gone, a bureaucratic role more than a violent one.

When Hades wanted a wife, he went to his brother Zeus and asked. Zeus suggested his daughter, Persephone (it was a different time, folks). Together they concocted a ridiculous plan to take Persephone, against her mother’s wishes, to the underworld. Ok so yes, not the ideal start to a relationship, but what happens next is important.

According to the ancient myth, Hades fell for Persephone like wildfire. He loved the flowers she loved, and the garden she kept. He is one of the only major gods in the entire canon who is never once recorded being unfaithful. Persephone, over time, came to love Hades back, drawn to a man secure enough in himself to sit inside a “feminine” interest, like a garden full of flowers, without it threatening whatever he understood his own masculinity to be. This directly contrasts with the manosphere’s belief that women are most attracted to men who are assholes, a claim vehemently defended by the pro-manosphere figures in this week’s Jubilee circle!

For a deeper dive into the historical context of the early moments of Hades and Persephone’s relationship, Didi Aphra wrote a wonderful examination, quoted here:

In modern audiences’ eyes, Hades can be seen as evil, but he is not, since death is an inevitable part of nature. Interestingly, this is close to how the ancient Greeks viewed Hades. Modern iterations turn Hades and Persephone’s story into a loving and consensual one. One way we interpret it is through a coming-of-age lens where Persephone matures and becomes independent of her mother, Demeter.

Since the ancient Greeks were a civilization that worshipped gods and goddesses, their myths were filled to the brim with religious/spiritual symbolism. Immortals cannot die, therefore, the act of abduction may also be seen as a plot device to convey death and represent the afterlife. In the Underworld, Hades says to Persephone, “I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods,” and that “while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods.”

Ares, the god who represented everything the manosphere now markets as strength, lost the girl. Hades, the god who could hold dominion over the dead, give his beloved rights and power of her own, exhibit emotion through his gloom, AND hold a quiet appreciation for the feminine aspects of Persephone’s being, got the marriage that lasted.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence, and I don’t think the Greeks thought so either.

Greek culture held an idea that power and real gentleness can coexist. Tate’s view hinges on convincing men they can’t. Every emotion coded feminine gets treated as a leak in a man’s armor. Every act of care gets reframed as a transaction, something you perform to extract sex or loyalty. This is problematic, and in many ways, a regression of culture that I really believe can be stopped.

We’ve lost the plot. Or maybe more accurately, we keep losing the plot, but we also keep finding it again. The oldest surviving myths about love in the Western tradition already knew that the men worth loving were the ones who actually don’t shy away from softness. Hell, if Hades were a modern day figure, he’d def be going to therapy! Hah.

It may require the Tate brothers’ live extradition case to remind us why the manosphere’s primary viewpoint curdles. But regardless, we’re getting there.

Substack may have put a man facing 58 charges on its leaderboard. But, I’d rather build my readership on a 2,700 year old myth about a god who liked flowers, treated women with love and respect, and melded the masculine and feminine in his relationships.

Dive deeper into any of the topics above:

• Author of Circe, Madeline Murray’s Myth of the Week: Persephone

• Didi Aphra’s thoughtful Substack essay, Why Do We Romanticize Hades & Persephone’s Myth?

• The Intelligence Squared Podcast: Inside Andrew Tate’s Manosphere, with Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin

• Jubilee Debate: 1 Anti-Manosphere vs 20 Manosphere (ft. Mark Manson) | Surrounded

• The Observer’s claim that Andrew Tate ‘boosted his Substack profile with fake subscribers’

The NYC Creative Directory!

• Last week, I attended ’s Media Happy Hour at Public Records, where I got to meet her in the flesh (quite cool!!!). The event was a fantastic way to meet other writers and editors, and the sense of belonging and support radiating off of everybody in the room was worth the 40-minute Subway trek to Brooklyn. Delia was excited to see the QR code I created and made my screensaver — a tactic I’ve been using since last year to give people an easy way to find my writing when we meet at networking events:

• clinamen, an aquatic and musical installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, is showing at the Park Avenue Armory until August 9th. It’s immersive and said to feel as close to design as it does music. I’m hoping to see if before it closes.

• Join Riley Daniel McGill’s Mail Club! Each month’s mail (sent to you by Riley himself) includes a hand stamped member card, a 5’7 print and a 4’6 postcard. His hand-written notes and illustrations are to die for! Bring back print media 2026.

@rileydanielmcgillYou can sign up via the link in my bio :-) #mailclub #newyorkcity #artist

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• Last, but absolutely not least, and I are hosting an NYC Substack Meet-up in Central Park in a few weeks. Everyone who comes will print 20 paper copies of one favorite piece of their writing. At the park, we’ll pass our writings around and spend a few hours reading each others’ work. I think it’s going to be reaaaalllly fun and great for community building. <3 RSVP at the link here!

Okay friends — that’s all for this week,

<3 Delaney

Hi overthinkers,

Today’s letter includes: a writing event inside a Burger King, a simple mindset shift that turns fear into curiosity, and the debut of my new weekly section: The NYC Creative Directory.

Each week, I’ll round up some of the most interesting creative happenings, spaces, and discoveries around New York – from zine launches and gallery openings to independent shops, readings, and the kinds of places you only find by wandering. If you’ve ever wanted a glimpse into the city’s creative scene, you’ll find it at the end of each newsletter. See below for today’s edition, ft. @littleshop_of hoarders and @theboweryreview!

Can you replace your fears with curiosity?

My first event gave me an answer.

On Wednesday night, I read my own writing out loud to a room full of strangers inside a Burger King in the Financial District. Not a Burger King near the venue – an actual Burger King. The largest on the East Coast, might I add. billed the evening as an open mic night, but for improv writing: on-the-spot, out-of-pocket responses to creative prompts, read aloud to us by , with celebs like Sarah Catherine Hook in the room, among other normies like myself. It smelled like late-night New York and opportunity (and beef patties), a scent I’d encountered before, just never with the same sense of belonging I felt that night. When the first three folks who took the mic mentioned “flesh,” “erotica,” and “Andrew Garfield”, respectively, it’s safe to say I got to know this group on a deeper level than when I first walked in.

The night was hosted by the iconic Matt Starr, and by the first prompt – “Pretend you’re a celebrity. Write an apology letter to the world in their voice” – the pressure had melted clean off my skin. The answers it produced, mine included, I can only describe as CREATIVE.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

But there’s one part I couldn’t have done the evening without: the mindset shift required to actually get me to the event in the first place.

Let’s start from the top.

Wednesday morning I woke with an itchy, buzzing-under-the-skin feeling — one that could have been from excitement or from nerves, and for the first several hours of the day refused to tell me which.

I was not buzzing about the nine hours of work I had to get done that day. I was buzzing about the event my friend Tanner (@gayfratstar) had sent me weeks earlier. I hadn’t looked into it further than the Eventbrite before buying my ticket. Which, in hindsight, may have been a mistake, because by the afternoon I’d done the research I should have done a month ago and learned that Broadway stars, Hollywood people, and at least one Real Housewife had been in the room at past Dream Baby Press nights.

The Dream Baby Press Substack

Hannah Berner's Love/Hate List

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2 months ago · 18 likes · Dream Baby Press

That’s when the buzzing turned into something else entirely. My thought cycle went, roughly:

What if I get up there and sound stupid? What if everyone else’s writing is funnier, sharper, or wittier than mine? What if my soft-spoken nature reads as coldness? What if I freeze mid-sentence and have to speed-walk to the ‘bathroom’ to Irish-goodbye, having missed the one night that was supposed to change my life?

What if, what if, what if, what if.

I know that spiral. I think most of us do. And I know from experience that if you don’t deal with it, it doesn’t go away: it just relocates. It shows up later as a sweaty palm, a shaky voice, a face that turns red at exactly the wrong moment. It can even show up as chronic back or pelvic pain (read Mind Your Body if you don’t believe me!). I firmly believe the emotions we refuse to name find a way to announce themselves physically anyway.

So instead of stuffing it down, I tried something else: I tried to catch the thoughts of fear mid-spiral and rename them.

I picked up this idea from a recent episode of EXPANDED, the podcast from To Be Magnetic, where host Jessica Gill speaks with writer Tara Mohr about nervous system regulation. Mohr explains that fear and curiosity are distinct physiological states—and because they activate the brain and nervous system differently, it’s impossible to inhabit both simultaneously.

What’s fascinating is that they can feel surprisingly similar in the body. Both might come with a racing heart or an adrenaline surge. The difference isn’t always the physical sensation itself, but the meaning your mind assigns to it. Is your body preparing for danger? Or is it preparing to discover something new? The story you tell yourself can shift the experience from one state to the other.

So — instead of I’m terrified to meet my significant other’s parents, try I’m curious what their family is like. Let this be a fun anthropology project. Instead of I’m scared to start this job, try I’m curious whether the strategy they pitched me in the interview is the one they’re actually running.

It sounds almost too simple. It also happens to be backed by more than a podcast vibe. Alison Wood Brooks, a Harvard Business School researcher, ran a series of studies on exactly this swap — she called it “anxious reappraisal.” Her subjects, about to do something nerve-racking (public speaking, karaoke, a math test under time pressure), were told to say either “I am calm” or “I am excited” out loud before starting. The ones who said “I am excited” performed better, felt more capable, and reported enjoying the task more — not because the nerves disappeared, but because they’d reframed the exact same physical sensation as fuel rather than a warning light. Kelly McGonigal’s research on stress mindset falls into similar territory: people who view their stress response as something that helps them, rather than harms them, handle high-pressure moments measurably better.

Which tracks with what I felt standing in my kitchen that afternoon. What if, instead of dreading a room full of better writers than me, I hoped for one? Imagine what I could learn from others.

Once I started looking for it, I realized how many moments in life can be reframed this way.

• The first day of a new job

  • “I’m scared I won’t be good enough.” Reframe → “I’m curious what my coworkers are like. I’m curious how this team actually works and what I can learn from them.”

• A first date—or even a fourth

  • “I’m nervous they won’t like me.” Reframe → “I’m curious about who this person is. What excites them? What kind of life have they lived? Even if we aren’t right for each other, I get to meet someone I’ve never known before.”

• Meeting your partner’s family for the first time

  • “I’m scared I won’t make a good impression.” Reframe → “I’m curious about the family that shaped the person I love. I wonder what traditions, dynamics, and stories I’ll discover.”

• Traveling somewhere alone

  • “I’m scared to be in a country I’ve never been to by myself.” Reframe → “I’m curious what I’ll notice when I’m moving through a place entirely on my own. What parts of the culture will I stumble into simply because I have nowhere else to be?”

• Walking into a dance class you’ve never taken

  • “I’m nervous because I have no idea what I’m doing.” Reframe → “I’m curious what my body is capable of learning. I’m curious how experienced dancers make it look so effortless.”

• Starting something from scratch—a business, a newsletter, a newsstand

  • “What if it fails?” Reframe → “I’m curious what I’ll learn by building something that didn’t exist yesterday. I’m curious where one small experiment could lead.”

• Having the difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding

  • “What if they get angry?” Reframe → “I’m curious how they experienced the situation. I’m curious what becomes possible once we’ve finally talked about it.”

• Receiving a health diagnosis that changes your life

  • “I’m terrified of what this means.” Reframe → “I’m curious about what my body has been trying to tell me. I’m curious how I can work with it instead of against it, and what healing might look like from here.”

Taking this mindset into consideration, I not only attended the event, but I went it in with confidence, excitement, and a learning mindset. I made three new friends, who sat down at a table with me, all of which were attending the event for the first time on their own, like myself. I also shared my writing on the open mic with the whole group one time (!!), because you don’t learn or gain comfortability if you don’t try :)

—

There’s a version of this concept of reframing fear as curiosity that’s about more than a single day of nerves, too. Fear, left unexamined, makes your world smaller. It keeps you circling the same three worst-case scenarios until they start to feel like facts (reminder: “thoughts” ≠ “facts”).

Curiosity does the opposite. It asks what else could this mean, and in doing so, it opens a door instead of closing one.

Here’s the part I keep coming back to: none of us actually see things neutrally. We see everything through a biased lens of our own history, our own worst memories, our own specific flavor of insecurity. Fear tends to lock that lens in place. It just keeps confirming what it already believed. Curiosity is what lets you ask, if I were a third party watching this unfold, what would I actually see? That question alone is most of what it takes to break a confirmation-bias loop.

What I keep noticing about days like this is that the fear rarely leaves entirely.

You don’t wake up one morning cured of it.

What changes is your relationship to the noise. You get faster at catching it, faster at asking is this actually danger, or is this just a costume fear is wearing.

Most of the time, when I’ve had the guts to check, it turns out to be curiosity in a bad disguise.

xoxo

But wait! before you go….

Introducing… The NYC Creative Directory!

For my new section — the NYC Creative Directory — each week, I’ll round up some of the most interesting creative happenings, spaces, and discoveries around New York, from zine launches and gallery openings to independent shops, readings, and the kinds of places you only find by wandering. If you’ve ever wanted a glimpse into the city’s creative scene, you’ll find it at the end of each newsletter. +++ dm me tips if you’re a part of NYC’s great creative web, and I’ll be sure to include them here.

My boyfriend and I have been working from home together all week, which by Wednesday meant we needed an excuse to leave the apartment before we started fighting over the A/C units on/off switch. So: lunchtime walk!

A few corners in, we found a newsstand that had clearly gotten the memo on a critical modern day newsstand gap. Rather than your typical stash of cigarettes, Celsius cans and Cheez-Its bags with a side of today’s international paper, this newsstand screamed zines, rare ceramics, woven earrings, and drinks I’d never seen outside of a Brooklyn bodega — Taiwanese sodas and cans of boutique coffee. Oh, and Pocky. Obviously, Pocky. Suffice it to say, Cole and I felt a magnetic force to stop walking. That’s how we met Aaron, a former journalist turned ceramicist turned newsstand owner, who opened the place, called Little Shop of Hoarders (@littleshop_ofhoarders), exactly a week ago at the corner of 34th and 9th. When we introduced ourselves, Aaron grabbed a pencil and started marking our names on the inside wall of the Newsstand. “I’m writing down names of everyone who stops in; you know, just want to get to know the neighborhood!” If that isn’t reason enough to love Aaron, stop by the Newsstand yourself to get a taste of all its gems, quirks, and perks.

Exploring the stand, my eyes immediately landed upon The Bowery Review. When I picked it up from the artful selection of bubble lettered and fun colored prints, little did I know its writer, Tim, happened to be standing three feet away. Tim briefed us on the entire artful process behind The Bowery Review before I’d even picked it up. It launches officially next week. Obviously, I bought myself a copy.

Creative finds like these happen when you get outside, look around, and see all the magic around you.

Until next time,

Delaney <3

For the fourth installment of So She Asked, I spoke with — Actor, Producer, Content Creator, and Writer of two Substacks: About Anything and Breakup Diaries.

Many people first discovered Lohanny through her candid TikToks about being laid off from three jobs in one year (yep, you heard me!), a series that made her a semi-viral spokesperson for Gen Z unemployment:

@lohannysantI got tear stains on my resume 😔😔😔 #nyc #unemployed

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Not too long after her virality, Lohanny went through what sounds like a *not fun* breakup. But instead of going quiet, she went all in. She leaned into relationship content, started documenting the messy, nonlinear reality of rebuilding a life after heartbreak.

Now, Lohanny boasts two years of full-time content creation, a voiceover agency signing, an acting manager, and a community of women who feel a little less alone because of her. She’s doing what most of us only talk about, and she’s doing it in real time, for everyone to see.

@lohannysantI was the only one taking a picture by myself…but I didn’t care. You can only be 28 with a cute haircut once 🥰✨♥️

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I DM’ed Lohanny after seeing a few more of her viral breakup videos and KNEW I had to hear her perspective on things.

So without further ado, let’s get into it.

This interview is part of a So She Thought feature called So She Asked. In this series, I introduce you to people whose perspectives I find genuinely fascinating, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them/comment anything they want.

Today, Lohanny Santos — Brazilian-American creator, aspiring actress, and one of the most honest voices on the internet — answers your questions about betting on yourself after heartbreak, dating standards, and why starting over might actually be the best thing that ever happens to you.

Lohanny, let’s kick things of with a few quick hits…

Current favorite NYC coffee spot? Hands down Pause Cafe on the LES. They have great food, coffee, and the place is cozy and inviting. (Noted. Adding to my list.)

Subway read right now? I’m currently reading Emily Henry’s Happy Place on my matcha green kindle.

Your ideal first-date setting (and your absolute dealbreaker)?

• Ideal first date: prob a cozy coffee shop for an hour. So i could run away if i don’t like him. Easy out.

• Dealbreaker? Broke men. If they complain about money problems and have no goals or career goals. Also someone who isn’t good at engaging in conversation. Mainly the money thing though. (No notes. Truly.)

You’re the host of the @imetsomeonetoday podcast. What inspired you to pick up the mic? Was there a specific “aha” moment?

Oh my gosh! Yes!! It’s still in its early stages and i’m trying to figure out what it could grow into. Currently it’s a short interview series of me talking to NYC strangers and asking them for breakup advice, the cure to heartache, and just genuine connection.

My AHA moment is definitely the breakup. When you go through something that feels so permanent and life altering you kind of get the feeling that you are invincible. In the sense that im going through such intense heartbreak that i feel like i have nothing to lose. And even if this tv show doesn’t turn out to be a hit i know that at least i tried.

As for a path for myself, I imagine it as an extension of something I’ve already been doing, like the content I make with strangers in New York. But I MET SOMEONE TODAY (the podcast I’m starting) is going to be a home for that niche, and its whole purpose is to inspire people and make them feel less alone. I also imagine it growing into real-life community events. We shall see! I did reach out to a small manufacturer to design at least 10 baseball caps with the logo “i met someone today.” Some might call it being ahead of myself, but I call it intense belief in the things that I put my time and energy into. Also delusion. I have a lot of that.

(Okay, now this is where our chat gets really good… the breakup-to-acting-career pivot, the mantra that gets Lohanny out of bed, and her hottest (and most controversial) dating take yet… Paid subscribers, keep scrolling.)

Can you paint a picture of what your life is actually like as a full-time creator in NYC? What does a typical, uncurated Tuesday look like?

If you do want the most honest answer it looks like anything i want it to look like. Everyday is different though. This specific tuesday i caught up with a friend at Pause Cafe, we stopped by a candy store, and then met my social media strategist at tompkins square park. Then i came home and I’m currently working on editing an ad for Batiste (which will take a few hours of editing) and surfing through emails. I’m also hosting a love island watch party at my apartment so today is an eventful day. I also have bi-weekly meetings with my manager on tuesdays and we usually have hour long meetings.

It also looks like walking my dog, coming up with new video ideas, and i do go to coffee shops a lot. It’s my safe space.

Also during the week ill have work events at night for a brand and that takes up my time as well. I will say this is the best job ive ever had and it gives me the freedom of time ive always searched for.

What was the exact tipping point that made you leap into full-time content creation? Slow burn, or jump into the deep end?

It was being let go of 3 jobs in one year! It’s a long story but if you google my name you’ll see that i essentially became the face of unemployment within GENZ and i shed a light on how hard it is to actually find employment. I gained a lot of my following on social media through documenting my life. By the time i was let go from my third job i decided to work for myself. I took a leap of faith and I've been a full-time creator for 2 years now!

In March, you posted a video saying, “breakup got me so bad that I’m chasing my dreams of being an actor again.” I love this so much. Walk us through the mindset shift — taking heartbreak and redirecting it into fuel for your wildest creative dreams.

Similar to what I said above–when you feel like you reach a low point in life it feels like you have nothing else to lose. So i started reaching out to agents. I went to college for acting and even studied along side your favorite actors like Chris Briney (the summer i turned pretty) and Cooper Koch (Monsters). Since then i signed to a Voiceover Agency called Access Talent and took on an acting manager at Slash MGMT. I’m now an actor for voiceover and film/tv/commercials. I’m more motivated now to become successful more than ever. I’m focusing on myself and my career.

You’ve been so transparent about going through this breakup while creating inspirational content online. What are your nonnegotiables now? What’s the self-talk that keeps you grounded on the days you feel like making yourself small?

When I wake up every morning, I start with positive thoughts that sound like: “I love myself. I love my life. I’m so happy to be alive.”

My personal non-negotiable is dating someone who is the sun in my life too. I’ve always dated people where I light up their world and am left feeling like there’s no sun shining back at me. Someone who actually/ likes me for me. Someone who makes me laugh. And most importantly–someone who lives life with me and who participates in my life.

But right now, I just see myself focusing on me and hopefully one day my heart will open up again.

Do you actually subscribe to “time heals all wounds”? Or is it less about time and more about what you choose to do with it?

I hate that phrase actually. I think it’s what people say when they don’t actually want to sit with you through your pain. It's an easy "don't worry about it” kind of response. It's actually annoyed me a lot. Because time does not go by fast enough when your heart aches. It feels soooo slow. I do think its what you do with it. And ive been doing so much. I’m just always moving, and I’ve been avoiding my bed. Something about beds make me feel really depressed. Maybe one day I’ll believe that phrase. But for now…it’s unhelpful.

There’s so much bravery required to process a breakup out loud on the internet. How do you protect your peace and set boundaries?

Honestly, it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve connected with so many new people — so many came forward to share their own stories, about how happy they are now, or how they’re in the same position I’m in, which made me feel a lot less lonely. One follower even sent me a video with her mom, where they both wished me well, and her mom shared how she met her husband after heartache. It was beautiful. It’s truly opened up my world in terms of connection. I usually post what I’m actually feeling — the quiet part out loud. And I’m okay with that.

We’re taught to fear starting over, especially in love and career. But starting fresh can be liberating too. What’s the most unexpectedly beautiful thing you’ve discovered about hitting reset recently?

How many new people there are to meet in the world. I have made so many new friends that i can actually be myself around without feeling judged. Without this breakup i would have never met Sam and Gabriela, and Joanie, and Markell, and Nick, and Lauren, and casey and sydney and Erin and everyone i know now.

You know….at 23 i used to be really scared and insecure about my age. Now? That im 29? Thank God im 29!!! Still in my 20’s. I don’t have kids. No husband. Just me and my dog. And i don’t even want kids or a husband right now. My life is my dream and i have no interest in dating. To me–building a relationship with my friends is the most important thing.

To wrap things up: what’s your biggest dating hot take right now?

Hot take is to only date a rich man. Preferably one who doesn’t hate himself or his life. Because someone who doesn’t love themselves or their life will only resent you for loving your own and bring you down like an anchor in the ocean. /// Hey siri! Can you play “the cure” by Olivia Rodrigo?

Also, say “no” more. To anything and everything. And if you’re not feeling someone just tell them.

Well, I can say I truly have no notes from this stunning conversation. Thank you again for your authenticity <33

And to ALL my readers — until our next installment, go choose yourself first.

Love you guys,

<3 Delaney

Hello overthinkers <3

A few years ago, I went through a breakup that left me wandering the aisles of Target at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, staring at hair dye.

I did not need hair dye. Nor did I even particularly want hair dye.

I really just wanted evidence that it was okay for my life to change.

I think that’s why so many of us cut our hair after a heartbreak. Or move cities or apartments. Or suddenly decide we’re becoming runners. Or purchase plane tickets that, financially speaking, should probably require a second opinion.

When your heart gets broken, your life develops what I like to think of as a strange before-and-after quality. The future that you spent months or years imagining disappears overnight, and you’re left standing in the wreckage wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do with all this energy that used to have somewhere to go.

Sometimes that energy becomes sadness. Sometimes rage. And occasionally, if you’re lucky, it becomes fuel.

I’ve been thinking about this recently while watching Morgan Riddle navigate her first few months after her split from professional tennis player Taylor Fritz.

I also got to thinking about it after an interview I conducted with creator Lohanny Santos, which will go live for my paid subscribers next Friday.

Lohanny recently went through a gut-wrenching breakup of her own, and instead of recoiling, she’s focused on reinventing herself. We talked about grief, self-worth, and what happens when you’re forced to build a future that no longer includes the person you thought would be in it.

It’s one of my favorite conversations I’ve published so far.

Upgrade to read Lohanny's Q&A

Since Lohanny has the floor next Friday, I want to focus today on Morgan.

But first, a roundup of news and products that caught my attention this week:

• Julip Is Making Tech Fun Again (i-D)— What if the secret isn’t choosing between your creative side and your practical side, but finding a way to let them collaborate? i-D’s conversation with Julip on code, music, ambition, and making tech fun again sparked a light inside my multi-passionate soul.

• Dwight from ‘The Office’ says fame didn’t bring him happiness. Something else did. (Washington Post) — Contrary to popular belief, money and fame did not bring Rainn Wilson the happiness he expected. What did? Breathing, accepting what is, and understanding life’s limitations.

• Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s attempt to flip a $30 million Cotswolds farmhouse has been thwarted by floods, planning battles, an anemic property market—and the Romans (AirMail) — Yikes. DeGeneres may have to flee yet another country it seems…

• What Working in a Grocery Store Taught Me About American Inequality (TIME) — Around 22% of cashiers rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in case you were wondering.

• These platform flip flops from Crocs (Yes, Crocs) are giving my toes new life this summer, and they’re so incredibly comfortable. Also highly into Dries Van Noten’s more expensive version, here.

Okay! Back to Morgan.

In April, PEOPLE confirmed that Morgan Riddle and Taylor Fritz had split after nearly five years together.

If you’ve somehow managed to avoid tennis TikTok WAG culture for the last few years, Riddle has become something of a phenomenon in the sports world. Through a combination of tournament vlogs, fashion content, and genuinely educational tennis explainers, she’s helped make a notoriously exclusive sport feel accessible to a younger, largely female audience. The New York Times once dubbed her “the most famous woman in men’s tennis”—a title that initially stemmed from her relationship with Fritz, but one she’s arguably earned on her own.

The day news of the breakup became public, Riddle appeared to take the whole thing in stride. She posted a grainy Instagram photo wearing a cropped white baby tee that read “World’s Best Ex-Girlfriend.” A few days later, she announced a partnership with energy drink company STORM, posing with a can and joking in the caption, “Turns out heartbreak pairs well with caffeine :) #EnergyForLife”

The posts were funny, self-aware, and refreshingly unserious. But the more I’ve followed her over the past few months, the more I’ve become interested in what seems to be happening beneath the jokes.

In interviews, Riddle has spoken openly about entering a new chapter of her life in New York City. She recently told PEOPLE that she’s been leaning heavily on her friends and family as she adjusts to life on her own. Since moving into what she lovingly described to Elle as her “Barbie Dream House” apartment, she’s thrown herself into the city with a kind of enthusiasm that feels familiar to anyone who has ever tried to rebuild after a breakup.

She’s taking ballet classes. She’s documenting her search for the best matcha in Manhattan. She’s exploring new restaurants, new routines, and seemingly, new versions of herself.

We LOVE to see it.

One of the strangest things about heartbreak is that it leaves you with an enormous amount of energy and nowhere obvious to put it. The relationship is gone, but the emotional momentum remains. All of a sudden, the time you spent texting, planning, worrying, compromising, and imagining the future belongs to you again.

Some people spend that energy refreshing an ex’s Instagram page.

Others decide to become marathon runners.

Morgan Riddle appears to be channeling hers into building.

Earlier this year, she joined The 400 Club as co-founder and chief brand officer. The company aims to connect female athletes, fans, and creatives through a global sports community, and the role feels like a natural extension of the audience she’s spent years cultivating online.

What I’ve found particularly interesting, though, is watching her become more publicly engaged with conversations beyond sports and lifestyle content.

Recently, Riddle posted a video critiquing a controversial New York Times opinion piece that was originally published under the headline “Being Straight Is Great, Actually” before later being changed to “There’s Nothing Wrong With Wanting Men.”

The video quickly gained traction.

Riddle argued that the revised headline somehow felt even more patronizing than the original and pushed back on what she viewed as the article’s dismissal of conversations around misogyny and heteropessimism. At one point, she remarked that publishing the piece on the eve of Pride Month felt particularly tone-deaf.

What struck me wasn’t necessarily whether I agreed with every point she made (even though I did). It was that she approached the topic thoughtfully and with a level of nuance that the internet rarely rewards fashion/lifestyle influencers.

She described herself as a “lover girl at heart” while simultaneously arguing that conversations about misogyny deserve to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as women simply being cynical about dating. Her remarks felt both culturally engaged and deeply personal.

[For further reading on this topic, read “Yes, Straight Women Are In Trouble,” by Sarah Jones in New York Magazine from this week...]

At the end of the video, Riddle shared a list of books she believes women should read, including Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates and Wordslut by Amanda Montell. I have never read either of them, but I can tell you with 100% certainty, they are going in my McNally Jackson cart as soon as I get back to NYC.

As Riddle points out, the first, Men Who Hate Women, is admittedly a difficult read. It’s unsettling and impossible to walk away unchanged. But it also tackles something I think we collectively underestimate: the real-world consequences of online misogyny and extremist gender politics. Riddle closes the video with a line that now keeps reverberating through my psyche:

“Misogyny is personal, and it kills.”

Watching Riddle’s post-breakup era unfold has reminded me that the best glow-ups rarely have anything to do with appearance. They’re usually intellectual. Emotional. Creative. They’re about becoming larger.

Oftentimes, heartbreak (as awful as it is) becomes the thing that finally gives you permission to do exactly that.

Until next time,

Delaney <3

For the third installment of So She Asked, I’m featuring someone who has had a front-row seat to every relationship I’ve ever been in, every spiral I’ve had, and every lesson I’ve (sometimes slowly) learned: my little sister and best friend, Emily Langdon.

Whenever I’ve been struggling or overthinking, Emily has always been the first to pick up the phone. She’s wise beyond her years like that. She navigated a not-so-great college relationship and came out the other side knowing exactly who she is and exactly who she isn’t willing to settle for. Now she’s in New York City, focused on building strong, real friendships, dating only when it makes sense for her, and putting herself first in a way that honestly makes me proud.

She’s proof that you can go through something hard and come out simultaneously softer and stronger. And I think she has a lot to say that this community needs to hear.

But first, a quick news round-up:

• If you’re looking for the perfect, non-basic sun hat this summer, ’s Off The Beaten Hat is worth a read. Or check out these hats I’m loving from Vitamin A (left) or STAUD (right). Your head will thank you.

• Last year, Andrew Rice wrote about how everybody in the Hamptons is suing each other, and I thoroughly enjoyed every word of it. Sagas, litigations, and minute landscaping details included. Are the rich okay? Read it on Curbed.

• The Sopranos is having a moment… specifically, a heated debate about whether Tony Soprano is hot. Men, apparently, cannot fathom it. I beg to differ, and so do the 5.5k other women who liked Catherine Shannon’s iconic post on the subject. The people have spoken. The case is closed.

• Song of the week: Is This It by The Strokes. I have listened to this every single morning this week. It makes me feel like a movie character on the verge of a life-altering change. Just picture me walking down the New York City streets in slow motion, wearing cute kitten heels, an iced coffee in hand, and a lot on my mind, with many places to be.

Ok, now let’s get into it.

This interview is part of a So She Thought feature called So She Asked. In this series, I introduce you to people whose perspectives I find genuinely fascinating, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want.

Today, Emily Langdon — Michigan-raised, youngest of three, New York-forged, and the person I call first — answers your questions about intentional dating, not making yourself small, and why the right people will always find the real you.

“What’s your type? Envision Substack fairies working to set you up with the perfect man.” — Paid Reader

I think it’s interesting because ‘my type’ in terms of aesthetic has definitely changed over the years but I think it’s reflective of the fact that I’ve changed. One thing that holds true is that I love guys who are driven. I don’t mean this just in terms of work or school, but I am intrigued by people who have interests and goals. I enjoy talking to people who are excited and passionate about their hobbies and interests. I also find it meaningful when a guy cares about the things that excite me. He doesn’t need to have the same interests as me, but rather understand that these are the things that make me excited. I don’t want someone who’s going to yuck my yum so to speak. With that said…... it wouldn’t hurt if he’s athletic lol.

(Athleticism always helps. And that’s just ONE of her refreshing hot takes on dating… keep reading for more.)

“How do you think being the youngest of 3 children has impacted your dating life?” — Paid Reader

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Hello overthinkers <3

How was everybody’s Memorial Day Weekend?

Today’s letter includes:

• your responses to a question I asked you all this week.

• a collection of what I’ve read in the paper.

• and an exploration into whether people can actually change or whether we’re all just slightly reformatted versions of our fourteen-year-old selves.

What I’m reading/thinking about this week:

“Olivia Rodrigo Breaks Her Silence on All That Controversial Babydoll Dress Discourse” (Cosmopolitan) – Every few months the internet rediscovers the fact that women have bodies and reacts like medieval villagers witnessing fire for the first time. Olivia essentially saying she dresses for herself instead of other people’s projections felt refreshingly direct.

“Google Changes its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years” (NYT) - Google is redesigning its iconic search bar for the AI era, expanding it to better handle longer, more conversational queries and layering in new features like video generation and streamlined shopping tools. It’s a subtle visual shift that signals a much bigger structural change in how we’ll be searching the internet. Read a deeper dive presented by Puck’s podcast here.

“Hollywood’s Gen Z Gap Is Real… and It’s Growing” (Puck) – Increasingly convinced charisma is becoming a lost art form. Everyone feels media-trained into oblivion.

“A Début Novel About the Quest for Eternal Youth” (The New Yorker) – I loved loved loved this novel about a dysfunctional, quirky family trying to find clarity among its own chaos. It also gave me some 1970s nostalgia, oddly.

Now, let’s get into it.

The version of you that once existed

I asked you all a question this week: Do you think people can really change?

Your responses have been thought-provoking. Many filled me with hope. A few favorites are below:

By and large, your responses leaned in one clear direction: yes, people can change, though it often depends on who the person is and what kind of change we’re talking about. Some changes feel more realistic than others, and most of you seemed to agree that growth is possible, but not guaranteed.

Leave a comment

That perspective stands in interesting contrast to a set of phrases I’ve heard so often over the years that they’ve almost become background noise in my thinking:

“People don’t change.”

“Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

“People are who they are.”

“It’s about nature not nurture.”

I have heard versions of this idea my entire life, usually delivered with the exhausted conviction of someone who has survived at least one catastrophic situationship (as have I) and possibly read Attached three times over. And I do understand why people arrive at this conviction. In a way, saying “People don’t change” functions as a kind of emotional shorthand that helps us make sense of patterns that have already hurt us.

When someone has repeatedly shown you that they won’t change their behavior, even after promising they will, it becomes very difficult to hold on to the idea that people changing who they are at their core is possible. Still, there is an important distinction between someone being capable of change and someone being willing to do the sustained, uncomfortable work required to actually change. That gap is where this conversation really lives, and it’s what I want to explore today.

Take me!

I used to have auburn hair, and I mostly refused to raise my hand in class. I was so shy that the idea of jumping off a diving board during swim meets felt psychologically akin to a public sentencing. If a teacher called on me unexpectedly in class, my face turned redder than a tomato! Redder than a stop sign!!

I was nervous of being embarrassed and didn’t enjoy visibility.

Today, I am as blonde as can be. Yep! I changed my hair and I’m convinced it led me to revamp my personality, too (for the better! Changing hair colors helped me express my hidden confidence… and the tinge of silliness I’d held close to my chest for many years.)

Today, I’m physically incapable of not raising my hand during a class or group discussion. Participation has become integral to the essence of my personality. I love talking, and I love sharing my thoughts with the world.

That’s how, somehow, against the odds my early years stacked against me, I became someone who willingly publishes thousands of words about her inner thoughts on the internet multiple times a week.

This raises an interesting question:

If personality is supposedly fixed, then who exactly is the “real” me?

My shy younger self? Or the woman writing this article now? Both? Neither? It’s a tricky landscape. Let’s dive deeper…

What Psychology Says About Change

One of the reasons this conversation becomes so emotionally charged is because most people aren’t asking whether humans can become more confident or outgoing over time. They’re asking something much more painful.

Can someone who hurt you actually change? Can a liar become honest? Can a cheater become loyal?

Psychologists have found that personality is far less fixed than most people assume. The brain remains adaptable through neuroplasticity, and people often become more emotionally stable and self-aware as they age. But here’s the difficult part: capacity for change and likelihood of change are not the same thing.

Technically, many people can change. The real question is whether they’re willing to tolerate the discomfort required to do it — because meaningful transformation demands genuine accountability. Not the kind that comes with a beautiful apology, but the kind that forces someone to confront the harm they’ve caused without minimizing it or blaming someone else.

This is why people often leave relationships devastated after years of waiting. We fall in love with glimpses — small moments of vulnerability, flashes of self-awareness — and convince ourselves those glimpses are evidence of who a person is becoming, instead of recognizing who they repeatedly show themselves to be. Psychology consistently reminds us that past behavior is one of the strongest predictors of future behavior.

Real change tends to reveal itself quietly and consistently over time. Persuasive apologies do not equal sustained change. For change to take place, someone must choose differently once, and then again, and then again — long after the initial motivation has faded.

And I’ve seen it happen!

• Someone who used to disappear during conflict starts staying in the conversation, even when it’s uncomfortable.

• Someone who relied on defensiveness develops a small pause between feeling attacked and reacting.

• Someone who made serious mistakes begins to genuinely reckon with what they’ve done — not just smoothing things over, but returning to it. Sitting with it. Letting it change how they move through the world.

What becomes clear is that transformation is not a single decision. It is a series of repetitions. Small ruptures in old patterns that accumulate, over time, into something real.

It doesn’t erase the past. But it creates the possibility of something new existing alongside it. Not the idea that people become perfect, or that every relationship is redeemable — but that people are not sentenced to remain who they were at their worst moment, if they’re willing to do the slow, unglamorous work of becoming someone different over time.

That’s the version of change that actually gives me hope.

Why culture is obsessed with the idea that people cannot change

I also think our culture has become strangely invested in the belief that people are permanently who they once were.

The internet intensified this dramatically. We live in a burgeoning cancel culture. For every person now exists as a permanent archive of every opinion, mistake, phase, and identity they have ever inhabited. One terrible take from 2014 becomes evidence of eternal moral failure. One embarrassing era becomes a lifelong character indictment. “She’s cancelled!”

People are rarely allowed to evolve privately anymore because every previous version of them remains searchable.

But I also think we are culturally obsessed with redemption stories at the exact same time – an internet trend I stand behind!

Some of the most beloved celebrity narratives are built entirely around reinvention.

Look at Robert Downey Jr. There was a point where he was considered professionally unhireable after years of addiction and public instability. Now entire generations primarily associate him with redemption, charisma, and Iron Man.

Or take Miley Cyrus, whose entire public life has unfolded through aggressive reinvention. Child star, rebellion era, cultural punching bag, rock-inspired existentialist with a gravelly voice and surprisingly insightful interviews. People mocked nearly every transition in real time, yet growth itself often looks embarrassing while it’s happening.

From Cynthia Bassinet’s Pinterest.

Even fictional characters obsess over this question constantly.

One of the reasons people connected so intensely to BoJack Horseman is because the entire show wrestles with whether self-awareness is enough to save someone from themselves. BoJack understands his patterns almost painfully well. He intellectualizes them beautifully. He apologizes sincerely. And yet he still repeatedly hurts people.

The show’s central tension is essentially this:
If someone understands exactly why they behave destructively but continues doing it anyway, have they actually changed at all?

That question haunts a lot of adulthood, because growing older doesn’t automatically mean we’re growing wiser. People relapse into old versions of themselves constantly. Healing is inconsistent. Progress can coexist with regression.

And yet I still think transformation is real. Wisdom is possible, it just takes time, practice, and attention.

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The terrifying freedom of becoming someone new

I think one of the most beautiful things about being human is that we are not fixed entities.

We are constantly responding to experience.

We are shaped by grief, friendship, humiliation, illness, success, rejection, cities, heartbreak, therapy, loneliness, timing, art, hormones, hope, and survival.

You are not the same person you were five years ago.

Thank God.

Middle school alone should permanently disprove the theory that people cannot change.

Personally, I hope I continue changing for the rest of my life.

I hope I become softer where I was once rigid. Braver where I was once afraid. More honest where I once performed. More comfortable being seen.

And maybe that is the actual point.

Perhaps growth is less about becoming an entirely different person and more about becoming a fuller version of who you already were.

As Hannah Montana once said, “You can change your hair and you can change your clothes / You can change your mind, that’s just the way it goes.”

Change away!

<3

Delaney

I’m writing this one with a little bittersweet feeling in my chest, because in about a month, one of my favorite people in New York City is packing up and moving back to Michigan.

Abby Seifman moved to New York for a relationship, which if you know Abby, tells you everything: she is someone who goes all in. The relationship ended six months after she arrived. To my surprise, the city still kept her for years. And in that time, I’ve talked to her a lot about her dating life as a newly single girl in her 20s, having high standards, and what it really means to know your worth. She’s not leaving New York defeated. She’s leaving it sharper and more certain of what she wants.

As a PA working in NYC emergency rooms (insane!) and a former University of Michigan dance team member (so cool), Abby has never once done anything halfway. That includes dating. She has a list of non-negotiables. It’s specific, and I think you should steal it.

Today, Abby answers your questions about intentional dating, being Jewish in the New York dating scene, the green flags worth paying attention to, and why settling is genuinely never worth it.

But first, a quick news roundup:

• Yes, the Blake-Baldoni Case Does Have a Winner (Puck)

• i forgive my ex-boyfriend for not being my boyfriend. (High Brow)

• I believed sustainable fashion’s hype. But between Everlane and Allbirds, the letdowns keep coming (The Guardian)

• Song of the week: Horses and Divorces by Kasey Musgraves (I really have her entire album on repeat though, tbh).

Now on to the good stuff: Abby Seifman.

This interview is part of a So She Thought feature called So She Asked. In this series, I introduce you to people whose perspectives I find genuinely fascinating and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want.

Today, Abby Seifman — Michigan-raised, U of M dance team-forged, New York emergency room-tested, and now Michigan-bound again — answers your questions about dating with intention, holding your standards, and why knowing yourself is the whole game.

“Genuinely. How do you balance it all? What are you looking for in a partner? And how do you keep yourself accountable to only accepting what you want/need in a relationship?” – Paid reader

On balancing it all… really for me it comes down to 2 things: prioritizing and being okay with saying “no.” I have always been someone who has been busy. Growing up dancing after school almost every day and then also on the weekends, I had to say no to social plans because of dance. The same thing in college, I had 7am practices, went to class, came home to study, then would perform at games at night. School and dance were my priorities. I made plans with my friends and was still able to go out in college, but I still had to say no when I had to study or go to practice/an event. Now, I still try to stay busy, but I have learned to prioritize myself too. When I first moved to the city, I felt burnt out really fast. I was working both day and night shifts at the hospital, was making time to see my boyfriend at the time, tried to see all my friends and explore the city as much as possible, and then I was just exhausted. I learned that for me, I need at least 1 night to myself per week to recharge. With my crazy shift schedule, I do miss out on a lot, and have to say no to things, but by now, it’s the only way I know I won’t burn out, and allows me to balance work, social life and myself. Moral of the story, it’s okay to say no sometimes, especially when you’re doing it to prioritize yourself. You won’t always be able to put yourself first, so do it while you can.

In terms of what I’m looking for in a partner: honesty, motivation, personality. We don’t do boring! I need to laugh. I have also learned through previous relationships, friendships included, that honesty is my non-negotiable. I don’t care if it’ll hurt me in the moment, lying makes everything worse. I also feel like I have always been a really goal-oriented person, so I want someone who will match that energy. Not just for me, but for themselves and for a future family. And regarding holding myself accountable, I think I have just gotten to the point of knowing what I want and am no longer willing to settle for anything less. What we all want is out there; we are all just on different timelines with getting there. That’s something that can feel discouraging for me when looking around at other people and where they’re at relationship wise, but there’s also so much more to life, and they may be looking at you career wise, or socially and wishing they were in your shoes too. It comes down to: would you rather be in a relationship that you’re only 75% happy in because you just want to have a boyfriend? Or would you rather wait the extra 3 months, 9 months, 2 years to realize “this is why it never worked out before.” It’s not worth settling when I know there is exactly what we’re all looking for out there, we just have to find it.

(Later: the one question Abby asks herself after every first date. It’s so simple. You’re going to start using it immediately.)

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Hello overthinkers <3

Today’s letter includes:

• a deep dive into why so many of us confuse anxiety for chemistry

• a few links I loved this week

• and an invitation to ask my next Q&A guest, Abby Seifman, your biggest questions about love, moving cities, career pivots, heartbreak, and starting over.

Abby once moved across the country for a relationship, survived the fallout, and somehow emerged wiser, funnier, and with significantly higher standards on the other side. Ask her what you’d ask your most honest older sister.

Free + paid subscribers are welcome to ask her anything here:

What I’m reading/thinking about this week:

P.C.O.S. Has a New Name. Doctors Hope It Will Improve Care for Millions (NYT) – As a PCOS girlie myself, this feels huge! Not because treatment will magically change overnight, but because the conversation is finally shifting away from “just cysts” and toward the serious metabolic and hormonal impacts the condition actually has on women’s lives.

Instagram privacy tech turned off — what does this mean for your DMs? (BBC) – As of May 8, Meta reportedly removed end-to-end encryption for Instagram messages, meaning the company can now access the content of DMs, including photos and voice notes. Slightly dystopian!

Dior and Jonathan Anderson Revive Old Hollywood with an All-Star Extravaganza Featuring Al Pacino and In-N-Out Burgers (Vanity Fair) – Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior cruise collection in LA felt like confirmation that he really can step into the role. I also loved that less models wore overstated lip liner and more went with faded flush look.

Big tech bets on new mascots in bid to seem more cuddly (BBC) – Sorry Zuck. I fear the anthropomorphic mascots will not save us.

Lastly, I’m convinced the LESET City shorts are the shorts of the summer.

Now…

Let’s talk about why so many of us mistake emotional instability for love.

Is it chemistry or… anxiety?

I used to think love was supposed to feel like losing my appetite.

Like leaving a dinner date replaying every sentence I said on the subway ride home.

Did I say something weird?

Did he like me?

Should I text him first?

Why can’t I sleep?

Meanwhile my nervous system is twitching. My stomach is in knots. My friends are trying to discuss the consistency of the french fries we UberEats’ed while I’m mentally refreshing my phone every seven seconds, wondering whether he will ever text me back.

And then:

Ding.

“Guys. He just texted me.”

The text that marks the beginning of every subsequent text becoming a sacred artifact requiring forensic analysis.

In modern society, we call this gurgling feeling inside our gut chemistry.

And sometimes it is chemistry.

But every time I’ve experienced this particular cocktail of obsession, uncertainty, fixation, and emotional freefall, it has actually been something far less romantic:

Anxiety!

Sometimes, those butterflies we mistake as destiny are actually our bodies recognizing an instability in a relationship.

This realization feels especially cruel because culture has taught us the exact opposite. We are raised on love stories that worship intensity: From Romeo and Juliet to The Notebook, emotional chaos has long been packaged as fate. Real love is meant to arrive like lightning! It’s supposed to consume and destabilize us… to interrupt our appetites and our ability to function like reasonable members of society until we get a text back.

The greatest romances in film and literature are often built not on peace, but yearning. Miscommunication. Distance. Emotional almosts.

Take Normal People, a love story so emotionally devastating that entire corners of the internet still speak about Connell and Marianne like they survived a war together. Their connection is magnetic partly because it is constantly slipping in and out of reach. Timing fails them almost as much as communication does. Their love is tender, yes, but it is also charged with uncertainty.

And uncertainty is psychologically adhesive.

The nervous system craves certainty, yet becomes fixated on unpredictability. That is why emotionally unavailable people can feel intoxicating. It is why mixed signals can masquerade as depth, and why waiting twelve hours for a text back can feel more emotionally significant than someone consistently showing up for you every day.

The body often interprets inconsistency as importance, especially when inconsistency feels familiar.

Human beings are deeply attached to familiarity. The nervous system gravitates toward emotional patterns it recognizes, even when those patterns are painful. When unpredictability becomes repetitive enough, the body stops experiencing it as alarming and starts experiencing it as normal. We cling to those dynamics because they feel emotionally recognizable.

Over time, the nervous system adapts to unstable love. It becomes hypervigilant. It learns to monitor tone shifts, facial expressions, pauses in conversation. It begins anticipating withdrawal before it even happens. Closeness starts to feel fragile, something that must be carefully maintained rather than freely received.

Then one day, you meet someone who recreates that emotional rhythm, and your body lights up like a Christmas tree.

This is the part nobody wants to hear because it challenges the way we romanticize attraction. We want our strongest feelings to feel transcendent and intuitive, and we want to believe chemistry always points us toward something meaningful.

But the body does not always distinguish between what is healthy and what is familiar.

Familiarity and compatibility are not the same thing. Sometimes “the spark” is simply the nervous system recognizing an emotional environment it already knows how to survive in.

Which brings me to one of the strangest experiences in modern dating: meeting someone genuinely kind.

I do not mean charismatic, performative charm. I mean someone emotionally steady. Someone calm during conflict, consistent, emotionally available. Someone whose affection does not wildly fluctuate depending on mood, distance, or convenience.

For people accustomed to emotional volatility, this kind of love can initially feel unfamiliar, suspicious, or even boring. Peace can feel difficult to recognize when your body has spent years preparing for withdrawal.

Chaos creates adrenaline. Adrenaline creates intensity. Intensity often gets mistaken for passion.

Healthy love usually unfolds more gradually. It builds over time. It allows your nervous system to soften instead of forcing it into emotional gymnastics worthy of a Simone Biles floor routine.

And that brings us to the difference between yearning and intimacy.

Modern culture collapses those two experiences together constantly, but they are not the same thing.

Intimacy is being fully seen on an ordinary Tuesday night with your mouthguard in, noise-canceling headphones on, acne cream visible, looking entirely uncurated. It is consistency. Honesty. Emotional safety sustained over time. It is someone remembering the small thing you said three months ago. It is existing in someone’s presence without feeling like you have to perform to keep your place in their life.

Yearning thrives on distance, ambiguity, and absence. Intimacy grows through presence.

Remember that distinction.

Being loved should not feel like winning a psychological obstacle course. A relationship should not require you to abandon your nervous system to sustain it.

Of course, real love still contains uncertainty. Loving another person deeply will always involve vulnerability, conflict, misunderstanding, and change. Another human being suddenly matters enormously to you, and that alone can feel destabilizing at times.

But healthy love does not leave you emotionally confused around the clock.

Eventually, the spark loses some of its mythology. You begin wanting steadiness alongside attraction. You begin valuing clarity alongside desire. You begin gravitating toward people whose presence allows you to feel more fully like yourself.

Which, I think, is the actual point of love.

Love should not keep us anxiously performing for reassurance. It should make aliveness feel safe.

When a relationship leaves you constantly overanalyzing, refer to these checklists to help ground you:

Red flags that often masquerade as passion

• You feel euphoric when they give attention and deeply anxious when they pull away.

• You spend more time analyzing the relationship than actually enjoying it.

• Communication feels inconsistent, vague, or emotionally confusing.

• You feel afraid to express needs because you don’t want to “scare them away.”

• Your self-esteem noticeably fluctuates depending on their level of responsiveness.

• You feel emotionally exhausted after interacting with them.

• Conflict leaves you panicked instead of peaceful.

• You confuse emotional intensity with emotional intimacy.

• You feel more preoccupied with being chosen than with whether you actually like who they are.

• You are constantly trying to decode them instead of simply experiencing them.

Healthy love, meanwhile, often looks far less cinematic:

Conversation starters for healthy communication

• “I don’t think I’m upset at you — I think I’m feeling disconnected from you.”

• “Can I tell you what this situation is bringing up for me emotionally?”

• “I want us to understand each other, not win.”

• “I’ve been overthinking this instead of just asking you directly.”

• “What do you need from me right now?”

• “Can we slow this conversation down a little?”

• “I think my anxiety is filling in blanks that communication could solve.”

• “I want to feel closer to you, but I’m not sure how to say what I need.”

• “Can we talk about this without trying to immediately fix it?”

• “What does support look like for you lately?”

• “I know we’re in a rough patch, but I still want to choose understanding over avoidance.”

• “I’m trying to tell you the truth instead of performing being okay.”

Ask yourself: in which section did you check off more boxes?

Because ultimately, healthy love is not built through mind-reading. It’s built through communication and clarity. Through saying the awkward thing instead of silently constructing stories in your head.

And maybe that’s the real difference between anxiety and intimacy:

Anxiety keeps you trapped in interpretation. Intimacy allows you to ask.

<3

Delaney

The free tier isn’t going anywhere (don’t fret). The long reads will always be the heart of so she thought. But the paid side is about to get a lot of extra zest: real, cool people telling me their real, cool stories about messy relationships, career uncertainty, and everything in between.

Starting with…

This interview is part of a So She Thought feature called So She Asked. In this series, I introduce you to people whose perspectives I find genuinely fascinating, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want.

Today, Xenia Gouras — LA-born, Berlin-raised, Shanghai-schooled, Boston-university-ed, New York-forged, and now London-based — answers your questions about dating in a city that never lets you settle, what it really takes to maintain friendships across continents, and how she found the right person the moment she stopped looking.

“What was your biggest struggle about being single in New York?” – Paid reader

Ahhhh, Newww York! Honestly, it wasn’t really a struggle — it was more like, New York had so much going on that being single barely registered. I’ve never needed a relationship to feel okay. I was distracted in the best way: work, friends, the city doing its thing.

That said, there was this quiet realization that New York probably wasn’t where I was going to find my person. Not because it’s impossible — Del, you are literal proof of that — but the city just breeds this restless, “always-looking” energy. There’s a rotating carousel of people and everyone’s too stimulated to stop spinning. You step out in Nolita and Gigi Hadid is walking down the street with Em Rata and you’re like... okay. Cool. How am I supposed to compete?

What worked for me was just not dating seriously for a while. I had genuinely cool experiences… like our BIERGARTEN nights… that weren’t meant to last, and I think that eventually led me to really wanting something more. My word of wisdom: get out there, meet people, don’t settle. Time is never running out!

(She did eventually find him, by the way. In Munich. Two weeks after moving to London. How? We’ll get to that.)

“How do you maintain friendships across continents? And does friendship look different across cultures?” – Emily

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Have you ever looked at somebody you’ve known for years and wondered, do I really even know this person at all?

Do we ever really know anybody at all?

Do we ever really know ourselves?

These questions filled my mind when reading Belle Burden’s wildly thought-provoking (and in many ways relatable) memoir, Strangers.

But before I dive into it, a quick, exciting note…

So She Thought is growing (yay!). It feels both surreal and deeply intentional. There are now around 1,000 of you here, and some of you have chosen to support this work in a more tangible way. That matters to me more than I can articulate.

Subscribe now

So I’m opening a paid tier.

The writing you’re reading right now will always exist. The long reads, the questions, the spirals. That part is the core of So She Thought.

The paid side will offer a different layer: A weekly exclusive Q&A interview with people who are living complicated, interesting lives. Real, cool people will tell me their real, cool stories about how they’ve navigated messy relationships, career uncertainty, staying sane amidst busy careers, and everything in between. Think HONY x Gossip Girl x Cultured Mag’s Lena Dunham feature. You will not want to miss a single one of these interviews. Plus (!) a few extra perks and giveaways along the way. 👀

If you stay on the free tier, I’m just as glad you’re here. Truly!

Ok,

Let’s get back into it.

Can We Ever Really Know Someone?

Belle Burden and her husband, James, shared a life most people would recognize as stable, even idyllic in ways. Burden comes from a wealthy New York family, with ties to the Vanderbilts and John Jay. After having three beautiful children together, Belle and James purchased two homes: one in Nolita and one in Martha’s Vineyard. Well, to be precise, Belle pulled money out of each of her two trust funds to buy the two houses, putting half of each property in her name, and half in James’ name (a disaster waiting to happen, a fact she acknowledges in the memoir).

After many years of James handling all of the seemingly perfect family’s finances, taking their son to hockey tournaments, and cooing the ospreys outside their beach home – with Belle mostly managing the household while working pro bono– suddenly and without warning, everything falls apart.

James’ affair becomes public.

He leaves. And he makes no attempt at repair.

Without looking back and with no apparent remorse, James says he’s moving back to NYC, does not want custody of their three children, and needs to find the prenup they’d signed 20 years prior. The entire exit is clean in a way that feels almost impossible to reconcile with the life that came before it.

Not to mention, all of this unfolds at the beginning of COVID, when the rest of the world felt like it was unsubtly crumbling.

It would be comforting to believe that a person has to transform into someone unrecognizable to do something like this. That there was a clear before and after. But as you read Belle’s words… this doesn’t really seem to be the case.

“He told me, every day, that he loved me. He asked me often, “I make you so happy, right?” He never told me, not once, that he was discontent in our marriage, unhappy with me, or struggling in our life together. I wonder now, Did I make up the love story. The tale of our commitment to each other, carrying it around under my arm like a prized book?... What if the story I told myself wasn’t true? What if he always had a different story?” - Belle Burden, Strangers

In fact, that explanation leaves something out.

What if the person was always capable of this? What if the distance had been there all along, just harder to see?

“If what happened in our divorce was vengeance, it was an existential vengeance, not a personal one. It had very little to do with me. And it existed on another plane from our love story.” - Belle Burden, Strangers

The Illusion of Knowing

We tend to treat time as evidence.

If you’ve known someone for years, lived with them, and built a life alongside them, it feels natural to assume you know them deeply. That closeness has already been earned and “the work”, whatever it was, must finally be finished.

But familiarity is persuasive. It fills in gaps in ways that enable us to ignore red flags, as big or small as they may be.

We learn someone’s rhythms and preferences. The stories they tell about themselves, and slowly, almost without noticing, we stop asking new questions. We stop checking whether the person in front of us is still the same as the person we first met.

Or whether they ever were.

As Belle had the misfortune of learning: knowing someone is not a passive state you arrive at. If two people want to really know each other, it requires an ongoing investigation into who both people really are. It requires an ongoing effort into each others’ interests. It’s an active, maybe even uncomfortable practice.

To know somebody requires curiosity, emotional availability, and emotional intimacy that doesn’t expire (for either person!) once things feel stable.

Because people change, sometimes so subtly that neither person can quite explain when or why things began to shift. And if no one is asking, if no one is really looking, those changes accumulate in private.

So, Can We Know Each Other?

I strongly believe we can.

But only under certain conditions!

Only if we treat knowing someone as something that requires maintenance.
Only if we remain willing to ask and answer difficult questions.
Only if we choose emotional closeness over convenience, again and again.

And only if we allow ourselves to be known in return.

Because it is one thing to want to understand someone else. It is another to let them see you fully. To risk being read correctly. To risk being read incorrectly.

Most people want to be loved. Fewer people are comfortable expressing how they want to be known.

There’s a quiet hopefulness in this, even if Strangers feels heavy. If distance can grow slowly, almost invisibly, then so can closeness. You have to choose to keep turning toward each other. You have to choose to keep asking, keep listening, keep seeing.

And if one person stops choosing that, if one person decides they are no longer willing to stay curious **cough cough, James**, to stay emotionally available, to keep learning the person in front of them, that is not a failure of the person who stayed open.

That is a limitation of the person who left.

What lingers with me about Belle’s story is not that she was unknowable. It’s that she was not continuously known. There is a difference: one is a mystery, the other is a missed opportunity.

This isn’t only true of romantic relationships, but all relationships – friendships, parents, children, siblings, etc.

To love someone over time requires a kind of sustained attention that not everyone is willing or able to give. It asks you to meet a person again and again as they change, as you change, as life reshapes both of you in ways you didn’t plan for.

When someone opts out of that process, they are not revealing something lacking in you. They are revealing the edge of their own capacity.

And yes, that hurts. It is disorienting. It makes you question what was real.

But it also clarifies something important.

You want to be in relationships where curiosity does not expire. Where emotional intimacy is not a phase but a practice. Where being known is not something that happened once, but something that is happening all the time.

Leave a comment

If someone cannot meet you there, they are not someone who gets access to you in that way. Not because you are difficult to know. Because you are worth the effort of being known well!

And that effort should be mutual.

I have a feeling this book, and all of its layers, will continue to find its way into my writing. This is only the surface.

More soon. And keep an eye out for the first interview in the series coming in the next few days.

<3 Delaney

Before we get into a very topical discourse on being ghosted, I want to briefly return to my last piece, Always Be the One in Love, which, judging by the 1.6k likes and hundreds of restacks (hi, I love you), seemed to strike a chord.

At its core, that essay was about the act of loving fully, even when it’s unrequited, inconvenient, or leaves a mark, because being the one who loves is not a weakness. It’s evidence of a life lived honestly.

And then, last week, I watched an episode of Shrinking that articulated this idea in a way that felt almost eerily aligned. (Spoiler Alert!! Skip ahead if you need to!) There’s a scene where Paul tells Jimmy:

Paul: Life threw you a curve ball. So to try and control things, you picture how you want them to go in your own head…that doesn’t work. If you can’t let go of this shit on your own, then I have to keep trying to shake it out of you.

Jimmy: Okay, I get it. But can we just talk about this over waffles?

Paul: No. You’re not eating with me. You’re eating with her.

*Paul points to Sophie, the woman Jimmy said he wasn’t ready to date after a few dates, because he was having trouble not talking about his late wife.*

Jimmy: *sighs*

Paul: Not how you pictured it, right?

Jimmy: You f*ckin’ Jimmied me!

Paul: That’s right! I f*ckin’ Jimmied you! Look kid, if you’re ever going to move forward, you’ve got to let go of the past, and I know that’s scary. But you… you’re never going to forget Tia. Hell, you’re never going to forget me. No one will. Letting go of the past just means you don’t allow your scars to hold you back anymore.

Jimmy: I’m covered in ‘em, Paul.

Paul: Good. What a shame to be 42 years of age and not be completely covered in scars. You’re the evidence…of a life fully lived.

Jimmy: I don’t want this. I don’t want you to have to fly all across the country just to make sure that I’m okay. I don’t want to be a burden to you.

Paul: You’re not. You’re more of a son to me. I don’t know why I never said that before. I think you’re strong. I think you don’t need me. But for as long as I’m around, if you think you need me, I will be there for you. Because I love you. Okay?

Now you've got a choice to make. Either stay stuck, or you can go make some new scars.

I got a f*ckin’ airplane to catch.

Choose wisely.

Jimmy: *walks over to Sophie and sits at the table* *sighs*

Hi.

Sophie: *smiles*

Hi.

You see? Always be the one with scars. Always be the one in love. Never regret giving somebody your love – even if it hurts, especially when it hurts – because hurt is part of living and you don’t want to miss out on living.

Which brings us to today’s topic: ghosting.

Because if being the one in love is the philosophy…

Then being ghosted is where that philosophy gets tested.

Ghosting. Or, rather, getting ghosted.

Let me set the scene.

Things are going well. Really well, actually. You’ve been talking to someone for a few weeks, maybe longer. The conversation flows. The banter is good. There are inside jokes, there are late-night voice notes, there are plans that were definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent going to happen.

And then.

Nothing.

The texts go from replied-to, to delivered, to read, to (and this is the truly diabolical part) not even opened. Their Instagram stories keep playing like a little ticker tape of evidence that they are, in fact, alive and well and simply choosing not to talk to you. They watched your story. They didn’t reply to your message. They are out there, living their life, holding their phone, and they have decided, consciously and deliberately, that they are not going to send a response.

You have been ghosted.

And somehow, inexplicably, the first thing you do is wonder what you did wrong.

Why ghosting hits the way it does

Here’s the thing about ghosting that nobody really talks about: it’s not just rejection. Rejection, in its honest form, is actually something we can process. It’s not working out. I don’t feel a connection. I’ve met someone else. These things sting, yes. But they are complete sentences. They have a beginning, a middle, and a full stop at the end. You can grieve them and move on.

Ghosting is a rejection with no full stop. It just… trails off. And the human brain, which is genuinely terrible at sitting with ambiguity, immediately goes to work filling in the blank.

Maybe I said something weird in that last message.

Maybe I came on too strong.

Maybe I wasn’t interesting enough, attractive enough, funny enough, chill enough.

Maybe if I’d just replied differently, or waited longer, or said less, or said more

Maybe if I—

You could do this for hours (trust me, I’d know!), even weeks, if you let yourself. And the cruellest part is that the person who left you in that spiral isn’t losing a single night of sleep over it. They’ve moved on. You’re the one lying awake, forensically analysing a read receipt.

That asymmetry — the fact that you’re in pain and they’re apparently just... fine — is where so much of the hurt lives.

But I want you to consider something.

What if the ambiguity isn’t a mystery to solve? What if it’s actually the answer?

What ghosting actually says about the ghost

We have collectively agreed, in the modern dating landscape, to treat ghosting as a kind of neutral act. It’s a soft opt-out that enables the ghoster to avoid uncomfortable confrontation, and rejection feels mean! Ghosting feels like a victimless fade. It’s so easy to just... not… do… anything. And quite honestly, it’s tempting in the age of cancel culture, when anybody anyone says is at risk for getting posted online and going viral — it’s frightening. It’s less frightening to let the conversation quietly die and trust that the other person will eventually get the message.

But here’s what I actually think ghosting is: extreme cowardice dressed up as indifference.

Ghosting means choosing your own comfort by avoiding an awkward five-minute conversation over another person’s dignity. It’s deciding that the time and emotional energy someone invested in you, the vulnerability they showed up with and the hope they let themselves feel — none of that is worth a single honest sentence.

And yes, I know. Not every situationship has earned a formal closing statement. If you went on one mediocre date and both of you faded quietly, that’s life. That’s fine. I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about the ghost who disappears after three months of daily or weekly conversation. Maybe they’ve introduced you to a friend or two of theirs. Chatted about future dates or plans. Told you how much they like hanging out with you. And then ghost you not because the connection wasn’t real, but because being honest about not wanting to continue it would require a maturity they haven’t found yet.

That person is not a mystery. They’re not secretly pining for you from a distance, too afraid to reach out. They’re not going through something so profound that they simply cannot send a text.

They are someone who chose the path of least resistance and left you to carry the weight of their exit.

That tells you something. Not about you. About them.

The part where I tell you how to actually feel better

Right, let’s get into it.

1. Trust your gut.

If it feels off, it probably is. If they haven’t texted you in a few days and something in your gut is starting to churn: listen to it. Not every delay is ghosting, of course. People get busy, and life happens. But more often than not, that internal sense that the vibes of the relationship have shifted isn’t coming from nowhere. Your gut is a remarkably good pattern-recognition system; it picks up on subtle changes in behavior long before your brain catches up. When someone starts pulling away, you feel it. Trust that. It’s not there to make you anxious; it’s there to protect you!

2. Let yourself be annoyed, not just sad.

We are so quick to turn being ghosted into a referendum on our own worth. What’s wrong with me? Why wasn’t I enough? But annoyance is actually the more accurate response here — because what happened to you was rude! It was unkind. It was someone treating you like a loose end to be quietly tied off. You are allowed to be irritated about that. Annoyance, unlike sadness, doesn’t spiral inward. Let yourself feel it.

3. Don’t send the follow-up message.

I know. I know you want to. Your brain has written seventeen drafts of a message that is funny but not too try-hard, casual but not cold, and leaves the door just slightly ajar without looking desperate. Do not send it. Not because playing it cool will magically make them come back — but because you deserve more than auditioning for someone’s attention. Whatever you say, you will not get the response you actually want, which isn’t a reply to your message. You want an apology or that person who actually showed up for you. That message doesn’t exist.

4. Resist the urge to make it make sense.

The reason ghosting is so particularly maddening is that it doesn’t give you a narrative. And humans need narratives. We will invent one if we have to — and usually the one we invent is unkind to ourselves. They lost interest because I was too much. Too eager. Too available. Here’s an alternative narrative, and I’d argue it’s equally valid and significantly more accurate: they lost the plot because they weren’t ready for something real. Yep!!! Full stop.

5. Do not check their Instagram.

You know what I mean. Just… don’t. Every time you look, you are reopening a wound that was trying to close. There is nothing on their grid that will give you the closure you’re looking for. Put the phone down. Go touch grass. Literally.

6. Take the love you were building up and put it somewhere worthy.

This one comes straight from our last piece, and I stand by it: you had all this warmth and attention and interest ready to pour into someone, and they left it on the table. That doesn’t disappear. It belongs somewhere — in your friendships, in something you’re creating, in yourself. Don’t let a ghost take that from you.

What nobody tells you about being ghosted

This is the part I really want you to hear.

Being ghosted by someone is not evidence that you are too much, or not enough, or fundamentally difficult to love. It is evidence that that specific person did not have the emotional vocabulary to be honest with you. And honestly? You want to know that sooner than later. You want to know that before you’re six months in, or a year in, or in a relationship with someone who solves every difficult conversation by simply ceasing to have it.

Because ghosting doesn’t stop at dating. People who ghost when things get uncomfortable will ghost in friendships, in partnerships, in every context where honesty requires even a little bit of courage. What you saw in the way they left is a preview of how they handle hard things in general.

You didn’t lose a person who was almost right for you. You lost a person who showed you, very clearly, that they weren’t.

And I know that doesn’t make the silence less loud. I know it doesn’t make the read receipts hurt less, or the brunch Instagram stories sting less, or the late-night spiral any quieter.

But here’s what I want to leave you with.

The person who ghosts you is choosing the easiest possible version of themselves. They are opting out of discomfort at the cost of your dignity. And the person who gets ghosted — the one who showed up honestly, who let themselves feel something, who texted back, made plans, and allowed themselves to hope — that person is braver. Full stop. Keep being you.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say again: You were the sun. They just couldn’t handle the light.

Keep shining anyway.

<3

Delaney

Hello overthinkers,

Last week, I wrote about why you should Always Be the One in Love, and it was officially my most popular article to date.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Aside from my amazing writing (lol jk), love is a topic every single one of us can relate to. I also think I introduced an angle on love that you might not hear that often: even if a relationship didn’t end well, or didn’t end lovingly (as many don’t), never regret the love you gave that person. Never resent the time and effort you spent making someone happy, because making them happy made you happy, too. And it’s who you are - a person who loves. Why would you ever wish to live in misalignment with who you are?

There’s another piece I want to write soon about how you know “the one” is THE one – but as a brief interlude before we get into the meat of today’s piece, Robert Pattinson already did that for us:

In an interview with Anna Martin, host of the Modern Love podcast, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson discussed the real-life anxiety that their new film, The Drama, takes to the extreme: Can we ever really know the person we love? And how do we know when someone is actually the one?

Pattinson’s answer:

“I kind of think the second you meet someone, you know which way the relationship’s going to go. I think that’s an instant thing. If you end up breaking up with someone, there’s always that moment where you go, ‘I knew this was going to happen.’ You know the second you meet them. And you just choose to go. And that’s not necessarily a bad decision. But you know. You always know.”

I included this because I have a lot of single friends who come to me after a mediocre Hinge date and say something like, “Well, they weren’t thatttt bad, so I’ll probably go on another date and see if it gets better.”

My usual advice: Okay, give it one more date. But after that second date, if the ick is still an ick… move on. You know they’re not the one. Thank them for the time, and don’t waste any more of either of yours.

Should we chase love, or attract it?

“Chasing love can be like trying to wrangle a pig covered in grease,” as my boyfriend so eloquently put it.

We’ve all been there. That person who sets your heart racing but barely remembers your name. The relationship that feels solid until three days of radio silence makes you question everything, including your own sanity. You double text. You refresh the screen.

What makes it worse is that hollow, gnawing feeling of being truly seen by someone, only for them to look straight past you. So you scramble to fill that void wherever you can. You chase a little harder.

And it fails. Almost spectacularly, every time.

We all know the gospel of modern dating advice: Don’t chase; attract! Let THEM come to YOU!! Said with such confidence, as if simply raising your vibration will conjure your soulmate from thin air.

But today, I want to offer a third option, one nobody talks about enough.

Create your own love.

Because maybe you don’t need to chase love, and maybe you don’t need to focus on attracting it either. Maybe it’s about creating love yourself, in every facet of your life that you want it in.

Yes, stop chasing love if you’re chasing it. But also stop waiting around for it to find you.

Maybe life isn’t showing you romantic love at a certain time in your life because it wants you to find it somewhere else first — in your friendships, in your work, in the world, in yourself.

“But how? And will I actually be satisfied without romantic love?” you might ask.

You absolutely can be. And here’s how.

What Tuesdays with Morrie taught me about love

When we talk about love, we almost always mean romantic love.

But love is a term that holds so much more than romance.

Mitch Albom wrote in Tuesdays with Morrie: “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in... a wise man named Levin said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’”

Think about it this way: if someone asked you what the most important thing in life is, what would you say?

If you said money, you can unsubscribe. (Kidding. But only a little.)

It’s love, isn’t it? Why else are we here? What are we actually doing on this planet, if not loving — loving people, loving the taste of pineapple from the fruit bowl, loving the feeling of finally beating the video game you’ve been sweating over for the past seventy days, loving a big warm hug from someone who knows you, loving the feeling of a new job or a perfect sunset or a walk in good air or lacing up a pair of new shoes. Finishing a really good book. The list is endless.

We are here to love.

But if you’re not living consciously — if you’re not actively creating love in your life — you start living from a place of lack instead of abundance. You convince yourself that because you don’t have romantic love right now, you have nothing. That you’re empty. That life is bleak and bare and pointless and someone may as well take your soul because there’s nothing left here.

And that’s where you end up drinking six beers and throwing up on the perfectly decent stranger you’d set your drunk heart on chasing across a frat party.

We’ve all been there. (Have we?)

The truth is: we are the creators of love in our lives. And once you actually start living like that — once you stop waiting for romantic love to swoop in and give you a life — everything shifts.

So where can we find it?

To put together a list that was actually comprehensive and not just my own limited perspective, I asked a few of my lovely readers to share where they consistently work to find and create love in their own lives.

Here’s what my readers said:

Reader 1:

1. A wine walk with friends.

2. Pushing myself in the gym.

3. Trying new restaurants.

4. HONEY BEE WEEN.

Reader 2:

1. Time that I spend with my loving girlfriend.

2. Morandi in the West Village, where I meet with my two best friends for lasagna Sunday dinner and connect with them.

3. I find love by reading books that my friends or family recommend to me.

4. The inside of an ice cream shop (I like Strawberry).

Reader 3:

1. Getting fully absorbed in a book for a few hours.

2. My weekly walk with my best friend, a hot girl walking through the neighborhood.

3. Launching UNCONTROLLABLY at a reality TV show with my friends.

4. Finishing something I’d been putting off and realizing it wasn’t as scary as I thought.

Reader 4:

1. A deep, interesting conversation with someone I’m close with (a friend, my spouse, my children…)

2. Creating something – a painting, a story, a photograph…

3. Discovering a new place – a new town, a new bookstore, a new museum, a new street.

4. My dogs – their pure loyalty and joy and loving nature (and their craziness too)

5. Books, books, books!!

The common thread here? None of these requires romantic love. We can create relationships by doing what we love and authentically connecting with the people in our lives.

They require you to show up for yourself, to pay attention, to stay open to the love that’s already in the room — in the ritual, the season, the friendship, the small ordinary moment that you’d miss entirely if you were only scanning for the romantic kind.

That’s the work. And it turns out, it’s also life.

Reader task!!! I want to know:

What brings you that loving feeling? Who do you invite into your life to share an authentic connection? What activities do you do that encourage you to connect with yourself and others?

Let me know in the comments or my chat <3

Much love,

Delaney

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with loving someone who doesn’t love you back. We’ve all been there at one point or another. In the age of situationships, many of us have probably been there more than we’d like to admit.

It’s that feeling when you’re in a full room and the one person you think you keep making eye contact with is actually looking clean through you to the person standing behind you.

It’s that feeling when you’re in a relationship but you feel like you can never fully be yourself in that relationship, because deep down you know the person you’re dating doesn’t love you like you love them.

Because when you decide to love someone, you love them. And you express that love unconditionally. You love to love!

Strangely enough, this isn’t the case for everybody.

Oftentimes, especially when dating emotionally unavailable people or when in a situationship, the ones we love (and love expressing our love to) don’t express it back… because they don’t reciprocate in the way we need.

If any of this strikes a chord, read on.

This Sunday at the Oscars, Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg found herself interviewing the brilliant actor, director, writer, and author Ethan Hawke. What started as a charming bit of celebrity small talk turned into something else entirely. She asked Hawke, almost casually, if he had any advice for someone dealing with unrequited love. What followed was one of those rare moments when somebody says something so plainly, so beautifully true, that you realize you’ve shed a tear at 2pm on an otherwise random Tuesday afternoon.

Amelia: “Do you have any advice for someone who also has a bit of an unrequited love theme in their life?”

Ethan: “The one who’s in love always wins.”

A: “Okay!”

E: “Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you get your heart broken. You’re living. When you’re living, when you’re feeling, you’re alive. You know, the sun doesn’t care whether the grass appreciates its rays right?”

A: *Pondering Ethan’s sentiment deeply*

E: “It just keeps on shining. That’s you.”

A: “I’m gonna get that tattooed on my forehead I think.”

E: *Laughs from his soul*

Hawke’s words spread across social media within hours, because of course they did. Because apart from Kendall Jenner’s crystal ball blue gown (loooovved this) and Timmy getting roasted, the Oscar’s were pretty boring this year. And here, a man just told the truth. Right now, the truth is something we’re all starving for.

“The sun doesn’t care whether the grass appreciates its rays. It just keeps on shining. That’s you.”

— Ethan Hawke, 2025 Oscars

The Cultural Lie We’ve Been Sold

There’s a popular piece of modern relationship advice making the rounds (you’ve probably heard it) that goes something like this: marry someone who loves you more than you love them. The logic being that security and devotion are better currencies than passion. That it’s smarter, safer, more evolved to be the beloved rather than the lover.

In some ways, I understand this sentiment. After being on the wrong side of an imbalanced dynamic or two in the past, the idea of being worshipped sounds like balm. And yes, we all deserve to be treated like royalty. That part is non-negotiable.

But here’s where I get stuck: the advice, taken to its logical conclusion, essentially tells us to outsource our emotional courage to someone else. To find a person whose love for us is bigger than our love for them and call that a relationship. And what does that leave us with exactly? A comfortable arrangement where we’re permanently half-present, quietly waiting for feelings that may or may not ever match theirs? That’s not love. That’s a hedge.

The ideal, and I’ll die on this particular hill, is mutuality. Two people who are equally, embarrassingly in love with each other. The kind of love that Mitch Albom wrote about in Tuesdays with Morrie, where the old professor insisted that the most important thing in life is learning how to give out love, and to let it come in. Not to strategize it or ration it, but to give it or perish.

Catherine and Heathcliff Walked so We Could Run

Before you write off unrequited love as only pain, as only something to be survived, consider its long literary legacy. Wuthering Heights is about a lot of things: class, obsession, cycles of cruelty, the moors. But at its heart, it’s about two people who loved each other with such ferocity that when it curdled, when it went unreturned in the ways that mattered most, it consumed them both. Heathcliff’s love for Catherine became grotesque, yes, but no reader finishes the novel thinking those two never really felt something.

Literature returns to unrequited love again and again not because writers are masochists, but because it is among the most clarifying of human experiences. When love is not returned, we are stripped of all the comfortable noise (the plans, the shared calendars, the domestic rhythms) and left with just the bare fact of how we feel. And what we discover there, in that stripped-down place, tells us something essential about who we are.

Are we capable of love? Deeply, really, without guarantee of return? Then we are fully alive. We are the sun.

What the Pain Is Actually Saying

Let’s be honest about something, though. There’s a version of “I’ll keep loving even when it’s unreturned” that is beautiful and philosophically correct, and there’s another version that is just staying too long in something that’s hurting you.

Ethan Hawke’s wisdom is about the capacity to love, not a permission slip to martyr yourself for someone emotionally unavailable.

If you have loved someone – I mean really loved them, shown up for them, made yourself vulnerable in all the ways that terrify you – and they have consistently made you feel unseen, unimportant, like a background character in their own story, that pain is not a punishment. It is a signal. The clearest, loudest, most insistent divine signal that this particular person is not your person.

You are not broken for having loved them. You are not naive. You are not too much. You are someone who was willing to feel, which is among the bravest things a human being can do. But the signal is still real, and it deserves to be honored.

The hard, necessary, deeply unglamorous pivot is from loving them to loving yourself back into wholeness. And from there, eventually, back into the world.

How to Actually Heal from Unrequited Love

1. Let yourself grieve without romanticizing it.

There’s a difference between honoring what you felt and replaying it on a loop looking for clues about what you could have done differently. You don’t need clues. Grieve it the way you’d grieve anything real: let it be ugly, let it be loud, then let it begin to move.

2. Turn on the playlist and remember who you were before.

Not who you were before them specifically, but who you are when you’re not monitoring someone else’s feelings about you. The person who dances in the kitchen. The person who laughs uncontrollably at silly things. The person who stares at the stars and sees potential. Put her back on.

3. Redirect the love inward.

All that love you were pouring out? It doesn’t disappear just because the recipient wasn’t ready for it. It belongs somewhere. Start with yourself. Aggressively, embarrassingly, take yourself on dates, buy yourself the flowers, write yourself the love letter — all of it.

4. Resist the urge to numb.

There’s a version of “moving on” that is just anesthesia — keeping busy enough, loud enough, distracted enough that you don’t have to feel it. That’s not healing, it’s postponing. Let yourself feel it in manageable doses, with people who love you, until it softens.

5. Stay open.

This one is the hardest. After being the one who loved more, the temptation is to armor up — to decide that next time, you’ll be smarter, colder, less available. Don’t. The goal is not to love less. The goal is to find someone who makes loving them effortless, because they are loving you back just as hard.

6. The Question Nobody Asks

We spend so much time asking why didn’t they love me? When the more interesting question (the one with the actual nutrients in it) is, what does it mean that I was willing to love like that?

It means you have an enormous capacity for feeling. It means you are not shut down, not guarded to the point of atrophy, not so self-protective that you’ve traded aliveness for safety. It means, whatever else is true, that you are someone who knows how to show up. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.

And some days the bad days, the 2 a.m. days, it won’t feel like everything. It’ll feel like a cruel joke. On those days, come back to the sun. The sun doesn’t ask whether the grass is grateful. It rises anyway. It shines anyway. It keeps its whole entire nature, regardless.

That’s the work. Not to love less fiercely or more strategically, but to keep your whole nature, and to hold out for the person who can actually receive it.

“What else are we here on this silly little planet to do, other than love?”

Maybe you find them — that person who reaches for your hand before you even know you need it, who laughs at the same things, who sees you clearly and still stays. And if you do, you’ll understand exactly why you had to feel everything you felt before. Every scar was a lesson. Every moment of loving someone who couldn’t love you back was practice for recognizing, bone-deep, what the real thing finally feels like.

But here is what nobody tells you, and what I think Ethan Hawke was actually pointing at: the person you’ve been loving toward this whole time doesn’t have to be a romantic partner for your love to have counted. It counts in your friendships, in your family, in the way you show up for people who need you, in the art you make, in the stranger you’re kind to on a bad Tuesday. Love is not a reservoir that empties if the right person never comes along to fill it back up. It’s a practice. It’s a way of moving through the world.

So keep shining. Not because the right grass is definitely, certainly, coming — but because shining is who you are. And whether it’s a partner, a best friend, a life built around people who truly know you, or some beautiful combination of all of it: that light will find somewhere to land.

And if it doesn’t? Well. You were still the sun.

<3

Delaney

Today I have an exciting PSA: I wrote an article for Slate Magazine this week called “The Herb That Broke Me.”

It tells the story of something I’ve been thinking about for a long time now: we’re living in a strange cultural moment where “wellness” has become a benchmark that defines our sense of adequacy, thereby morphing into its own particular form of anxiety.

Before anyone worries — Grammy and Papa, I know you’re reading this one! — Let me reassure you: I’m not broken anymore; I’m doing much better. But in November of 2024, my body went through something that felt like a complete system crash. It was confusing and frightening, and for weeks, I couldn’t put my socks on, walk down the block without searing pain inside, or feel my face, etc.

Looking back, I can trace quite a few threads that led me to that place.

One of which begins with something deceptively small: a green smoothie from a well-liked cafe in NYC.

Where are you hiding, herbs?

I felt tired in 2024. I was working a ton, and I wanted to boost my immune system in any way I could. I wanted to feel better. Anything green or #healthy naturally drew my attention.

Think: Melissa Wood’s Signature Smoothie in collaboration with Greenwich Village’s Spring Cafe Aspen.

If you watch the reel, you’ll hear Wood name the smoothie’s many supposed benefits: “[Spring Cafe Aspen] is the only place I know that you can get 100% organic ingredients, filtered water, and the smoothie is seed-oil free and refined-sugar free.” She then claims that in drinking her smoothie, “You just know what you’re going to get.”

After placing a hefty amount of bananas and too many spinach leaves in the blender bottle, Wood sings, “Spirulinaaa,” as she tops the potion off with the greenest green of all the greens: spirulina powder.

Ok. Watch what comes up when I type the below Google searches into my browser:

“Can Spirulina be bad for people with autoimmune disease?”

“Can spirulina trigger dermatomyositis?”

Here are the first two results:

So, actually, I did not know what I would get when I ordered that smoothie.

Nor did I know what I would get from adding Orgain protein powder to my oatmeal many mornings for breakfast, or when I tried out The Alchemist Kitchen’s ashwagandha-enhanced latte. There are no obvious or visible warnings.

I didn’t know I was going to end up diagnosed with dermatomyositis.

I didn’t know I’d be unable to get out of my bed.

I didn’t know.

The Illusion of Control

Once upon a time, I was a 24-year-old girl trying to feel better in her own body. I sought out reputable sources and popular health influencers who seemed to have all the answers.

Looking back now, the number of people online claiming they’ve “healed” their autoimmune conditions makes my blood boil, because you can’t heal an autoimmune disease. You can manage them. Your symptoms can improve. But the conditions don’t disappear because someone sold you a powder.

So why did I believe said “reputable influencers”?

Because when you don’t feel well, you’re most vulnerable to the person speaking with absolute certainty.

Especially when that certainty is delivered through a magic sleep gummy or a focus-enhancing coffee, packaged with promises of health benefits.

At a time when I sought out and truly thought I’d grasped control of my health and my immune system, it’s ironic that I had ~literally~ no idea what I was doing.

From Cereal in the Morning to Podcasts and Potions

I used to eat without thinking about it, wake up, brush my teeth, eat cereal, and head off to school without a second thought about whether or not it was “healthy.” It’s counterintuitive to think those were the days I felt the healthiest. I was eating, studying, playing sports, connecting with friends, sleeping — all in moderation, without worrying about the latest trends.

But somewhere along the way, the wellness internet found me.

It started with podcasts. Shows like The Skinny Confidential and their rotating lineup of “healthmaxxer” guests, each more confident than the last about the one thing we all should be doing.

Detox with this mineral! Balance your hormones with this tincture! Do this! Do that!

When someone speaks with that level of confidence, the overthinking brain does what it always does: it spirals.

They’re an expert. Why would they say this if it wasn’t true?

And if I don’t follow the advice… am I failing my body?

That influencer looks great. It must be working for them.. so it will work for me… right?

Soon my Instagram feed was flooded with bright green powders and immune-boosting elixirs: spirulina, elderberry, ashwagandha, alfalfa.

I was trying these mysterious things with ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, because self-proclaimed “experts” promised it would make me feel better.

It didn’t. It just made me anxious. And it made my immune system attack itself.

These things broke me. I don’t want them to break you, too.

Getting Out of Your Head (and Your Feed)

What I eventually realized is that the wellness rabbit hole is just overthinking wearing a lab coat.

We scroll because we want agency over our bodies. We want answers. We want reassurance that we’re doing the “right” things.

But the deeper you go into the algorithm, the further you drift from the one thing that actually matters: your own intuition.

In my article for Slate, I talk about the moment I realized some of the “immune-boosting” herbs I’d been consuming may have actually triggered my body to turn on itself. I wrote:

“The irony was devastating. By consuming ingredients like ashwagandha, spirulina, and echinacea, I was convincing my system to attack its own tissues. My genetics provided the foundation, but these supplements turned a predisposition into a chronic, irreversible attack on my healthy cells. Today, in order to prevent further flares, I have to live by one strict rule: total avoidance of these immunostimulatory herbs.”

It’s a sobering realization.

But it also forced me to confront something bigger about the modern wellness industry and the loud pressure it places on all of us to constantly optimize.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do isn’t add another supplement. Sometimes it’s closing the browser. Doing less. Logging off. And listening to the one person who actually knows your body best.

You.

And probably your doctor. Which, in my case, was definitely true (after finally finding a fantastic doctor who listened to me).

I found Dr. Victoria Werth when I needed answers most. Dr. Werth is a leading dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, whose research has shaped the modern treatment of autoimmune skin diseases.

All Dr. Werth had to do was examine my inflamed cuticles, ask about my history of consuming “health” products, and review a positive blood marker to confidently diagnose the disease.

I was floored when she handed me a list of 5-10 herbal supplements and said: “I really would eliminate your consumption of all of these herbs completely.” But aren’t these healthy? In my efforts to be healthy, had I hurt myself?

For Slate, I wrote:

“In one study, Werth followed 637 patients with dermatomyositis or lupus and treated them with supplements including spirulina, elderberry, ashwagandha, echinacea, chlorella, and alfalfa. For dermatomyositis patients like me, 31 percent experienced a disease onset or exacerbation after the supplement treatment.”

What if I didn’t have the good fortune to meet with Dr. Werth? If she hadn’t told me about this research and plenty more invaluable studies she’d conducted on the topic, I might have never known any of this. I might still be consuming these things — like too many people surely are.

And that realization stuck with me long after I left her office: how many of us are trying so hard to be healthy that we never stop to ask whether the things we’re consuming are actually helping us at all?

I know I’m not alone in living this reality.

In fact I’m really curious about your experiences...

Have you ever found yourself caught in the cycle of trying to “optimize” your life, only to realize it was making you feel worse?

What’s one wellness rule, supplement, or influencer trend you tried that didn’t actually help?

Let’s (please!) de-influence each other in the comments.

And if you haven’t already - do read the full piece I wrote for Slate. There’s a lot covered there that I didn’t cover here, including interviews with other folks adversely affected by herbal supplements.

Thanks everybody,

<3 Delaney

As a child, I enjoyed finger painting and creating things with my hands. As I grew up and cultivated a real artistic practice for myself through a love for composition, photography, mixed media, and abstract painting, I found myself perceiving everything from grimy street signs to falling icicles to streaks of golden light reflecting off of shiny objects as tiny miracles of beauty, works of art powerful enough to restore hope in my bones. It’s the beauty in mundane angles and niche shades of the rainbow that remind me of the greater forces at play in this world.

Moreover, when I’ve encountered and undergone stressful periods of life, art (seeing it and creating it) has proven therapeutic in ways nothing else — not journaling, not meditating, not even talk therapy — proves to be.

When I have a challenging proposal at work coming up? I grab a coloring book and scribble away my fears. When battling a health scare? I lay out squares of canvas paper and paint mind-bending abstractions into the night.

Art is how I’ve learned to make sense of the world when nothing else makes sense.

Only recently did I learn how close this way of seeing the world sounds to something Georgia O’Keeffe famously said about her own view of the world and her artistic practice:

When I saw O’Keefe’s quote plastered across the front wall of her museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I instantly turned to my mom in awe: “Wow! This is literally what I say to myself all the time, isn’t it?”

Instantly, I felt understood in that feeling I’ve always felt: that art serves a purpose much bigger than creating a pleasurable experience or serving as a luxury item that, when hung on one’s wall, creates status.

Art can literally save us. Art can heal.

How? Well let’s dig deeper.

Edward Munch and The Scream

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch famously said, “For as long as I can remember, I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.”

In 1868, Munch’s mother, Laura, died of tuberculosis when he was only five. Then his eldest sister, Sophie, died of the same disease. Munch himself was a very sickly child, often bedridden with bronchitis and rheumatic fever, missing long stretches of school. His father, Christian Munch, was a military doctor who was described as obsessively religious—so devout it bordered on psychoneurosis. He told his children vivid ghost stories about sin and damnation, feeding the young artist’s nightmares and spiritual dread.

Given all of this capital “T” Trauma, Munch later wrote: “Illness, insanity, and death were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life.”

In other words, art saved him.

In creating works like The Scream, Munch externalized what psychologists now call “affect labeling,” the act of translating words (or images) into named emotions. Studies show that naming or symbolizing an emotion reduces amygdala activation and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, our rational minds. When you translate fear into form, you quiet it.

This is precisely how art gave Munch a sense of containment. A frame around the chaos. A place to put the scream so it wasn’t just echoing inside his body.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Flowers and Skulls

O’Keeffe’s story is quieter but equally as psychological as Munch’s.

Raised in rural Wisconsin in 1887, O’Keeffe experienced periods of depression and professional doubt. In her early twenties, she temporarily stopped painting altogether, convinced she had nothing original to say. It wasn’t until she encountered the ideas of art educator Arthur Wesley Dow during her time at the University of Virginia that she began painting again. Dow’s work emphasized composition, line, and emotional resonance over replication, and that had a profound effect on O’Keeffe’s creative practice.

O’Keeffe painted flowers so large they became landscapes: “I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers,” she once said. She painted skulls like she was holding the desert in her hands. She was far from home, alone with the heat and the sky and the silence, and those sun-bleached bones became her companions. There’s something about looking straight at mortality that quiets the mind: the lines, the curves, the hollow eyes of a skull made her anxious thoughts feel tangible, almost conquerable. Painting skulls made O’Keefe feel steady. Each brushstroke was a way to map the fragility and resilience she saw in herself, to take the wildness of fear and shape it into something permanent and beautiful. In a world that often tried to shrink her, the skulls gave her space to exist fully, to endure.

At the psychological level, O’Keefe’s work is essentially an intervention in attention. Anxiety thrives on cognitive fragmentation—our attention split into a thousand tabs. O’Keeffe practiced the opposite. She zoomed in… wayyyy in. Petals became the smooth architectural lines of corporeality. Color became her meditation.

There’s research on something called Attention Restoration Theory, which suggests that sustained, gentle focus, especially on beauty or nature, restores depleted cognitive resources and lowers stress. O’Keeffe was doing that long before it had a name.

She wasn’t just painting flowers. She was practicing, prescribing, deep looking.

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”

- Georgia O’Keeffe

You Don’t Have to Make Art to Benefit From It

I know some of you are already thinking: I don’t have time. I’m not creative. I can’t even commit to journaling.

Here’s the good news: research suggests you don’t have to create art to experience its psychological benefits. Simply viewing art can shift your physiology.

In a 2019 study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, participants who visited museums or galleries even once or twice a month reported lower levels of psychological distress and higher life satisfaction. Other studies measuring salivary cortisol found that just 30 minutes in an art museum significantly reduced stress hormone levels.

Why?

Neuroscientists believe art activates the brain’s default mode network, the system associated with introspection and meaning-making. It also stimulates dopamine pathways involved in reward and pleasure. When you encounter something aesthetically moving, your brain experiences a micro-moment of awe.

And awe, as we’ve discussed before on So She Thought, shrinks the ego and expands perspective. It interrupts rumination. It moves you out of “What’s wrong with me?” and into “Wow.”

How Viewing Art Can Lower Cortisol and Anxiety

Let’s get specific.

When you stand in front of a painting and really look:

• Your breathing often slows.

• Your parasympathetic nervous system (rest-and-digest mode) activates.

• Cortisol decreases.

• Your mind temporarily exits task-oriented thinking.

You are no longer optimizing or performing (which can be exhausting!). You are perceiving. From my personal experience, there’s something profoundly healing about being asked to notice instead of achieve.

Art creates psychological distance from your own narrative. Instead of looping your problems, you step into someone else’s interior world. This is similar to what therapists call cognitive reappraisal, the ability to reinterpret experience. Art gently trains that muscle.

Artists to Check Out

When I asked, you sent! Here’s the list of artists you all said you loveddd right now:

• Leon Xu – Dreamlike, atmospheric works that feel suspended between memory and fantasy. His color palettes alone feel like a nervous system exhale.

• Jess Allen – Emotionally rich portraiture that explores intimacy and identity. Her work invites slow, relational looking.

• Jean-Michel Basquiat – Raw, frenetic, layered. There’s something powerful about witnessing someone else metabolize rage into rhythm.

• Julie Beaufils – Ethereal color fields that feel almost synesthetic.

• Claude Monet – Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum. Monet’s water lilies are practically a case study in attention restoration theory. Soft edges. Light as therapy.

• Yoshitomo Nara – Childlike figures with complex emotional undertones. His work often evokes a nostalgia we didn’t know we needed.

And my personal prescriptions:

• Georgia O’Keeffe – For focus. For reverence. For remembering how to see.

• Josef Albers – His Homage to the Square series is essentially a masterclass in perception psychology. Stare long enough and your brain starts playing with color relationships in real time. It’s like cognitive Pilates.

• Faith Ringgold – Narrative quilts that merge activism, storytelling, and softness. Her work reminds us that art can regulate and resist.

• Edward Hopper - because, duhh! So beautiful.

• A few more: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Pablo Picasso (another duhh), Barbara Kruger.

My doctor prescribed me a museum visit.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, and in addition to her medical advice, she suggested it might be beneficial to incorporate art and painting into my life.

Little did she know I already do. And it helps tremendously!

When something has shape, it has edges. When it has edges, it can be held. And when it can be held, it is no longer running the whole room.

If you are overwhelmed this week, consider this your prescription:

1. Go look at something beautiful.

2. Stand in front of it longer than feels efficient.

3. Let your nervous system recalibrate in the presence of shapes and color.

Art won’t solve everything.

But it might (at the very least) lower your cortisol!

Before you go… comment below your favorite artist or museum to visit! I’d love to hear.

<3

Delaney

Last night, I woke up at 3 a.m. with my mind racing.

Naturally, I tried to fall back asleep. I flipped my pillow to the cool side, adjusted my blanket, regulated my breathing, and counted backwards from 100.

Nothing worked.

So I lay there in the dark and let the familiar sea of thoughts start flooding in: If I don’t fall asleep in the next hour, I’ll only get four hours of sleep. My team has that huge meeting tomorrow. Am I ready? There’s so much going on in the world. I want to help. And I need to finish my article. Will I be too exhausted? Will I mess everything up? HELP!

Let’s just say the anxiety spiral was in full swing.

With each passing minute, I could feel my body growing more awake, not less. The harder I tried to sleep, the more alert I became.

Then, something shifted. Instead of lying there catastrophizing about all the things I’d be too tired to do tomorrow, I thought: What if I just got up and did them now?

So I did.

I got out of bed, splashed cold water on my face, made a cup of tea, and started working on the exact things I’d been panicking about not having energy for later.

And here’s what happened: my mind softened. The pressure lifted, and my nervous system’s fear dissolved. Because I wasn’t waiting anymore. I was doing things.

Does this sound counterintuitive?

For years, I thought it did.

I used to be the kind of person who could close my eyes and disappear into Delaneyland after a half hour or so. When the lights turned off, my brain drifted off. Sleep was this reliable, automatic thing my body just… effortlessly fell into. I trusted myself to fall asleep every night.

Then, somewhere around the time I turned 20, cue a shift.

As years tacked onto my life, so did new responsibilities, expectations, tasks, and plans. My body seemed to learn a new trick: exhaustion without rest. I’d lie in the dark with my screens off and my room quiet, and still, this continuous buzz raged inside me. Like my nervous system missed a memo. Oftentimes, my body confused excitement with anxiety and anxiety for real danger. Like one of half me didn’t believe the other half when I said, we’re safe now. We can power down now!

Night after night of four, five, maybe six hours of sleep, I realized something unsettling: all my old sleep rules stopped working.

It was time for some new tricks.

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Where Overthinking and Insomnia Collide

If you’re reading this, you probably know this loop intimately.

You’re exhausted. You desperately want to sleep. But the moment your head hits the pillow, your brain decides it’s the perfect time to:

• Review every slightly awkward interaction from the past week

• Mentally rehearse tomorrow’s conversations

• Solve problems that don’t need solving right now

• Remind you of that one embarrassing thing you said in 2016

And the worst part? The harder you try to sleep, the more awake you become.

Because now you’re not just lying there. You’re lying there trying. You’re performing sleep (side note: jeez. we perform all day at work. and we perform all day on social media. do we also need to perform our sleep?? goodness gracious!) You’re watching the clock tick closer to morning, calculating how many hours you have left until an alarm blares, feeling the pressure build with each passing minute.

This is where overthinking and insomnia become the worst kind of roommates. They feed each other. Your racing thoughts keep you awake. Being awake gives you more time to think. More thinking means more anxiety about not sleeping. More anxiety means… you get it. It’s a vicious cycle. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably tried everything to break it.

Understanding the cognitive and emotional roots of restlessness helps. Meditating, journaling, trying out melatonin and sleepy tea, establishing a bedtime routine… all of it helps.

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: sometimes you do all the “inner work” and your body still says no.

Sometimes you’re not anxious about anything.

Sometimes you’re just awake.

And honestly, that’s okay!

So What Should You Actually Do at 3 a.m.?

Here’s my two cents.

Stop fighting it.

Get out of bed. And just… start doing things.

Apply a lightly chilled cloth to the face (just cold enough to freshen, not cold enough to shock).

Make yourself some lemon tea. Something steaming, grounding, a warm mug to hold.

Stretch! I like this free routine by Pamela Reif.

Have a dance party with yourself. Run around your room like a golden retriever with nowhere to put its energy. Get the zoomiez out!

Read a few pages of a book that wants to whisk you away to another universe.

And finally, attempt to get a head start on your work or responsibilities. Open your laptop and finish the PowerPoint you’re worried you won’t be able to finish. Practice that speech. Read an article that will make you smarter. Create that TikTok reel you’ve been severely procrastinating.

The best way to kill anxiety, full stop, is to start doing things.

So no matter the hour … get up and do things!

I did this last night.

And strangely enough, I almost immediately felt a softening of my bones.

There’s something deeply calming about beginning the thing you’re afraid of. About telling your nervous system, see? We can do this. About proving to yourself that nothing is actually chasing you.

Plus, there’s a quiet magic to doing things while the rest of the world sleeps. No emails or expectations. No one needing anything from you. It’s just you, the silence of the night, and a strange sense of permission to create what you want to create.

I even caught myself wondering, should I be waking up at 3 a.m. more often?

Is 3 a.m. my hour?

I mean … chic!

Alright. Let’s Talk Research

You know I love a good, recent research study. And we’re in luck today, because sleep research published by MIT last week backs up everything I said above. Lying in bed awake trains the brain to associate the bed with stress, vigilance, even frustration. Pretty much the opposite of the rest we seek.

Sleep specialists now recommend breaking that association entirely. If you can’t sleep, don’t stay. Get up. Change the scene. Let your brain relearn that the bed is for rest, not rumination.

And then there’s this: anxiety feeds on anticipation. When you start the thing you’re worried about (especially in the quiet hours of the night) you collapse the fear loop. You move from imagined catastrophe to lived competence.

What a 3 a.m. Ritual Can Do For You

Here’s what you may notice after adopting this practice:

1. You stop punishing yourself for being awake. Instead of lying there feeling like a failure because you can’t force your body to do what it won’t do, you give yourself permission to work with what is.

2. Your anxiety actually decreases. Counterintuitively, getting up and doing something feels less stressful than lying in bed trying to sleep. Movement gives your nervous system somewhere to put the energy.

3. You reclaim the night. Instead of dreading 3 a.m. wakeups, you start to see them as pockets of renewed possibility. Sometimes the most peaceful (or sometimes the most necessary) work happens when the world is asleep. ✨

Life will never stop being stressful.

And that’s a fact.

Unexpected anxieties will always pop up. Some nights, your nervous system will be too activated to sleep, no matter what you do.

We all know that the horrors persist by now, but we don’t stop to notice how we’re reacting to such stressors, consciously and subconsciously.

When you stop fighting your body and start working with it, when you give yourself permission to be awake without shame, you invite in a different kind of rest.

You remind yourself that you’re human. Your nervous system is doing its best. And that deserves to be met with compassion, not frustration. Sometimes you need to be flexible and do things differently than the textbooks tells you to, okay? Okay.

Sleep will come back when it’s ready.

I solemnly swear it!

Love you guys.

Delaney <3

The smell of piñon smoke and roasting green chiles threads through a crisp mountain air. Outside my second-floor window, I catch a glimpse of a slowly setting honey golden sun shedding light upon an array of Adobe-style houses, the color of malt and rust. Mountains frame each side of the valley like the spine of an ancient book being gently kept. I can’t escape the feeling that Santa Fe understands itself. It wants me to understand myself, too.

Inside, colorful rugs sprawl across every floor like a conversation among Spain, New America, and the Old Southwest. Mud walls bring me intimately close to the town’s ancient origins. Fabrics woven by Ira and Sylvia Seret overlap with intricate Indian-inspired tapestries, each hung by hand from the Inn’s walls like prayers.

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Joseph’s Culinary Pub, a cozy restaurant that tourists flock to in high season, becomes a local haven in early January. Something about it stirs up a novel feeling in my bones, one I can’t immediately name.

Soft chatter moves from one corner of the small, adobe-walled restaurant to the next. Wooden planks run the length of the ceiling. In one corner, two small tables seat pairs of men in their forties or fifties leaning toward each other, sharing a meal and easy conversation. I wonder why more men don’t casually go out to dinner together.

Across the bar, a group of turtlenecked women and men in chunky-framed glasses lean over plates of duck confit pad thai, acorn squash enchiladas, and steak au piovre. The room glows with the same honey-gold warmth I noticed earlier, even though the sun has set by now. The warmth of the space floats off the glow of real conversation. Something tells me to keep my phone tucked away in my purse.

My mom and I clink two chilled flutes of non-alcoholic Mionetto and eat slowly. Later, bundled against the January chill, we walk back to the hotel. I feel whole.

The next morning moves slowly, deliberately. Yoga first, then meditation, the room left warm with breath and silence. By the time we stepped outside, my body felt lighter, as if something had loosened inside, reminding me what matters.

Next, we visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, and I stood in front of her paintings with a feeling I can only describe as awe.

This incredible woman lived everywhere, it seemed. New York. New Mexico. Virginia. Wisconsin. Texas. She followed light and landscape and her own relentless curiosity about what the world looked like when you really, truly look at it.

She was the first woman ever to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). But more than that: she was someone who understood that to make meaningful work, you have to be willing to disappear into places that slow you down enough to pay attention.

New Mexico slowed her down.

It slowed me down, too.

I’ve been back for a few days now, and I keep thinking about the meals and art walks and discoveries my mom and I shared together. Those galleries. The way people in Santa Fe seem to have made a collective agreement to embrace presence fully, without apology.

It reminded me of something I wrote about a few months ago on the practice of making “done lists” instead of to-do lists. How when we focus on what we’ve accomplished rather than what’s left undone (what we don’t yet have or what’s still out of our reach), our brains finally get permission to rest.

Santa Fe felt like a city-sized done list. A place that isn’t trying to become anything other than what it is. An embrace of slow creation and intention. A place that celebrates being old and unhurried.

And maybe that’s what I needed most: permission to stop trying to optimize every moment. To let dinners stretch long. To really ask my mom questions about her life and her childhood, ones I’ve never asked before. To leave my phone in my bag. To notice the two men talking deeply and the colorful birds tiled into every crevice and the way chile peppers dry in wreaths on every doorway and the way everybody smiled and tried to strike up conversations with us when we walked into a room.

To remember that presence is a choice you can cultivate through a hundred tiny moments that add up to a lifetime.

Delaney <3

P.S. See my Santa Fe post on IG here!