Hello dear ones,

How are you? How are you really? Are you doing ok? The world feels unbearably heavy right now, and some days I look around and wonder how we’re all still functioning. Personally, the last month has felt like the longest year of my life. And I know that I’m not alone.

But there are two ideas that I have carried with me every day for the last few weeks, that have helped me tremendously. And I want to share them with you:

1. Grief is necessary.

2. Joy is an act of resistance.

In fact, since only a few days after my last newsletter I’ve been curating this one around these very themes. I’m including lots and lots of things I’ve found and loved, things that have helped me, made me laugh when I needed it most, and given me strength to keep going. My hope is that perhaps they’ll do the same for you.

Thank you, always, for being here. And you know how much I love to hear from you, so write me back.

much, much love -

kg

GRIEF IS NECESSARY

I come from a long line of deniers. Growing up, when things were bad, you didn’t talk about it. If you were in a bad mood, or feeling sad, or frustrated, you didn’t show it. You always wore a smile, and when asked you were always, “great!” As a girl especially it was my job to make sure everyone else was comfortable; or rather, not made uncomfortable by my inconvenient feelings. Fortunately I had a mother intent on helping to break that cycle for me and my sister. And so - thank goodness - I became intimately familiar with my grief.

But I think often about the balance of it. It is easy, of course, to let your grief consume you, become you, to know nothing else. And this is not good. But equally as bad is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Because named or not it is there, and the things that we refuse to recognize and honor are impossible to tame.

But perhaps the most compelling argument for acknowledging our grief is that it is necessary for our joy; our capacity for one is only as deep as the other.

Kahlil Gibran said it best —

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears…
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

JOY IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE

Late last spring in one of my newsletters I shared some brilliant words from one of my favorite poets, Alok Vaid-Menon. In fact, to this day that one excerpt was the most responded to item I have ever shared, so many of you were touched by it. (I’m re-sharing it down at the very bottom of this letter for those that missed it, and because I think we all could use it again right now.)

But recently Alok was on The Daily Show, and when asked about keeping humor in times like these talked about the idea of joy as resistance, and it felt like the most important thing I had heard (edited very slightly for clarity):

“What’s really frustrating is most people think that trans people are just snowflakes, humorless, hypersensitive. But if you spend a couple of centuries surviving attempted eradication, you get kind of bored with being depressed, it’s just a major buzzkill… so you start cracking jokes to survive and then you begin to realize actually, maybe part of the oppression is keeping you miserable…. And so what I started to realize in my own life was there are powers that be that want me to hate myself and to be sad, and what’s profoundly rebellious when you’re a marginalized person is recognizing that people might have the ability to take your rights, they might have the ability to take away your safety, but they can’t take away your joy. And so what humor has become for me is a practice of resistance.”

SOME THINGS WORTH SHARING

• This quote from Cole Arthur Riley (@blackliturgies), which is just perfect:

It can feel foolish to pause to marvel at the stars when the world is burning. Or to find the world beautiful when you've known it to betray you.

But wonder is a liberation practice. A reminder that we contain more than tragedy. Beauty is our origin and our anchor.

• I can’t remember if I’ve ever shared Matt Eicheldinger here or not, but if I haven’t he’s absolutely worth checking out, starting with this beautiful post. (And if you like that, you can watch this one next.)

• Bugsy Sailor has filmed and/or photographed every sunrise, save one, since January 1, 2019, nearly all of them from the shores of Lake Superior. That’s well over 2,200 now. I’ve been following him most of that time, and his videos are seriously one of the only reasons I still have an instagram account. Whether warm and colorful or gray and cold, they bring a much needed feeling of calm whenever I see them, an opportunity to pause and just be still for a moment.

• This video of starling murmurations has been an open tab on my computer for many months now after sharing it with my boys. Often in the early mornings I’ll see enormous flocks of them out my studio window. There’s something completely mesmerizing about these dances, and peaceful; a gentle reminder of our place in the world.

• I saw something recently about leaning into absurdity in these weird and depressing times, and I’ve noticed since that I absolutely have been. The weirder and kookier, the likelier I am to laugh uncontrollably. (It definitely doesn’t hurt that my boys do the same, and their laughter is a bit like a drug for me.) The one we’ve come back to the most is literally the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen but I laugh so hard I cry almost every time I see it.

If ever I had a spirit animal, it is this dog.

RECENTLY

LISTENING TO

These days I find myself looking for music for moments of grief, and music for cultivating and celebrating, and even forcing if need be, joy. Two of my favorite albums for grief are Fred Again and Brian Eno’s Secret Life, and Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks. (Even if you don’t know this second album you will almost certainly recognize the haunting track, On the Nature of Dayllght.) Both are beautiful, and perfect for a somber mood.

When it comes to joy I’m still relying pretty heavily on a handful of playlists and albums I’ve shared here in the past, mostly made up of old funk and jazz. But there’s one artist I’ve gone back to that I hadn’t listened to in years. I discovered Josh Rouse what feels like a lifetime ago and when I first moved to DC his Nashville and 1972 records were practically all I listened to as I explored my new city. They just feel so good, and hearing the opening chords of either (but Nashville especially) still puts an instant smile on my face.

READING IN

I came across the Moon Lists newsletter through The New York Times, and it’s by far the best thing I’ve signed up for, maybe ever. The newsletter comes out two to three times a month, with one issue being mostly “prompts for journaling or conversation” (or I like to add contemplation), and another being a list of Away/Toward; similar to the “In/Out” lists you see posted around the new year, these are lists of things to move toward and away from, revisited and refocused once a month. The list shared is personal to the author, but of course the point is to consider your own. (And don’t be surprised if I begin to adopt this practice here.)

The newsletter is free to sign up for, paid if you want access to the archives.

CRUSHING ON

Though I write with pencil 99% of the time (or did, anyway) I’m a sucker for a fantastic pen. I stumbled across these beauties a few weeks ago and I’m kind of obsessed. They have an extra fine point (crucial to score points in my book), and don’t smear. I know, not the kind of thing I usually share, but what can I say? They bring me joy.

THINKING ABOUT

Too many things to name here honestly. But mostly all of the people who are hurting and scared and grieving and raging and grasping to just hold on right now…

“What feels important to say now is that we have to become fluent in everything that makes us want to live. I'm seeing so many people, rightfully so, detail everything that's wrong about the world right now, get apocalyptic about the future of our government, about the future of the world, and I am here with you.

AND, that's not how you continue going.

It’s just not. The way that you keep going is you notice the beautiful things. The small gestures of kindness, those are the things that give you stamina…

I feel so much despair, all of the time… But the beauty is what is keeping me going…

So… find your beauty and become a publicist for it. Represent it everywhere you go. Say, I saw this thing… I had something that touched me, made me feel human. And preserve that humanity, preserve that empathy, preserve that ability to feel everyone's grief and pain. That's what's going to protect us long-form.”

— Alok Vaid-Menon,

from an episode of We Can Do Hard Things