SOME GOOD WORDS: The Invisibility Myth, Being A Charlotte, Seasonal Comparison and more!

A GINORMOUS treasure trove of links + a story about change

Hi friends—

I have a treasure trove of links for you in this edition of SOME GOOD WORDS. But first, a story:

My mom was in town this past week, and brought a flash drive filled with old camcorder videos she’d recently gotten digitized. I take pride in having a memory like a lockbox (I am also a stellar secret-keeper, btw), so as I plugged the drive into my MacBook, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing anything I didn’t remember. A high school jazz performance from Junior Year. Moving Day 1994. Green-screen souvenir videos featuring Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno from a visit to 30 Rock back in 2002.

lol @ the foreshadowing of me actually being on NBC two decades later…maybe next segment i should bring back the space buns and 90s sunglasses?? UPDATE: i looked it up and can confirm they still do these green-screen “star in your own NBC talk show” things during the NBC studio tour!

Now I have these files saved on my computer, and I can’t stop watching. It’s not that I don’t remember these moments, it’s that I notice things that were most likely impossible for me to appreciate in the moment. How sweet and hilarious my brother’s mannerisms were at four years old. How consistent my parents’ personalities have been even though their hairstyles have not. How nonchalant I was in my bravery as a 16 year old.

We talk about the power of “noticing” a lot on

WANT: Women Against Negative Talk

. And while I stand behind its importance, sometimes I think I lean in so hard because it feels like a way to control the present. To make sure I don’t miss ANY moment.

Watching these videos was a necessary reminder to me that no matter what, there WILL be things I miss in the moment because they can only be noticed in hindsight. I imagine this is why the social media trend “I’m 90 years old and woke up today as my [insert current age here] self” has caught on so quickly. Does it help us appreciate the moment we’re in? Absolutely. But I think that maybe for people like me, it also makes us feel like we have more control than we actually do over the impermanence of these moments. Like if we can appreciate them hard enough NOW, we can evade forgetting.

But what if some forgetting isn’t actually forgetting — it’s just not having a point of comparison in the moment?

I’m sure I’ll look back at videos of my 38 year-old self and 38 year-old life and notice things I just can’t right now. How healthy my voice sounds because my vocal cords are still in their prime. How easily Frankie does her favorite tricks (which are currently “dance” and “ring of destiny”; I’ll get a video for you at some point I promise) because her joints haven’t yet aged. How Jeremy’s laugh ends up changing (or doesn’t), or how the expression my 1.75-year-old niece makes while singing Defying Gravity ends up changing (or doesn’t). I can appreciate all of these things now, but without a point of future comparison, I can’t fully understand or identify what I’ll delight in noticing years down the line.

All of this is on my mind as the seasons start to change here in NYC. On a walk this morning I saw tiny white and purple flowers starting to bloom in Riverside Park. It took me a second before I clocked: Oh yes, I’ve seen these before. They were here the spring before that, and the one before that. But the long winters and dry grey-brown flower beds always cloud my memory.

It’s part of the reason I love living on the East Coast now — the constant points of seasonal comparison. It reminds me that the only thing constant is change. That as much as I can tell myself to “remember” that flowers always bloom in spring and leaves always change in fall, a forced remembering isn’t what actually leads to remembering. I will remember the flowers if I notice the flowers. I will remember the leaves if I notice the leaves. The noticing is what prevents the forgetting.

And, maybe even more important: HONING THE PRACTICE of noticing is what will eventually allow me to delight in noticing new things and seasonal shifts years from now.

~

ON TO THIS MONTH’S LINKS!

A heads up on some changes this month: In addition to starting a YouTube channel (yay!!) I’m shifting our paid subscriber benefits. Feedback I’ve heard from you is that while you’ve loved the weekly prompts, it’s easy for them to get lost in the email shuffle. I get it!!

So what we’ll be doing is this: posts like this will be half free and half paywalled, so paid subscribers get another generous batch of links and recs plus a monthly playlist and mindset-shift prompt. This feels good to me, because it gives something to paid subscribers that is high-interest and that I personally would pay $5/month for, but allows me to continue to produce the amount of high-value free content I do (which now includes YouTube) without sacrificing quality due to time. Plus, I know some of you don’t necessarily care about subscriber perks and just want to support WANT! I definitely subscribe to multiple Substacks for that exact reason. A lot of people out there are doing amazing work, and paying $5 to help them keep doing that work at the level they’re doing it is a joy. I’m more likely to pay for minimal “extras” — in addition to a lot of great free stuff that’s put out there for the masses — than pay for what might be excellent content but can’t reach the majority of people who might actually need it because it’s behind a paywall.

I’m sharing because I know that *I’m* always super curious as to how people decide to structure their paywalls/subscriptions and why…so I thought maybe it would be interesting to you too. If not, the TL;DR is below ⬇

So! This post is half for free subscribers, half for paid members of the WANT community. If you’d like to support this publication and the work we do here at WANT, you can tap the button below and join our Paid community. Your support of a few bucks a month is sooooo deeply appreciated, as it helps pay for things like hosting fees, subscriptions to paid media (so that I can share as many “gift links” as I can), and freelancers who can help make WANT the best it can be.

(And if you’re already a paid subscriber — I seriously can’t thank you enough!)

What you’ll find below: a whole host of random links to articles, podcasts, other Substacks, as well as a Monthly Prompt and Monthly Mixtape you can download on Spotify. As always, gift articles are used wherever possible.

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SOME GOOD WORDS THIS MONTH

1) “1. young men have always been turned on by older women 2. the patriarchy has always benefited from convincing 40+ women we're invisible 3. we're not.” by Rebecca Woolf (via the braid)

I find it telling that the majority of women I feature on WANT and the WANTcast are over 35. Heck, the majority of them are well over 45! That’s because women 40+ are generally speaking, some of the most interesting, the most innovative, the most profound — and yes, also the hottest IMO. Worth hitting the “subscribe” button on this one, and this entire publication.

1. young men have always been turned on by older women 2. the patriarchy has always benefited from convincing 40+ women we're invisible 3. we're not.

2) This excellent profile on Idina Menzel as she prepped for her return to Broadway after 11 years via NYT (gift article)

I have been obsessed with Idina Menzel ever since summer camp 1999, when my friend Erica introduced me to the RENT cast recording on her Discman CD player. I just had to do the math to make sure I was correct — yep, 26 years. I was especially struck by her description of herself in this NYT profile, where she says she’s always felt like she’s too much. And how she’s getting tired of her self-deprecation. A relatable read for Broadway fans as well as anyone interested in getting a peek into someone’s mental health / self-worth journey.

3) Worst Club Ever: A Child Loss Podcast (by Allie and Mike Kramer)

If you’ve been following along for a couple years now, you’ll remember my cousin Allie and her incredible son Theo. Theo was diagnosed with DIPG, a rare and inoperable terminal brain cancer, at 3 years old — and passed away nine months later, the day after his fourth birthday. To say that Allie, her husband Mike, and their entire family have been to hell and back is a complete understatement. The loss and grief they’ve been through isn’t just tough to wrap your head around if you haven’t been through the loss of a child — it’s loss and grief that is extremely under-discussed. That’s why they created WORST CLUB EVER: to provide the kinds of conversations and resources they wish they’d had.

This podcast isn’t just for bereaved parents or people who’ve experienced tragedy — and, isn’t just about the struggles and tears. This podcast is a love letter to LIFE ITSELF. It’s heart-wrenching and heart-opening. It will help you explore grief, love, courage, relationships, and tenacity. You will laugh as much as you sob. You will learn so much, and you will feel the full spectrum of human experience. And between Allie’s psychotherapy and performance background and Mike’s composition and production background, it’s honestly the most incredibly produced podcast I have ever heard in my life, soup to nuts. If listening to a podcast about child loss feels scary to you, I encourage you to take a listen. It is tough, yes. But it is also joyful, and spectacular. (and I swear I’m not just saying this because these are relatives I love very much — 141 stellar reviews can’t be wrong!!)

From Allie:

“I’m really glad you found us, and I’m so sorry you’re here. Losing a child is a horrific experience unlike any other; if you're looking for understanding, resources and community, you've come to the right place. Join me, bereaved mom and licensed psychotherapist Allie Kramer, as I set out to rebuild my life after the loss of my 4-year-old son to brain cancer. I'll be talking to experts in grief, trauma, medicine, and of course, other bereaved parents, trying to figure out how to tend to our wounded hearts and find a way forward. Wherever you are in your grief, let's navigate it together.”

4) It It Okay? Substack by Bonnie Morrison (via Substack)

I could recommend one post, but why recommend one post when I could recommend the entirety of Bonnie’s work? So, transparency alert, I have known Bonnie for almost five years now (maybe more — she will know an exact time frame, I’m sure). She’s got one of my favorite minds and I get the pleasure of hanging out with her nearly every week. So am I biased? Sure. But if you knew Bonnie, you would be too. She’s just an awesome human being, who is always down to discuss the complexities of life with you.

Bonnie’s Substack, Is It Okay?, is a phenomenal deep-dive into subjects you’re dying to download about with people you know will bring a juicy analysis. Her posts are both timely (Is It Okay That Demi Didn’t Win?, Is It Okay To Be Freaking Out rn?) and evergreen (Is It Okay To Not Be A Mom?, Is It Okay To Cut Someone Out Of Your Life?), and ones I always look forward to receiving in my inbox.

5) “How I Write Culture Study” by Anne Helen Peterson (via Culture Study)

Oh look, another week with a Culture Study link in the round-up! If you’ve been paying attention to these link round-ups, you know what a huge AHP fangirl I am. What makes this link different than the ones I’ve shared in the past: it’s an uber-detailed, day-by-day and line-by-line breakdown of HOW she does what she does.

If you’re someone who loves learning how the greats do what they do — habits, rituals, patterns, priorities, tools, and more — this post is a goldmine. I might take a cue from Anne and create my own post like this…if I can ever lock down my “process” as well as she has :) If you’re a nerd for “process explanation” stuff like I am, I would highly recommend this, as well as checking out her post about how she structures Culture Study (one of the ones I pay $5/month to support because I think it’s awesome and she’s awesome).

How I Write Culture Study

6) An (unfortunately convincing) argument for getting up early by Arthur Brooks via The Atlantic (gift article)

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love my sleep. “Love” might actually be an inaccurate word here…I am sleep’s biggest fangirl. I am a solid 9-10 hour gal. Less than 8 hours of sleep and I’m cranky, but get to 6 and below and you might as well consider me dead to the world.

I half expected to read this article and scoff at yet another think piece on the “beauty of dawn”, clicking out of my browser tab feeling all proud that I can find beauty in any time of day and prefer to be rested while I do so. I’ve done a little research on chronotypes, and from what I’ve learned, I just don’t think I’m an early bird (or Lion, if we’re going with the chronotypical kingdom).

And yet…Arthur Brooks makes some really good, practical arguments here. Namely, the arguments that waking up before the sun rises may help you maximize what are essentially the chips in your brain oriented toward goal-setting and goal-getting, and that waking up early can help you feel happier on the regular.

I’ve been an early-morning gal a few times in my life, and can always *force* myself to if the mornings provide the literal only time in my schedule to get something done. But if given the choice, I would rather stay up very late to finish something and sleep when it’s done than wake up early to make a 9am deadline.

But maybe it’s time for something different. You never know until you try, right? Stay tuned :)