Hi hi,
This bad newsletter thing is a bit we’re all doing together so while I appreciate you telling me it’s a good newsletter, don’t feel the need to do so repeatedly. Once is nice, though. I’m not telling you not to compliment me. Definitely compliment me.
1.
I really love Sara Campbell’s Tiny Revolutions newsletter, and on Valentine’s Day she sent out a link to a blog post she did a while ago with songs to listen to when you’re in various romantic or heartbroken kinds of moods, with great descriptions such as: “For when you’ve put up with a lot of shit from someone and you did it because you thought there was a chance that if they would just change slightly, just do what they said they were gonna do, it could be great, really great, but you finally give up and you’re crushed but underlying that you mostly feel relief, like, whoa, go fuck yourself times 1,000.” YIKES and also how did u know, Sara?????
When I first subscribed, I liked it and its premise so much, I went back and read a bunch of old issues, and this one shook me up. I describe what it did for me as making me realize the sky was blue after 34 years of just not realizing it. Basically, I identified with the little boy she described so much, to the point that I remembered a whole bunch of very specific instances when I had the exact same emotional response she describes him having, and then I got to the part where she reflects on him and says:
[A]t such a young age he was already shaming and beating himself up for his mistakes. How that conditioning had come from somewhere — probably an adult who didn’t know any better. And how there was a critical voice already lodged in his head that’d he’d likely be living with for the rest of his life.
For my entire life, the foremost question in my mind has been “what’s wrong with me?” It wasn’t until I read that newsletter that I realized that I was not born feeling that way and it wasn’t my fault that I felt that way—my feeling that way was not, in fact, evidence that something really was wrong with me. Something was wrong with the world around me that conditioned a little kid to grow up feeling fundamentally bad, and all the grownups who reinforced that feeling, regardless of whether or not they knew better. If I sound angry, it’s because I am, and because I’ve realized I need to be. I spent the vast majority of my life directing so much fury at myself in order to maintain the illusion that the adults around me were competent, were not terrifying to be around, were not abusively mean and frighteningly unpredictable. Redirecting that anger where it should have been the whole time is a way I show compassion to the little kid self I spent so much of my life being so mean to, thereby (hopefully) discontinuing the mental habit I have of abusing myself. (The newsletter also helped me to do some necessary trauma work known as “reparenting” much more organically than it usually comes to me.) The end goal is to get to a sort of equilibrium of acceptance of everything that happened, and everyone involved, a letting go of anger. But the anger is a necessary part of getting to that goal. Also, as someone in a 12-step meeting reminded me recently: Acceptance is not approval.
2.
I really love Jewish Currents (the source of one of my favorite tote bags, no lie), and while their political content and commentary is obviously very strong, I’m often really into their arts stuff as well. For example, I love the sound of this project and preemptively relate to its creator so much, I’m actually scared to listen to it!!!!! Normal and healthy!!!! Also I love the headline of that interview.
3.
An older piece from Jewish Currents that came out late last year and which I kept telling myself “If I start my newsletter back up, I’ll send this out” while also knowing I would have no real comment to add to it other than it’s the kind of writing that makes me want to write, which is close to the highest praise I’ve got in me.
Phew! Did we get too heavy? If it’s any comfort, I’m redoing my resume, which is my personal hell and therefore a process that has taken, at minimum, 10 months to simply start. Still, here’s a bonus thing: Baby Fleaby sleeping the cutest it’s actually possible to sleep.
Remember, the newsletter really IS bad. That’s the only way it gets out. I am INTENTIONALLY making a bad newsletter.
Love!
Danielle.