💎 treasure chest 💎
Helping Friendly Newsletter, 11.29.24
💎 Today’s issue is a special edition treasure chest!
This issue is dedicated to my family. I love you so much.
GM ☕️
Quick heads up: I’m taking a newsletter vacation in December and will see you next in January. Thank you for supporting this pause for rest and reflection. I hope you also find ease in the weeks ahead.
To fill your cup and stretch waaaaaay across the holidays, I made you a gigantic! huge! MONSTER! treasure chest.
I bet you find a gem 💎→
Justice & Change
Harriet Tubman, icon of defiance | four women share their experiences in the sex trade | YES Magazine published an excellent digital series on reparations | an early draft of the playbook | insights for radical organizing from the mysterious world of mushrooms | we teach life, sir | where do you belong in the social change ecosystem? | overcoming the scarcity mindset | i got nothing for you but this shitty little prayer | radical gratitude spell
“Yes, some of us are called to be bombastic brief mushrooms on the surface of the world, but so much more is happening in the darkness of rich soil. We can impact the surface, the forest, the health of the whole world with our earnest organic underground labor. Learn from what moves under the earth.”
—adrienne maree brown, “Four Insights for Radical Organizing From the Mysterious World of Mushrooms”
Earth & Science
the long-unacknowledged first paper to link CO2 and global warming | could an industrial civilization have pre-dated humans on earth? | things I’ve spontaneously said to animals | 4 scientists, 4 approaches to climate communications | on ugly tomatoes and our desire for uniformity | a short film on puffin rescue | a taxonomy of climate emotions | why climate anxiety is an overwhelmingly white phenomenon | on indicator species and being “too sensitive”
“It takes three to four generations of Monarch butterflies to make the full migration from the top to bottom of North America. The generation which begins in Canada will never see Mexico - but if all goes as planned, their great-grandchildren will…The species is an estimated one million years old, yet we still don’t completely understand how new generations of Monarchs know how to continue the migration they are born into.”
—Sarah Quirk, “Indicator Species”
Mind & Spirit
questions to ask my therapist | breathing exercises to ease anxiety | what is third-eye seeing? | gentleness always wins | dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity; how did it become a human necessity? | “wasn’t it just summer? or was summer a thousand years ago? was summer?” | the only reason people are friends with you | how to be happy for friends when you want what they have | how to belong be alone | grief and end-of-life resources serving Communities of Color | blessing for the brokenhearted | DIY self-care assessment & plan
“For now, touch yourself. I’m serious. Touch your self. Take your hand and place your hand some place upon your body. And listen to the community of madness that you are. You are such an interesting conversation. You belong
here.”—Pádraig Ó Tuama, “How to
BelongBe Alone”
Leadership & Work
introvert report cards (also relevant for managers) | how to be more open-minded | some useful and overlooked skills | should you quit your job? | beyond Karen: white woman archetypes in the nonprofit sector | case study: when everything is important but nothing is getting done | adaptive strategy involves less planning and more steering | E is for experimentation | 3 damaging myths about attention | the Excel superstars who throw down in Vegas
“The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting delusion that we, personally, do not have any.”
—Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
Art & Creativity
on the terrifying feeling of having no ideas | ”good art doesn’t just take time; it deserves time” | learning to love your bad drawings | never-too-late inspo: “it took 70 years to find my inner artist” | the joy of making marks | humanity needs the humanities | creativity as a spiritual practice | maggie smith on the dreaded question: “what do you do?” | a blessing for those who have far to travel
“There is nothing for it but to go, and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes: to be faithful to the next step; to rely on more than the map; to heed the signposts of intuition and dream; to follow the star that only you will recognize; to keep an open eye for the wonders that attend the path; to press on beyond distractions, beyond fatigue, beyond what would tempt you from the way.”
—Jan Richardson, “For Those Who Have Far to Travel”
Books & Reading
what is reading? | the strangest library on the planet | on reading more than one book at a time | U. S. booksellers map | 10 great books anyone can read in a weekend | American literature is a history of the nation’s libraries | a stirring film (that lives up to the incredible novel) | a watered-down adaptation (of a fierce and feral story) | a browsable index of year-end reading lists | the best music books of 2024
“I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Bits & Bobs
the constant work to keep a family connected has a name | allegorical maps of love, courtship, and matrimony | the man changing North London through topiaries | the case for imperial in a world gone metric | tiny desk playlist: Ralph Stanley > Chappell Roan > Jon Batiste > Khruangbin | little things that aren’t little and questions that feel like a hug | how to comment on social media | you are hereby sentenced to attend a music festival
“Can we figure this out together?”
—a good question that feels like a hug
ICYMI above, I am taking a newsletter vacation in December. I will return to your inbox in January. Happy holidays!
💵 Monthly subscriptions are paused through December 31. Annual subscribers, I hope this vacation seems fair and reasonable, but if not please hit reply and I'll make things right. Last week I shared a love offering for uncertain times: “We are big enough for this. We are wise enough.”
THANK YOU for supporting my work this year.
Paid subscriptions make this newsletter possible, and on a deeper level they encourage me to keep going. It would be impossible to overstate how much your support means to me. I am truly grateful.
To every reader, paid and free, I’m delighted you’re here. Thank you for visiting each week and for helping me hold this space to create, learn, and teach. It is no small thing for us to share this connection:
together, human beings being human together.
Big love, y’all. Happy holidays!
& peace,
Jenny
P.S. ✨ it’s true; did you know? i can feel it right now ✨
