1. Poetry: Genetic Memory and Bad at Surrender by Julie Barton, In Its Own Time and The Gift of Forgetting and Portal and Walking Across Snowfields at Tree Line in May and Self-Portrait as Seedling by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, After the Work Is Done by Deahna Fumarol, Old Age Requires the Greatest Courage by Red Hawk, [insert adjective here] by Maya Stein, True Story by Camille T. Dungy, Unrepeatable by James Crews, and The Only Way I Know to Love the World by Julia Fehrenbacher.

2. Eight Years by Kari on A Grace Full Life. “I sat there staring at those words for a long time. Because the woman who wrote them had no idea what was coming. She didn’t know about the losses, the diagnoses, the grief, the exhaustion, the fear, the ways life would crack us open and rearrange us. She didn’t know how much surviving there would be in those years. But she also didn’t know this: That we would make it here…Because here we are. Still loving each other. Still standing. Still becoming. And somehow, after everything, life feels good in a way I could not have fully understood eight years ago. Not easy. Not simple. But good.”

3. A Day Is a Sonnet by Danusha Laméris. “The longer I live the more I am concerned with days. With how to enjoy the day. And though my enjoyments might be odd, sometimes, and sometimes ordinary, they are specific. I have started to figure out that hitting certain touchpoints gives me a sense that I have made the most of a day.”

4. I have become a large piece of red-stemmed Swiss chard by Patti Digh. “I was living inside a wet paper bag and couldn’t fight my way out. That’s the only way I know to describe it to someone who hasn’t been there: you know exactly what you should do, can see it clearly, and cannot make your hands and body do it. The knowing and the doing become two different countries with no bridge between them.” *sigh*

5. Poetry: I Too, Dislike It by Maria Popova on The Marginalian. “I was a latecomer to poetry, curling my nose at it in that confounding and rather embarrassing way we have of discounting what we don’t understand, dismissing as useless what we don’t know how to use. And then I met Emily Levine. Across the aisle on a transatlantic flight, across our half century of age difference, we became instant and abiding friends.”

6. Teacher’s Life Advice Goes Viral After Students Secretly Compile His Quotes. “Students Secretly Record All the ‘Slightly Unhinged Things’ Teacher Said and Compile a 152-Page Notebook Filled with His Quotes. ‘Whenever I said something that made them smile or feel inspired or moved, we’d add it to the book,’ Joseph Fasano tells PEOPLE.”

7. Crimes of Omission by Nancy London on Writing at Red Lights.

8. Summoning into being, “and what our words can architect” by Lisa Olivera on Human Stuff. “I keep asking myself, what am I summoning into being through the words I turn toward, the language I speak, the sentences I write? What am I growing from the words I use to describe myself, my life, and the world with? What am I making more vivid that I actually want to release or create distance from? What am I refusing to allow, simply because I refuse to practice new ways of speaking about it? What have I not yet put into words because some part of me is afraid of making it more real — because I’m not sure what lives on the other side of summoning it into being?”

9. Things we know but need to know. “(Life is about remembering what we forget)” by jeanette winterson.

10. Perfect or better? by Seth Godin.

11. Upon this rock by Pádraig Ó Tuama on Poetry Unbound.

12. I Blame My Father’s Summer Reading Lists. “On dangerous books, desert wanderers, and the strange afterlife of reading” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

13. Dear MAGA Christians, Why Do You Hate Your Neighbor? on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz.

14. It is important to remember that we are winning. “It’s not about clinging to false hope; it’s about not giving up” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

15. Good stuff from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less: 5 Daily Habits That May Be Causing Most of Your Stress and How To Be Happy: 15 Practical Secrets To Happiness. Also from Courtney on her little saturday Substack, How to prioritize better mental health. “Experiment with these 9 suggestions and trust yourself to know what works best for you.”

16. 10 habits to support your mental health. “Now that ‘self-care’ has been monetised to within an inch of its scented candle-lit life, what truly bolsters our mental health? To mark Mental Health Awareness Week we asked the experts and this is what they said.”

17. Your Greatest Work is Still Ahead of You by Alexandra Franzen.

18. Rooted by Robbie Gamble on Short Reads. “A boy and his unknowable fears.”

19. Another Victory For Your Unconscious. “In which I visit my mother, have a dream about George Michael, and am surprised by my recent reading habits during a crisis” by Alexander Chee.

20. Object-ives #35: Slippery Soap and the Wrinkle People. “A bath-time ritual, an imaginary family, and the small plastic soap figure that helped us through.”

21. Ode to a good dog. (Facebook reel) *sob*

22. What on Earth am I doing? “An attempt to explain myself” from a real artist and teacher, Danny Gregory.

23. 1000 Words of Summer 2026 FAQ Starts May 30 with Jami Attenberg. Also from Jami, Come Back to the Page, in which she offers this pep talk she gave herself when she got distracted: “When you feel distracted, just say to yourself, “Come back to the page.” Then sit with the distraction for a second. Write it down. Why did you think about that one thing that had nothing to do with your writing? Why did you feel the need to check your phone for no reason? Why are you afraid of staying in this moment before you? What could possibly be more interesting than making your art? Why walk away when you could sit with it instead?” P.S. I love that my three primary practices (meditation, yoga, and writing) offer the same simple instruction: when you get distracted, come back and begin again. No need to beat yourself up about it, just come back. Also, you can start over as many times as you need.

24. All My Mistakes, “A comic about owning them” from Connie Sun.

25. Good stuff from Elissa Altman on Poor Man’s Feast: From the Archives: risk and truth-telling (“On Shame and the Mundane Stories That Change Our Lives”) and the midweek roundup (“Look, listen, read”).

26. Why Gardening May Be the Most Important Wellness Habit of the AI Era.

27. The Hidden Cost of Rushing Through Everything on Zen Habits.

28. 101 Hobbies Proven to Make You Happier, Healthier, and Sharper on Happy on Purpose, which also includes “how and why to make time for hobbies in an already full life.”

29. A Beginner’s Guide to Befriending Your Neighbors.

30. Book lists: Twelve New Nonfiction Environmental Reading Recommendations, “From the Orion staff shelves to yours,” and The 100 best novels of all time on The Guardian, “The greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide.”

31. And finally, two things I saved to my phone during the day and a half I was back on Facebook this week.