1. Poetry: The Mirror and Sometimes Grief Looks Like This and Playing with the Wild Child and One Story of How We Make It Through and Thanksgiving and all the poems on her website tagged “Thanksgiving” from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Gloria Mundi by Michael Kleber-Diggs and The Eulogy I Didn’t Give (I) by Bob Hicok from Maggie Smith on The Slowdown, Egg Tooth by Benjamin Garcia, In Praise of Quiet and Awakening with Crow and Species of Least Concern by Julie Barton, and Missed Flight by James Crews.
2. From Isabel Abbott: A Private Atlas and The Shape of Control.
3. The Address of Grief by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights. “Grief is the edge of a cliff, my friends, but it’s also a portal.”
4. Tig Notaro on grieving poet and friend Andrea Gibson on Anderson Cooper’s All There Is. “Comedian Tig Notaro recently witnessed the death of her friend, poet Andrea Gibson, after a years-long battle with cancer. Being by Andrea’s bedside was a profound experience for Tig and she talks about its impact on her in this moving and at times funny conversation.”
5. ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’ Review: Struggles of ’90s Wellness Guru Get Intriguingly Intimate, if Not Informative, Doc Treatment. “Zeberiah Newman’s documentary finds Susan Powter in Las Vegas and explores her life, celebrity and hopes for a comeback.”
6. Why People Keep GLP-1s Like Ozempic, Mounjaro & Wegovy A Secret. “One notable exception in the new era of tell-all beauty? Weight-loss injections.”
7. Signs you might live in a cult on Supernuclear. “An interview with cult journalist and author Ellen Huet, author of Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult.”
8. Don’t Recommend a Book to Bryan Washington (Unless You’re a Bookseller) on The New York Times. (gift link) “His new novel, ‘Palaver,’ observes how an expat in Japan and his visiting mother find ‘a new language and way of being that’s amenable for them both.'”
9. Roda Ahmed Tells Us: About Listening to the Silence on Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar, “another installment of my occasional Tells Us series, in which I ask an author to tell us about five things.”
10. Haiku Comics Pep Talk. “Exercises in brevity” from Connie Sun. #2 is my favorite.
11. 27 Holiday Self Care Ideas: Simple Ways to Take Care of Yourself Over the Holidays and The Quiet Power of 8 Gentle Habits That Simplify Your Day from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.
12. Out the Front Door by Beverley Stevens on Short Reads. *sob*
13. Good stuff from Open Secrets Magazine: The Owl Remains (“On whittling a life down to what matters, and why one lamp still stays with me”) and When I’m Alone, I Try on All My Jeans (“Is my fashion obsession self-soothing or self-abusing?”).
14. How to Stop Waiting for “Better” and Start Living Now. “What If This Is It? Learning to Live Fully With Limitations” by Elizabeth Kleinfeld.
15. Mystery of the Missing Mail on Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray.
16. National Geographic photos for 2025 ‘Pictures of the Year.’
17. The one change that worked: I had Sad and felt desperate – until a scientist gave me some priceless advice. “Since I was a teenager I had struggled in winter, experiencing excessive tiredness and low mood. A specific instruction lifted the gloom.”
18. The Joy of Doing Nothing in Retirement on The Wall Street Journal. “How often have we heard it: Stay busy to make the most of the time we have left. But there’s a lot to be said for doing the opposite.”
19. Now and Forever. “The gift of presence” by Jena Schwartz.
20. Building a Personal Cartography of Pain. “Learning to name what hurts” by Patti Digh.
21. This Year’s Thanksgiving Surprise: Half of the Guests Are Stoned on The Wall Street Journal. “What started as a secret trip to smoke pot before dinner has mushroomed into a full-blown commercial holiday. Behold the ‘cousin walk.’”
22. Friendsgiving 101: A history of the made-up holiday and how to celebrate it.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 