1. So much poetry. Picture Day, First Grade and Again With the Ancestors and Nocturnal and Not Quite Lost on the Big Trees Trail and Sundays and Her Grand Nap Affair and Ode to a Good Friend and Fireproof Box by Julie Barton, Practice in Being Present and How and In the Fields of Grief by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and May the Brutal Never Erase the Beauty from Julia Fehrenbacher, and Any Common Desolation and How to Apologize from Ellen Bass, and The Owl Who Comes by Mary Oliver, and A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Ríos shared by Patti Digh. And in related news, Thirteen ways of looking at form from Pádraig Ó Tuama.
2. Overwhelmed by Life? 15 Reminders to Help You Feel Better from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.
3. Good stuff from The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Hey MAGAs, Aren’t Christians Supposed to Give A Damn About Other People? and No, It’s Not Going to Be Okay and Before You Die, Remember to Live and Dear God, WTH? and We on the Left Didn’t Want to Be Right and It Doesn’t Matter How Bad Things Are Here and The Cure for America’s Cruelty Sickness.
4. Keep Stress From Overpopulating on Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray. “Let me warn you here that this is going to be a difficult post. Consider this sentence a trigger warning. I’m going to look closely at stress and the zeitgeist of 2025, and for a minute it won’t be easy. Then I’ll talk about ways to defuse, deactivate, and neutralize stress. These are strategies you already know. Don’t take them as suggestions. Take them as mandates.”
5. Staying informed and hopeful, a list of resources compiled by Patti Digh. “It’s clear that major news outlets are not providing the real news of what is going on in Washington, DC, primarily because they are owned by oligarchs like Jeff Bezos who are restricting the news. But we deserve to know what is happening.”
6. 6 Simple Habits That Will Keep Your Long-Distance Friendship Strong.
7. Addicted To Being Busy? How To Overcome Chronic Overwhelm.
8. The Value of Doing Nothing in a Hyperproductive World.
9. The Art of Doing Nothing: How to Create Your Own Personal Retreat Day.
10. 3 Hygge Hacks I Learned from Visiting Sweden in the Winter.
11. ‘Reading is part of my identity’: the woman taking on Goodreads owner Amazon. “Software engineer and developer Nadia Odunayo created the social media readers’ platform StoryGraph and its popularity has rocketed.”
12. The News and Your Attention: Engaging Without Being Consumed.
13. Recipes I want to try: Fish Taco Bowl, and Potsticker Salad, and Artisan Apple Bread, and Nigel Slater’s recipes for onion tart, and sweet potato, with miso and maple syrup dressing.
14. Worst possible from Seth Godin. An important, timely reminder.
15. 192 Nonfiction Books to Read This Women’s History Month.
16. Let Your Cardboard Show by Laurie Wagner.
17. Self-Taught Artist Masterfully Spray Paints Large-Scale Hyperrealistic Portraits.
18. A List of Things I Love from Andrea Gibson, “The poetry of everyday.”
19. Making Peace With Grief on A Grace Full Life.
20. Good grief, “A pep talk of sorts for those of us who are fresh out of pep” from Rita on Rootsie.
21. There are two political movements in America right now. “An invitation to join the one that’s smaller (but that won’t be for long).”
22. The End Files, “a weekly newsletter featuring stories about death. Inside each issue, you’ll find news stories, a weekly roundup of notable obituaries, a listing of famous deaths in history, interesting quotes and lots of cemetery- and death-related art.”
23. In Praise of the Fake Bathroom Break from Elizabeth Kleinfeld: Here for All of It. “The fake bathroom break is how we’ve cripped inhospitable situations for generations. It’s how the neurodivergent, the anxious, the traumatized, the exhausted, the grieving, and the overstimulated have survived spaces and situations that weren’t designed for our nervous systems or emotional needs. It’s the socially sanctioned disappearing act that no one can really question. ‘I need to use the restroom’ is the magic phrase that grants temporary reprieve from unbearable sensations, conversations, or environments. It’s the universal pass to solitude when the world becomes too much.”
24. “do I have to show other people my work before publishing it?”: For the love of God: No.
25. Art, Ambition, Creativity: How To Steal Like An Artist’s Austin Kleon on Daily Stoic. (YouTube video/Podcast)
26. Bodies hold our stories…the shame, the desire, the healing.
27. Keita Morimoto Lingers in the Artificial Light of Urban Nights.
28. Being There: The Hospice Story on The Dying Matters Podcast. “Since the founding of the first modern hospice in 1967, their work has grown to encompass rehabilitative therapies, emotional counselling, and even bereavement support for families, alongside excellent clinical care. The mission of a hospice is to improve quality of life and wellbeing, so that every patient can enjoy whatever time they have left to the full. This modern incarnation of hospice and palliative care was the vision of one woman: Cicely Saunders. In the 1940s, Cicely was a nurse who believed that medicine was failing to provide adequate and compassionate care to people who were dying, and it was this belief that led her to pioneer new methods of palliative care that totally redefined how we care for the dying.”
29. Making art in times of turmoil from Patti Digh.
30. Hope in Dark Times by Satya Robyn on Going Gently.
31. Why Animals Love Introverts (and the Feeling Is Mutual).
32. Are you homesick too? “Perhaps for a place, a time, or a person? It all counts” from Sas Petherick.
35. Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible. “To compel Trump to reverse course, our job is to highlight political missteps, heighten public outrage and raise the political cost of implementing his radical agenda.”
36. The Page is Always Waiting, “And your words are always there for you” from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk.
37. On Writing More of the Story from Jena Schwartz. “A little story about PR and keeping it real.”
38. Your Art is a Tool and Beauty is an Emergency. “Maggie Smith on creating during upheaval, how not to kill pleasure, and the emergency of a sunrise.”
39. Musk’s Economic Jihad, “Trump will soon learn that his support isn’t infinite. His base might be rabid, but even the most die-hard MAGA voter has a breaking point.”
40. How To Stop Food Noise Naturally: 5 Habits To Start Now, According To Doctors.
41. How Not to Have a Breakdown While America Does. “Why Your Self-Care is a Revolutionary Act.”
42. ‘The nice version of her was manufactured for YouTube’: my mum, the family vlogger who became a child abuser. “Ruby Franke was a social media star who made viral videos about her six children and perfect-seeming life – until she was jailed for child abuse. Now her eldest daughter Shari is telling her side of the story.”
43. Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – a former disciple unfriends Facebook. “This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant organisation describes a ‘diabolical cult’ able to swing elections and profit at the expense of the world’s vulnerable.”
44. ‘It’s part of who I am’: Heston Blumenthal on the bipolar diagnosis that saved his life, his journey of self-discovery – and how he finally emerged from his family’s shadow. “In a searingly honest interview, the star chef talks about the pressure of success, dealing with grief and how being sectioned changed everything.”
45. Stargazing, poetry and meditation: What connects NPR readers to their spirituality on NPR. “In February, we asked our audience: What does your spiritual practice look like?…More than 80 readers from different belief systems sent in their poignant responses.”
46. Vasilisa Romanenko’s Lush Portraits Wrap Common Birds in Decadent Patterns.
47. Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Why She Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
48. Yotam Ottolenghi: I tried intermittent fasting, and hated it. This is why we need to ditch the diets and go back to basics. “The chef says we need to forget fads and focus on the joy of good food cooked with love.”
49. In a world that glorifies hustle, deep rest is a revolution from Rev. angel Kyodo williams. (Facebook reel)
50. Charles Yang performing “Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. (Facebook reel)
51. And finally, a bunch of random things I saved to my phone recently.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 