1. Andrea Gibson, 8/13/75 – 7/14/25. “On July 14th, at 4:16AM, Andrea Gibson died in their home surrounded by their wife, Meg, four ex-girlfriends, their mother and father, dozens of friends, and their three beloved dogs…Andrea would want you to know that they got their wish. In the end, their heart was covered in stretch marks.” I knew this was coming, and yet… One of the last comments I left on Andrea’s blog was, “I do not love a world that will someday be here when you are not. I will also one day desperately love a world where you have been, that holds your open heart, your voice, your poetry in the stars and the sun and the grass and the bunnies and and and and…I love you. ❤️” 💔

2. Poetry: Messages from Home and My Aimless Love and When Answering Your Calling and A New Dark Age from Julie Barton, In Passing by Lisel Mueller, and Remember by Joy Harjo. And these:

3. Five Steps to Walk Away from Empire. “On finding new shapes and embracing nonlinear meanders” by Nicholas Triolo.

4. Advice for Getting Through Grief on Lion’s Roar. “Miriam Tarcov on how to navigate the pain of losing a loved one and—ultimately—reconnect with joy.”

5. Dear Fanny, Don’t Worry, I Know You’re Dead. “Ezra Fox on Working With Fanny Howe on Her Last Book.”

6. Choi + Shine Architects Collaborate with Communities Around the Globe to Crochet Monumental Lace Works.

7. ‘I felt pure, unconditional love’: the people who marry their AI chatbots. “The users of AI companion app Replika found themselves falling for their digital friends. Until – explains a new podcast – the bots went dark, a user was encouraged to kill Queen Elizabeth II and an update changed everything.”

8. The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River. “On July 4, the Guadalupe ripped our home from its pillars, pulling my family into its waters and into the night. Then morning came.”

9. Seane Corn and Lama Rod Owens: Steady Breath, Steady Heart on the Sounds True Podcast. “How are you doing these days? Exhausted? Heartbroken? Outraged? All of the above? In this era of uncertainty and instability, you may feel like your only choice is to forge ahead and just get through the week. If so, this podcast with two beloved Sounds True authors was created just for YOU. Here, Tami Simon speaks with Seane Corn and Lama Rod Owens to hear their personal insights for navigating our rapidly-changing world from a place of deep connection to our most important values, to the people who give us strength, and to those with whom we may feel hopelessly divided.”

10. Good stuff from Patti Digh. Reclaiming Sonder: The Profound Realization of Other Lives and The ghosts of becoming: A lineage of selves, lost.

11. Practice Delight, with Ross Gay: Hope Portal, Session 7.

12. The FOMO no one talks about: Am I missing my own life? by Meg Josephson.

13. Journaler’s Routine No. 2: Melissa Febos on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “There are few moments in a day more peaceful and satisfying than these.”

14. 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You’ll Actually Do It.) by Katherine Goldstein. “How to prioritize connection over exhausting Instagram expectations.”

15. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Poetry: In Harsh Times and Sacred Pause from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, At Strawberry Creek and Only Slightly Under Water and Tiny Little Joys and The Kids Are Not Alright from Julie Barton, and A Defense of Joy by Mario Benedetti translated and shared by Maria Popova.

2. Live in the Whole of Time, with Joy Harjo: Hope Portal, Session 6.

3. Don’t Let Anyone Keep you Small, “how old wounds can keep us from writing our story” on Writing At Red Lights.

4. What do we do when our government says that it hates us and doesn’t care if we die? “Just two things (in a million different ways)” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

5. Why write (or draw or build or play or think) if a robot can do it for you? “I like you more than I like the machines, and I’d like to keep it that way,” also from Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

6. WTF?! Conversation With Author Omkari Williams on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. (video) “Though she has an affinity for supporting activists who identify as introverted or highly sensitive, as she does, she welcomes all people into the world of micro activism, a sustainable path to change-making based upon honoring the inherent dignity of all people.”

7. You Will Never Be Completely At Home Again. “Some things I’ve learned about how to create a life” from Amanda Sandlin.

8. The Colorful History of Tarot Is as Mesmerizing as the Decks Themselves.
“The original meaning behind the cards, first created 500 years ago, still remains elusive. But that didn’t stop our reporter from traveling to Milan in an effort to find out” on Smithsonian Magazine.

9. Thumbs up: good or passive aggressive? How emojis became the most confusing kind of online language.

10. A Failed Experiment, “A morning to myself & revenge bedtime procrastination” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. This line in particular got me: “I still forget, more often than I’d like to admit to you (maybe even less to myself), that my value does not lie in my output.”

11. In the Wake of the Big Beautiful Bill. “On being dealt a devastating blow by Trump, but not being beaten” by Frederick Joseph.

12. Going for Bronze from Danny Gregory. Because this, “I used to think my worth came from making great things. But I’ve slowly come to believe that my worth comes from making things, period. The judgment comes later—if it comes at all.”

13. Pep Talk (Ok, not really) from Maggie Smith. “I have seen plenty of terrible this week. So have you. I have seen cruelty and greed beyond comprehension. I have also seen and felt love, gratitude, generosity—and I hope you have, too. We need the beauty if we’re going to keep fighting the terror, and we have to keep fighting. What choice do we have?”

14. Journaler’s Routine. “Part one of a new summer series” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, “in this summer series, I’ll be asking writers and artists from The Book of Alchemy to share their journaler’s routine. Today we begin with mine.”

15. Acting because you don’t have to from The Imperfectionist. “So you don’t need to choose between peace of mind and the thrill of pursuing ambitious goals. You just need to understand those goals less as vehicles to get you to a future place of sanity and good feeling, and more as things that unfold from an existing place of sanity and good feeling.”

16. The Key to Longevity Is Boring on The New York Times. (gift link)

17. the fundamental tangle of joy and pain*, “The Summer the Roses Died” by Elissa Altman’

18. NPR staffers pick their favorite fiction reads of 2025 so far.

19. If you want to move forward, there are four people you need to forgive. (Facebook reel)

20. And finally, this collection of random things I saved to my phone this week.