1. Curvy Yoga: Love Yourself & Your Body a Little More Each Day. Both yoga and body acceptance have made such a big difference in my own life. So I couldn’t be more excited that my friend Anna Guest-Jelley has a book coming out on just this topic! Join me in pre-ordering Curvy Yoga: Love Yourself & Your Body a Little More Each Day (and get some great pre-order bonuses while you’re at it)!
2. 43 Things I’ve Learned in 43 Years, a list from Meg Worden. I don’t agree with every item on this list, (for example: “16. Indian food is better than all other food.” I like Indian food too, but “better than all other food”?) but there are some really good things here — like, “Sociopathy and narcissism are the real zombie apocalypse. Skills to deal with/avoid these personality disorders are paramount to survival in the modern world.” Word.
3. The Key Is Always Hope from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.
The thing we think is the End of the World isn’t that, after all. It’s the end of something — or at least, a troublesome pause. But the Apocalypses we expect and predict are rarely those. They are transformative. They are terrible. But they rarely end everything. They often form new beginnings, terrible and transformative as they are…Things won’t be fine. Things might get really, really bad. But we can survive them. And we have a chance to come out better than we were before. That is the key.
4. Finding Purpose in Uncertain Times from Laura Simms.
5. 16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016 on Brain Pickings, “From loneliness to love to black holes, by way of Neil Gaiman, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver.”
6. Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda. “Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.”
7. White Women and U.S. Slavery: Then and Now.
8. How To Create Art And Make Cool Stuff In A Time Of Trouble a great list from from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.
9. 4 questions to ease you out of 2016 (and get you feeling hopeful for the year to come) from Jamie Greenwood.
10. No. My Magical Word for 2017 from the brilliant and brave Laurie Wagner.
11. “You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm,” (unknown). Whoa. I needed to see this right now.
12. We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump.
My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.
13. 10+ Hilariously Creative Snowmen That Would Make Calvin And Hobbes Proud.
14. Zoologist uses cheetah as a pillow. Sleeping with Sam, #same
15. Support the White Helmets. “Every day in Syria, volunteer rescue workers from the White Helmets rush to the scenes of bombings to pull people out from under the rubble and carry them to safety. Their courageous and selfless work has given hope to millions of civilians.” In related news, Syria: The story of the conflict, “eight steps to understanding the Syrian conflict.” And this, How Can I Help People In Aleppo? 10 Charities Working To Provide Food, Shelter, Medicine And Education To Syrians and this 7 real things you can do right now about the catastrophe in Aleppo.
16. Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons of crude into creek about 150 miles from Dakota Access protest camp. No more pipelines. Water, not oil.
17. 20 Facts About Living in Poverty That Rich People Never Have to Think About from Everyday Feminism.
18. This Is Your Stressed-Out Brain On Scarcity.
19. Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it. “You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do.”
20. Los Angeles Times publishes letters in defense of internment. Blergh.
