1. Poetry: Nothing To Hold On To from Julia Fehrenbacher, and Instead of doomscrolling, I will from HannahRoWrites, and Another Reason to Love Trees and Succulents by Julie Barton, and By What Strange Truth and The Minimum and One Persistence from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, In English We Say by Larson Langston, and At Albany Bulb with Elaine by Alison Luterman, and a cool visual poem by Madeleine Jubilee Saito, It Is Very Good That You Are Here. In related news, Free Little Poetry.

1. Hope is a Verb: an Active Verb from Patti Digh.

2. Synonyms for Hope from Abigail Rose Clarke. “But hope can also be a synonym for belonging. This hope is alive. This hope strengthens. I belong to a future where we care for each other, I hope we all live to see this. I belong to a future where all people are safe in their homes and in the streets, I hope we live to see this. I belong to a future where all people are free to love who they love and live in their most liberated expression, I hope we live to see this. I belong to a future where the lands and waters are protected, and the more-than-human world is honored as teachers and kin, I hope we live to see this.” 

3. How Dementia Defies Our Expectations: and How Caregivers Can Cope from Elizabeth Kleinfeld on Here for All of It.

4. So many ways to call it, “Noticing that worldviews create worlds” from Erin Geesaman Rabke on Seeds of Possibility.

5. KNOW WORRIES #17 – “Six Gay Guys Walk into a Bingo Hall” from Jonathan Edward Durham.

6. A publisher asked me to write the book I thought the world needed. Here’s what we made. Introducing Letters From Wonderland from Josie George.

7. Silencing the Inner Critic to Get Your Words on the Page. An excerpt from ‘Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay’ by Nancy Slonim Aronie.

8. Consciousness Strength Training* *especially for white progressives from Julie Colwell on You are Here for This.

9. Get a load of all these stickers. “Collective action, even on the tiniest scale, is still pretty damn terrific” from Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

10. who you were back then: On Memoir, and Remembering My Former Me from Elissa Altman.

11. Wisdom from The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: The Grief of Sharing a Country With Trump Supporters, and It’s Too Bad the Pro-Life Right is So Violently Anti-Life, and Here’s Why You Need To Be An Activist — Right. F*cking. Now.

12. An unofficial guide to block printing, “Lessons from an amateur” by Austin Kleon.

13. Slacker for a Day, “When ‘nothing’ is the most urgent something of all” from Jena Schwartz.

14. My Perpetual Motion Machine from Danny Gregory.

15. The Imperfectionist: Three ideas for turbulent times.

16. The resistance is alive and well – and our research shows it. “Street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest.” And just to be clear, they aren’t being paid to be there, by anyone.

17. Division is easier than connection from Seth Godin.

18. ‘It was revenge for our movie’: Oscar winner says soldiers helped settlers attack him in West Bank. “Hamdan Ballal says Israeli soldiers beat him with their rifle butts and threatened to kill him.” In related news, Press freedom groups condemn targeted killing of two journalists in Israeli strikes. “Israel Defense Forces has confirmed it killed Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, claiming they were terrorists.” Telling the truth can have consequences, but in most cases, NOT telling the truth or even staying silent is worse. I’m so grateful to those who continue to speak out, regardless of the risk.

19. ‘Plot twist – I’m still a fat person!’: meet the people proving you can be fit at any size. “In the age of Ozempic and extreme dieting, slimness is still prized over any other body shape – but you don’t have to shrink your frame in order to be powerful, supple and healthy.”

20. Wisdom from Britchida: “I used to think that the more I did, the more I’d be able to do. But it didn’t work that way for me. Living without edges just led to me bleeding out my energy, unable to tell where other things ended and where I began.

Now, my life is smaller. I can hold it in my hands. I say no to opportunities, I rest when there are still things to do. There is no one I am trying to become. I might be missing out on some ‘best’ life, but I am not missing out on me.”

21. British Wildlife Photography Awards 2025 Winners. In related news, World Press Photo 2025 Winning Images.

22. Disenfranchised Grief, “When society says you shouldn’t mourn.”

23. Little Altars Everywhere. “An invitation to assemble the sacred and activate the good” from Sara Saltee.

24. A Tender Guide to Grieving a Pet for Highly Sensitive Introverts.

25. Why I’m Embracing Stillness In The In-Between Moments.

26. “Taking in the good”: A simple way to offset your brain’s negativity bias. “Psychologist Rick Hanson’s HEAL method encourages people to dwell on positive experiences to offset the brain’s negativity bias. It’s based on the idea that repeated mental habits can shape the brain over time through neuroplasticity. While the science remains preliminary, the method is a safe and accessible tool that could extend the shelf life of life’s good moments.”

27. Recipes I want to try: Cheesy White Bean Tomato Bake, and Sheet Pan Roasted Sweet Potatoes, and One Pot Pizza Pasta Bake, and Raspberry-Rhubarb Slab Pie.

28. Watercolor Artist Creates Stunning Large-Scale Canvases Filled With Lifelike Flowers.

29. Delicate Ecosystems Converge in Sonja Peterson’s Intricate Cut Paper Compositions.

30. 11 Brilliant Bird Murals That Bring Nature to the Streets.

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

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.

33. Against Self-Improvement: Adam Phillips on the Danger of Treating Ourselves as Pathological Patients in Need of a Cure.

34. After Loss, Comes Life.

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.