Hello, again, kind and gentle reader. Whoa, do I have a lot to share with you! As I begin this post, there are currently 420 emails in my inbox, 287 of which are already vetted and determined to contain something worth sharing with you. I certainly can’t make a list of 300 things, that would overwhelm the “both” of use, so we’ll see how this goes…
1. Poetry: To start, go visit Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Julie Barton‘s websites. They post a poem every single day, and pretty much every single one of them are ones I want to share with you. Also, check out The Slowdown hosted by Maggie Smith, “a poem and a moment of reflection every weekday.” Or sign up for emails from Rattle or Poets.org’s Poem-a-Day, or check out Heart Poems where Janice Falls will “regularly share with you poems that have touched me deeply. I offer my reflections, without analysis or explanation, about why this poem spoke to me, how it moved me, in hopes that this may resonate with you.” And if you haven’t already, go to James Crews’ site Poetry is Life where “each week I share poems, essays, and writing prompts meant to open the heart and nourish the soul.” Sign up for Maya Stein’s newsletter for weekly poetry and writing opportunities. Visit Patti Digh’s site on Wednesdays, when she shares a poem. Or check out Julia Fehrenbacher or Jena Schwartz‘s blog(s) for new poems and writing opportunities. There, that alone took care of 100 of the emails I had saved to share with you.
2. Drawings and tiny pep talks from Jenny Lawson: It’ll be okay, and Expect the unexpected, and It’s okay to make due with what you have, and Climb, rest, fly…
3. If Your Heart is Breaking… (A Video Message from John) on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. And there were 28 other videos and posts that John made in the past few weeks that I could have shared, so go check out his site.
4. Patti Digh’s blog, also had too many individual things worth sharing so just go look for yourself. She’s my favorite kind of person: kind, creative, super smart, and infinitely tender hearted. She tells the full truth somehow without making me want to give up.
5. Open Secrets Magazine “is a lit mag and community for sharing personal stories about all the subjects we’re taught to keep ‘secret.’” There was lots of good stuff here from the past few weeks, too much to list out individually.
6. Emerging Form, “a podcast about creative process. It’s a conversation between friends — science writer Christie Aschwanden and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — in which we discuss the joys, the agonies and the black holes of our creative endeavors. Each episode, we discuss issues and questions that plague creative people.” Another place where you can find lots of good stuff I like to share here.
7. Writers Who Use AI Are Not Real Writers on Terrible Minds from Chuck Wendig. I don’t always agree with everything Chuck says, but I love that and how he says it. The other post of his I appreciated this week, and agree with every word, was The Rage and the Hope, written in response to the current debacle that is ICE and the Dump presidency.
8. The Guardian, my current favorite news site. “Guardian Media Group is a global news organisation that delivers fearless, investigative journalism – giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account. Our independent ownership structure means we are entirely free from political and commercial influence. Only our values determine the stories we choose to cover – relentlessly and courageously.” I saved at least 20 things from the past few weeks to share. The most recent post is this, Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show review – a thrilling ode to Boricua joy, a review of an event that I LOVED because it made so many awful people mad.
9. 17 years after retiring, Canadian icon Anne Murray returns with new music. She was/is one of my mom’s favorite singers, so I have a soft spot for her too.
10. Recipes I want to try: I Tried the Salad Jane Fonda Calls ‘Delicious’ and I’ll Be Making It All Winter Long, and Tofu Banh Mi, and Copycat Reese’s Hearts (4-ingredient) — (I saw another copycat that used a mix of PB Protein Powder and applesauce for the filling), and Healthy Banana Nut Muffins (No Oil, With Greek Yogurt and Oats).
10. Once Wiped Out by Blight, Thousands of American Chestnut Trees are Thriving on Biologist’s Land in Maine. In related news, I loved The Overstory by Richard Powers, which has a whole part about one Chestnut tree in particular.
11. ‘Dying is the opposite of leaving’: Anderson Cooper talks to spouse of poet Andrea Gibson. (video) “Is dying really ‘the opposite of leaving?’ Are we ‘reincarnated in those we love?’ Poet Andrea Gibson thought so, and in this moving conversation, Anderson speaks with Andrea’s wife Megan Falley, about Andrea’s battle with cancer and why she uses the word ‘alleged’ when talking about Andrea’s death.”
12. How Much Protein Do You Actually Need Each Day? It enrages me the way clickbait and wellness culture confuse issues related to such basic universal needs like “what do we eat to be healthy?” in order to make a buck. It really should be so much easier, so much less complicated.
13. Haruki Murakami Isn’t Afraid of the Dark on The New York Times. (gift link) “The author, who brought Japanese literature into the global mainstream, grapples with aging and his place in the world of letters.” He’s one of my favorite authors.
14. The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, “In moments of great uncertainty, I’ve always turned to my journal. When covid hit, I was no stranger to isolation: I spent much of my twenties in treatment for leukemia, unable to travel, eat out, see friends, even take a walk. Suddenly isolation was back—this time on a global scale. To turn that isolation into creative solitude and connection, I asked my favorite writers, artists, and community leaders to share some words of inspiration and a prompt, and I invited my community to journal along with me…Here at the Isolation Journals, we navigate life’s interruptions together. Here, we reimagine survival as a creative act.” I had three things saved from her site to share with you, but there’s so much more that’s good, I’m sending you to check out ALL her stuff instead.
15. I Hadn’t Heard Shit About What They Did to Keith Porter from Robert Jones, Jr, on Witness. “Did you know that an ICE agent killed Mr. Porter on New Year’s Eve?”
16. Be More With Less is one of my favorite websites, with its constant reminders to slow down, to simplify. Posts like Overwhelmed by Life? 12 Reminders to Help You Feel Better and 5 Mindset Shifts to Help You Declutter with Ease. I also regularly share links from Courtney’s Weekend Favorites lists.
17. Craft Talk from Jamie Attenberg is one of my favorite websites for writers, home of #1000wordsofsummer and a weekly newsletter on writing & publishing & living a creative life.
18. Love letter to an ICE Agent from Kaira Jewel’s January 2026 Newsletter.
19. Here for All of It, Elizabeth Kleinfeld’s blog, is another personal favorite. “This blog is about facing life’s most difficult moments with honesty, compassion, and a commitment to living fully. I’m not here to offer easy answers or toxic positivity. I’m here to share real stories, practical advice, and hard-won wisdom about navigating life’s most challenging terrains—from caregiving and loss to personal growth and resilience. The reason I write is not just to document my experiences, but to create a community of people who understand that vulnerability is strength. To remind you that your story matters. To show you that you’re not alone in your struggles, your grief, your hope.”
20. Poor Man’s Feast, another of my favorite blogs, “is about sustenance in the face of pretense, and authenticity in the face of the artificial. It’s about simplicity instead of the tarted-up. It’s about kindness in the face of the rude. It’s about storytelling — mine, my family’s, yours, your family’s — and how those stories are inextricably bound up with what and how we feed ourselves and those we love, literally and metaphorically, what we eat at times of joy, sorrow, delight, surprise, fear, and sadness.” Elissa recently lost her mother and so much of what she writes feels like she’s narrating what is happening in my own mind.
21. Short reads, “a free literary magazine emailed every Wednesday morning featuring flash nonfiction.” Recent favorite posts: Holding Patterns and Displacement.
22. What a rage-filled heart, an exhausted heart, a terrified heart, and a grieving heart have in common from Garrett Bucks on The White Pages, another favorite site. “They are proof that you have a heart.”
23. A Writer’s Notebook by Summer Brennan. Summer is a beautiful writer, but I especially connect with the writing she does about things that are hard, like the recent loss of her father and the current political climate.
24. ‘Birds of Mexico City’ Celebrates a New Generation Defining Queerness.
25. 44 things on my 44th birthday on bimblings by Josie George. “Yesterday was my 44th birthday and, throughout the day, I wrote down 44 things I wanted to tell you that feel true right now. They all felt important at the time, but reading them back has made me feel extremely self-conscious and silly. I’m going to publish them anyway because it’s good practice to do things that make you look a bit silly.”
26. Cartoon Connie Comics Blog. “As some of you know, I’ve been working on an illustrated book and I’m excited to start sharing parts of that process here. I’ll also continue publishing my good, old-fashioned comic strips here because drawing them is my favorite thing. Cartooning is not an easy path in life, but I owe it everything for being the creative outlet I need to be okay. Drawing comics is how I learned to be myself in the world. That’s why I stick with it through thick and thin. I’m grateful to see you here. Thanks as always for reading.” Her comics are sweet and tender and I adore her elephant friend.
27. Seeing Good: On visibility, grief, and action on Reasons for Living with Esmé Weijun Wang, which includes a good “what can you do” section of resources at the end.
28. It Is Very Good That You Are Here, a visual poem on Orion by Madeleine Jubilee Saito.
29. Many Strange and a Lot of Wonderful Things. “There are days when nothing happens…” from The Shadowed Archive, one of my new favorite sites.
30. Living the dream on Danny’s Essays, another favorite site: “Because you are a creative person, which means you get to have all sorts of unique and lovely challenges. Voices in your head. Creative blocks. Self-doubt. Perfectionism. Credit card debt. And you could probably benefit from someone who has been a reasonably successful creative person since the days of the IBM Selectric to help guide you through it all. But I’m not just old. I’m also pretty good at this.”
31. On ‘The Pitt,’ E.R. Doctors Try to Fix This Broken World on The New York Times. (gift link) “Noah Wyle and his castmates turned one harrowing day at an E.R. into an unforgettable season of television. Can they do it again?”
32. When the world feels close instead of big, “A small shift in where you’re standing” from Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project, one of my new favorite sites. “It’s a soft, human corner of the internet for people who are a little drunk on being alive. The kind who look up at the sky and can’t believe they get to be here at all. Every Wednesday, I send out one essay, a quiet, curious love letter to life. Sometimes it’s about time or home or the way light moves through a window. Sometimes it’s about grief, or hope, or that split second when something ordinary suddenly feels extraordinary. It’s not self-help. It’s not productivity. It’s presence. It’s wonder. Curiosity. It’s remembering that being human is wildly beautiful.”
33. Come Home to Yourself by Kaira Jewel Lingo on Lion’s Roar. “Your true home is this body. This mind. This moment. There, says Kaira Jewel Lingo, you’ll find peace and freedom.”
34. How a ‘dysfunctional’ English farm became a biodiversity hotspot. “A trailblazing rewilding site in England has recorded a 900% increase in breeding birds in just 20 years, proving what’s possible when nature is given the space to recover.”
35. It is a strange thing to allow a pause, “to trust that nothing is lost in my resting” on Earth & Verse from Alix Klingenberg, one of my favorite websites. “This space is for creatives who cannot seem to choose just one passion. If your curiosity spills over into poetry, nature, mythology, psychology, parenting, visual art, spirituality, and justice, welcome. If you’ve had a lot of different jobs, if you struggle to find the balance between vocation and financial safety, if you want to put creativity, curiosity, and connection at the center of your life, hi. You belong here.” I like to think if we could meet each other in real life, Alix and I would be friends. I absolutely adore what she offers, the way she views the world, the community she creates.
36. After Jackson: “Be more Jewish than ever.” A guest post hosted on Jena Schwartz’s website by Rabbi Valerie Cohen. I adore everything Jena does, writes, offers, is.
37. The nature of nature writing, “What is revealed” on Poetry Unbound from
Pádraig Ó Tuama, another favorite site, thinking, poet.
38. Me, Dewey, and My Boots, “A decade of wandering the West with one very good dog” from Amanda Sandlin on Future Memory. Good dog, Dewey 🐾💔
39. How to play Exquisite Corpse from Austin Kleon. (video) “My kids and I like to play this drawing game that the Surrealists invented.”
40. Letter From Minnesota: “Mad Means Something” on LitHub. “Charles Baxter on the Rage of the Poet, and Its Power.”
41. I Quit Social Media 10 Years Ago from Alexandra Franzen, my hero. I love this recent story she shared, A Lesson from the Forest.
42. How a Six Pound Dog Transformed My Relationship to My Neighbors, a guest post about a dog named Spaghetti by Madysen Luebke on The Double Shift.
43. Outpouring by Alison Luterman on The Sun. “In the aftermath of a second killing by federal agents in Minneapolis, Alison Luterman wrote ‘Outpouring,’ a poem about the massive protests in response to ICE’s presence in the city. It’s a reflection of the enormity of emotion that these terrible events have brought forth—outrage and fear, yes, but most of all love for our neighbors.”
44. How To Destroy Loneliness by Alexander Chee on The Querent.
45. How to Hold the Darkness: Notes on Living Through Uncertainty by Maria Popova on The Marginalian, another favorite website. Another recent post from Maria, How to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering.
46. A World Without Strangers from Brad Montague, a human out there being a good human, on The Enthusiast, which “delivers reminders of goodness in the world through stories old and new. This project is rallying people to add real joy, hope, and beauty to the world.”
47. The Magic Button. Sometimes you just need to believe it’s this easy.
48. The Opposite of Doomscrolling, Vol 2 from Britchida, one of my favorite artists. Other recent gems: what a difference a few years can make and one more thing (re: bro no the world is burning).
49. Good stuff from a good one, Andrea Scher: So much potential and Gather.
50. My heart is sore. Your heart is sore. “Let this be common ground between us” from Krista Tippett on The Pause. “We have a long way to go to find our way back to feeling our belonging to each other that has never stopped being true. But it is what we are called to. I cleave to my faith that there are ‘enough of us’ longing to meet this calling. The common ground of our sore hearts may be the place to begin, and return, and ever begin again.”
51. The Imperfectionist: The freewriting way of life. “Unclenching into life demands that we relax in the midst of the uncertainty and insecurity, because ‘in the midst of the uncertainty and insecurity’ is where we always are. The reward is the aliveness, agency and sense of purchase on life that comes from no longer pretending otherwise.”
52. Put down your sword and pick up your pen (and the true meaning of courage) by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.
53. The Ground & The Roots by Erin Geesaman Rabke, another good human doing good things. Also from Erin, We Don’t Have to Listen, “On ignoring internet yellers, curiosity vs. fundamentalism, growing underculture, and I trust you.”
54. Resolutionize Your Community Involvement. “On doing whatever it takes to just get started right now” from Elise Granata on Group Hug.
55. Collapse is Not a Broken Machine. “On the Limits of Fixing and the Work of Tending” from Isabel Abbott on spells of survival.
56. Pep Talk. “On writing as the world burns” from Maggie Smith.
57. The Choreography of Care. “On the shift from caregiver to receiver, and learning to be carried” by Megan Falley (and Andrea Gibson) on Things That Don’t Suck.
58. Season of Seeds: My Top 5 Seed Companies. “Seeds are small, but they carry entire futures. Here are five companies I trust most for a liveable, hopeful future from Janisse Ray on Trackless Wild.
59. ‘We just have to stop doing bad things and do good things.’ “Humanity may be facing existential challenges but the acclaimed novelist Ian McEwan argues that the future is still very much in our hands.”
60. And finally, a few things I saved on my phone while I was in Oregon.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 