1. Poetry: The Mirror and Sometimes Grief Looks Like This and Playing with the Wild Child and One Story of How We Make It Through and Thanksgiving and all the poems on her website tagged “Thanksgiving” from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Gloria Mundi by Michael Kleber-Diggs and The Eulogy I Didn’t Give (I) by Bob Hicok from Maggie Smith on The Slowdown, Egg Tooth by Benjamin Garcia, In Praise of Quiet and Awakening with Crow and Species of Least Concern by Julie Barton, and Missed Flight by James Crews.

2. From Isabel Abbott: A Private Atlas and The Shape of Control.

3. The Address of Grief by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights. “Grief is the edge of a cliff, my friends, but it’s also a portal.”

4. Tig Notaro on grieving poet and friend Andrea Gibson on Anderson Cooper’s All There Is. “Comedian Tig Notaro recently witnessed the death of her friend, poet Andrea Gibson, after a years-long battle with cancer. Being by Andrea’s bedside was a profound experience for Tig and she talks about its impact on her in this moving and at times funny conversation.”

5. ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’ Review: Struggles of ’90s Wellness Guru Get Intriguingly Intimate, if Not Informative, Doc Treatment. “Zeberiah Newman’s documentary finds Susan Powter in Las Vegas and explores her life, celebrity and hopes for a comeback.”

6. Why People Keep GLP-1s Like Ozempic, Mounjaro & Wegovy A Secret. “One notable exception in the new era of tell-all beauty? Weight-loss injections.”

7. Signs you might live in a cult on Supernuclear. “An interview with cult journalist and author Ellen Huet, author of Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult.”

8. Don’t Recommend a Book to Bryan Washington (Unless You’re a Bookseller) on The New York Times. (gift link) “His new novel, ‘Palaver,’ observes how an expat in Japan and his visiting mother find ‘a new language and way of being that’s amenable for them both.'”

9. Roda Ahmed Tells Us: About Listening to the Silence on Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar, “another installment of my occasional Tells Us series, in which I ask an author to tell us about five things.”

10. Haiku Comics Pep Talk. “Exercises in brevity” from Connie Sun. #2 is my favorite.

11. 27 Holiday Self Care Ideas: Simple Ways to Take Care of Yourself Over the Holidays and The Quiet Power of 8 Gentle Habits That Simplify Your Day from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

12. Out the Front Door by Beverley Stevens on Short Reads. *sob*

13. Good stuff from Open Secrets Magazine: The Owl Remains (“On whittling a life down to what matters, and why one lamp still stays with me”) and When I’m Alone, I Try on All My Jeans (“Is my fashion obsession self-soothing or self-abusing?”).

14. How to Stop Waiting for “Better” and Start Living Now. “What If This Is It? Learning to Live Fully With Limitations” by Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

15. Mystery of the Missing Mail on Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray.

16. National Geographic photos for 2025 ‘Pictures of the Year.’

17. The one change that worked: I had Sad and felt desperate – until a scientist gave me some priceless advice. “Since I was a teenager I had struggled in winter, experiencing excessive tiredness and low mood. A specific instruction lifted the gloom.”

18. The Joy of Doing Nothing in Retirement on The Wall Street Journal. “How often have we heard it: Stay busy to make the most of the time we have left. But there’s a lot to be said for doing the opposite.”

19. Now and Forever. “The gift of presence” by Jena Schwartz.

20. Building a Personal Cartography of Pain. “Learning to name what hurts” by Patti Digh.

21. This Year’s Thanksgiving Surprise: Half of the Guests Are Stoned on The Wall Street Journal. “What started as a secret trip to smoke pot before dinner has mushroomed into a full-blown commercial holiday. Behold the ‘cousin walk.’”

22. Friendsgiving 101: A history of the made-up holiday and how to celebrate it.

1. Poetry: Loving In A Broken Time by Frederick Joseph, Untether Yourself and Scientists Say Cats Are Perfect by Julie Barton, Song “A” translated from the Navajo by Washington Matthews, Believing and belief on Poetry Unbound from Pádraig Ó Tuama, Life Lessons in an Uber in Atlanta and How and After Effects from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, If the month of November was your friend from HannahRoWrites, A Sense of Grace by James Crews, What We Wanted by Carol Moldaw, Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano shared by Patti Digh, The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke on The Slow Down podcast, and Fourth of July by Rob Arnold.

In related news, Is poetry happening to you? and are you avoiding it? from Alix Klingenberg, and Emerging Form Episode 151: Alison Luterman on Striving.

2. I’m Devastated By America, So I’m Getting Out on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. And when he says, “getting out,” it’s not what you think.

3. ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’: The Sweetness After a Terminal Diagnosis on The New York Times. (gift link) “The film chronicles the poet Andrea Gibson’s final year of living with cancer and trying to make every second count.” It came out on Friday and I haven’t been able to watch it yet.

4. Change One Thing and Everything Changes. “Reflections 11 days after leaving Facebook” from Jena Schwartz.

5. A House of My Own Making from Laurie Wagner.

6. I’m now offering therapeutic journaling workshops! “Two options–and one is free!” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

7. There Can Be No Reasoning with MAGA by Robert Jones, Jr. “Like I have said before: Cults cannot be shamed and they cannot be reasoned with. They can only be stopped.”

8. The truth about distraction from Oliver Burkeman, which suggests “a more fundamental solution to distraction, one that’s incredibly simple, but not at all easy: just stop expecting hard, important, meaningful things to feel constantly comfortable and pleasant. Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about.”

9. Love Immortal: the man devoted to defying death through cryonics from The Guardian Documentary Films. “Alan has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death, and reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan, now 87, falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.”

10. ‘I’m not as fierce as I seem’: Glenn Close on growing up in a cult, marching against Trump – and being unlucky in love. “She’s Hollywood’s biggest character actor who terrified a generation of men with her ‘bunny boiling’ turn in Fatal Attraction. Now, Close alternates the glamour of the red carpet with living in a red state. She talks about the joy of her ‘undefined’ life.”

11. The works of art that changed your life, and why. “We asked readers which book, film, song or art work changed the course of your life. From soul-stirring poems to unforgettable paintings, this is what you said.”

12. Slowly Growing. “A list of noticings…” from Erin Geesaman Rabke.

13. Asking questions leads to more questions by Laura Lentz on Writing at Red Lights.

14. All Praise to the Lunch Ladies on the Bitter Southerner. “Blessed are the women who watch over America’s children.”

15. Guilty pleasures are more than just giving in to temptation. “Psychologists are discovering what’s going on when you do something you enjoy, but also feel weird or embarrassed about.”

16. Freaky Caesars & More Restaurant Trends You’ll See In 2026.

17. How We Do Our Best Work, “three shadows and their bright opposites” by Brad Montague.

18. The Way the World Answers, “why i believe in magic” by Isabel Abbott.

19. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher. I just finished this and really liked it — before I checked it out from the library, I researched to ensure that nothing bad happens to the dogs in this book. I use this site regularly to do so for movies, TV, and books: Does the dog die?

20. Jeff Hiller in Conversation with Special Guest Murray Hill. (video) “Comedian and Somebody Somewhere actor Jeff Hiller joins us to dive into the grit and grind of climbing the Hollywood ladder and the struggles, triumphs, and humiliations that shaped him into the wonderfully imperfect person he is today.”