Books

Lucille Clifton’s Next

Hannah Templer’s Cosmoknights vol. 1 & 2

Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall’s Brooms

Wendy Xu’s Infinity Particle

eds. Shantel Gabrieal Buggs and Trevor Hoppe’s Unsafe Words

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TV/Film

Echo S1

Pokémon Concierge S1

Dimension 20’s Neverafter

dir. Adele Lim’s Joy Ride

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Music

Barbatuque’s Baianá

Beyoncé’s TEXAS HOLD ‘EM

Alicia Creti’s Pity Party

Cynthia Erivo’s Nothing Compares 2 U (Prince cover)

Hiatus Kaiyote’s Everything’s Beautiful

Tori Kelly’s missin u – R&B edit

Jung Kook ft. Usher’s Standing Next to You

Kyle Lux’s Lover Loaded Fantasy

Kate Stewart’s Never Enough

Lo Steele’s Another Life

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Articles

Nedra Glover Tawwab’s The Truth About Emotional Regulation

“When you are tempted to respond in a way that is reactive, erratic, and maybe even aggressive ask yourself:

• Will responding this way actually make me feel better?
• Is responding this way helpful?
• Will responding in this way truly resolve anything?
• Is responding in this way in alignment with my values and who I want to be?

Asking ourselves these questions can help us to bolster our self-awareness, which is a key component of emotional regulation. Being self-aware means that you:

• Know your triggers

Pay attention to what consistently ticks you off. It could be people being late. It could be someone yelling at you. It could be someone bringing up their relationship with their sister or brother. It could be calling the cable company. That was a trigger of mine for years because I couldn’t understand how the prices kept going up while the service was getting worse. It could be anything because we’re all different and different things set us off. 

• Get to the root of why you’re feeling upset

If I look at the example of my experience with the cable company and dig into what was going on there, I think I was upset because I felt like I was being taken advantage of. I felt like the company was getting over on me. When we take the time to figure out what is truly causing our agitation we are better able to identify our triggers. 

• Recognize when your energy is being misplaced

When I was calling the cable company fussing at the customer service representative, I would have to remind myself that those people were not the cable company. They were just people with a job, like me. Getting upset with them didn’t make any sense. They weren’t who I was really upset with. (Apologies to anyone who worked at a cable company between the years of 1999 and 2019)

• Acknowledge when it is inappropriate to direct your energy at a particular person

You have to consider whether the person you are speaking to can withstand your wrath. In boss-to-subordinate, parent-to-child, teacher-to-student situations, or others like them where there is an imbalance of power, it is unfair and even abusive to unleash your frustrations on those people. 

• Seek out support

When we find ourselves in situations where we need to manage our reactions amid other people having their reactions and it feels like a lot, we have to find ways to replenish ourselves. We need to figure out who our people are – the ones we can call to process what’s going on. It’s important to have someone you can talk through your experience with, whether that’s a friend or a therapist.”

Dr. Jenn Jackson’s Asexuality Teaches Us That Intimacy Is About More Than Sex

“Culturally, the dependence on sex for intimate connection stunts our platonic relationships and leaves many in our communities bereft of the closeness they reserve for sexual interests.”

“So, when my spouse of seventeen years began exploring his asexuality, I wanted to go on that journey with him. I had to figure out how our relationship might exist outside of being sexual. We both had to ask if a non-sexual relationship was something we wanted to build with one another. Most importantly, we had to create an intimacy that wasn’t reliant on sex but on authenticity, vulnerability, and the most profound care we could muster.”

Jim LeBrecht’s Oscar-Nominated ‘Crip Camp’ Director Jim LeBrecht Praises ‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’: It Shows How Authentic Representation Is Possible

“I believe that the goal should not be overcoming a disability. It should not be about fixing a disability. For a vast number of people, that’s not going to be their reality. So many disabled people that I’ve become friends with feel that the goal is getting back to your true self. You will have certain changes in your lifestyle, for sure. But you can still ask yourself, what do I want in life? What was driving me before acquiring this disability or illness? Is that something that I want to continue?”

Elizabeth Minkel’s Lots of People Make Money on Fanfic. Just Not the Authors

“The ever-increasing reach of fan fiction has inched the practice away from text-written-in-community to a more traditional author-reader relationship—and the context collapse that’s come with viral works being treated like any other romance novel has spurred clashes between different types of readers with different sets of expectations.”

“Lantagne sees this context collapse as a key factor in the illegal fanbinding situation. “I think that big-name authors might be out of luck when their fan fiction ceases to be fan fiction,” she says. Like a photograph that ends up in a popular meme, it might be protected by copyright, but there’s little that the original photographer can do to remove every infringing use. “Once your fic is no longer on AO3 and is instead being sold on Etsy, you’re outside of community norms now. There is very little way to fully protect anything that’s on the internet. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.””

Anne Helen Petersen’s Show Up For Yourself First

“Not knowing your needs makes it hard to cultivate relationships where others will be able to understand and fulfill those needs. And if you haven’t done the work of learning how to like yourself, it makes it a lot harder to cultivate the skills necessary to show up for others. As [Rachel Wilkerson] Miller puts it [in The Art of Showing Up], “there’s not much space for generosity, confidence, or vulnerability when you’re constantly worried about whether you have enough and are enough.”

It sounds basic, but people who like themselves are likable. Not because they’re “happy” (liking yourself and constant happiness are not the same thing) but because they’re at ease. They’ve done the work of getting to know themselves, of sitting with the parts of themselves they might sometimes dislike, of working on rejecting shame society has invited them to feel, of seeing themselves and their needs clearly. And that sort of ease? It’s magnetic.

It doesn’t necessarily make them the life of the party. It might make them someone who’s easy to be around, but it might not. I encounter it most often in women who’ve gone through the portal, but I’ve certainly seen it in others — including five-year-olds. They might have two friends, they might have two hundred. Whatever number it is, it’s the right one for them. And that, again — there’s ease there.

Miller does not suggest that getting to this point is easy. There are reasons — some societal, some highly individual — that can make it hard to like yourself. In addition to unpacking and exploring some of those reasons with a professional (in, say, therapy) Miller’s big suggestion for liking yourself more is incredibly simple: spend more time with yourself, and just yourself.”

Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha’s campfire on the superfund site

“When it comes to thinking about the ethics of writing your survivorhood, it’s never been as simple as that oft-cited line “if they wanted you to write about them better they should’ve treated you better,” to me. There are some people who I can write about that way with impunity. There are also people where I sit with a lot more complexity about what part of what stories I can tell.

But: you can write about the people who are survivors who abused you, with as much grace, compassion and “I understand their intergenerational trauma” as you can muster. You can leave out the worst parts. And they can still not see any of that and come to jesus.

Because, here’s the thing: people who were abusive to you, they didn’t abuse you because you were good or bad, and you can’t make them not be abusive by being really good or writing really good. They abused you because they made that choice. They might be still making it.

Writing your survivor story is, at best, something that tells a mean, good story. It’s not healing in a therapist office and it doesn’t have to be “healing.” Maybe it offers healing for you or others, because the story makes a new portal into a next, as well into the past.

Those that hurt you, they had choices and made them. Their choices to be of account, to heal, to change, are still theirs.

Your writing is not the magic spell that can make your child or younger self finally have people apologize. If you’re lucky, it’s a magic spell that changes you by the process of writing it.”

Heather Ringo’s We Keep Us Safe: Bay Area Businesses Practicing Community Care

“Yet there are a few stalwart businesses going against the trend of treating disabled people as disposable. In this article, we will profile five of them: a gift shop, a bookshop cooperative, a dentist, a pet sitter, and a comics and games store. While other businesses have scrubbed any pandemic reminders from their premises, these COVID-safe businesses lean into community care. All of them incorporate some form of universal masking. Some implement much more stringent protocols, such as upgrading their ventilation, going great lengths to make their businesses safe and accessible for all. If you live in the Bay Area, check them out and share your appreciation for keeping everyone safe. If you don’t live in the Bay Area, seek out those businesses in your area and let folks in your community know.”

Rafia Zakaria’s Why Brené Brown’s Gospel of Vulnerability Fails the World’s Most Vulnerable

“In Brené Brown’s worldview, compassion is generated by a shared belief that everyone is “doing the best they can.” The rude cashier, the unaccommodating flight attendant, are all “doing the best that they can.” It is cute this idea and even workable, but it is a prescription best suited to those who are by and large untouched by systemic injustice. It tells us to think that the white cop nailing brown bodies to the pavement is just doing his best—in doing so it furthers the fraud that all our vulnerability is equally valued.”