a particularly Shit Time.

radical love note | + links, lists, recommendations <3

Dear ones, 

I am eager for the day when I don’t start this note with some kind of admission about the last week being difficult, but that is not today. We are fully in the throes of daily radiation appointments, navigating some too-personal-for-the-newsletter things alongside it, on top of both of us trying to get back to more working hours. Emotions are big, normal stressors feel extra heavy, and abnormal stressors continue to pile on. Things are not all bad, of course, but I am confronting the reality that I’m in another life chapter where the challenges outweigh the ease. “It was always going to be a shit time,” says Emma Thompson in Love Actually, and is a line often re-quoted by my oldest best friend, K. K’s honest and practical Virgo voice plays in my head sometimes when I’m navigating a particularly Shit Time; it helps me rest into radical acceptance. It helps me stop resisting, giving me more energy to find an easeful way through and out. 

I think every few months I end up dropping this reminder to myself and to you all, because it’s wisdom that never gets old, a reminder I am never bored of hearing: everything is temporary. No feeling is final; the best and worst news. 

I did have some genuinely beautiful moments this week though, which, as always, I share below (+ lists of what I’m Reading/Watching/Listening to). 

That’s all I have in me today, but more again soon. Thanks for being here. <3 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading.