Do not allow yourself to believe that happiness will have to wait.

The news is grim and everything feels hopeless. You're not alone.

First time here? Here’s what this newsletter is.

A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.

Hi Friend,

If ever there was a week to feel like you were certainly not doing a good enough job, this would be it. It’s hard to have faith in humanity right now. People are killing each other; the virus we’d so recently declared victory over has come crashing back, despite the tools we have to defeat it; and it’s now scientifically and anecdotally clear that we have entered a point of no return with the total destruction of the planet. There are earthquakes, hurricanes, uprisings, senseless killings, sweeping fires, mass extinction … I mean, you get it. You live here too. You probably had at least a few moments of feeling totally hopeless over the past week.

You aren’t alone. Everyone I know who follows the news even the tiniest bit has expressed to me an amount of depression about the General State of Things. My husband Luke and I like to read the Times in bed on Sunday mornings; this particular Sunday, Luke stayed in bed for all of eleven minutes before saying, “Well, I’m going to go take a shower.” He’d started with the front page section, and he couldn’t take it. (I had wisely started in the Business section, which featured a story about how there are a lot of flavors of artisanal ice cream, so I was still OK.) My Twitter feed feels like the background chatter in an apocalypse movie. Anyone who is listening to The Daily daily should probably seek therapy. So no, it’s not just you.

What do we do in the face of this enormous hopelessness? I’m not going to pretend like I know the answer to that question.

Here is what I do know: you, Friend, are not going to be able to fix or manage everything that is wrong with the world all by yourself, and so you have to try not to hold all that weight. Put some of it down. Notice how sore your shoulders are and let them release a little.

Here is what I do know: love is still powerful. Who and what can you remember to love? How can you hold on to your love, even when the world feels like it is crumbling? Find your loves and hold them close; and once you’re doing that, spend some energy staying present. Worry and grief are important and meaningful, but they live in the future and the past. Your animal self knows how to be here now. Try to find Here and Now at least once a day, and let it be in moments when you’re filled with love.

Here is what I do know: pleasure is important, and pleasure in the face of oppressive forces is dissent. I learned all of this from adrienne maree brown, and I find myself wanting to quote her entire book, Pleasure Activism, but you should really go and buy it and support her amazing work. A few lines that stick out: “Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure and that our social structures must reflect this. In this moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression.” And: “Pleasure activists believe that by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists.” So make pleasure a part of your work. Enjoy things. Let other people enjoy things. Do not allow yourself to believe that joy cannot exist when the world seems to be falling apart. Do not allow yourself to believe that happiness will have to wait.

Love,

Sophie

Add this to your to-do list.

• Eat something that is growing fresh right now. This might mean you go to the grocery and buy something with the “Local” sign on it, and then sit outside and eat it RIGHT NOW (because there is a real RIGHT NOW element to this to-do list item), or forage! If you’re not following Black Forager (Alexis Nikole) on social media, what are you even doing with your life? Follow her. Or, here’s a guide to what you can forage where you live right now. Close your eyes while you chew.

• Make eye contact and say “hi” smilingly to a stranger.

A drawing.

Here’s my Instagram comic from this week, in case you missed it.

What’s on my mind this week.

(This will be about pregnancy. Skip it if you don’t want to read about pregnancy.) 

Luke and I are taking an Evidence Based Birth class (which, for the record, is the Goop-iest thing I have ever done), and the first video we were supposed to watch was about how we could be basically guaranteed that we could have a shorter, less painful labor that would come sooner if we took some vitamin supplements. Obviously, I was skeptical. But I also went to Whole Foods (the video lady said that we could find these supplements at Whole Foods, and maybe other places, but she was SURE about Whole Foods) and bought the supplements — which include Vitamin D3, Magnesium, Vaginal Health Probiotics, and medjool dates. (Medjool dates are actually a food and not a supplement, and I already had a bunch of them in my house because I’m already a vegan, but I bought more.) These supplement recommendations came at the same time as a blood test that told me I was anemic, and should therefore take an ungodly amount of supplemental Iron (as well as B12, as well as orange juice, because orange juice has Vitamin C and you need that in order to absorb the iron). (When I told my roommate and love-friend Bethany about the anemia diagnosis, she very gently was like, “How did you not already know you were anemic? Because… veganism.” And the thing is, we vegans read a lot of literature about how we can get enough iron from spinach, which is probably technically true, but guys: that’s a LOT of spinach you’d have to eat.) I went to the doctor two weeks after the anemia diagnosis and had more blood taken to see if I had done a good enough job with Iron supplements, and it turned out that even though I’d diligently followed orders, I had not done a good enough job. The doctor called me at 9:30 at night to tell me how much I was failing at having enough Iron in my blood, and that I should double or triple the Iron supplement I was taking. (As an aside, it’s terrifying when your doctor calls you at 9:30 at night, and shouldn’t all OBs know that pregnant people tend to be already asleep at 9:30? Because we have to wake up every two hours to pee, and it takes another hour to fall back asleep, and so we go to bed at 9 because we will take what we can get where sleep is involved. Anyway, if you are my doctor and you are going to call me a 9:30, it had better be an actual emergency.) I was already taking a giant fat red prenatal vitamin every day, and Wellbutrin (which is blessedly OK-ed for pregnant people), and so basically what I am telling you is that I had to buy a bigger pill container and I feel like a very old person. Also, I have never really believed in supplements, or pills in general. This isn’t an intellectual thing; I lived for a long time with a group of hippies who had me read articles about how supplements didn’t really work, and it’s psychologically proven that you blindly believe the first thing you read about a topic, so I can’t shake the idea that supplements are a big smoke-and-mirrors show. But I take them anyway, and suffer the mild gagging and later constipation that result, because I don’t want to be failing at pregnancy, and it seems like there are ever-more things to fail at. For the record, the medjool dates and the orange juice are great. When you get to get your vitamins and minerals from food, it’s a lot of fun.

Extras.

• My gf Kat sent me this powerful, wonderful essay about 9/11 and diaries and grieving from The Atlantic. It’s a wonderful thing to settle into.

• I like making origami things while in Zoom meetings. I put YouTube videos like this one on mute and fold away.

• Jesus Christ, frozen Kind bars (vegan!?) are REALLY freaking good. If you were a kid who loved a frozen Snickers, but now you’re an adult and that much sugar makes you feel horrible in your body, might I suggest these?

• We are naming our daughter Tanager. You might feel judgmental about that, but that would be because you haven’t looked at a tanager yet. Look at pictures of tanager. NATURE MAKES THESE.

• Luke Kruger-Howard is an artist who also seems like he is probably a really good person, and his art makes me laugh.

• Luke (husband version) introduced me to “The Great Pottery Throw Down” and it is exactly the same show as “The Great British Bake Off” except it’s pottery so you don’t get really hungry, and one of the hosts always cries because he thinks that the pottery is so beautiful. This is pleasant.

• The only good thing about pregnancy is that there are lots of pillows. You shouldn’t have to be pregnant to enjoy many pillows. Stop living half a life and double the amount of pillows you use.