Perhaps you need a hug.
On solidarity and the agency of where we place our attention.
[If you do not like ridiculousness, start reading at HUG TIME. That’s where the real essay begins, but if we were eating dinner together, this is maybe where I would begin:]
Hi hello I have my soft clothes on, a throw on my lap, and two snoozing dogs at my slippered feet. The ground outside is blanketed with snow. Today the snow sparkled diamond bright as I stood on our deck watching Resa chase her nemesis squirrel, and the cold air in my lungs was better than the coffee in my cup, so bright and piquant that I briefly did not care that my fingers generally feel like ice, a lupus ludicrousness that I mostly accept with little fanfare save for the gloves I am growing accustomed to wearing to bed like a shriveled ancient who could be cast in a Willy Wonka film. Inside a real tree is half lit and already wafting the scent of pine to every room of the house, calling us by nose and lung to the Christmas cheer that is there for the taking. [Take it! Take it!] Later, we shall decorate it, the towering tree that has a curious crook akin to a bent cock—poor tree—which we did not notice when we stood shivering in the empty lot. We usually cut down a tree in a national forest but this year we needed ease. This year we shall deck the tree and halls with red, for both courage and for cuteness, complete with miniature felt amanita mushroom ornaments I ordered on Amazon 🍄🍄🍄 which my dogs believe are little tiny toys intended solely for their pleasure. I will outlast my dogs in curiosity and guard the cuteness with firm commands. Get off the tree. Not a toy.
My cold fingers are typing extra crass and stream-of-consciousness, so if you’ve made it this far without unsubscribing, hi, thanks, and wow. But especially, thanks.
Let me tell you an unsecret: I craft my books like blown glass—carefully, painstakingly—so, for the greater good of the art that will hopefully outlast me, when I write for
, I throw sentences against the wall of this page like strands of hot spaghetti and just see what will stick. I realize this might sound rather unsavory and slightly unsanitary, but it is the only way to be a full-time working author and not work myself into living a life that is, frankly, a farce. Hot sticky words help me live what I write: embodied and present to the people in my life, myself included.More on that in a moment, because, good God, I think what we all need most right now is a hug.
My brain would like a hug break and also a huge break from focused, intense, weighty words because Sunday evening I finished the rough draft of the largest book I have ever written. (!!!) That’s right, folks, I have a whole first draft of a whole new manuscript that will soon be making her way down the halls of Random House getting her hair cut and waxed to be as beautiful as possible for you, and you, and YOU to have and hold and hug, should you so desire.1 She emerged from the womb of my mind plus sized and plucky. She’s a curvy minx of a book—like the fighter of a friend who might show up at your door on a particularly dark day and hold your face in her two hands while giving you a big, bold pep talk to not give up on your life. She will call you beautiful and give you a hug and hopefully transform before your scanning eyes into a giant mirror to your self, reflecting back the shape of the strength that already lives in that handsome head and heart of yours.
Clearly, I should probably let someone at my publisher write my marketing copy…
Anyway, as is likely obvious based on whatever this is, I’ve been staring at this screen all day long, rearranging sentences and killing a small coterie of my darlings so that I can submit my manuscript by the end of next week and take most of December OFF to do wild and exotic things.
(Just a parking lot sunset I noticed and enjoyed while not focused on my phone, thanks self and amen.)
HUG TIME
Who can you hug? Who can you check in on? Where can you show up with kindness?
The morning my nation woke up to the news of another Trump presidency, I received a text from an executive at my insurance company—from the same woman who has helped me navigate getting several extremely essential treatments and surgeries authorized after insurance denials. She woke up that morning and went straight to work reaching out to some of her medically fragile patients to see if there was anything she could do to help us. She took her grief and turned it into compassionate action.
Later that week, I stood before my husband as he sat on our couch and delivered a lengthy monologue that can perhaps be simmered down to this:
I want to spend my time and attention focusing on extending kindness to the people I can see and hug and hear with my actual eyes, hands, and ears. While the world at large is terrifying, I want to fill the world I can reach with kindness.
After much applause, silent though it be, I shimmied off my soapbox and we made a plan we’d been putting off for approximately two years. Thirty minutes later, we had texted several of our local misfit friends and invited them over for the first of what will hopefully be many regularly-scheduled and low, low key gatherings with the sole purpose of having a space to see other faces who care about how each other are doing.2 Gathering number one happened last Saturday, and while my introvert self trembles a little at giving up any solitude, my soul is already saying yes, there is something here that you need and they do too.
These days it seems like the chasm between a wave or a smile and sitting on someone’s living room couch telling them what you really care about is miles wide.
And if you’ve left behind your religious home because the home was filled with carbon monoxide and it seemed like only you could smell it, it gets rather confusing to find a different, safer space to come and sit a while.
But loneliness extends far beyond church exiles. Loneliness lives inside every car driving down the road beside you on the way to pick up your kids or groceries. Loneliness is the shape of a society ordered on self-reliance made of souls that not only crave but are cellularly shaped to need kindness.
You don’t reach for your phone 100 or more times a day because you want to see an ad for jeans. You reach for your phone because your hands were made to hold other hands that can hold yours back. You don’t lift yet another glass of red wine because it’s wine ‘o clock and mommy needs her juice. You lift a glass because you were made to swallow something good at a table across from a person who savors your company more than well aged wine. We reach for what we don’t really want because we don’t know where to reach and not get burnt.
This morning I caught up with my cousin who is a community organizer for her local education union as well as a literature professor and this is what she said:
“In the organizing community we have a guiding phrase: ‘Solidarity is a verb.’”
Over the last couple months of taking a break from social media, one thought has reigned supreme: I have a choice in where I place my attention.
Stepping back from constant social media use has given me space to step toward finishing a book I believe will sow lasting kindness. Stepping away has energized me to move toward my body in grief and hope enduring challenges I can’t wish away. I can’t ignore the grief of needing to be in a wheelchair a lot when my eyes aren’t busy looking at a phone. I have to confront the pain that remains—con/front: to face what is in front of you. And the confrontation creates resolution, both in a surprising sense of peace with my present circumstances and a resolve to live as fully as I can the way that I am. Setting down social media has freed me from stressors I do not need so that I can soothe my way through the ones I cannot circumvent. Taking a long break from the chronic collective chorus of outrage has freed me to live lighter in a life that remains heavy enough all on its own. Turning away from a screen has made it easier to turn toward the faces I count as precious with all of my presence.
Solidarity is not a noun nor a building fixed in place; it is a verb utterly dependent on channeling our singular vulnerabilities into shared strength.
And to feel safe enough to risk that kind of kindness, you have to protect your peace from the powers that want to claim your attention as a commodity in the economy of domination and control.
Do not stick your head in the sand, stick your head in your neighbor’s door with a plate of cookies. Do not give to the New York Times or even my beloved Stephen Colbert what you could give to a book that warms your heart enough tonight to stay soft toward a stranger tomorrow. Put up a crooked tree and cover it in lights that ask you to linger with what glows in the dark. Get sad about your loneliness so you can be moved by your own heart enough to do something about it. Consider the fleeting moments you must talk to strangers as sacred—the kid working the cashier and the medical assistant taking your blood pressure probably want to be loved just as much as you do.
A writer I respect AF,
, said it well in her substack yesterday on staying sane and sober during the holidays:“Moving on, when it comes to the holidays, your family is your family; they are who they are and if recovery has taught me any critical lessons, it is that you can’t change, fix, or save anybody. It’s not your job; it’s not worth your energy.”
The wild thing about choosing not to change anybody else is that when you radically accept that people are the way they are, you can spend the energy of change on becoming a person who radiates love. And love, it changes what you can’t. We change the world by being changed.
A tapping meditation I do a lot gets at this best: You can’t stress yourself to a solution.3
The solution to the lack of solidarity we sense in the world around us will never be found in constant overstimulation and outrage. The solution is in staying soft to your own sorrow and that of those you love. The solution is sitting with your own scared soul long enough to hear a cry of desire become a cry for help or hope. I don’t even know about the word solution: how about space? You can’t stress yourself to the breathing space you need.
I think I’ve slung enough spaghetti for one evening. Hopefully some of it stuck. I leave you with one final strand:
Your heart holds vast holiness. Your desire for love is worth feeling, even when it stings. Do not distract yourself to death. Do not numb the ache in your chest for a kinder world. Kindness and peace do not often come without being called. Put into your world what you seek, one small text of checking in or invite to dinner at a time. You might be surprised at how much joy is right on the outer edge of your longings. You might find yourself inexplicably dancing in your car on the way to the gym, delighted at the gift of being alive.
FUN THINGS
That lovely aubergine/burgundy soft sweatshirt I’m wearing in the photo above and below is from my very favorite seller of the softest loungewear and home goods of all, Cozy Earth. Full disclosure: they sent me this new jogger set for free (linked below) and I immediately put it on so I could share it with you along with a MEGA DISCOUNT so you can buy your favorite aunt or best friend etc etc something real nice for Christmas. November 28-December 2nd, you can get FORTY-FREAKING-FIVE PERCENT OFF EVERYTHING with my code CE-KJRAMSEY. Go forth and get gifts.
One of my absolute favorite music artists just released a Christmas-ish album and it feels like a personal gift to me. I cannot get over the power of his lyrics, such as in the track “Light the Light”: All the good in you / I see it pushing through. If you need some cheer, please do yourself a favor and give Tim Baker’s “Full Rainbow of Light” album a listen. Come back and tell me what you think. It’s the soundtrack to my season.
An old college friend has a brand new book out just in time for Advent et al.
of has written a small tome, Christmas with the Green Knight: A Strange Pilgrimage. I’m down for most things with the word “strange” in the subtitle. And Alex is both a gifted writer and deep well, so those who are looking for a Christmasy read may want to give this one a look.My husband Ryan of
wrote an essay over the weekend that made me cry good tears. This one’s for anyone who has been boxed into a role that is too small for their full soul. It’s a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the goodness we have found together in our grief.A movie I cannot stop thinking about which my former fundamentalist self never would have bought a ticket to nor made it through the first forty minutes (cuz, whoa that’s a lot of sex) but dear brown baby Jesus in a manger, it is BEAUTIFUL.
Two books I devoured, by authors whose art is so stunning that I read their books twice—once by listening and once with a physical copy—just so I can delight in their craft deeply: Lifeform by Jenny Slate (She’s one of those multi-talented wonders who make me just want to spill over all my own creative juices into the world with abandon: Mona Lisa Sapersteinof Parks and Rec lore and the co-creator of Marcel the Shell and star of couple fantastic comedy specials.) and There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib. (Hanif—I must pause in sheer wonder—writes the most urgent, stunning prose of almost anyone I’ve encountered in recent years. I don’t even care about basketball beyond telling Ryan “it’s okay, I know the Tar Heels are playing tonight and I shall read a book while you clap and shout” but I cared about Hanif telling me about basketball because he was telling me not about a sport I sucked at but a people and a life that are worthy of cheering on. His poetry is also…world altering.)
Finally, ONE MORE VERY SELFISH GIFT IDEA: The Book of Common Courage by yours truly is on sale on Amazon for 11 bucks, plus there’s a coupon that brings the total down to $7.62. You can get a whole book of my poems and prayers and pretty pictures for your BFF or your kid’s teacher—whatever—for less than you can buy lunch. Do with that information what you will. Buy here.
Links are amazon affiliate links to feed my reading habit, loves. I don’t make much from it, but I do buy myself more books pretty much every time I do! Thanks for enabling me!
More specifically, Convergent. And I’m keeping the release schedule to myself because a minx needs secrets to sustain herself.
Please be proud of me for keeping some of my saltier words to myself. I try, Glenda! I try to not litter every last thing I write with f bombs! Please don’t put me on your church prayer chain!
I use The Tapping Solution App and while I find it annoying to do yet another damn tapping meditation, it always helps me. Even just a little. Damn somatic wisdom, you inconvenient arse. You do work.
Thank you! I love all your books and can’t wait for your surprise 🌷. I love your unedited writing and I truly love and am encouraged by your strength in your weakness❤️
"The wild thing about choosing not to change anybody else is that when you radically accept that people are the way they are, you can spend the energy of change on becoming a person who radiates love. And love, it changes what you can’t. We change the world by being changed." Alleluia Amen. Amen to the art of sitting in another's discomfort and the people in our lives who do that for us.