Hello dear ones,
This Monday note will be a short one because the TLDR is that I’m in a heartbreak portal right now and it’s real rough. No surprise to me that we’ve got a lunar eclipse happening tomorrow night. But I wanted to make a little offering to y’all, so here’s a messy newsletter that represents my messy heart.
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Some lessons from the heartbreak portal
You’re capable of loving and being loved. Your heart breaks because of this. Remember these words when you doubt whether love is possible for you.
“Love and heartbreak are fuck buddies.” This is the title of a Billy-Ray Belcourt poem, in his beautifully named book This Wound is a World. In other words, you grieve because you loved.
It’s gonna hurt a lot. And you can handle the hurt. Just don’t try to hold it all alone.
When your heart breaks in the present, past heartbreaks will come to the surface. You grieve for them all simultaneously.
Your trauma brain will look for patterns, will map this experience onto the past. You’ll wonder: how could I let this happen again?? Whatever happened this time is different than what happened in the past. Because you are different.
Each heartbreak is an opportunity for growth, for learning something new about what it is you need and desire. Without silverlining your grief, can you look for the lessons?
You’ll want to run screaming into the night, away from this pain. But the more you can learn to sit with it, the less scary it will feel.
Nothing about what happened here makes you a horrible person. No matter the hurt that you caused or experienced, you are not a horrible person. You get to be imperfect. And you get to be accountable. Both of these truths make you so beautiful.
Let yourself find joy. Grief and joy aren’t opposites. One does not have to cancel out the other. You can feel both. You need to feel both.
Heartbreak is a portal, a cracking open and an opening up. Our heartbreak tells us that we do not need to accept the toxic world that we live in. We can imagine something better. Heartbreak as imaginative, divinatory practice.
Culture Diary
I’m in a class called “Experiments in Experience,” and this week we’re looking at profiles: writing that tells the story of someone famous. As part of our assigned readings, I picked up Hilton Als’ My Pin Up, a book ostenisbly about Prince, but really more about Als’ desire and relationships through Prince’s musical career.
Selling Sunset is one of those shows that I watch so that I can turn my brain off. And while I love the addition of the drama-free Alanna, this season feels too high conflict for me, and that’s saying a lot.
I’m still making my way through Carrie, Carolyn, Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession With the Unthinkable and am enjoying how slow-going it is as someone who tends to read things very quickly.
After seeing a billboard for English Teacher, there was no way that this English lit nerd wasn’t going to check it out. What I really like about the show is that it’s not afraid to be slow and focus on the interpersonal relationships. Plus there are some really funny moments around queer culture and a cameo by Jordan Firstman, who I’ve been obsessed with since he started doing “impressions” on IG during the pandemic.
More on the tv front, Netflix’s The Perfect Couple gives me some White Lotus vibes and I’m here for it. While it’s always a bit of a challenge to watch ultra-rich people be insufferable, I’m holding onto the intrigue.
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The Billy-Ray Belcourt poem was incredible, thank you for sharing <3 sending you love
Sheeeeeesh heartbreak portal central here as well 🥲❤️ We’re doing it!