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Lucky Girl newsletter #01: unpinning + being good


Depression, meet hot girl summer.


May 29

︎ CW: the following section of this newsletter discusses some of my experiences with depression, though no mentions of *hopelessness* are made. scroll to the headline “lessons in pleasure & play” if you’d like to avoid this material.

Now hiring: seamstress (skilled in handling fragile garments)

As a writer, I've been surprised and disappointed to learn that the actual happening of my depression doesn't make for a good story. The whole ordeal is sad and dark (not in a sexy way) and lacks a discernible beginning, middle, or end. So much of it is just boredom - boredom of being awake, being asleep, eating, talking, even boredom of feeling guilty for being bored. And the rest is anger because it’s not fair that I’m sick and it’s so terribly hard to get better.

A few weeks ago, I told my therapist that the landscape of my mind, the infrastructure of it, suddenly feels completely foreign to me. After 11 months of feeling the same every day, I had convinced myself that the real me was waiting on the other side of this bad dream, unchanged. Apparently I hadn't considered the fact that “winning” depression isn't an option. There would be collateral damage. This was the real me and, devastatingly, I hadn’t remained unchanged.

In the weeks since our conversation, I’ve tried to identify what has happened to me. It’s something like this:

Imagine a seamstress made a garment out of one long cloth, pinning and folding, pinning and folding. Revealing a form from something once flimsy and two-dimensional. But then, someone comes along and takes all the pins out. Or even just half of them. The fabric now wrinkles and hangs in the wrong way. The form no longer exists. Somewhere in the hanging fabric still lives that once-distinct series of folds, but they only made sense in relation to one another. Unpinned, the garment is rendered formless, at least to anyone who doesn’t know how to put it back together.

I’ve come unpinned and I don’t feel qualified to put me back together. The threads - my personality, my values, my interests - they’re all still here. I just can’t get the folds right again. Can’t quite make sense of myself in the context of my life.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, even scary, but instead of rushing to fix it, I’m taking my time getting to know myself again. Measuring the space between who I am and who I want to be is a serious task. In the meantime, I’m choosing to define myself by the things I pay attention to, what I love and yearn for, and how I eventually coax that yearning into a new form. I’ll admit I’m a bit overconfident, as all artists must be, in my ability to create something from nothing. But here you are as my witness. My unpinning just became an exposition.


Lessons in pleasure & play

I’ve been reading a book called Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown. It’s absolutely changing my life and I recommend everyone read it, or at least look up the premise of emergence. But for now, I just want to talk about this quote:



As I’ve been trying to heal my mind and body from this traumatic year, I’ve been meditating on the transformative power of pleasure. I’m tying to “not settle for anything less than the erotic sense of wholeness and rightness” in my life. I wake up in the morning and put my bare feet in the grass. I kiss my dogs’ noses. I repeat the first line of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, “You do not have to be good,” like a mantra when I can’t get a good grip on the forgiveness I owe myself. I watch Rachel Nguyen’s YouTube videos when I need to remember that my daily life can feel abundant and full of beauty. I listen to loud music and jump on my bed. I fill my brain with images of people living simply and read books about friends and lovers and people who are both.

It’s all part of healing. Sometimes healing is work other times it’s play.


Hot girl summer

Act I: I came unpinned. Act II: I learned about pleasure. Act III: Be hot + have fun

Playing is a crucial part of healing and finding new form. But playfulness necessitates a freedom I find hard to give myself. So I made it a game! We can play together and hold each other accountable. Hot girl summer is about living as your most empowered self and and that is the only rule of my game. Do things that remind you who you’re becoming. If some days you can’t participate in these challenges simply because you love yourself, then do it for the points ;)

Play along here

Anyone is welcome to join, girl or not. But I urge you to pay your respects.