#2: This sparks joy 💥💫

Happy Sunday, precious being of this earth!

Hello sunshine, happy Sunday! I’m wishing you a glorious day filled with awe, peace, and joy. This Sunday, I’m feeling a range of emotions but I wanted to return to joy in this newsletter. I very much struggle to stay consistent with things because I come up with all these ideas and I run from one to the next without seeing many through. I bake my loving loaf of something new, excited for the ways it might nourish you and me. I then hastily and fearfully pull it out of the oven. Not good enough, I declare, finally confident in something. Convinced it was destined to become a disappointment or failure, I throw my half-baked loaf into the trash and start again, kneading away at the next thing. I love the feeling of beginnings and possibilities, and not so much that of follow through and “discipline”. This makes it hard to stick to one thing!

I do, however, also love the idea of Sunday newsletters, the consistency and reliability of a stubborn note in your inbox every Sunday. So, I’m trying to be consistent with this one. The theme may not always be joy, as I’m also interested in exploring others — like love, freedom, pleasure, community, wisdom. But today we are choosing joy, with a touch of other things. I hope you enjoy it!

1. This poem

2. This cartoon

This literally read me! I have so many drafts that are definitely good enough to send (anything is!) but I just get so insecure and fearful of criticism. It’s sad that we’ve created such a critical environment on- and offline. That’s what motivated the tweet I shared at the top of last week’s joy list.

Also, I’m going to do a longer post about AI (my thoughts on it do not spark joy) but I absolutely love this podcast episode and how clearly and passionately the guest, AI expert Timnit Gebru lays out her concerns:

3. This quote

Re: insecurity and art, my dear friend

Let's Thrive Together

recently shared a beautiful roundup of 10 things that inspired him this week, and he has this delicious quote on forgiveness that has really been helping me with my own toxic perfectionism:

4. This playlist

listened to this while making this list!

… and this one

5. This article

On the importance of awe: “Awe has two fundamental components, say researchers who study the emotion. It is a response to encountering something more vast, complex, or mind-blowing than we had conceived of either physically or conceptually. The experience also induces a change in how we see the world, producing “little earthquakes in the mind.”

The Milky Way viewed from the Namib desert. Read more about The Cultural Heritage of the Namibian Dark Sky

This article on awe (paywall): “Awe is all around us. We just need to know where to look for it. In our daily-diary studies, one source of awe was by far the most common: other people. Regular acts of courage—bystanders defusing fights, subordinates standing up to abusive power holders—inspired awe. So did the simple kindness of others: seeing someone give money to a broke friend or assist a stranger on the street.”

In the interest of giving money to broke friends, if you have the means, let’s help Alia get lifesaving surgery as she battles chronic illness caused by uterine fibroids resulting in excessive uterine bleeding and pain. We can also help Taylor avoid eviction after being blindsided when her work contract was terminated in September without any notice, verbal warning or insinuation of termination.

Note: I found these asks on social media. If YOU are in need of mutual aid, please please use the comment section or my Substack chat to ask for help!! Or if you’d prefer to, email me privately to promote your ask! We need each other!!!

6. This video

Shoutout to sunshine

letters to my past

(Ruth Nya) for the podcast recommendation, Bobo’s Void, on Spotify here and Apple here. I've been loving it!!!

7. This book

8. This organization

“How can we help people who suffer from despair and depression and cannot seek professional help because they don’t have enough money? Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Zimbabwe, developed a psychological support method carried out by local community members. He trains grandmothers to treat depression. And this idea is working!” Read more here

NPR: In Zimbabwe, like many countries, there are few options for mental health care. So psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda came up with an unexpected solution: therapy from trained grandmothers, on park benches.

Dixon Chibanda is an associate professor at the University of Zimbabwe and the director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI). He created the Friendship Bench program in Zimbabwe, which is a cognitive therapy-based approach to depression. The program trains community grandmothers in evidence-based talk therapy and attentive listening as an accessible alternative to mental illness care. — NPR

9. This art

Nelson Makamo is a South African, Johannesburg-based artist best known for his charcoal and oil paintings that redress decades of images that have portrayed African children in destitute. Makamo has managed to solidify an iconic signature and a subject matter that has steadily placed him on a global stage, making him one of the world’s young and most sought-after visual artists of our times. Nelson Makamo’s artworks speak to changing the global mindset of what it means to be an African child. His portraits convey strong emotions, from conviction to dispair to joy. — learn more about Makamo’s work here

Thanks for reading!