Learning to Let It Go

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

Hi subscribers,

Two messages in two days, I know!

Super quickly, I wanted to share my new essay for Cosmo, about re-learning to pee at age 37. It’s an account of my experiences with public restrooms and about trying lately to become more comfortable such that I can even go in public — after too many years of just … holding it.

Grateful to my editor, Nicole Pasulka.

Some cutting room floor / liner notes, if you will, for this one…

My audio deep-dive for the podcast 99% Invisible (five years old but alas no less relevant) all about the history and future of segregated bathrooms, from a design perspective… featuring Susan Stryker and the rest of the brilliant minds behind the Stalled! project.

My Cosmo essay mentions working with one of my therapists, and so I wanted re-float this older post with my general-purpose thoughts on finding therapists — especially in case reading my essay prompts anyone to want to seek professional assistance to work on something they struggle with (maybe not peeing per se but perhaps something else seemingly basic-but-for-some-reason-challenging).

FWIW my impression — as someone whose focus as a journalist is mental health and who is friends with a number of therapists — is many of us adults struggle with seemingly “basic” things.

I also in this essay didn’t mention but… as a teenager and twenty-something I had UTIs so chronic I rushed to countless urgent cares begging for antibiotics, even once with an infected kidney (at 16). I was prescribed daily antibiotics prophylactically for maybe a year there in my mid-twenties (which has made subsequent doctors who’ve heard about it wince). Anyway I frequently recommend the practice that I tend to call “brain cleaning” and that its actual creator calls JournalSpeak. Doing this work stopped my UTIs altogether (and has lessened/curtailed many other such pesky chronic, stress-related tendencies), a bunch of effort that preceded what I discussed in this piece.

Also re-sharing my older post on how I finally became a meditates-every-day kind of guy, after some frustrating decades of not being able to get a meditation habit going.

Also, I mentioned Glennon Doyle in the essay whose new book just arrived! I’m excited to check it out…

Finally: if you wanna dance, do put on “Let’s Have a Kiki”…

In the piece’s honor, I wore this shirt today…

Once again: here is the link. Thanks to those who read the piece and even share it!

Alright, I’m going to go outside to hopefully harvest some rhubarb and transplant some seedlings…

Sending love,
Sandy

p.s. If you missed it, yesterday’s post featured another round of nice stuff.

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