"to deal with grief honestly"

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.

Hey folks,

Just wanted to interrupt this newsletter’s sometime hiatus to check in with you all. Very rough time (still), in my little universe.

If you like my work / this newsletter: If you can, would you please consider supporting me, via my Buy Me a Coffee … My suggested is $5 a month or more.

Being HONEST: I’ve had to delay filing some freelance work during this period of grief and mourning. Suffice to say, I would super appreciate your help.

Thanks.

Short one today, mostly wanted to share some links …

Great piece, by Rahawa Haile:

Here’s a recommended article with some actual T-related science (imagine!), by Jules Sherred …

I’m someone who’s struggled with insomnia on and off, including during these last few years of “manopause” (as I call it); I found this conversation very illuminating, on insomnia and what we can actually do about it …

Here’s a recommended resource via Julia Serano for you to send to anyone you know who believes still in ugly myths regarding transness being a ‘social contagion’ and other such bullshit:

Here are some other random nice things ...

Like this sold-out sewing class for people learning to mend their own clothes …

Like this horseshoe crab pin …

Like this (good) news about solar …

As a(n alas) big tuna sandwich lover, I was glad to read this excellent tuna melt essay, by Tal Lavin:

“Still, I like to think that the anonymous cook who mated tuna salad and grilled cheese knew exactly what he was doing: he was creating greatness behind that Woolworth’s lunch counter, and he knew it, and the story of an accident was something he spread to add a sense of destiny to the mix.”

This part, from the above, got me good:

“It is also incumbent on us, I think, to deal with grief honestly. To face it head-on, and feel it in all its tremulous depth, with appropriate periods of dissociation as necessary.”

Yesterday I was standing in a CVS toothpaste aisle, a somewhat unfamiliar song came on, the chorus of which included the name of the beloved one I’ve just recently lost-lost … and it was all so uncanny … and I disassociated almost all the way, as I can sometimes do, especially when I’m drowning, baseline, in such a powerful emotion, as with this all-consuming grief.

Anyway, it’s good I didn’t fully lose it in that CVS toothpaste aisle, but it was a close call.

Right now, even telling a single person what has happened is so sad I can hardly bring myself to speak the words or type them. Some friends or strangers I tell anyway. I feel the momentary relief of their compassion, them sharing it with me.

If somebody asks me, How are you? I often have zero clue how to respond. I pass through the world a “grief-zombie,” by my own description. Like I am full of obvious holes nobody else can see, like I am Swiss cheese.

What’s Helping Today: A friend let me crash at their place a few nights as they travel and I’m appreciating the solitude, the big bathtub (to cry in) and their vinyl collection. I’m enjoying exploring unfamiliar backroads in search of unfamiliar coffee shops and unfamiliar sandwiches … Perhaps even a tuna melt of quality …

Tal, in the above, also writes these wise words: “Grieve with your whole self so you can offer yourself to those who need it most, when you must.”

I am trying, that much I can say.

Alright folks. Once again, if you’re willing to help me out with a few bucks, it’s greatly appreciated.

From my broken heart, sending love,
Sandy

p.s. If you didn’t read my latest, published by Luke O’Neil on his newsletter Welcome to Hell World, I encourage you to read and share it (now paywalled):

Thanks for reading What’s Helping Today, a newsletter by me — author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen. If you were forwarded this message, WHT is free; you can subscribe here. Once again, if you like this newsletter: Please consider tipping me via my Buy Me a Coffee. Your support of my work is greatly appreciated.