What's Helping Today has moved!

Hi What’s Helping Today subscribers!

It’s me, Sandy. I wanted to send one more quick note with a bit of housekeeping: I’ve finally moved What’s Helping Today off of Substack. I’m writing you now from the new platform I’ve opted to try out, beehiiv. Moving off of Substack was the sort of thing I’ve meant to do for a while and then this week Substack did Yet Another Obnoxious Something so I was like, fine, that’s it.

What Substack has done (this time) is a whole debacle that non-media types probably won’t find interesting. Long story short, to my mind Substack’s behavior is yet another example of corporate spinelessness in the face of this moment’s totally aggressive transphobia — not unlike Disney deleting trans representation from an upcoming Pixar project, not unlike so many Democrats in congress failing the trans children of our military.

So, I dunno, I moved my (tiny) newsletter. Does me doing this matter, in the scheme of things? Who knows. I just couldn’t stomach remaining.

We’ll see how this new platform goes. I am not sure whether I can actually import all of What’s Helping Today’s previous posts over here but perhaps that’ll be a way I want to spend my recovery. (As I mentioned last time, I’ll be getting surgery next week and hopefully not doing much for awhile after that.) I do want the old posts to still be available to readers, regardless, so we’ll see what I figure out.

A couple recommendations of good stuff to listen to:

• Since the election, I keep thinking that the one book I’ve read that seemed to really predict this nightmarish social/political era we’re now in is Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger. Highly recommended if you are grasping to make sense of these times. (I listened to her read the audiobook.)

• I wanted to share the new episode of You Are Good about The Holiday, mostly for their discussion of Christmas itself. There was one insight in particular towards the episode’s end that spoke to one reason why as a trans person I hate Christmas so much. It resonated so much I involuntarily groaned aloud.

• I thought this We Can Do Hard Things interview about sociopathy was surprising and fascinating, in part because it was actually a broader conversation about neurodiversity. A good example of how all of humanity stands to benefit if we really embrace ourselves as we are, for our variety, and let go of some mythical “normal” way that a person should exist inside.

Alright, back to stress baking and other pre-surgery preparations. Today’s agenda includes pumpkin bran muffins and carrot lentil soup.

Take care,
Sandy

p.s. As ever, you can send in a question for consideration for my advice column by writing [email protected].

p.p.s. Otherwise, if you want to write me, you can do so here. Again I’m also now on Bluesky.

p.p.p.s. Here is a long / weird instrumental playlist I made called “verging on chaos.”

p.p.p.p.s. If you like this newsletter, consider forwarding it to a friend or sharing it somewhere you share things. I really appreciate your support.