Guess who finally subscribed to The Atlantic? 🙂

Dear Therapist: The Pandemic Has Changed My Relationship With My Therapist by Lori Gottlieb (from The Atlantic)

“In other words, you say you’re trying to protect your therapist, but I have a feeling that the person you’re trying to protect is yourself. If you stop having sessions, you don’t have to examine your feelings and patterns and behaviors at a time when you may, like many people right now, feel most vulnerable. But this doesn’t really protect you—it just makes it harder to feel the full range of your emotions, which is ultimately what helps us connect authentically with both ourselves and others.”

I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough by Caitlin Flanagan (from The Atlantic)

“When I first learned I had cancer, a friend told me that even during chemo I would still have my life, that I would still go forward, still do the things I wanted to do. I didn’t believe her. I recently looked through all of our photo albums—something I never do, because I feel so sad about what happened—and I was stunned by what I saw. I didn’t see pictures of two sad boys. I saw picture after picture of two boys with huge smiles on their faces, pictures of vacations and soccer games and art classes and all the fun to be had on the big swing set I bought at Costco when I first got sick. In Costco, it had looked a reasonable size. In our small backyard, it looked like a condo building had gone up. It looked ridiculous. And the boys loved it. Looking at all of those pictures, I realized something: This was my life’s work. I gave the boys the best childhood I possibly could.”

My sister died of coronavirus. She needed care, but her life was not disposable by Rory Kinnear (from The Guardian)

“…our spirits exist far more tangibly than our abilities.”

People Are Remembering What Music Is Really For by Spencer Kornhaber (from The Atlantic)

““If you look at music around the world, every culture has music, and every culture makes music for each other,” Loui told me. “What we’re seeing right now, in a time of uncertainty and social isolation—people are really seeking out music as a way to still make that signal that we still care about each other. We still want to move together and sing together.””

The Silence of Witches by Sabrina Orah Mark (from The Paris Review)

““But shouldn’t certain things be left sacred?” she asks. “Like your children?” The word “children” floats above my head like a magnificent cloud about to burst. And when it bursts I will be drenched by them. All day I am drenched by them. A holy water. Why, I wonder, should the sacred be unsayable? How can I write about motherhood without writing about my children? Who would play their part? The birds in the trees? A stranger? The shadows?

“Why,” asks my stepdaughter, “did you write about me?” Another cloud. I look up. It’s in the shape of a heart, no, a mouth. I want to say something about repair. About fixing us. About love, and fear, and hard work. About wanting to help her. But instead I say, “this is my life, too.” And the cloud thins.”

Photo by Brad Mills on Unsplash