A poem, a podcast and a newsletter walk into your inbox

And a book review comes running after

Welcome to my head - a round up of what I have been thinking about, reading and eating. If you haven’t yet subscribed to this free newsletter you can change that here.

Thinking

Most of what I’ve  been thinking about this week comes from other people because I haven’t had an original thought this week. I call it Trumpitis. Others call is ‘head-in-the-sand’ and others yet call it ‘inability to cope with the news of the world right now.’  Either way, these are the three things I have heard this week that have stuck with me.

1. A poem from James Pearson mentioned by Julia Baird on the podcast Not Stupid.

Take back that part of yourself
you lent to politicians.
Peel their slogans from your mouth
and pledge your allegiance
to the mother down the street
whose kids have grown out of
their summer shoes again.

And if you’re going to raise a flag
let it be the flag of forgiveness,
the flag of our complicity
in so much we say we’re against.
Under that flag you and I.
can plant a small new world

and nurture it as it grows.

Hearing that poem felt like balm for the soul and Julia Baird’s beautiful voice certainly added to that.

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2. Mia Freedman
   sent me a podcast episode of We Can Do Hard Things by Glennon Doyle that spoke about the complexities of being parents to older children. Mia knows me well enough to understand just how much of a helicopter parent I was/am.  This line from Glennon made me cry - ‘I never want another baby. I just want my baby’ because some days I look at my beautiful grown up independent strong man child and I miss him as a baby. He is his own individuated adult and I adore the person he is but him being an adult means I am no the longer the mother I used to be and it’s a big shift. The podcast explains it better than I do. Listen to it here.

Also the line where Glennon talks about her apathy towards the world and the fact that we have brought children into this time in history struck me so hard I flinched.

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3. And, in the spirit of trying to dig myself out of my hole I subscribed to the newsletter Reasons To Be Cheerful which describes itself as ‘a weekly dose of dopamine for your inbox’. I read inbox as head and decided I really needed that. Maybe you need that dopamine hit as well.

Reading

I am going to be honest here, although I like to think you can expect that of me without me announcing it, but I really didn’t like this book at first. I have enjoyed all the others in the series, but I found this one heavy going at first. There were too many names and people to remember and I had to keep going back to work out who was who and how they were connected. But I persisted because I quite love Elizabeth Strout’s writing and the way she tells a story as if she’s talking to a friend.

But then something happened, the story took a new direction and suddenly I was riveted and immediately familiar with all the people. They just appeared where they belonged like a puzzle coming to life and I think this is because of Elizabeth Strout’s ability to see the minutiae of life and to thread them together into a story that fills your heart.  In a series of interactions between the characters she looks at the unremarkable lives of unremarkable people; each interaction is moving and gentle and human and thought provoking.

I fell in love with the character of Bob Burgess and his line “there’s a big difference between a broken person and an evil person”, and if anyone has read this book and wants to talk endlessly about Bob please feel free to contact me.

Also if you are feeling bleak and tired of the news (looks at mirror) - Elizabeth Strout is always a good recommendation.

Eating

Soon you will get used to my sweet tooth, or you will think that I have the tastebuds of a four year old whose parents have left them with a generous grandparent. This week I went  into the city with a friend just for the purposes of eating these pancakes at Gram. If you live in Sydney and you have a chance to visit the city to browse through the magnificent Kinokuniya bookshop - pop downstairs and you too can eat this fluffy deliciousness.

At home I assembled tuna salads, bagels and a lot of leftovers. I also relied heavily on my husband and Uber Eats. If Trump takes away my love of cooking I will… I don’t know what I will do so I won’t even countenance that idea.

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Thanks for reading to the end, I promise that next week I will try not to mention Trump.

Lana