The future is coming 🔮
On weeks like this one, I feel like I'm straining my neck trying to see the future. As if standing on my tiptoes and squinting hard enough will make it all come into perfect view. I find myself unconsciously rolling my tense shoulders as though I actually have been reaching up. Our bodies can so easily feel the exhaustion we create in our minds.
Two years ago this month we signed the lease on The Assembly and two years ago this week I sent my first of these newsletters. Looking back at that first missive, I can see that same feeling coming through the words. It's slightly younger me trying to see over a mountain. It turns out, I haven't become a psychic (yet...).
I was on the brink of so much. I still am. And so are you.
Every time I send this out, it's letter to each of you to remind you — and myself — that this is experience is shared. You are not doing this alone. I am definitely not doing this alone. Our futures are coming, that's the only thing I know for sure.
Trusting in the process and celebrating progress doesn't mean being complacent. There is work to be done every day to create our futures and show up how we want to in this world. None of us knows everything we are becoming, but I do know that doing it together is imperative.
Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women, said this about her process at her Assembly event last week:
"I didn't know what it was going to be until the very end."
She worked on a book for a decade before knowing what it would become. She talked to hundreds of people who didn't make it into her pages. They may not have been in the finished product, but they surely shaped it. All of these moments of friction and feelings of being stuck are part of that.
None of us knows what it's going to be like when we get where we are going. As the amazing Dani reminds us every Come Alive class, "you have to do the work on your own, but you don't have to do it alone."
Thank you, always always always, for allowing me to write this and for participating in this collective.
You know what also works? Put a song you love right into your ears and dance. Last night I went to a Robyn concert and oh man did it feel good.
xo,
Molly
Permission Granted
Permission to get back to the little pleasures: a shirt to remind you of a trip, clean white shoes, sitting outside well into the night, a bowl of cereal, the act of putting words onto a page. I'm a nostalgia person, but coming full circle on something with childlike excitement? Leave room for that.
A current representation of the evolution of going from kid --> teen --> 20-something adult --> sentimental 30s and beyond adult is the tourist tee shirt. They're back in my life, baby, and I want one from everywhere I go. I bought this one (designed by my friend Thao) during a recent trip to Joshua Tree. It's cuter than most (okay all) tourist tees and reminds me of a place (and a rock) I love.
This water-activated (first ever!) OWA powder shampoo is my jam. It feels sort of like playing with shaving cream in the most delightful tactile way. Great for the earth and great for travel.
Weekend lounging and errands fit: the comfiest joggers and my crisp white summer '19 edition of Stan Smiths.
Cereal. Yes, cereal. Somewhere along the way, I lost the simple pleasure of a bowl of cereal so I'm grateful that Magic Spoon brought it back in my life. I try real hard not to have guilt around food, so I won't call this "guilt-free" but it's high protein, low carb, and tastes like kid stuff.
To [always] remind you: you have to do the work, but it doesn't have to start big. Writing longhand every day brings me back to high school essays. It's reawakening a long-unused muscle. So, I've been on a giving spree with The Artist's Way. This is not the first time I've written about it here and probably won't be the last.
To watch: Trip of Compassion, a truly compelling and intimate documentary out of Israel about the power of MDMA therapy in treatment of PTSD. For more on the fascinating subject, I thought this episode of the Goop podcast and Michael Pollan on Tim Ferriss were good starting points.
To read: Fleishman is in Trouble. A book that is funny, very true, insightful, sometimes too true and not exactly what you think it's going to be.