Save Yourself 👑

Hello, hi.

How are you? How are you *really* doing? How am I doing? What am I doing?

I am okay (thanks for asking), better than okay many days. I fight to stay grateful for this strange personal time, even though it makes me wildly uncomfortable. I am unsure of what comes next. This phase is quieter than I expected, which leads to a specific brand of mental spiraling. I’m learning, once again, the most valuable lesson.

No one is coming to save me. So here is where I save myself.

What’s different this time is what I know to be true. I can take the mental spiral and make it into marching orders. When no one is paying attention — which is most of the time for most of us! — there is freedom. Remember that no one cares as much as we do about the things we try. Most people won’t even notice. Use the world’s self-involvement as your safe haven. No one will know our ins and outs and most perfect visions. The phone is not going to magically ring with your dream on the other end. I wish I could tell you otherwise — that hoping is enough — but hope is a muscle that needs to be fed with action.

When we are fueling that muscle, we get to know the voices inside our own heads and engage them in conversation. “Why the hell not?” is a favorite answer to my little mental demons. I say it even when it doesn’t feel true. Sometimes the little demons fight back. And when they do, I come here, and I start to write.

No one is coming to save us. So we get to save ourselves, together.

While the world truly does feel lighter since the election was called (again, and again, and again) and the doomscrolling is less doom-filled, that change won’t save us either. We are still fending for ourselves, building our own support systems, treading water to stay afloat. We are our saviors. We are each others saviors.

As someone who has been rejected a lot — like a lot — over the past couple of years, defeat can also be a necessary reminder. I got countless Nos on the road to building The Assembly. I have felt the bitter taste of disappointment when I didn’t get things I wanted so badly it hurt. I have felt the same bitter taste when I didn’t get things I didn’t even really want in the first place. Funny how our brains do that to us. Even this week, I awoke to a kind but firm wall. No, you are not what we are looking for. Not you, not you.

That isn’t the savior you needed. I promise.

When it hurts the most is when we have to choose ourselves with the most conviction. The Assembly remains dormant, sleeping for now, but the fire inside of it is getting stoked every day. When the phone isn’t ringing off the hook (the email inbox isn’t overflowing? What is the 2020 version of this…), we watch out for inspiration from each other and we start. We press send.

The only constant in my career is that it’s non-linear. This is the space for those of us (like me!) who don’t “look good on paper” — I will share it all as I grind through this. If that can help in some small way, it’s all worth it. Permission Granted, remember? Thanks for the permission to do this. And so, I am back here again, where I was meant to end up. These connections, this electricity, is already saving us.

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This is a self-promotion break. Please read or scroll accordingly.

This email was intended to feel more like a launch, but I’ve never loved to celebrate the starting line. Starting this week, there are ways you can further support Permission Granted.

1. Keep receiving this monthly free newsletter. That’s it.

2. Share this with anyone you think might be on a journey of their own or interested in what I’m writing.

3. Write me back (askaway@theassembly.com) and tell me what you’d like to hear more about.

OR if you’re feeling generous:

4. You can start getting paid subscriber weekly emails from me with more: product recommendations for things I love, conversations with people who inspire me, advice and tips on anything I can be helpful on, secrets of nature and places to explore. You can pay $5/month or $55/year and sign up here after you drop in your email.

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We are in a time where we must hold our closest circles even closer. We have never been confronted so directly with our own sense of responsibility. The holidays will look different this year, so we can stop holding any traditions or customs tighter than we want to. We can, quite literally, save one another.

Lately, I am happy to have had mornings waking up among the redwoods, sleeping in the bed of a an ‘88 Westfalia Vanogan that is on loan from my in-laws. I take stock of days spent in the passenger seat, not going anywhere too far or too fast, trying to find the source of the lastest squeak or rattle, hum or click. I thank the trees and come back to the ways that we hold each other up by the roots.

No one is coming to save me, but the best way to save myself is to stay connected in, to latch my roots onto those of another. We are here to save ourselves, together.

And so, I thank you for being here. If you’d like to support further here’s that link again. Next week, for those subscribers only we’re going to talk about some tools, resources, and products that I have found incredible these past few months.

And FINALLY (finally), I’ve been asked this a lot so I’m going to try this out. It’s an occasional advice-ish section. If you have questions for me about things like entrepreneurship, fundraising, failing, choosing the best candy, career stuff, relationship stuff, how to not feel like shit when you wake up in the morning or anything else that you think I can help you think through, my line is open. Shoot me a note and I’ll do my best to answer on here (or maybe I’ll just answer you privately, who knows!): askaway@theassembly.com.

Take care. Happy Thanksgiving.

xo,

Molly

P.S. Our next book club is this Sunday (yes, two days from now), but hear me out — the book is short and we never judge how much you get through. We are reading Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam and the link to join us is here!

In addition to our book club book (info on that below), here’s an extra book recommendation. I just finished the excellent Real Life by Brandon Taylor which contains some of the most intimate and incredible descriptions of emotions that I’ve read in a long time.

Let’s try to get one more book club into 2020, shall we?

The book is Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate and we will meet Sunday, December 20 at 4 pm. Sign up here!