Too messy, too self-indulgent, too much. Let me add: Too female, too queer, too trans, too any color BUT white and Christian. Always too much. Good piece, Jay. Thank you. xo
Yes I have, and I'm going to stay there. I am happy to be TOO MUCH. And I'm going to keep hanging around with people who are TOO MUCH. Because I CAN'T GET ENOUGH of them! xo
Danielle, thank you for this comment. How would it be, if we all could just be, instead of being told we are being too much? Wouldn’t that shift something. And also, wouldn’t it shift something if we wouldn’t give a damn about it?
Absolutely ! I wish it wasn’t used at all, many of us who were made to feel we were « too much » have learned to repress aspects of ourselves to try to shrink into a more societally palatable version.
Danielle, yes, exactly. What would stop for us, if we started to refuse the script and rules we were handed? It seems to me, that Glennon, Liz and many others would like to show us the way in that direction.
Respectability is the velvet rope at the club of acceptable pain. If your grief doesn’t dress right, it doesn’t get in. It tells women their feelings are overblown. It tells queer people their love is marginalia. It tells survivors their testimony is better swallowed whole in private.
I'm standing up snapping my fingers, Jay. Hurrah for this gorgeous piece. May we all be strong enough to sit in the room and listen, really listen, when anyone speaks of pain and trauma and heartbreak and isolation. And then, BELIEVE them. I am also so angry that people feel the need to stand up on that stage and spew opinions that are really just mirrors held up, darkly. I want to yell, "STOP! Just listen. Just sit and feel uncomfortable and let it stretch you!" Anyway, I love this, and I love you and I love Liz and everyone who is out there telling the truth.
Kendall, I feel your fingers snapping all the way here. Thank you for standing with me in this, with your anger, with your call to stop the noise and just listen. That’s all I want too — for people to stay in the room, to let the discomfort stretch them, to believe what’s spoken. I love you, and I’m grateful for the way you hold Liz, me, and everyone daring to bring raw truth to light.
Prajna, yes — to stay in the room. Not to run, not to hide, not to dress it up as something else before sitting with it. Propaganda thrives on that rush to speak instead of the courage to listen. Thank you for bringing your voice here.
Prajna, if there is another one, I’ll find it. Yet suffice to say, I cherish your “I love this piece” just the same. I know you are still handicapped. Get well soon.
“The truth has legs; it always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will always be the truth. Since that’s where we’re gonna end up anyway, you might as well start there.” Rayya Elias
This IS what matters. Liz’s truth, your truth our truth. May we continue to BE and speak it. Such a truthful and needed piece, as her baby is awaiting birth. Our loving hands are waiting outstretched.
Dearest Joanie, thank you for bringing Rayya’s words here — they land with such force and tenderness. Yes, the truth has legs, and it will keep standing even when everything else falls away. To be held in those outstretched hands, with Liz’s truth, with mine, with ours — that is the deepest gift. I feel your gratitude and return it, always. ❤️🔥
djw, yes — I feel that too. The unwillingness to listen often hides in the fear of opening their own cellar doors, their own buried grief. That’s why the reflex is to call others “too much.” Thank you for naming it so clearly.
A piece that couldn't be more timely. Thank you for speaking up and speaking out; for underscoring that women's stories matter and women's pain matters. It is only through the unburdening of those stories and having witnesses that things can change.
Stephanie, thank you for this. Yes — women’s stories, women’s pain, they matter, and they deserve to be witnessed without being diminished. I believe too that the unburdening is what shifts the ground, what makes change possible. I’m grateful to have your voice alongside mine in this moment.
"Raw memoir doesn’t wear polish. It shows up with the cracks visible, the grief leaking, the chaos intact. It doesn’t fix or clean or resolve. It stands naked in its imperfection and says: be here with me anyway. And that invitation is radical."
POWERFUL!!!
This needs to be out in the public published for ALL to read.
Jay....you are speaking raw TRUTH.
THANK YOU.
I bear witness to your experience.
I honor your Truth.
I bow in gratitude for your authenticity.
I stand with you - Here - Now - in being heard, seen and appreciated for your radical invitation.
Veronica, thank you for holding my words this way. To be witnessed like this, to have someone stand with me in the cracks and the chaos, means more than I can say. I feel your bow, your presence, and your gratitude, and I bow back. Here, now, in this space where raw truth can breathe.
So well said!! A few days ago I HAD to respond to a post by someone who said they were scathing after just reading the editorial in the New Yorker, I believe. He was saying he was tired of experts, but what he was really saying he was tired of people who aren’t white, cis, men having a voice. I do not normally respond, but I couldn’t help myself. Here’s mostly what I said:
I’m tired of experts, too, mostly because the idea of an expert trying to solve someone else’s problem is often based one-size-fits-all recommendations, instead of encouraging us to reach inward for our own discernment. As a woman, I’m also disappointed that too many experts are men who don’t take the time to understand women (or those who are othered by society) and automatically poo-poo instead of being open and curious about what someone has learned through their own lived experiences.
That said, having followed Liz’s work in her Substack community for the last two years, I can say she is actually anti-expert—not because she’s used those words or echoed those exact sentiments—but because of how she always points to how we are meant to become our own expert, regardless of how flawed it sometimes looks to the outside world. I haven’t read the book, but I also read the opinion piece. It was one person’s perspective, but I’m holding my own expert opinion until I read it myself. I don’t expect to agree with everything, but I know it will make me think and feel for myself. That’s the gift.
Susan, I so agree with what you’ve written here. That “I’m tired of experts” line so often masks a deeper weariness with anyone outside the old white, cis, male frame daring to have a voice. I love how you reframed it — that the real work is to look inward, to become our own expert through lived experience. You’ve named exactly what I see in Liz too: she keeps pointing us back to our own discernment, however imperfect and messy it may look from the outside. Thank you for adding this, it widens the conversation in the best way.
Sage, I know you mean this from a place of care, and I feel that. Thank you for standing with me so strongly. What matters most to me is being seen, not diminished, and your words remind me of that. I hold close your last line — never too much. 🫶🏽
Mary Beth, my dear friend — thank you. Yes, that word obliterated carries the weight of it. I’ve felt it in my bones, and I know you have too. Still, here we are, asking to be seen and heard, and holding one another steady in that asking.
Hi Jay, I saw the post you are referring to, and I was upset and I started typing a response and then decided it wasn't worth responding directly to a person with an ignorant opinion. I initially watched Eat Pray Love when it was released, I was in my 20's and quite immature so it all just went way over my head, but last year at age 38 I went through a very difficult episode in life and the book, Eat Pray Love and Letters from Love was a saving grace for me, it gave me so much hope. Elizabeth Gilbert is not perfect, she has never claimed to be but her willingness to share her journey of imperfections, flaws, baring her soul to the world makes her so relatable so I do not understand where that judgement is coming from. But, as a fellow member of SOUL, I cannot wait for the new book, it is going to be amazing and profound just like Liz Gilbert! 💛🌻
Samantha, thank you for sharing this. I can feel how deeply Eat Pray Love and Letters from Love carried you, and it moves me that you let that hope in at a hard moment in your life. What you say about Liz is what I see too — she never claimed perfection, only the courage to show her imperfect self. That is what makes her human and why so many of us resonate. I’m glad we are waiting together for this new book. 💛🌻
Thank you Jay, my book is on its way and I am sooo excited!!! When I think of Liz and all the naysayers I think of this quote by Franz Kafka: "I was ashamed of myself when I realized that life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.", and I think that is true of Liz and our community of Lovelets, no pretending, just brutal honesty and open hearts.
Samantha, that is indeed a wonderful and very fitting quote. Thank you for sharing. And I am in agreement in your assessment of it being true for many Lovelets.
Thanks, Jay. Right on time. The first time I read an excerpt that Gilbert shared, I feared this might happen. The shadow cometh. People are all too ready to tear it down so they can call her a fraud. Not just ignore it. I was stunned by what happened to Glennon Doyle, though I shouldn't have been. I'm glad you are getting ahead ot this. People don't want their own trauma activated, and a huge percentage of us carry trauma. Our culture is traumatic. Keeping the mask in place is a life-and-death matter. You know what happens when your mask slips. Reality comes crashing in. You can never be who you thought you were again. You can never not-see. In the US, we are walking through a trauma every day, refusing to see it. So, we become it instead. Now we have to look.
Susan, thank you. The way you describe the mask, the shadow, and what happens when it slips stays with me. I read your words and feel the depth of what you see — not only about Liz or Glennon, but about the weight of trauma so many carry. I’m glad you brought this into the conversation.
When I read that part about the therapist, I thought, “Oh, dear.” Not for you. I know you are fine. But for the therapist. Imagine spending years developing a professional persona, and being confronted with you, that's what it said? Make no mistake. The person didn’t say that. The persona did. Yikes.
I’m so happy this is the piece I read about Liz’s new book. I’ve preordered it and was worried all this online fuss was going to spoil it before it arrived at my door so have been ignoring it as best I can. For some reason I clicked to read this one. Thank you for this essay, I am ready to listen when the story arrives.
Jen, I’m so glad you found your way here. That’s exactly what I hoped for when I wrote it — a space apart from all the noise, where the story isn’t spoiled before it even begins. You’ve named the heart of it: being ready to listen when the book, and Liz’s voice, finally arrive. Thank you for holding that space with me.
Excellent essay on erasure, Jay. Every word resonates with me, especially this:
“Raw trauma memoirs aren’t self-help manuals. They don’t hand you bullet points and happy endings. They’re not roadmaps. They’re survival artifacts. They exist because someone had to get it out or be swallowed by it. Raw memoir says: I’m still here. This happened. It’s witness. Testimony. One person standing in their wreckage saying, look, this is what it felt like to be me. And in that act, solidarity is born. Another voice whispers back: me too. I’m not alone in this mess.”
Monika, thank you for this. I’m glad those lines resonated — they are the core of what I wanted to name. Raw testimony isn’t about handing out lessons, it’s about survival and solidarity, about that moment when someone whispers me too. I’m grateful you felt it.
And if the painful stories of abuse are available, others who have similar stories can feel ‘I am not alone’. Which is a part of the healing journey. And for those who haven’t experienced extreme forms of abuse, they can at least make an attempt to develop some compassion. I also think the ‘world’ is afraid of finding out how much abuse is out there, hiding in the shadows. And the enormity of it challenges patriarchal structures of control. The sickness and evil of it demand changes that society is not prepared to make.
Maya, yes — exactly. That’s the thread I was trying to pull: when stories surface, they do two things at once. They remind those carrying their own pain that they’re not alone, and they force those who would rather stay comfortable to confront what they’d rather keep in the shadows. The enormity is staggering, as you say, and it rattles the structures that depend on silence to survive. Which is why these stories matter all the more — they ask us to feel, to witness, and maybe to change.
The feeling of being erased, watered down, silenced… wow. Jay you captured this moment with grace and patience. From a well of deep knowing. Thank you so much.
Things have been uncertain for me at work, but I am upgrading to Paid for as long as I can.
Kaylen, your words mean so much — thank you for seeing me, for seeing what I was reaching toward in that piece. And your choice to upgrade to paid, especially in such uncertain times, touches me deeply. I don’t take it lightly, for myself or for Monty.
I know how fragile work can feel, especially in the U.S. where job security is so thin compared to here in Europe. In Germany, a two-week notice would be unimaginable unless you had robbed the bank. Knowing this, I feel your gesture all the more — it carries the weight of generosity in a world where stability is rare.
I’m wishing you steadiness, protection, and moments of ease as you navigate what’s ahead. Monty and I send you our love.
Susan, thank you for these words. To know you are staying and listening means everything, because that’s the heart of what I was writing toward. Presence itself is the rarest gift. 💜
On Sunday September 7th I published the OTHER SIDE of this essay. The SIDE OF SUCCESS
https://open.substack.com/pub/wildlionessespride/p/liz-gilbert-success?r=1sss7q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I wrote a poem to go with this essay, from the bottom of my heart. https://substack.com/@jaygermany/note/c-152451552?r=1sss7q&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Too messy, too self-indulgent, too much. Let me add: Too female, too queer, too trans, too any color BUT white and Christian. Always too much. Good piece, Jay. Thank you. xo
Nan, yes all that and more. Not normal and standardized enough. You have been there.
Yes I have, and I'm going to stay there. I am happy to be TOO MUCH. And I'm going to keep hanging around with people who are TOO MUCH. Because I CAN'T GET ENOUGH of them! xo
Glad to hear that, Nan. Me too. Maybe we should start a #TooMuch campaign…
Love that idea!
Too much is a term meant to repress anyone who pushes against the status quo. May we all strive to be named as such 😏
Danielle, thank you for this comment. How would it be, if we all could just be, instead of being told we are being too much? Wouldn’t that shift something. And also, wouldn’t it shift something if we wouldn’t give a damn about it?
Absolutely ! I wish it wasn’t used at all, many of us who were made to feel we were « too much » have learned to repress aspects of ourselves to try to shrink into a more societally palatable version.
Danielle, yes, exactly. What would stop for us, if we started to refuse the script and rules we were handed? It seems to me, that Glennon, Liz and many others would like to show us the way in that direction.
Absolutely!
Good on you, Nan . You are a wild woman who doesn't act her age, and I so admire that.
I certainly am, and I certainly don't, and thank you! I'm just me. xo
No just about it Nan, you're an original.
I'm smiling! xo
Respectability is the velvet rope at the club of acceptable pain. If your grief doesn’t dress right, it doesn’t get in. It tells women their feelings are overblown. It tells queer people their love is marginalia. It tells survivors their testimony is better swallowed whole in private.
Thank you so much for quoting me. I am glad my words found a tiny path into your heart and got a seat there for a little conversation.
Your ability to speak the truth is such an incredible, powerful gift. Thank you Jay!
I truly appreciate your words and you having read mine. Thanks Kathy.
Hi Nan! Neither here no there, but my last name is Tepper too. I don´t think there are too many of us.
I love that! I think there are more of us then we think! And we're probably related, even if it's distant. Howdy, cousin?
Exactly!
I'm standing up snapping my fingers, Jay. Hurrah for this gorgeous piece. May we all be strong enough to sit in the room and listen, really listen, when anyone speaks of pain and trauma and heartbreak and isolation. And then, BELIEVE them. I am also so angry that people feel the need to stand up on that stage and spew opinions that are really just mirrors held up, darkly. I want to yell, "STOP! Just listen. Just sit and feel uncomfortable and let it stretch you!" Anyway, I love this, and I love you and I love Liz and everyone who is out there telling the truth.
Kendall, I feel your fingers snapping all the way here. Thank you for standing with me in this, with your anger, with your call to stop the noise and just listen. That’s all I want too — for people to stay in the room, to let the discomfort stretch them, to believe what’s spoken. I love you, and I’m grateful for the way you hold Liz, me, and everyone daring to bring raw truth to light.
Yes to be able to stay in the room. So much running and hiding, and if someone said above propaganda.
Talking about something before sitting with it
Prajna, yes — to stay in the room. Not to run, not to hide, not to dress it up as something else before sitting with it. Propaganda thrives on that rush to speak instead of the courage to listen. Thank you for bringing your voice here.
I also added a comment, but I think it disappeared
I didn’t have the capacity to write it all out again
Just to say, I love this piece. Thank you.
Prajna, if there is another one, I’ll find it. Yet suffice to say, I cherish your “I love this piece” just the same. I know you are still handicapped. Get well soon.
“The truth has legs; it always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will always be the truth. Since that’s where we’re gonna end up anyway, you might as well start there.” Rayya Elias
This IS what matters. Liz’s truth, your truth our truth. May we continue to BE and speak it. Such a truthful and needed piece, as her baby is awaiting birth. Our loving hands are waiting outstretched.
In gratitude to you dearest Jay… Always! ❤️🔥
Dearest Joanie, thank you for bringing Rayya’s words here — they land with such force and tenderness. Yes, the truth has legs, and it will keep standing even when everything else falls away. To be held in those outstretched hands, with Liz’s truth, with mine, with ours — that is the deepest gift. I feel your gratitude and return it, always. ❤️🔥
Beautifully said Joanie.
I suspect that those least willing to listen are those who are too ashamed or afraid to peel back the covers of their own pain or grief.
djw, yes — I feel that too. The unwillingness to listen often hides in the fear of opening their own cellar doors, their own buried grief. That’s why the reflex is to call others “too much.” Thank you for naming it so clearly.
A piece that couldn't be more timely. Thank you for speaking up and speaking out; for underscoring that women's stories matter and women's pain matters. It is only through the unburdening of those stories and having witnesses that things can change.
Stephanie, thank you for this. Yes — women’s stories, women’s pain, they matter, and they deserve to be witnessed without being diminished. I believe too that the unburdening is what shifts the ground, what makes change possible. I’m grateful to have your voice alongside mine in this moment.
"Raw memoir doesn’t wear polish. It shows up with the cracks visible, the grief leaking, the chaos intact. It doesn’t fix or clean or resolve. It stands naked in its imperfection and says: be here with me anyway. And that invitation is radical."
POWERFUL!!!
This needs to be out in the public published for ALL to read.
Jay....you are speaking raw TRUTH.
THANK YOU.
I bear witness to your experience.
I honor your Truth.
I bow in gratitude for your authenticity.
I stand with you - Here - Now - in being heard, seen and appreciated for your radical invitation.
Veronica
Veronica, thank you for holding my words this way. To be witnessed like this, to have someone stand with me in the cracks and the chaos, means more than I can say. I feel your bow, your presence, and your gratitude, and I bow back. Here, now, in this space where raw truth can breathe.
I love this! “Raw memoir does not wear polish.” YES! ❤️🔥
So well said!! A few days ago I HAD to respond to a post by someone who said they were scathing after just reading the editorial in the New Yorker, I believe. He was saying he was tired of experts, but what he was really saying he was tired of people who aren’t white, cis, men having a voice. I do not normally respond, but I couldn’t help myself. Here’s mostly what I said:
I’m tired of experts, too, mostly because the idea of an expert trying to solve someone else’s problem is often based one-size-fits-all recommendations, instead of encouraging us to reach inward for our own discernment. As a woman, I’m also disappointed that too many experts are men who don’t take the time to understand women (or those who are othered by society) and automatically poo-poo instead of being open and curious about what someone has learned through their own lived experiences.
That said, having followed Liz’s work in her Substack community for the last two years, I can say she is actually anti-expert—not because she’s used those words or echoed those exact sentiments—but because of how she always points to how we are meant to become our own expert, regardless of how flawed it sometimes looks to the outside world. I haven’t read the book, but I also read the opinion piece. It was one person’s perspective, but I’m holding my own expert opinion until I read it myself. I don’t expect to agree with everything, but I know it will make me think and feel for myself. That’s the gift.
Susan, I so agree with what you’ve written here. That “I’m tired of experts” line so often masks a deeper weariness with anyone outside the old white, cis, male frame daring to have a voice. I love how you reframed it — that the real work is to look inward, to become our own expert through lived experience. You’ve named exactly what I see in Liz too: she keeps pointing us back to our own discernment, however imperfect and messy it may look from the outside. Thank you for adding this, it widens the conversation in the best way.
Dear Jay, I don’t condone violence, unless in self-defense.
when I read what the therapist said to you— I imagined punching her in the throat.
In your self defense.
You’re never too much!🫶🏽
Sage, I know you mean this from a place of care, and I feel that. Thank you for standing with me so strongly. What matters most to me is being seen, not diminished, and your words remind me of that. I hold close your last line — never too much. 🫶🏽
Totally meant from a place of care— and passion— I feel protective ❤️🩹 (not a violent person)😉
I can feel it. 🙏❤️
You have nailed it Jaybird. We are obliterated when we make others uncomfortable with our truth. When we ask to be seen and heard.
Mary Beth, my dear friend — thank you. Yes, that word obliterated carries the weight of it. I’ve felt it in my bones, and I know you have too. Still, here we are, asking to be seen and heard, and holding one another steady in that asking.
Hi Jay, I saw the post you are referring to, and I was upset and I started typing a response and then decided it wasn't worth responding directly to a person with an ignorant opinion. I initially watched Eat Pray Love when it was released, I was in my 20's and quite immature so it all just went way over my head, but last year at age 38 I went through a very difficult episode in life and the book, Eat Pray Love and Letters from Love was a saving grace for me, it gave me so much hope. Elizabeth Gilbert is not perfect, she has never claimed to be but her willingness to share her journey of imperfections, flaws, baring her soul to the world makes her so relatable so I do not understand where that judgement is coming from. But, as a fellow member of SOUL, I cannot wait for the new book, it is going to be amazing and profound just like Liz Gilbert! 💛🌻
Samantha, thank you for sharing this. I can feel how deeply Eat Pray Love and Letters from Love carried you, and it moves me that you let that hope in at a hard moment in your life. What you say about Liz is what I see too — she never claimed perfection, only the courage to show her imperfect self. That is what makes her human and why so many of us resonate. I’m glad we are waiting together for this new book. 💛🌻
Thank you Jay, my book is on its way and I am sooo excited!!! When I think of Liz and all the naysayers I think of this quote by Franz Kafka: "I was ashamed of myself when I realized that life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.", and I think that is true of Liz and our community of Lovelets, no pretending, just brutal honesty and open hearts.
Samantha, that is indeed a wonderful and very fitting quote. Thank you for sharing. And I am in agreement in your assessment of it being true for many Lovelets.
Thanks, Jay. Right on time. The first time I read an excerpt that Gilbert shared, I feared this might happen. The shadow cometh. People are all too ready to tear it down so they can call her a fraud. Not just ignore it. I was stunned by what happened to Glennon Doyle, though I shouldn't have been. I'm glad you are getting ahead ot this. People don't want their own trauma activated, and a huge percentage of us carry trauma. Our culture is traumatic. Keeping the mask in place is a life-and-death matter. You know what happens when your mask slips. Reality comes crashing in. You can never be who you thought you were again. You can never not-see. In the US, we are walking through a trauma every day, refusing to see it. So, we become it instead. Now we have to look.
Susan, thank you. The way you describe the mask, the shadow, and what happens when it slips stays with me. I read your words and feel the depth of what you see — not only about Liz or Glennon, but about the weight of trauma so many carry. I’m glad you brought this into the conversation.
When I read that part about the therapist, I thought, “Oh, dear.” Not for you. I know you are fine. But for the therapist. Imagine spending years developing a professional persona, and being confronted with you, that's what it said? Make no mistake. The person didn’t say that. The persona did. Yikes.
Susan, yes I think that is true for the American and European continent.
The worst part, she truly meant it and was in a way trying to fix-help me there. Thought my chances of finding one would be higher.
I'm sure she did. That's how projection works: the opposite of intended. After all that education, the persona is practically bulletproof.
I’m so happy this is the piece I read about Liz’s new book. I’ve preordered it and was worried all this online fuss was going to spoil it before it arrived at my door so have been ignoring it as best I can. For some reason I clicked to read this one. Thank you for this essay, I am ready to listen when the story arrives.
Jen, I’m so glad you found your way here. That’s exactly what I hoped for when I wrote it — a space apart from all the noise, where the story isn’t spoiled before it even begins. You’ve named the heart of it: being ready to listen when the book, and Liz’s voice, finally arrive. Thank you for holding that space with me.
Excellent essay on erasure, Jay. Every word resonates with me, especially this:
“Raw trauma memoirs aren’t self-help manuals. They don’t hand you bullet points and happy endings. They’re not roadmaps. They’re survival artifacts. They exist because someone had to get it out or be swallowed by it. Raw memoir says: I’m still here. This happened. It’s witness. Testimony. One person standing in their wreckage saying, look, this is what it felt like to be me. And in that act, solidarity is born. Another voice whispers back: me too. I’m not alone in this mess.”
Thank you.
Monika, thank you for this. I’m glad those lines resonated — they are the core of what I wanted to name. Raw testimony isn’t about handing out lessons, it’s about survival and solidarity, about that moment when someone whispers me too. I’m grateful you felt it.
“Raw testimony isn’t about handing out lessons” - well said and a good reminder. Thanks Jay!
And if the painful stories of abuse are available, others who have similar stories can feel ‘I am not alone’. Which is a part of the healing journey. And for those who haven’t experienced extreme forms of abuse, they can at least make an attempt to develop some compassion. I also think the ‘world’ is afraid of finding out how much abuse is out there, hiding in the shadows. And the enormity of it challenges patriarchal structures of control. The sickness and evil of it demand changes that society is not prepared to make.
Maya, yes — exactly. That’s the thread I was trying to pull: when stories surface, they do two things at once. They remind those carrying their own pain that they’re not alone, and they force those who would rather stay comfortable to confront what they’d rather keep in the shadows. The enormity is staggering, as you say, and it rattles the structures that depend on silence to survive. Which is why these stories matter all the more — they ask us to feel, to witness, and maybe to change.
Yes. It’s so important to continue to share. Thank you.❤️
The feeling of being erased, watered down, silenced… wow. Jay you captured this moment with grace and patience. From a well of deep knowing. Thank you so much.
Things have been uncertain for me at work, but I am upgrading to Paid for as long as I can.
Wishing you and Monty all the best.
Xx 🤍
Kaylen, your words mean so much — thank you for seeing me, for seeing what I was reaching toward in that piece. And your choice to upgrade to paid, especially in such uncertain times, touches me deeply. I don’t take it lightly, for myself or for Monty.
I know how fragile work can feel, especially in the U.S. where job security is so thin compared to here in Europe. In Germany, a two-week notice would be unimaginable unless you had robbed the bank. Knowing this, I feel your gesture all the more — it carries the weight of generosity in a world where stability is rare.
I’m wishing you steadiness, protection, and moments of ease as you navigate what’s ahead. Monty and I send you our love.
🩷🩷✨
I have to say this is one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve read in a long time. I’m staying and I’m listening 💕
Susan, thank you for these words. To know you are staying and listening means everything, because that’s the heart of what I was writing toward. Presence itself is the rarest gift. 💜