I’m grateful for... (👩🏻🦰 my single years )
Some thoughts & recommendations to start your weekend
I’m grateful to have published a piece about my single years to coincide with Valentine’s Day. I’m grateful for those years, which were sometimes hard and sometimes amazing, and for how they shaped me into the person I am today. I’m grateful for the confidence they gave me, knowing that I can rely on myself to build a full, meaningful life. I’m grateful for the wonderful writing that exists around singlehood, even if I didn’t get to include them all in my piece. In particular, I want to spotlight this article about the epidemic of gay loneliness, a story which resonates deeply in my life even if it was centered (as the vast majority of non-hetero stories do) gay men.
I’m grateful not to be single anymore, and to have great love in my life. I’m grateful for the stamina of love that is freely chosen and nurtured, and for how it bolsters me during hard times. I’m grateful for community, for the fierce love of queer women who care enough to show up and build something better.
I’m (trying to be) grateful for the challenges that are rarely visible in online spaces, but which exist within our innermost selves and in the quiet moments between people. I’m not yet grateful for the small agonies and losses which might one day be written about but which must first be endured, the requisite emotions felt and processed, even especially when they are hard. I’m grateful to know this season will pass. While there are sick pets and elderly loved ones and uncertain jobs and complicated families and bodies that falter, there is also great love and it is love which makes these things both painful and survivable.
To quote the astounding (& much missed), bell hooks:
“True love has a transformative power — and that by learning how to face our fears we learn how to truly embrace love. Real love — that love of humans, the ability to look past foibles, and consider and comprehend the humanity in another is a gift more profound than anything in this world.”
Recommendations
📺 Speaking of queer women, I want to shout out to Niecy Nash’s Emmy acceptance speech. I have so much to learn!
📚 I started reading Mohsin Hamid’s ‘The Last White Man’ a few nights ago, and while the premise is strange and unsettling, I am compelled to keep reading.
🧅 I made this for dinner last night and was not disappointed.
🎧 I enjoyed this expansive (& quite queer) conversation about child-free life.
❤️ And speaking of bell hooks, I wanted to share this moving remembrance from
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✍️ Beyond Survival is written by me, Clare Egan, an award-winning writer and journalist. You can read more about me here, or look at some pretty pictures over here. 👋 Click reply to say hello anytime. Thank you for being here!