just hibernate already
recs & links & a hibernation playlist for your deep winter days ✨
Hello from the in-between days, friends! ✨ That sacred time between the winter holidays and the new year, when you have no idea what day it is and are hopefully living in your favorite sweatpants. This is also the season of yearly round-ups and best-of lists and while I love seeing them roll in, I do not have the capacity to pull that off right now. Instead, here are some things I’ve loved of late, an of-the-moment round-up of things that have helped me to be where I am.
Full disclosure: I started this piece while wedged between my kids on a flight back to Pittsburgh for the holidays (and I’m going to keep that part in present tense b/c this is the life of a parent/writer)… Lulu just shoved her brick-like copy of all three Lord of the Rings books combined into my lap and spilled my plastic water cup all over my sweater. This on top of a thousand tiny interruptions and requests to watch Kai’s TNT explode in Minecraft or to watch Lulu’s favorite scenes in LOTR over the last few hours. This is it, friends! This is life lived alongside each other! One minute we’re cruising along and I’m rolling with the ups and downs, and the next we’re sopping up water and I’m sighing deeply. Which makes me think of Suneel Gupta’s newsletter, in which he posed the question, “Where’s the gift?” A mantra I keep repeating in my head, trying to look for the gift in any situation. I resist this, and yet, it is powerful.
Speaking of gifts, here’s a tangible one for you: I’m offering a 20% discount on a one-year subscription to Be Where You Are (until Jan 15th)! With a paid subscription, you’ll get access to paid offerings like weekly Ass in Chair Collective meet-ups and workshops, as well as all the usual free stuff (essays, interviews & prompts). In the new year, I’m also going to offer monthly writing workshops (some live, some recorded) for paid subscribers. If this sounds good to you, you know what do!
If you really can’t pay to support this work and feel like these offerings would benefit you, please just reach out to let me know. Paid subscriptions are meant to help me keep this community going, not to be a barrier.✨
LISTEN 🎧
My Just Hibernate Already mix for your hibernating pleasure🧣
This conversation between adrienne maree brown and Jocelyn K. Glei helped me tangibly: “Are you satisfiable?”
I’m loving Feed the Art with Catherine LaSota for wisdom about creative practice and life.
Amelia Hruby’s new book, Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media, was one of the few books I read (audio version!) while on my first retreat this fall, and it made me want to radically transform my relationship with social media and my phone. I also loved this episode of Amelia’s podcast, off the grid, on how to stop doomscrolling.
READ 📚
Poetry is Not a Luxury continues to curate poems that speak beautifully to our collective life on this planet. (At the link: Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Jane Hirshfield, Nikita Gill)
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch broke open my compassion for people caught in the crosshairs of a state’s creeping descent into fascism. It’s one of a few books I’ve read in the last year that made me see our world differently.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. This book destroyed me with beauty. I’m looking forward to seeing the film (I loved Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland), but unsure when to actually decide to watch a film that I know will reduce me to a weepy mess?
I am certainly in “The Humble Years” and I needed this piece by Sarah Menkedick: “The humble years. What does one short span of human years on earth add up to? Should we even be adding, or simply taking notes?”
I loved this piece on the legend (and my beloved teacher) Ed Ochester by Kris Collins: “In the poems of the Pittsburgh School you can make all the wisecracks you like, call someone a jag-off when it’s deserved, and trust that even when your language is rough it’s still beautiful as long as you never lose sight of the very real people at the center of your practice.”
This Sarah Ruhl piece in The Guardian. Two of my beloved former students are at Brown. Reaching out to check on them after another mass shooting felt terrifying and normal. As Ruhl says, “Why can we not collectively make this not normal again?” Donate to March for Our Lives and/or Everytown for Gun Safety.
Cody Cook-Parrot’s writing has become very important to me. You can subscribe to the free version of their newsletter, Monday Monday, here. Their book, how to not always be working, was the first book to help me start to disentangle my workaholism years ago, and I’m eagerly awaiting The Practice of Attention, coming out in March.
Sebene Selassie’s newsletter, remind me to love, always cuts through all the noise to the depths underneath. I loved this piece on attunement theory, which is also about slowing down and healing.
Jeff Chu 朱天慧’s essay, “No Human is Garbage” is one I think about often these days: “No human is garbage. Every person is a beloved child of God.”
Courtney Martin’s End-of-Year Reflection questions are so good.
WORKSHOP 📓
There are still spaces in some Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops for this Spring 2026! There’s an incredible range of workshops taught by a crew of brilliant women and gender expansive writers and many are online (some are in-person in Pittsburgh): DETAILS HERE. There’s nothing like Madwomen workshops for that magic mixture of craft, community & encouragement. Let me know if you have any questions!
Nancy Reddy is hosting her fourth annual new year’s planning party with planning guru Sarah Hart-Unger TODAY, Tues, December 30th from 2-3pm EST on zoom. Details & register here! If you haven’t yet checked out Nancy’s newly re-designed newsletter, Be Less Careful, you should. Especially if you’re looking for monthly workshops to help you with holding the thread with your creative practice in the midst of life.
Your turn 💬
What’s helping you to be where you are? What are the books, writing, films, podcasts, songs, playlists, etc etc that are keeping you company these days? I’d love to hear.
What You May Have Missed on Be Where You Are
Ass in Chair Collective continues to be the spark that gets me going with my writing every Monday. Erinn and I are taking the holiday weeks off, but we’ll be back on Mon, Jan 5th for paid peeps. On Jan 19th, we have our monthly FREE meet-up. Come make something with us and see for yourself what all the fuss is about! Link to register below👇🏼
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Be Where You Are is a newsletter about how to use writing and mindfulness to live more fully where you are. To reply to this newsletter, just hit reply. I’d love to hear from you! I read and respond to every comment (though sometimes I am slow). You can also find me on Instagram / Facebook / Bluesky or find more info at my website.
Thank you for the shoutout, Emily! Happy New Year!