Field Notes: January 2025
Tips for being a "kid whisperer," the hidden epidemic of chronic pain, how TikTok supports the disability community, delicious poems, our unappreciated glutes, moving on from the great unmasking
Hello, dear friends,
Somehow January is drawing to a close. What a year so far. I hope you are taking care in this turbulent time.
If you could use extra gentle reminders to tend to yourself, consider joining us in Winter Camp. We focus on six themes: light, outdoors, movement, nourishment, connection, and creativity, all things that experts say help us, and all things that can be harder to seek in the colder, darker season. Learn more here. Scholarships are available; send me a note.
Below is our monthly Field Notes, a collection of interesting things I’ve run across this month. I hope you find something useful, comforting, or delightful.
To our journeys,
Brianne
Why The TikTok Ban is Devastating for Disabled People
The future of TikTok in the U.S. seems up in the air, but here’s an important take on a potential ban that I didn’t see anywhere else, from
in her newsletter .Erin writes: “It is the disability community who stands to lose the most from TikTok’s ban. For people with disabilities, TikTok over the last seven years has provided a space for both community and culture. The app has been a third space where we can simply exist without the arduous and dangerous task of leaving our homes; it’s a space we cannot afford to lose.”
Echocardiogram — a poem
I loved this poem by
, who writes the newsletter and whose Instagram is a treasure box of more word gems.One more heart-searing poem by Joy: When my friend is low, we walk by the river.
Googling without AI
I follow author and teacher
for her sage writing advice, but here’s a life tip she shared recently that has changed how I Google:Many of you have probably seen the news that one response from Chat GPT (such as asking for help drafting an email) uses 8 ounces of water. (That’s almost a full bottle.) You’ve also probably noticed that Google is resorting to showing AI-generated results first when you search for something.
To prevent this, type your search in google then add -AI at the end. For example:
“Who was the first American woman author to publish under her real name -ai“
Crazy that we have to save water now in our physical and virtual lives. But here we are.
Check out Courtney’s newsletter,
.Time Is Precious: Make It Count in 2025
starts what seems like a routine rumination on new year’s resolutions, then veers into a vivid personal story. Honestly, I can never get too many of these reminders that cut through the daily fuzz.“This weekend, as I reflected on my own resistance to change, I found myself thinking about my brother Harry, who died in July. His death changed the way I see time—how I use it, how I value it, and how I honor it.”
Chronic Pain is a Hidden Epidemic. It’s Time for a Revolution.
New York Times reporter Jennifer Kahn chronicles how she woke up one day with mysterious and alarming pain, joining the 2 billion or so people with chronic pain. She writes:
“For a long time, I assumed that what happened to me was just bad luck. Everyone else seemed so hearty: going for jogs, typing away for hours in cafes. But what I discovered over the next year was that chronic pain is everywhere. There was the colleague who developed an autoimmunelike disease after being bitten by a virus-carrying mosquito. A friend, John, who had a bad reaction to an antibiotic and ended up with disabling full-body nerve pain that lasted for years. A former student who dislocated her shoulder in a crash and now has chronic neck pain and tension headaches. Another friend’s cousin who developed terrible pain after abdominal surgery — pain that left him incapacitated for months until, bizarrely, another, unrelated surgery caused it to disappear.
“I didn’t know any of this before my own mystery ailment began, because chronic pain, like chronic illness, is mostly invisible.”
Pain research “where cancer research was 20 years ago,” one scientist tells her. But the studies are speeding up and discoveries are mounting. This was a discouraging and hopeful read, all at once.
Read the full post. (NYT gift link)
On Befriending Kids
In
(what a fantastic newsletter name), shares tips from her experience as a “kid whisperer.”“I’m proud of this skill because it can be hard to build and maintain relationships with the kids in our lives. The younger the child, the longer any interval of absence must seem to them: for a one year old, three months is a full quarter of their life. That’s the equivalent of me, at 44, not seeing someone for eleven years. When kids are little, you basically have to reintroduce yourself every time.”
This post is immensely practical for any of us around kids.
For instance, she shares alternatives to the dud question of “How do you like school?”
“One of the most successful conversation gambits with kids, I’ve found, is to actually not expect them to respond at all. Just lob one or two kid-friendly observations in their direction and see what happens.
“On my way here I saw a tractor with the most gigantic tires I have ever seen! They were bigger than my car! I was like, ‘whaaaat????’”
I want to talk with this auntie!
homage to my hips
I just met this marvelous, classic poem by Lucille Clifton. Its beat is irresistible — and what a sublime message. “These hips are magic hips."
Free online yoga and breathwork 4x week
The wonderful
— a Winter Camp instructor, writer and all-around creative human — offers online sessions of virtual yoga and breathwork for people with chronic health conditions or limited energy. These 4x a week sessions are made possible through the support and generosity of MS Society Wales. We’ve been so lucky to have Gina lead sessions in Winter Camp, as she brings such a beautiful and grounding sensibility and grace.The great unmasking (and why I'm moving on)
offers a deeply thoughtful and rigorous examination of why energy devoted to trying to change a world that has moved on from addressing the Covid pandemic … doesn’t help. She validates the worries and anger over how so many people — friends! healthcare professionals! virtually everyone! — seem oblivious to the great and sustaining dangers of Covid and incapable of taking action that would protect people. And yet, she concludes:
“I believe getting people to truly understand what we are all up against is a done deal. You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved. I think we should turn our limited energy to addressing things we can change.”
“Aside from feeling that we are pissing into the ocean on the specific topic of getting everyone to care about us and to mask, I feel that this type of futile communication is simply bad for our fragile nervous systems.”
So smart, kind, and practical — ultimately, a message of care.
Scourges of the ’70s, Defeated!
This amusing essay from
lists myths from the 1970s, like “knuckle cracking leads to arthritis” or “you need to wait 30 minutes after eating before swimming.” This was a blast from my past 1980s childhood — and reassuring.Fix Your Glutes. Fix Your Life.
Behind this over-the-top headline is an essay by Amy X. Wang where every other line is hilarious, brilliant, or interesting. Worth a read, and a thought — should I be doing glutes exercises, too?
“Physical therapy, for anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, is a sort of fast-tracked ego death, a cold slap in the face to lots of things that you might have believed to be true about yourself. Only after I started remedying my ‘gluteal amnesia’ (real medical term) did it become clear how little I knew about basic affairs like walking, standing and sitting (or living, for that matter).”
Read the essay. ( NYT gift link)
An Obituary Writer Writes One for Himself
Long-time obit writer James R. Hagerty explains why he’s writing his own obituary now — and why it could be a helpful practice for any of us. “Write your own story while you can. Don’t leave it to family members, who are almost certain to make a hash of it.”
Read the full story. (WSJ gift link)
Bonus: James’ mother, a journalist now in her 90s, had her (totally non-ironic) review of Olive Garden in a North Dakota newspaper catch national attention. He wrote about it, of course, back in 2012: When Mom Goes Viral. (WSJ gift link). I loved her answers — maybe such a cheerful, no-nonsense attitude is the secret to living a long life.
From the Odyssey of the Body Archive:
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Thank you for the shout out!
Thanks for reading and sharing The Auntie Bulletin! I agree this is such a lovely round round up of links. I’m looking forward to diving in.