First, the good news: Tomorrow is Monday, and this whole Mother’s Day overwhelm can abate until 2026.
But today, you might be having a rough go for any one of a number of reasons. So I thought this might be a good time to land in your inbox with some music, good reads, and one of the best grief comedy bits I’ve seen.
My primary losses are older now. But like AIM screen names being wistfully recalled, tiny fanny packs earnestly appearing at sexy brunch locales, and Carrie Bradshaw twirling back into our consciousness in Manolos and existential monologues—grief, too, circles back with uncanny timing and cracks the seal on something I could have sworn was safely stored away. And just like that, everything old is new again.
That’s why I wrote one of my most personal essays in a while (terrifying, always). It’s on TIME’s homepage right now, right below a piece about Trump’s Orwellian Erasure of Women (so how about reading mine to do a tiny part in ensuring that doesn’t actually happen?)
Another reason I wrote it: There is a notable absence of national policies that reflect what loss actually looks like: expanded bereavement leave, sustained mental health funding, and public acknowledgment of collective trauma. And many of us are distressed by imagining the destruction that could be caused by continuing to eradicate mental health resources and sustained support at every level of U.S. society—in schools, for veterans, a lack COVID-19 grief memorials, and so on.
More reads and watches
🌺 Last week’s Substack Live on the raw, the real, and the ridiculous of Mother’s Day with my friend, author and trauma expert
. Video up at the top, which includes helpful guidance for moving through a lot of these “Hallmark-y” days.📓 Storied New York Times columnist and Columbia Journalism School professor (fully disclosure: mine) Sam Freedman’s piece on harnessing reporting to reckon with memory, regret, and learning who his mother truly was. Read it here.
📺 Nora McInerny’s case for solo parents to binge-watching Netflix on Mother’s Day. Or not. Read it here.
🍕 Comedian Adam Christie learned just how long it actually took for him to order pizza delivery after his mom died. Zero shame in wrestling with the hard through the funny. Watch it here.
Redwood: A Broadway creation (and discount code) for us
Last week, the producers of the new Broadway musical, Redwood, cordially invited me to a Friday evening performance on a balmy May evening. The show was conceived by superstar Idina Menzel and Tina Landau (the show’s director and writer), and at the nut is the truth of it all: We can learn a lot about coping in times of grief and darkness by going back to nature.
We watch as Menzel’s character, Jesse—a grieving mother whose teenage son died from a drug overdose the prior year— stumbles her way through recovery in groves of California’s ancient woods. It’s powerful and resonant, you will cry, and you will also watch Menzel absolutely belt out a song while swinging upside-down from a harness.
Redwood bravely explores themes in a world that doesn’t always put up the money to do so on main stages. It’s closing on May 18, so if you are anywhere near New York City before then, I strongly encourage you to see it. Plus, I have a special Modern Loss discount code for you, with love from the production. Let me know if you do.
To use it, go to the below link (discount amount depends on which performance you see):
Click on Get Tickets, then the performance you want to go to, which will bring you to a page to select your seats.
Then, click “enter promo code” under Idina’s photo in the top left corner.
This week’s song for thought
🎸 Noah Kahan’s fellow Vermonter Haley Peterson endured double perinatal loss last year, when she delivered extremely premature twins at 22 and 24 weeks right after attending Kahan’s show in Montreal. Godlight was one of the pieces of art that helped pull her through a thing she did not necessarily think could be survivable.
Read her open letter to him here and close your eyes and listen here:
Live on May 15 @ 12 pm ET: NORMALIZE IT with Dr. Jessica Zucker
Tune in on Thursday, May 15 for a Substack Live with my friend Dr. Jessica Zucker, a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in reproductive health and the author of the award-winning book I HAD A MISCARRIAGE: A Memoir, a Movement. She’s also the creator of the viral #IHadaMiscarriage campaign. We’ll be talking about her new book, NORMALIZE IT, which encourages people to talk about hard things, and how platitudes can derail the process of feeling connected amid grief and during the healing process. It’s high time to stop thinking we “should” feel, think, and act in a certain way at any given moment, because those only strengthen the roots of shame.
You’ll need the Substack app to tune in and participate. Open to all for now but soon only for paid subscribers—please consider becoming one.
Share this post