hope and vision
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.
Each week feels a little bit tougher. I guess this is 2025.
“Managing Overwhelm Amid Trump’s Chaos” by Kelly Hayes is useful and generous.
I’ve been glad to see this making the rounds: how it is, by Sarah Thankham Mathews, who wrote a great novel I read last year called All This Could Be Different. This piece is sobering and important—you might want to read it when you feel most grounded?
Mariame Kabe shared a great zine called A Million Experiments to help anyone “make an activism/organizing plan.”
Take One Step, Every Day by Vicky Osterweil is so full of great ideas, projects, and links to how-to’s, and includes good cheerleading on taking it all step by step.
I write this to you on Sunday, not long before this newsletter goes out, and I’m tired. At least all my page and cover proofs are done, and I’ve booked some things (April 25th in Los Angeles, May 8th in Chicago, and a date in NY to come). My calendar is full from now until almost the end of July even though I really want to book readings in Portland and Seattle, yet all planning, to me, feels pervaded by unknowns about what state this country will be in at any given time. Books have been saving me this year and I’m trying to make space to read more poetry. For anyone who can envision June 2025, and wants to escape to the mountains at an art camp to write for a week, consider Idyllwild Arts Writer’s Week, where I’m one of the faculty this year. This is my second time teaching nonfiction there, so if you have any questions, let me know. Let’s visualize time writing together in the earliest days of summer. Let’s visualize [redacted]. Let’s visualize succeeding in our efforts to upend, interrupt, and disrupt.
Take care, everyone.
