🧵 Thursday Thread: “True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings." ~Pema Chodron
In honor of community, today is for YOU. Links to your Substack & other writing, recipes for your bread pudding (if only we could post pics in comments!), all your best stuff, please!
I was about sixteen when I first heard this famous Margaret Mead quote:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
Mead’s words went in deep—it was like drinking a truth serum spiked with hope.
These days, it’s harder to hold onto that spiked feeling, harder to feel the immutable truth of Mead’s words—yet, I cling to them like a raft in this ever-rising sea.
So I stayed up late last night watching the news about Milton tearing across Florida, thinking about my friends there—beautiful writers I love, Katrina, Krystyna, Jan, Kristine, Amy, Suella, and many, many from our WITD community. If you know I know your name and I’m forgetting, please know I love you nonetheless!
And while my “love and prayers” feel impotent against the onslaught of climate change and its destructive consequences, and while my donations feel paltry, I still believe community does matter, what we do is important, and our kinship with each other will make a difference. I’ll keep believing that for as long as I’m here, because the alternative—well, there is no alternative.
Mead’s words remain my beacon.
It’s in the light of that beacon that we celebrate our quarterly community thread.
The idea for our community threads came from a Live Salon open mic reading over the summer, where some of you said it would be helpful to know where to follow each other and to find each other’s work here and also outside of Substack.
And that’s an important part of the vision for the creative creative community we’re building here! It’s the same reason we host our occasional WITD classifieds, where members offer their services (paid or free), sell stuff, find reading groups or writing groups where you can use the WITD workshop method to advance your manuscripts (like Amy Stonestrom did to land her piece in the NYT or like Billie Oh did to land theirs in HuffPost), or just connect with other people interested in birding or gardening or whatever else under the sun. Our classifieds are great fun.
And so are these community threads, which are more like a big writerly extravaganza of sharing, self-promo, and celebration. You can share almost anything you want here, as long as it’s kind (we’ll delete it if it’s shady so don’t do that).
You can check out the first one here—it was epic.
And here are some ideas:
Any links to and/or titles of published work & where we can read it/buy it
Links to your own Substacks and maybe a little more description than we’d find on in the short taglines!
Links to website(s) if you have one
Other cool stuff we might want to know about you that isn’t on the internet, like that bread pudding recipe you’re famous for
An arts or craft project you recently finished or started
A recent soberversary or any other personal anniversary you care about
Any other recent achievement, endeavor, or initiative you’re excited or anxious or triumphant about
Any books, movies, TV shows, podcasts you’ve loved lately
We just want to hear your own voices celebrating the Universe inside of you
Don’t be shy—as long as it’s not mean or harmful, we want to celebrate your stuff
Please give your comment a HEADING in ALL CAPS saying what it is you are sharing (e.g., BOOK LINK, ESSAY LINK, LINK TO MY SUBSTACK, BREAD PUDDING RECIPE, STORY ABOUT MY GRANDMA, etc.).
Also, feel free to share more than one thing, but in the name of easier scrolling and finding, consider dividing your shares into two or more comments if the things you are sharing are in wildly different categories (i.e., I probably wouldn’t put my memoir and my pie in the same comment, but, then again, who knows, we’re building this ship as we sail it).
Also, one more thought about celebrating ourselves and sharing our gifts: Brene Brown says joy is the most vulnerable emotion we can have, because the more joy we allow ourselves, the scarier it is to recognize how much we have to lose, and how little control we have over our lives.
It takes courage to allow for joy, and to celebrate the beauty of our lives. But as with all other scary things, it gets easier with practice. So, again, don’t be shy!
Love,
Jeannine
PS Threads/comments are a rich, safe space for paid members to convene. Upgrade/manage your membership here any time to join the conversation, or give the gift of WITD to someone who needs it. Thank you for Writing in the Dark together!