I really enjoy your work and have been binge-reading your newsletter since I discovered Disorderland two weeks ago. I've been trying to challenge my relationship with success and create a life that doesn't need external validation from symbols of systemic power to feel like my life is worth something. Your writing gives me so much to think about and reflect and I spend a lot of time going down research rabbit holes after I read your work - which is a testament to how much knowledge you can deliver in such a short-medium. I really look up to you and am glad I found this space. Thanks so much for your hard work!
I like to read your newsletters at bedtime because a lot of what I’m taking in here makes total sense to me—and that’s comforting 😌. Some of it makes me laugh because of how true it is! That’s good for relaxing too. I appreciate you calling in your substack subscribers to engage together. I’d love to share feedback with you on how your work has impacted me :) Looking forward to being able to join a community or group session (or maybe even a 1 on 1 session)!
Great newsletter! I am curious if you think we are able separate “self-help” behaviours, such as meditation, yoga, journalling, from this incessant need to fix ourselves and return to productivity. I just listened to a podcast on spirituality and self reflection which inspired me to get back into journalling and try to start meditating again. Then I read this newsletter and became a little discouraged. I think that my reasons for wanting to engage in these self-help activities stems from wanting to bring more peace and self awareness into my life. Perhaps this could translate into me being more productive and successful, but I didn't think of that as the route cause for this behaviour. This being said, can we really separate any self healing from capitalism? Maybe not since it is so intertwined with our lives. I think I kind of answered my own question but am interested in what you think. :) Thank you!
Your work has deeply impacted me at a point when I was open and ready for it. I am so grateful for what you do, and am honored to be able to support and learn from you.
Hey, just wanted to say that I deeply resonate and am so appreciative of your work !! I always share your newsletter with my twin brother and we get to talk about it and understand it and how this has shown up in our lives, family and communities and then what we can do about it. As someone who feels quite young at 19 in these spaces, I am so grateful for your insights and the insights of others you bring into these newsletters and how they are guiding mine and my brother’s burgeoning understanding of the world and systems we are apart of. Thank you !
Ayesha, thank you. I've been following along, listening, appreciating, feeling so, so grateful for... a year? now, and I have been changed by your work (and Jesse's). I'm a humanities PhD cand. at a UC so you can imagine the kind of shit I deal with on the regular. This quarter, though, I'm teaching my class (on the down-low) on the principles of rest and the anti-grind that I've found so incredible in your work, and the work of Tricia Hersey, and we'll read some other works on what it means to read and write with multiple languages under the catastrophically colonial system that is U.S. education, under the concept of grading, all the things. We're taking it slow, folding in lots of reflection, reading your work. There's not much I can do about the conditions of higher ed, but I can sure cozy-pill (lol) the kids. Normally I teach a course on my specialty in Queer Death Studies so I already talk a lot about conditions of death and dying and how they are conditions of life and living, but this will give my students /and/ me a space to really reflect on the grind and our ability to resist capitalism and anti-Blackness, and go forth into our communities with more wisdom. So again, thank you!
i found your work over the summer. each post felt like you were tear down the veil i was clinging to for the delusion of control. i’m a survivor (i hate that word!) and i have learned for much in therapy. however with this examination of systems i am shedding the veil. sitting with the vulnerability of being a hamster on a wheel, spinning out on my collection of psychology books that keep me chasing the fiction of healing. if only i could self actualize— that would seam the hole in me. i release the dualism of a bad guy who did cruel things. i’m someone who since childhood has felt the hole of colonization. stunted family members, shallow day-to-day routine, helplessness all around. church felt gross, reinforcing superiority complexes that reduced my life to meaningless. literally everyone around me was living to die— of course i was too young to understand capitalism and patriarchy but i felt the robotic insistence of both in my life. i’m grateful to be here, making meaning and learning how to be in community. not one that dehumanizes my body for the afterlife. one that teaches me how to support and love people now. i come from people that don’t know how to do this. the social conditioning has really made love numb.
I really enjoy your work and have been binge-reading your newsletter since I discovered Disorderland two weeks ago. I've been trying to challenge my relationship with success and create a life that doesn't need external validation from symbols of systemic power to feel like my life is worth something. Your writing gives me so much to think about and reflect and I spend a lot of time going down research rabbit holes after I read your work - which is a testament to how much knowledge you can deliver in such a short-medium. I really look up to you and am glad I found this space. Thanks so much for your hard work!
I like to read your newsletters at bedtime because a lot of what I’m taking in here makes total sense to me—and that’s comforting 😌. Some of it makes me laugh because of how true it is! That’s good for relaxing too. I appreciate you calling in your substack subscribers to engage together. I’d love to share feedback with you on how your work has impacted me :) Looking forward to being able to join a community or group session (or maybe even a 1 on 1 session)!
Great newsletter! I am curious if you think we are able separate “self-help” behaviours, such as meditation, yoga, journalling, from this incessant need to fix ourselves and return to productivity. I just listened to a podcast on spirituality and self reflection which inspired me to get back into journalling and try to start meditating again. Then I read this newsletter and became a little discouraged. I think that my reasons for wanting to engage in these self-help activities stems from wanting to bring more peace and self awareness into my life. Perhaps this could translate into me being more productive and successful, but I didn't think of that as the route cause for this behaviour. This being said, can we really separate any self healing from capitalism? Maybe not since it is so intertwined with our lives. I think I kind of answered my own question but am interested in what you think. :) Thank you!
i never missed your single story, you are amazing , your writing is next level , very relatable
Your work has deeply impacted me at a point when I was open and ready for it. I am so grateful for what you do, and am honored to be able to support and learn from you.
Hey, just wanted to say that I deeply resonate and am so appreciative of your work !! I always share your newsletter with my twin brother and we get to talk about it and understand it and how this has shown up in our lives, family and communities and then what we can do about it. As someone who feels quite young at 19 in these spaces, I am so grateful for your insights and the insights of others you bring into these newsletters and how they are guiding mine and my brother’s burgeoning understanding of the world and systems we are apart of. Thank you !
In solidarity, Darcy
You are reaching and resonating with me 💗
Ayesha, thank you. I've been following along, listening, appreciating, feeling so, so grateful for... a year? now, and I have been changed by your work (and Jesse's). I'm a humanities PhD cand. at a UC so you can imagine the kind of shit I deal with on the regular. This quarter, though, I'm teaching my class (on the down-low) on the principles of rest and the anti-grind that I've found so incredible in your work, and the work of Tricia Hersey, and we'll read some other works on what it means to read and write with multiple languages under the catastrophically colonial system that is U.S. education, under the concept of grading, all the things. We're taking it slow, folding in lots of reflection, reading your work. There's not much I can do about the conditions of higher ed, but I can sure cozy-pill (lol) the kids. Normally I teach a course on my specialty in Queer Death Studies so I already talk a lot about conditions of death and dying and how they are conditions of life and living, but this will give my students /and/ me a space to really reflect on the grind and our ability to resist capitalism and anti-Blackness, and go forth into our communities with more wisdom. So again, thank you!
i found your work over the summer. each post felt like you were tear down the veil i was clinging to for the delusion of control. i’m a survivor (i hate that word!) and i have learned for much in therapy. however with this examination of systems i am shedding the veil. sitting with the vulnerability of being a hamster on a wheel, spinning out on my collection of psychology books that keep me chasing the fiction of healing. if only i could self actualize— that would seam the hole in me. i release the dualism of a bad guy who did cruel things. i’m someone who since childhood has felt the hole of colonization. stunted family members, shallow day-to-day routine, helplessness all around. church felt gross, reinforcing superiority complexes that reduced my life to meaningless. literally everyone around me was living to die— of course i was too young to understand capitalism and patriarchy but i felt the robotic insistence of both in my life. i’m grateful to be here, making meaning and learning how to be in community. not one that dehumanizes my body for the afterlife. one that teaches me how to support and love people now. i come from people that don’t know how to do this. the social conditioning has really made love numb.