this vehicle makes frequent stops at your mom's house
🥲crying/😵💫numbing/💥sparking #6
Hey criers. As you read this I am flying home to Philadelphia to throw my sister a baby shower and root for the Eagles. All my Delco aunties who’ve been friends with my mom since they were girls at Cardinal O’Hara will call me Er and say the next shower will be for me and come game time I’ll drink a fountain diet coke and eat skinny pop from Wawa and smile when my mom yells at the TV and cry when I go to bed from overstimulation and that mysterious, nostalgic ache that all daughters get in their mother’s houses. Wish me luck.
This is crying/numbing/sparking, a series where the frequently weepy and frequently numb can both find commiseration, where TMI is not a thing, and where you might just find something that sparks you up, brings you back to life, and helps you keep going.
Let’s get into it.
🥲 MAKING ME CRY:
Petite Maman, a film written and directed by Céline Sciamma, who also wrote and directed Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Petite Maman is something like 75 minutes long, but you should allot 15 extra minutes for crying once it’s over. not that it’s devastating, in fact it’s quite a hopeful and delicate film, but if you’ve lost a grandmother or mother it will definitely open you to that grief.
tears are hard to come by lately. with everything going on, I am more enraged and anxious than I am weepy and tender. i’m ready for a fight. i’m sure the wave will break soon, but right now there’s not many tears to report. let’s keep going.
😵💫 NUMBING ME OUT:
The Sacred Stones trilogy by Kate Golden. fae, witches, magic, enemies to lovers, adventures to distant lands, impending war, ancient prophesies, hate sex, love sex, sex against a tree. uh, yeah. that pretty much sums it up! if you’re an ACOTAR fan, you’ll love it.
The Recruit on Netflix. if I could only convince you to watch this series with two words, they would be: Teo Yoo. (yes, that Teo Yoo, from the 2024 oscar-nominated film Past Lives.)
💥 SPARKING ME UP:
last week I was following a dodge neon down a residential street, and at one of the stop signs I leaned forward, squinting to see the single bumper sticker placed neatly in the center of the hatch. it read: WARNING: this vehicle makes frequent stops at your mom’s house. I have not stopped laughing about it since! just typing it now makes me giggle! I am not ashamed!
talking with friends in person or over video chat or on the phone. texting is good, talking is better.
writing this essay about attention, which is my most popular to date?? how. no really. how. thank you all from the bottom of my little attention-seeking heart, and a special shout out to the moms who told me they gave some extra undivided attention to their kids after reading it. I did not expect that kind of response. ripple effects!!! yes.
speaking of attention, every single word of
’s essay in defense of pretension deserves yours. I could quote the entire thing, but I will leave you with this: “pretension is out, and we are all worse for it. any earnest expression of literacy or tastefulness is now painted with the same social brush as actual elitism.”
and this: “art is the curing of callousness. we have doctors who heal our bodies, psychiatrists who are tasked with healing our minds. it is information, books, paintings, films that can heal our souls. this war on knowing is in reality a war on feeling. on thinking.”this note from
. as someone with ADHD, I think a lot about what my brain needs: what nutrients, how much stimulation and what kind, how much downtime and what kind, how much rest and what kind... on and on. I think appreciate Julie’s list because it is straightforward and practical, but it also feels like good medicine for this moment in time. watch your thought-life. think deeply. listen. stay gentle. yes.
drinking licorice mint tea. yum.
reading my local paper. it’s grim out there, my anxiety’s at an all-time high, but reading the paper is helping me focus on local voices, opportunities to join my community in joy or aide, and stay grounded in what’s happening right here right now in my little city.
I finally finished my YearCompass!!! pls high five me!! air high five, do it! I will feel it! thank you to the real ones who just did an air high five. the YearCompass is “a free booklet that helps you reflect on the year and plan the next one.” if you’ve been following along for a couple months now, you know that i’m not someone who knows anything about time, so resolutions and basically any form of visioning / future planning is lost on me. my sister introduced me to the YearCompass during a siblings trip to joshua tree over new years, and what will take you an afternoon took me a month to complete. don’t let that dissuade you, though, or the fact that it’s february. this was a true joy of an activity, and it gave me a new energy and focus for my year head. it’s not too late. actually, this is the perfect time to do it.
- wrote this very brief story about her 94-year-old Nana trying to fly to barcelona to meet a man she’d recently met on facebook. I have a soft spot for grandmas and also for Sudana, and this piece sparked me right up <3
whatever this is:
FREQUENT CRIER HIGHLIGHT
is a Scottish songwriter that I met on substack back in the early days, and since then i’ve come to know her has a deeply hilarious and outrageously creative human being. last week, she left this comment on my essay “i’m doing this for attention,” and i’m highlighting it here because 
CRIERS TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻
tell me about your sparks please!
🖤 liking, sharing, or commenting on this post helps me reach more criers. thank you for these small but crucial acts of support.
That last meme! Also the nostalgia of fitting back into your life as your mother's nesting doll. I ache just thinking of my little sleigh bed next to the drafty window...
I loved this post. 💕