Say more (again)...
a roundup of music, movement, grub, and the show on Netflix that got us all crying our damn eyes out.
Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays—sometimes I smush them together. I have some fun new stuff on the horizon, that I teased last week. I also do a biweekly podcast with my husband & periodically do an advice-esque segment and roundups. The latter of which is what we have on the docket for today.
I’m going to level with you. I was going to wait much longer before doing one of these again, but then I watched One Day on Netflix. Waiting flew out the window. Must discuss.
This is going to be a longer round up because I just want to share all the things that are lighting me up lately.
Come along and play in the sand with me…
Music
I’m starting with music, because well, what a time in music it’s been. I can’t even fully articulate my feelings around Beyonce’s new album. Frankly, I’m not worthy. Instead I direct you to
of who wrote about Black Country Culture. It’s brilliant and beautiful:Don’t Do Me No Good by Madi Diaz and Kacey Musgraves
I’m past my weeding out the ones who “don’t do me good” days, but I certainly had my time in the sun with that concept. This duet is crushing. It haunts me.
Deeper Well by Kacey Musgraves
I’ll be honest. This isn’t my favorite song of hers musically, but these particular lyrics stopped me in my tracks:
So, I'm getting rid of the habits
That I feel are real good at wasting my time
No regrets, baby
I just think that maybe
It's natural when things lose their shine
So other things can glow
I've gotten older, now I know
How to take care of myself
I've found a deeper well
From what I’ve read, she’s referring to her relationship to weed, but damn if this couldn’t be about my own sobriety. It’s been hard for me to parse out when I stopped having a relationship with alcohol I could stomach. It feels insincere to say it never worked within my life, because it did. Until it didn’t. Until it lost it’s shine, so other things could glow.
Swoon. Thanks Kacey, for the words.
This Feeling by Alabama Shakes
Not a new song, but I’m on my annual Alabama Shakes kick where I listen to only them for a few weeks. One of my biggest regrets in life is missing seeing them live.
If you immediately feel like crying when you click play, it’s because it’s beautiful—AND because it was in the last scene of Fleabag.
(disclaimer: even though I linked to that clip, don’t. DO NOT. watch it unless you’re ready to have your heart ripped out your chest before we even get to One Day. I just watched it and now I’m fully crying.)
Bunny in a Bunny Suit by Simone White
Thank you to my friend’s Spotify Discover Weekly that brought this into my life. I’m currently in Chicago and having all sorts of feelings about how I was/felt/acted while I lived out my 20’s here. I will be exploring this more in an upcoming newsletter, but for now, this song.
Departing Thoughts: If you haven’t watched RAYE’s performance from SNL a few weeks ago, do that. After it drops 4/19, I’ll be doing an initial reaction newsletter, a la dialgouing on dialogue, to Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department. eeeee.
Movement
I love yin yoga.1 I’ve talked about it several times here on dialoguing already. Can’t stop. Won’t stop.
And now, I give you one of my faves.
I have a huge aversion toward working on my upper body. I’m not sure if this is gendered socialization or just me. When I say work, I mean I have to force myself to do upper body strength, stretching, anything, really. It’s like I forget my upper body exists.
For me, this is a huge problem for I am a trunk tension holding girlie. My massage therapist has a field day up there. He’s constantly telling me to stand with the confidence of a toddler (jut out my hips and say that shit with your chest kind of energy) and lift heavier weights to support all the shoulder bullshit leftover from my volleyball days.
All this to say, I gravitate toward lower body focused stretching and yoga. That was until I found this class. It’s a 30-minute yin yoga class from Peloton2. I’ve done it more than 10 times since it was released. It’s mostly upper body and oh. My. good. Lord. it’s the best. It gets in so deep to where I hold my tension and anxiety. By the time I’m done I can breath entirely different than I did when I started. I can’t recommend it enough. Enjoy.
TV
One Day on Netflix
Even though the trailer really appealed to me, I dragged my feet to start this one. One of the lead characters, Dexter, is played by Leo Woodall. Leo’s performance in the second season of White Lotus was so unnerving to me (think: scary, controlling, kidnapper vibes), I thought it would prevent me from buying into him as a romantic lead. Butttt, everyone was raving about it so I turned it on one day.
It took about three seconds for me to buy in 🤣 He’s a charming, little stud, after all. And playing our other lead, Emma, is Ambika Mod. She is utterly and completely divine.
I’m a sucker for a good premise. For those unfamiliar, this show—that once was movie and before that a book—follows two people across several years. The hook is that we see them once a year for one day, the same day-July 15th—beginning on the very first night they meet. Then we hold on for dear life and watch how they weave in and out of each other’s lives over the following almost 20 years.
If you’ve seen anything about it, it’s likely you’ve heard it’s sad and/or heartbreaking. And that is accurate.
I also found it relieving.
Before I forget, this is where I should put this—SPOILERS. AGAIN, SPOILERS. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, KEEP READING TIL YOU SEE STEVE MARTIN’S NAME.
I found it relieving because it reminded me of how we just go through it. Life. It’s not a project to perfect or a finish line to reach as soon as possible.
It’s to be a bit fumbled through. To be a bit messy. To have the insecure moments. To grapple toward something that feels true. That’s how you get to the real stuff.
As we watch Dex and Emma, obviously the thing they want is for us to want them to just bridge that gap and be together. But as much as I wanted that—and I SO did—I also wanted them to just be. Not “figure it out.” Just let it be what it was, when it was, as they were.
I’m sure (again MAJOR SPOILER-GO FIND STEVE) when she dies only a few years into them getting to be together, really together, there are regrets levied at “wasted time.”
But, I just don’t know if I see it as wasted (although Dex was very much wasted, in the other sense, much of that time). It seemed to me, they were both trying to find their steady core. Their Self. My romantic part believes that is what they wanted to bring to their time together. Which meant waiting and wanting. Screwing up. Missing it. Missing each other.
To me, their love felt really imperfect. I loved that. Even when they found each other in the end, it was still messy, dull, and rich all at once.
Departing Thoughts on One Day: First and foremost, my departing thought is fuck…Beyond that I was blown away when I realized upon a closer look that these episodes were roughly about 30 minutes each—some shorter, some longer. The emotion of just simply talking will get it done every time. And lastly, for real this time, the first episode had one of my favorite songs of all time. If I ever write a movie, this song will be in it as we first lay eyes on our protagonist. Mark my words.
Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces on Apple+
I’ll level with you. I was drawn to this after seeing a headline about Steve Martin tearing up about his relationship with John Candy in this doc. That’s all it takes for me to have buy in. Crying. I’m a simple psycho in that way.
The documentary is broken into 2 hourish segments. It’s all good by any metric, but the first bit is only voices. No sit down interviews where you can see the interviewees. I can’t tell you how much this bothered me. When the second part started and it opened on Steve walking around his kitchen, I groaned to my husband, “Oh, Thank God.”
I’m not sure what that is about. I guess I need to see the person for it to land? Am I alone in this? Please advise.
Like most deep dives on comedians, it shows a much more serious person than we’re led to believe is in there. Serious about life. Serious about their craft.
Seeking, searching. Aren’t we all?
Departing Thoughts on TV: This SNL skit about Pilates had me screaming with laughter. Now that it’s on Disney+, anytime I can’t get motivated to do shit, I just throw on Taylor’s Eras Tour Concert Film and all of a sudden I’m capable of all sorts of stuff. Archie drew a picture of our family recently which included Taylor. So, I guess, my job is done.
Food
As we know, I’m not the resident chef in our home, but I made a little something recently that was so delicious I wanted to share. If I can do it, you can do it. It was the Crispy Coconut Shrimp and Shallots from NYT. It felt very orange chicken-y to me, but with shrimpies.
The two little tweaks I did were (1) I let the sauce really thicken up, leaving it on low for at least double the time it said, but kept my eye on it and (2) instead of drizzling the sauce over the rice and shrimp, I tossed only the shrimp in the sauce. This warmed up the shrimp before serving. Then I topped a bowl of rice with the saucy shrimp. These changes were not culinary-inspired choices but rather lifestyle-inspired (didn’t have time to sit down to eat yet), but I feel it really elevated it. A textured, flavorful bop.
Podcasts
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned Internal Family Systems (IFS) in today’s newsletter yet, but if I haven’t that would be shocking. If you’re new here and don’t know what the heck IFS is about,
recently wrote about her experience with IFS and provided a great primer. I’ve also written about it in nearly every single one of my previous newsletters so you can also find some of that content here, but honestly hers is simultaneously concise and fleshed out.I say all this because the founder of IFS, Dick Schwartz, was on the podcast We Can Do Hard Things recently for two full episodes where he talks about the model and does a demonstration with each of the hosts. To me, this is a huge moment. A breaking through into more mainstream exposure for IFS. The idea that more people are being informed about this framework is so exciting and fills me with a great deal of hope.
Books 📚
My friend,
, rebranded her Substack recently to be geared more toward how to protect our reading habits. Maybe even flourish in them. She has inspired the hell out of me this week after quite a reading drought. So I’ve made some real progress on the draft of her (!!) book and have a few books waiting in the wings. Next time this section will be stacked. For now, head over to for all your book needs.🗞️
What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath by David Marchese
I may be an outlier here, but I found this interview with Patric Gagne to be really illuminating. In it she shares quite openly about her experience of Sociopathy (or more commonly referred to in my field as antisocial personality disorder). Even just typing that, I can feel all of our messaging from society pulsating through my fingers. However, and this may be startling, as I read the interview, I found myself nodding a long. Realizing how on a spectrum most things are, even sociopathy. Strongly recommend if you’re open to having your perspective widened.
Additional intrigue elements for this interview is that Patric was a therapist at one point and did this column for Modern Love in 2020.
Questions for you:
What are you listening to right now on repeat?
Did you watch One Day? How was it for you? What came up for you watching them move in and out of closeness with each other? And please dish it if you got it: Did you ever have a One Day-esque romance?
What is up next for you reading, watching, listening-wise? What are we getting into these days?
Catch this one before it goes into the archives in a few days:
If you liked this, you may also like:
I don’t work for them or anything but just in case you didn’t know, you don’t need to have a bike, tread or rower to use the Peloton app. They have lots of classes for mat, outdoor and strength. They also typically have a free trial for the app workouts if you’re interested.
Thanks for all the great music recs! "Archie drew a picture of our family recently which included Taylor." What a precious little monkey, I absolutely love this so much. Really appreciated your thoughts on One Day, how we just "go through it". I was left feeling unsettled and almost angry with that series, but I can see the beauty of it through your lens. Time wasn't wasted, it was just messy and imperfect (which so much of life is).
I haven’t seen “One Day” yet and am not sure why…I read (and loved) the book ages ago and also saw the movie, so it is on my list. I guess maybe I’m waiting until I’m in the right headspace because I know it’ll wreck me.
I did actually have a similar romance years ago (ie someone who kept resurfacing until we finally got together for a while.) It didn’t end well (no one died) but it’s a good story that I plan to write about someday, if/when I can find the words.