Evidence of the first cast on I managed to do on my own and I feel like I could take over the world.
It’s been a week since I returned from the retreat I was a part of in Woodstock. I’ve spent the last 6 days trying to figure out how to describe the experience, but I keep coming up short. How do you explain that a weekend with complete strangers was one of the most profound and healing experiences of your life? I haven’t figured it out, but here’s what I do know.
Isolation, loneliness, and anxiety are at an all time high, and yet part of the solution is simple. My biggest takeaway from a weekend with complete strangers is that what we need is connection. When researchers followed people for their entire lives, they found that good relationships were the most important thing for health and happiness.
Connection is our life force and it costs NOTHING. It’s not something we can buy, and that’s what makes it so simple, and so hard. Shopping, consuming, scrolling, these are quick fixes to feel good, but the price we pay for them isn’t just money and time.
When we confront our desire for connection, we acknowledge our own vulnerability, the reality that we do in fact need each other. It goes against the very things our culture tells us define success: toughness, self-reliance and independence. Connection requires the opposite: humility, trust, and acknowledging that we are actually better off together.
Sixteen women came together, most not knowing each other ahead of time. What we left with was an experience and connection we will share for the rest of our lives. It happened because every person came with an open heart and mind. The weekend proved to me what scientists have spent decades studying, that the secret to a happy and healthy life is available to all of us, if only we’re willing to open ourselves up to it.
The question is, are we willing to put in the work and face the uncomfortable vulnerability required to build true community? Or will we settle for a future empty of the connection that gives life true joy and meaning? Last weekend was proof that women are already choosing the former, and I’m betting on us.
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Welcome to my weekly newsletter Click. Read. Love. which goes out to subscribers on Sunday mornings. It has all the best things I’ve discovered throughout the week. This week feels like a really great combination of humor, politics, pop-culture, and wtf(?!). Enjoy!
In this week’s Click. Read. Love.
So I guess Baby Ivy’s (feeder schools in pre-k) are a thing?
No one is safe from Meta’s AI smart glasses
Corporations benefiting from welfare recipients
The only take I needed on the Timothée Chalamet debacle
A fellow Vermonter saving stuffies from the landfill
The best place in the world to find a boyfriend/husband (spoiler: not the US)
A phenomenal podcast about the lack of regulation of PFAS (forever chemicals)
How to get a free tree if you live near me
and more!
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