What's Feeding Me 🐛 vol. 7
a monthly buffet of creative fodder
The Webs We Weave is a free weekly-ish newsletter on staying connected to ourselves, making connections in our creative work, and feeling more connected in the world.
Hello! 👋
When I pull together these monthly round-ups, I’m not really looking for a unifying thread that ties all the pieces together. But sometimes, one emerges so plainly it’s hard to ignore. It hardly feels like a coincidence that, as we’re staring down the barrel of an incredibly stressful election week in the U.S. on top of everything else, much of what I’ve been reading and thinking about in the last month touches on uncertainty and how we respond to it.
My writing friend Nicole shared this note coming out of an incredible writing workshop with Marie Howe that I also was lucky enough to watch, and I feel these words so deeply.
Maybe this is how we get through watching the world burn.
Take good care this week: of your nervous system, of each other, and of our future. And for the love, if you’re in the U.S. and you haven’t already: VOTE.
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Each month I share a little buffet of things that have been keeping me fed: intellectually, creatively, and emotionally. I invite you to share in the comments what's been feeding you, too! Both with me, and with each other.
📔 Great Writing
📖 First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger
Last month during a getaway trip to the Shenandoah, I spent a slow morning sipping coffee and tearing through Lilly Dancyger’s essay collection, First Love. As the personal essay continues to seduce me more and more as a writer, I’m hungry to read as many well-crafted examples as I can find. The essays in this book read like love letters to the women who made an impact in Dancyger’s life, particularly during challenging and formative eras; the whole collection moved me deeply.
📜 To Make A Snow Angel On a Stranger's Grave by Andrea Gibson
Last month, the always-brilliant Andrea Gibson wrote and shared a different kind of bucket list. To use their words:
“My bucket list of little things aims to live every moment as if it’s my first.”
I love this idea of tiny dreams that feel big, because of the attention and significance we give them. No bungee jumping required. A beautiful reminder that awe is always available.
📜 Part of the practice is returning to the practice by Nic Antoinette
has a way of writing just the thing I need to read. As I’ve been wrestling with my own practices and routines, trying to find commitment to the ones that matter without over-systematizing or being too rigid, reading this piece grounded me in relief and permission to think differently:
“This used to feel like a problem I had to solve; how can I make sure I stay consistent with my writing practice no matter what?
But I find that I am now bored by that question, by its lack of nuance and self-compassion, its ignorance of the fact that to be human is to wander away—from ourselves, each other, our rituals and practices, everything—and to then return again.”
📜 On voting in a swing state by Cody Cook Parrott
This one’s a late-add, but this piece from landed in my inbox this morning and felt right on time. In it, Cody shares both why they are voting the way they are (and what it’s like to do so in a rural small town), plus voices from other organizers and change-makers that helped them make their decision.
“I make a choice to vote for the person who will best let me continue to fight for what I believe in. With pen and tongue, with monetary redistribution, and with on the ground movement work.”
I’m grateful for their vulnerability in sharing, and that these words now exist in the world. Read the full piece below.
🪶 Gate C22 by Ellen Bass
I first heard this poem by the great Ellen Bass in a writing workshop and MY GOD. For a poem about such a seemingly mundane moment, this one left me totally bowled over.
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🎙️ + 📺 Great Listens and Watches
🎙️ Unlocking Us | Grief, Laughter, and Sisterhood
This was a different sort of episode of Unlocking Us, where Brené and her sisters spoke really candidly about the experience and aftermath of losing their mother: first to dementia, and later to death. There was something so interesting and, frankly, reassuring to hear examples of how people navigate grief differently, how to lean on each other, and the role laughter can play in hard, disorienting times.
🎙️ This American Life | This Is the Case of Henry Dee
This entire episode tells one story: of a man who has been incarcerated for nearly 50 years, and is now up for parole—and what happens next. The reporting is great, but more than that, I appreciate the way this episode grapples with bigger questions: about the purpose of punishment, who gets to decide whether a person has been rehabilitated and what that even means, and what constitutes justice. It wasn’t necessarily an easy or a comfortable listen, but a worthy one.
🎙️ Song Exploder | Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Our House
Song Exploder continues to be one of my favorite podcasts. I absolutely loved this episode and its breakdown of all the stories and layers behind the CSNY classic, Our House. It’s a beautiful conversation with Graham Nash about memory, his love with Joni, and how comforting it felt to write a song about home.
I was not emotionally prepared for the moment that starts just shy of the 19:00 mark, where they isolate everyone’s vocal tracks: first individually, then played all together. One minute I was standing in my kitchen buttering a square of cornbread, and the next I was bracing myself against the kitchen counter with a lump in my throat. So freakin’ beautiful.
📺 Shrinking (Series on Apple TV+)
If you’re not already watching Shrinking, let this be a hearty recommendation that you change that as soon as possible. Several of the folks who helped create Ted Lasso are also behind this show, and it shows—plus the cast is killer. (Jason Segel! Jessica Williams! Harrison Ford!) The show manages to address tough topics like grief head-on, make me laugh out loud in every single episode, and just generally feel like a hug. (Below is the trailer for Season 1, to give you a taste.)
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🙇🏼♀️ Current Project or Micro Obsession
(Adapted) NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge
This month inside my writing community, we’re participating in an adapted version of the classic NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge together this month.
In our version, we are to choose a mentor text (a novel, a book of poetry, a collection of essays) that we’ll use for the month. Then each day, we’ll spend our first five minutes reading from our mentor text, then set a pomodoro timer and write for 25 minutes, and then share in the forum. So far it feels really good to return to a daily writing challenge in community with such warm, inspiring, and encouraging people.
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo (or any other challenge) this month?
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🤣 An Internet Giggle, Just Because.
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Your turn!
What’s feeding you lately?
If you’re game, share something that’s been feeding you lately in the comments. A podcast, a book, a habit, a new favorite thing, a project that’s lighting you up, a thing that made you laugh… anything! Let’s crowdsource some good creative fodder. 👇
Until next time,
Michelle
The spark of joy I experience every time I see that little caterpillar pop up in my Substack feed 🙌 the new creative fodder buffet is HERE! Bless you for including a recommendation for Shrinking on here. It is the light this world needs and deserves. I'd add Only Murders in the Building to that mix, if anyone hasn't watched the recent season that just wrapped. Oh, and Ghosts! I just love funny shows that also make me think (but like, not too hard).
And I'm thrilled to be writing alongside you in our version of NaNoWriMo! I've been eating up my mentor text, The Orange by Wendy Cope. It's a reminder I regularly need that great poetry is great poetry, even if it's funny, and that I can write into the funny without the dark, and it's still necessary and good.
I love seeing the various challenges people take on in November! I’m making a zine every day this month.