Welcome to a groupchat with your best friends
I've been threatening to start a newsletter for weeks, and here it is. Get comfy.
Hello!
🤸♀️ Welcome to the first edition of The Girlfriend Groupchat! I’m so happy you’re here. This newsletter is inspired by a 5-year-and-counting text chain I have with some of my best friends. It’s a wonderful place - supportive, uplifting, and filled with advice on how to look, feel, and do better.
Each week, I'll send out a distillation our discussions: from how to deal with mansplaining at work to the dankest cute animal memes. I hope you’ll stick around.
The big discussion // the sad anniversary
Last year this time, my boyfriend and I were planning a housewarming, having just moved into a creaky, sun-lit apartment near the park. We ended up cancelling and eating a tub of party size hummus alone with a spoon (maybe that was just me): the mayor had just declared shelter-in-place, an unfamiliar phrase that soon joined the vocabulary of the new normal.
A year on, you’re probably as ragged around the edges as I am. My friends and I have been talking about ways to reckon with the pain and grief of a lost year.
🎈Account for your privilege…Remember we aren’t all in the same storm: those of us with WFH jobs, who’ve been healthy, and whose families are safe are in much bigger boats. Our Black friends, in particular, have had a year (a life) filled with the additional trauma of racial violence and injustice. Even now, vaccines aren’t equitably reaching the hardest hit Black and POC communities (that, not coincidentally, make up disproportionate amounts of essential workers).
🎈… and recommit to the work to address it: Many of us started or grew in our anti-racism work last summer. If, like me, you’ve perhaps done a little less since, consider how you can continue working to correct these injustices. I’ve learned so much from Rachel Cargle and her curated materials on the Great Unlearn: A “self paced, self priced learning collective… celebrating and highlighting the genius of academics of colour.” I love syllabuses - like the lil nerd I am - so I’m currently working through the materials on “Unlearning America’s Birth Story”. Consider joining me - I’d love to talk about what we (un)learn and action we can take.
🎈Honor your personal journey: We all did some odd things to cope. I rearranged the furniture. I lost two grandparents - then I bought 30 plants. I moved the fridge. We do odd things to cope.
🎈 Allow yourself to hope: There are vaccines! To help tide myself over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to list tangible moments of small joys: finding sidewalk chalk drawings, admiring the magnolias in bloom, taking pictures of friends that I meet in the park, masks and all. We’re so close to a sunlit summer.
I’d love to know what your journeys looked like, as raw and painful as they might be, if you’re open to sharing. Just reply to this email.
The small talk // 💧 Hydromate clear water bottle:
Every day, I say I should drink more water. And then I don’t. I’ve tried SO many things - Flavored waters, a reminder app, fasting on just water for the morning - turns out, all I needed was a sippy cup and generic motivational messages, since I am but an easily convinced baby.
This clear water bottle is no Nalgene (go easy on it) but dang it I’m drinking 64 oz a day because my simple lizard brain just needs to see the progress across time stamp markings. Keep it on your desk and I promise that your pee will be clear in a day.
The forward // This duck
There’s an Australian farm Instagram account run by two sisters who seem cottagecore as hell, and I’m only a little jealous that I don’t get to wear lacy dresses and frolic daily with geese. They posted this sleepy duck with a flower hat. I don’t care if you’ve seen it before. Look at it again.
That’s all for this week - if you’d like to see me in your inbox weekly, please subscribe. Be well,
Such a feel good piece! Love it!
It’s a fun and refreshing read in not so good times. Keep it up, Shreya!!