Friday Happy Hour: As a woman of many appetites, here’s what fed me on Substack this week

Introducing my new Friday series, Happy Hour: What Delighted Me This Week (most often, it's a wonderful writer here on Substack). Pull up a chair and join me.

What is it to be a woman of appetite? Since I published my newsletter Tuesday on learning to celebrate my aging and perfectly imperfect body, I have been thinking about all the ways I feed myself—body, heart and soul—and why I find it empowering, especially as a woman, to lay claim to my hunger.

I have such a hunger for life. For all the things. I want to do and learn and be and grow. I want to taste and feel and move. I want to touch and hold, and be touched and held. I want it all, everything on life’s menu. And, in this microcosm of Substack, I am finding humanity’s beautifully varied menu on full display.

There are so many teachers here, so much heart and laughter and wisdom as well as a good dose of outrage and provocation because sometimes you need a dish with a bit of heat. And because I am ravenous for all of it, I hit the “subscribe” button the way I used to pour myself wine. (It will be three years of sobriety on Feb 1, cue happy dance). Yet giving myself permission to embrace my appetite, in all the ways, has taken years.

Growing up, I received messages that maybe I should tone it down. My membership in the clean-plate club was a little…unladylike. A phrase I heard often as a girl—”She eats like a bird”—was intended as a great compliment. I was no slender sparrow, pecking at my food. I was more like a turkey vulture. I took delight in my meals, often asking for second helpings. My father used to joke about my healthy appetite, saying “step on her foot and her mouth opens.” My siblings laughed and I laughed along with them because I understood my father was teasing me. But those early messages about my appetite sunk into my psyche, sending me on a dieting rollercoaster starting in my early teens that I’m only now trying to exit. What I choose to eat and how much I eat has become inextricably tied to guilt and shame; that’s a lot of societal conditioning to undo.

I am a woman who needs to satisfy her hunger quickly. Intermittent fasting is not for me. You don’t want to be around me when I’m “hangry.” My hunger pangs are insistent, preventing me from focusing on anything else until my appetite is sated. Once I’ve enjoyed my food, I am content again until the next time. I’m not a snacker (at least most of the time). But a delicate, birdlike eater I am not.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash Substack is like these delectable donuts, at times almost too beautiful to eat but always delicious and satisfying

When it comes to feeding my intellect and my heart and soul, Substack is filling me up these days. I am a glutton on Substack, an incorrigibly proud one. I knew I had been binging on subscriptions (so many tasty morsels!) but when I checked today and saw I had 200 subscriptions my head started spinning. I am wondering if any other Substackians have me beat?

Of those newsletters, about 14% are paid, which at close to 30 subs, is still considerable. Since last year, I have been extending my budget for Substack subscriptions just a little bit more, cutting back on other expenses. When a wonderful writer or intriguing  subject matter comes across my radar via Notes or a recommendation from a friend who tells me I absolutely have to check out a newsletter because here is yet another kindred soul—I mean, what choice do I have?

Sometimes I choose a dish off the menu that I can’t finish, even though it is beautifully prepared and extremely tempting. That includes

Story Club with George Saunders

where if I had been officially taking one of his creative writing classes at Syracuse University I would have flunked out well before I decided to quit (for lack of time and because, as a long-form prose writer, I was less drawn to the study of the short story than I hoped I would be). Yet I came away with some gems, like this one from his charmingly titled, “First Thohts on Revision.”

Writing fiction, as those of you who have tried it will attest, is hard. It involves taking that weird lump called The Self and using it to make something up, then using that same Self to revise that highly personal, even obnoxiously self-referential, made-up, thing into something, well, universal – something that other people can enter pleasurably, that speaks to their experience.—George Saunders 

I also had paid for but never really got swept away by

Backstory Serial

, the romance novel serialized by Mary Trump, E. Jean Carroll and Jen Taub called Italian Lessons. It wasn’t the quality of the story or the writing, both of which are captivating. It was the format. I am a hard cover/paperback reading kind of woman when it comes to fiction. I forgot all about reading the weekly installments because they were hidden in the recesses of my phone or laptop.

Sorry, George, Mary, E. Jean and Jen—I had the best intentions. Some meals aren’t meant to be finished.

Coming face to face with my Substack obsession did however have a silver lining. Over the next several weeks, for paid subscribers (with a generous amuse-bouche for all readers), I will share a small tasting menu of the delights I enjoy each week—the newsletters that are nourishing my clarity, connection, community and creativity.

I’m calling the series What’s on the Menu? This Week’s Substack Delights. Sprinkled in will be a few a la carte items, for variety. So, pull out your napkins and let’s dig in!

Clarity

With body-loving, age-embracing goodness on my mind this week, I was drawn to a few favorites that add clarity to my palate when I am in the mood for badass women who say to their gorgeous, aging, full-appetite selves: Bring it on!

JULIA HUBBEL

who writes

Too Old For This Sh*t

is a role model for me on her take-no-prisoners attitude toward aging with adventure, style and compassion for herself and others struggling to get out from under societal expectations of how women in particular are supposed to age. This week I NEEDED to read “You and I are Too Old to Melt Into the Recliners: It’s Time to Kick Out The Excuses and Kickstart Our Lives.” While I’m learning to love and accept my body with its post-divorce and caregiving weight (because berating myself never got me anywhere), I love to move! And there are so many fun ways to move. Julia, who summitted Mount Kenya in 2018 at 65 among many other physical feats, is the perfect person to encourage me. She also guides people on how to keep moving despite disabilities, having recently gone through several surgeries herself. In other words, in Julia’s book, no more excuses!

“Do what you dream of doing. Doesn’t matter what that is. It only matters that you give yourself permission to have options…The point is that if you crave the wide world, it craves you back. There is no reason to recline your way through the last three decades of your life watching other people do interesting things. Let’s have you be that gramma/grampy about whom the kids and grandkids say, ‘Where the hell is s/he THIS time?’ Let’s play.

I always find inspiration on how to age with style and grace with

Sari Botton

and friends at

Oldster Magazine

. Just to be clear, “unliked other age-related media,” as she explains here, Sari explores “what it means to travel through time in a human body—at every phase of life.”

I was delighted to see author, editor and teacher Megan Stielstra answer the Oldster Questionnaire this week. I met Megan when she taught a workshop at the Chautauqua Writer’s Festival in 2023 and she lit that room of nervous, shy writers on fire with her prompts and exercises, getting us up and moving—our bodies and our imaginations. I will never forget her signature phrase—Write that down!—after I bravely shared from my notebook.

So of course I was expecting humor, brilliance and wisdom from Megan as she contemplates what it is like to be 48 and I wasn’t disappointed. Like me, she has been through divorce. But she’s come to the other side of it with the sun shining down bright on her, knowing the truth of Rilke’s poem:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

While there is so much to love in Megan’s responses (the enduring presence of female friends, the best sex of her life—whoa now!—, her refusal to “participate in our culture’s age-related expectations,” how she wants a future version of herself to live just like her late father, with risk and joy and maybe fulfill her 7-year-old desire to be a witch), it was this reply I loved the most:

Aging gave me trust.

Aging took it away, too. The end of my marriage dropped an atomic bomb on my idea of trust. But weirdly? What brought it back?

Younger me.

I’m figuring out what hope means now, in this life, this body. And I’ll tell you what—it means everything.

Connection

A perennial favorite on the menu isBeyond with Jane Ratcliffe. Jane is a consummate interviewer, bringing us breathtaking insights from authors like George Saunders, Cheryl Strayed, and Elizabeth Gilbert.

This week, though, it was Jane’s beautiful writing that helped me connect with the latest, unexpected bout of grief I am feeling 16 months into initiating my divorce. When everything starts to sink in a little more. The loss of the dream. The loss of what could have been.

Her essay Lullaby, “about getting divorced when you’re still (very much) in love,” struck me to my core. The incredibly difficult day I told my ex-husband of three decades that I wanted a divorce, we told each other—and meant it with every fiber of our being—”I will always love you.”

That conversation was on my mind when I read Jane’s words, sharing the moment she knew the marriage was over, in a cab on a New York city street:

And then it was just like in the movies, when a drowning person's life flashes before their eyes. Every flower-petal touch, every sweetness cooed, every fear steadied, every Christmas gift wrapped, every gift opened, every laugh shared, every sickness healed. All of it. In thirty, maybe forty, more likely twenty seconds or less. All of it summarized. All of it felt. All of it remembered and cherished. Then I closed the door. And he was gone.

Every week I hop on over to the

Lily Pond

with

Louisa Wah

, one of my dearest friends, a soul-searcher like me, who always helps me connect with a deeper part of myself. Her latest essay, “What Self-Leadership Means” describes a journey we are on together. She writes about the Internal Family Systems Model developed by psychotherapist Richard Schwartz. He explains the dangers of not acknowledging our younger parts, exiled long ago from our core of Self. If we don’t, we carry unresolved emotions like guilt and shame from childhood experiences into adulthood and our adult relationships.

“By supporting the young parts with their distinct injuries, needs and voices, the Self is holding a safe space for all of them, so that they no longer need to scream and react strongly to get attention. Over time, with patient and compassionate dialogues with our internal family of distinct parts, the parts will separate (“unblend”) from the core Self one by one.”

I felt affirmed to see that among the eight Cs that Schwartz says characterize self energy and self leadership, are Clarity, Creativity, and Connectedness, three of the four Cs I explore each week. (The others are curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion and courage).

I encourage you to delve into this topic more with Louisa. She offers a large helping of self connection!

To enjoy the rest of the meal (and all my Friday newsletters and other paid subscriber perks including my voiceover of every article, which you’ll find at the end), consider supporting my writing with a paid subscription.