Cruel Compendium #35 š
The art of flipping men, reframing failure, and the return of making out
IāmĀ Jillian Anthony, and this is Cruel Summer Book Club, a newsletter about change, heartbreak and healing. In the Cruel Compendium I send out links to everything Iām reading and thinking about. Last week I wrote about the joys of living alone. Thanks for being here.
Iām reading
Some People Flip Real Estate. I Flip Men. By Kelly Sundberg. This was personally painful for me to read; I assume it will be for many straight women.
Do you fuck your friends? by David. Iām reading The Ethical Slut right now and this post is a fascinating dive into some of the concepts Iām unlearning through this book, such as the inherent heterosexual āfactā that you shouldnāt fuck your friends.
Iām a privately educated Oxford graduate but I still struggled to fit in as a Black woman in the workplace by Otegha Uwagba. Iām so looking forward to her new book We Need to Talk About Money, and have been loving her podcast about women and their work, In Good Company.
The first Black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay talks about her struggles with The Bachelor franchise, and why she eventually chose to leave it all behind. Iāve never watched this show, but Lindsay says so many fascinating and important things about the state of racism in Hollywood and TV today.
Thom Wong on divorce and reframing what we consider failures in relationships in his newsletter, Supergranular.
The other reason I talk about divorce is itās a pretty useful way to reframe what we think about failure, specifically what we think failure is.
If youāre not currently in a relationship, 100% of your relationships have ended. To this crowd-pleasing, feel-good sentiment Iāll add, if you are in a relationship right now and itās your second, 50% have ended. Third? 66%.
And then, in a move historians will one day call āa real point makerā, Iāll ask, does it make sense to talk about something as complex as relationships in terms of success and failure when most of us, at best, will āfailā in over half of them?
Women now drink as much as menānot so much for pleasure, but to cope by Aneri Pattani
[Women are] at greater risk for hangovers, blackouts, liver disease, alcohol-induced cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers. One study found alcohol-related visits to the emergency room from 2006 to 2014Ā increased 70% for women, compared with 58% for men. Another paper reported that the rate of alcohol-related cirrhosis from 2009 to 2015 roseĀ 50% for women, compared with 30% for men.
Katie Seaver on some intense ideas to remove screens from our lives. No screens after dinner, no email on weekends and totally screen-free weekends are a few of her ideas. Iām all for it, but unsure I could practically implement these! Because I am addicted to screens! Could you?
Questionable self-care advice
Support system
Vision board
Barton Springs truly slaps. You can catch me topless there all summer long.
Obsessions
š Making out is back, baby
š NPRās joy generator
š¼ļø A gorgeous art Tumblr
š¦ This Canadian tattoo artist made me feel things in places I forgot about
š When you give your spiritual practice up for a few weeks and your crystals judge you
šŗšø Can you answer the hardest US citizenship test questions? I couldnāt!
āØ An introduction to digital accessibility. Iām learning and working on this!
šµ The Mexican WixĆ”rika peopleās annual desert hunt for peyote is being threatened by drug tourism. Gorgeous photos.
š A tool to find out what Native land you stand on
š A site to search for hosts who share your same values and interests
Minerva moment
Anthem
I shared my loss playlist with a friend who needed it this week. Sharing it here in case you need a list of embarrassingly earnest, sad songs Iāve been curating since 2011, too.
Mood
Have watched this so, so many times.
Cruel compliments
Frederik Neckar wrote about discovering the work of psychologist Guy Winch after his divorce, and quoted my own CSBC interview with Winch. It was so interesting to see someone elseās perspective on Winchās work on mending a broken heart. Thanks Frederik, and thanks for sharing so much of yourself.
A few days ago, I watched a very helpfulĀ TED talkĀ called āHow to fix a broken heart.ā Jillian Anthony interviewed the speaker, Guy Winch, on herĀ Substack. I like how Winch reframed getting over heartbreak into an active process rather than waiting for time to heal the wound.
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