self care for the season

making space for play and escaping through stories

In the spirit of the holidays and moving through a season where some extra TLC might be needed, I wanted to share my best self-care tips in this edition of Pen and Prose. This is a reminder to anyone who might need it, that we can get through challenging and uncertain times. Maybe we can even become a bit stronger and wiser in the process.

create space for play

Last week, my dog Mysa turned 5 (!). We celebrated the day and week by letting her pick out a toy from our favorite pet store, Canino, and baking her pumpkin and peanut butter cookies. My husband and I adopted Mysa in June 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, after months of applying for rescue dogs that were in very high demand at the time. (I wrote an essay about my quest to adopt a dog if you want the full story.)

Just as she did while in lockdown, Mysa continues to teach us that in tumultuous times, it’s essential to create space for play and curiosity. This is, perhaps, the best part about having a dog — knowing that no matter what, my job is to help her find joy and adventure in each day.

practice mindfulness

At the core of yoga, meditation, and many other wellness modalities is the practice of mindfulness — the state of focusing one’s awareness on the moment. When the world feels like too much, or when I’m trying to process an unpleasant emotion, I try to come back to this practice and remind myself that we have to move through the hard thing to move past it. That requires noticing said emotion and observing how it manifests — what it feels like in the body and mind — without giving it the power to derail us.

write or journal

My work as a writer is to create stories that bring empathy and understanding to the human experience. Even if you don’t write professionally or with the goal of publishing, journaling can be a powerful tool to help articulate your feelings and begin to process them.

Buy a new journal to help jumpstart this practice. Last week at a holiday craft fair, I came across an artist selling these gorgeous notebooks and writing accessories. I couldn’t pass up this dreamy notebook and crystal-filled pen. Seeing these pretty accessories sitting out on my desk inspires me to write a few paragraphs, or a few pages, whenever I can squeeze it in.

immerse yourself in a story

Reading brings us closer to the world we live in and our human condition, but it also offers us escape. One of my favorite things about “lighter” fiction and “beach reads” is their ability to help us heal. Their immense power to capture our hearts and minds in the moments we most need to be pulled into a new story. I’m in the mood right now for anything with well-drawn characters and a gripping plot that plunges me headfirst into the author’s world.

And with that, I’ll share a few of my favorite recent reads that fit this bill.

After reading Liz Moore’s Long Bright River a few years ago, a thoughtful and propulsive exploration of addiction, I was excited to see Moore recently came out with a new novel. God of the Woods starts at a sleepaway summer camp in the 1970s, where we immediately learn that a camper has gone missing. A literary whodunnit of sorts, the novel progresses as camp staff, investigators, and the camper’s parents begin to piece together what happened. The story weaves through many different perspectives (at least 10) and jumps back to earlier timelines as we uncover more context behind the girl’s disappearance and the history of the camp and its people. God of the Woods was one of those books where the setting is a character itself; the camp and nearby town of Shattuck were masterfully drawn. And pulling off 10 distinct character voices could not have been an easy feat, but Moore made it look effortless.

Husbands and Lovers was also a summer release from my book-of-the-month subscription that I just got around to reading. It was a page-turner, and to me, falls between the genres of historical fiction and romance/beach read. It also felt a bit like a melodrama, but in a good way. The novel jumps between two different stories and timelines — 1950s Cairo, Egypt, where we follow the story of diplomat’s wife, Hannah; and post-pandemic Connecticut and Cape Cod, where Mallory navigates life’s complications as a single mother to her preteen son Sam. I’m keeping the descriptions vague here, so I don’t ruin anything (because the drama takes off on page 1), but you can read more details and some spoilers in this review.

Books I’m excited to read next:

Meg Tady’s Bluebird Day, out tomorrow, is about mother and daughter ski champions who are stuck together in an alpine lodge when an avalanche hits. The Washington Post calls it one of its 10 noteworthy books of November and December, praising its exploration of “the achievement mindset and how society views competitive women.”

I’m also excited to dive into Nick Gardners, Deliquents, and Other Attempts at Escape, which came out this fall, a collection of linked short stories of residents of the Rust Belt town of Westinghouse, Ohio who are battling addictions.

What are you reading this winter? Leave your recommendations below!