HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: Because of all the evangelizing y’all did after last week’s extra emo letter, I reached my Q1 paid subscriber goal in time for my birthday this past Saturday. 🥳 Thank you so, so much for continuing to share and subscribe — it means a lot to me that y’all support this work to keep it free for those who can’t afford it. If you are a paying/Zaddy/Zommy subscriber, I have decided to send you periodic *exclusive* letters with extra sexy content, recommendations, and musings. Can you slide into my emails/DMs with requests on what you want to see/read? Nothing’s off limits. 😈
A while ago, I stopped using the term “self-care.” It’s not necessarily because I have a particular aversion to the phenomenon of self-care or how people employ it. But for me the concept lost its jush when its usage faded into meme-y vacuousness, co-opted from mental health advocates and Black feminists to sell $32 rose quartz gua sha massagers.
The economy of self-care and how it has become both an excuse for white people to tune out and yet another conduit for the many octopus arms of capitalism — it’s gross. But all those takes have been made, and I am definitely not one to talk as I am *highly* susceptible to goopy gentrified wellness culture (e.g. this Substack).
But thinking about it, I often return to the words of one of the wisest women I know:
When we are instructed to retreat within ourselves under the premise of “self-care,” we forget about how the people around us give us a bigger opportunity for care than any Swedish massage could. In a 2019 Facebook post, organizer Nakita Valerio pointed to the lack of intentionality around the term:
“Shouting ‘self-care’ at people who actually need ‘community care’ is how we fail people.”
And she is so right. Try as one might, a luxurious bath will not cure your burnout, will not shoo away systemic anti-Black violence, will not push pause on the hamster wheel of capitalism we are all beholden to. Sometimes, we don’t need to meditate and “unplug” — we just need each other.
I guess I will just say I learned that lesson the hard way this month. I was stretched too thin, took on too much, tried to help too many people, and never asked for help myself.
When Rihanna said “nobody text me in a crisis” let me tell you, I could not relate. I am the girl everyone calls when they need to talk through a conflict, an existential crisis, a writer’s block, an event, a letter of recommendation, a comms plan. People call me when they need to draft their Twitter apologies, price out their clients, or help locate a friend in trouble. (Just over the course of writing this letter I was FaceTimed once by a friend who needed sponsorship for a grant and again by another who needed help processing something after therapy.)
Self-involved as I can be, my love language is showing up for the queer people I call friends. I rarely feel taxed by it (Virgo moon) because my friends give that care right back in different ways. Selfishly, it brings me great joy to do acts of service for my friends, to be there for them. Alternatively, as Raquel clocked me over FaceTime, I “need to be needed.”
Icky as that is, I soothe my vice with the words of Mia Birdsong. In her book about community care, she completely shifts the notion of asking for help with the words of Amoretta Morris:
“It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, by doing so, you are taking part in the divine circle of giving and receiving. While we often focus on what the request means for the asker/recipient, we should remember that giving can be transformative for the helper… By not asking for help when you need it, you are blocking that flow.”
By not asking for help, you are blocking that flow. Wow. This completely unlocked my framework for care, what it means to show up for others. It has challenged me to ask for what I need, when I need it.
I wrote a speech once about my best friend — a person who has shown up for me and I for him in bigger ways than most know. In this speech, I describe how our relationship was a testament to the poetic fact that the definitions of “caregiver” and “caretaker” are the same. You give care, you take care. In the giving, you are taking and in the taking, you are giving.
Anyway, instead of advocating for “self-care” in small talk, I’ve been saying, “I hope you are taking care” as a sign-off for every convo, text, or email that requires it.
So, I hope you are taking care, whatever that means to you.
Xx Fran
some things that brought me joy this week
1. On my Mia Birdsong kick, I will say How We Show Up was my favorite book I read last year. It is a beautiful cultural study of community, chosen families, and how we can reframe meaningful friendships outside the tradition of “The American Dream.” In this book, Birdsong understands the American Dream as a heteropatriarchal capitalist fantasy. The things we are taught make a family and a “good life” (a wife that takes care of the kids, two parents, homeownership, upward mobility, a salary) are an artifice. In fact, this structure often makes us feel *even lonelier.* The building blocks of a true family unit are profound and unpredictable; children need more than two parents, parents need breaks and social lives, not all families have children, not all families haver romance, not all couples are couples, and friendship can be as powerful as romance or biology. For a great entry point to Mia’s work, listen to this episode of Call Your Girlfriend. This book is so good y’all. It made me excited to be your friend.
2. Another book that added a layer to my interpersonal relationships was Mutual Aid by Dean Spade. The concise but powerful pocketbook describes the philosophy of mutual aid and how it’s risen to political prominence.
3. I’m addicted to Brian Esperon’s dance videos and frequent his page often when I’m looking for a pick-me-up. Brian is the choreographer who invented the WAP dance and his TikTok is nonstop sexy joy.
4. A lot of people ask me about my bath pillow, which you can find for cheap at any online retailer tbh. It’s such a small thing, but the cushion is next-level comfort for those like me who soak, read, existentialize for hours at a time.
5. Willow Smith’s latest collaborative album went largely under the radar, but I’ve been returning to my favorite track “Meet Me At Our Spot.” The album is something of an alt rock experimental anomaly, a performance art piece and meditation on how anxiety affects our romantic relationships. The album is produced with her guitarist boyfriend, and this song specifically brings me back to my senior year of highschool — meeting your crush late at night for a drive, so unsure, but so elated.
6. Kevin Bacon stanning Joni Mitchell. :’) Is there anything more pure?
7. Thong swimsuits are hard to come by for people with penises — and most you can find are on white gay body fascist shops. But queer indigenous Latinx designer Louis Dourantes’ snake swim thong dropped a week ago and I’ve never purchased anything faster.
8. Why yes, I did need a compilation of Dominique Jackson saying “get the shoes, baby,” thank you for asking.
9. I love this meditation on the cultural meaning of the word “lesbian” and how it takes many forms despite binaries. Kimberly sent it to me while ago following the 2019 Lesbiannale and I return to it often.
“Sometimes it feels nice to be a lesbian, to have a home for a while, to honour the feeling that perhaps inherent in that word is something that explains the way you’re moving in that moment better than any of the other words currently available. Pansexual doesn’t always slap in the way you need it to.
The word lesbian is a label and like all labels it provides a type of freedom via its provision of language to a particular sub-culture or experience that would otherwise gladly be overlooked by the masses. Like all labels, it is also, on some level, constricting and exclusive, fundamentally disappointing, and once dominated by dusty, white, cis, transphobic energy, inhabitable to many. Who thought it would be a good idea to affix the colonizer’s language to matters of body and soul and spirit and sex anyway? Man could never.”
10. I *still* am not over Grace Jones’ dressing room rider. I read it to myself like a mantra or a Taurean spell to give me the confidence to ask for what I want. Tag yourself, I’m “all glass, no plastic.”
this week’s action
Ma’Khia Bryant is a girl from Columbus who should still be alive today. Organizers from her home state and beyond are working to find accountability (not “justice”) for her murder and above are some ways to do that. There is also a resource guide for more info on how to maintain an actual infrastructure to protect Black women and girls.