Come As You Are Podcast

No one has ever heard a podcast episode this good. It’s amazing, people are saying it’s incredible — they’ve never heard anything like it in their entire lives. Can you imagine speaking about yourself like you were the most amazing person ever to grace planet earth — meanwhile you’re just a mean old windbag who thinks Hannibal Lecter was an asylum seeker? Someone pass the fava beans.This week I read the essay and then talked about lying. It fascinates me when people lie with conviction, or knowingly support people who lie — without a hint of remorse or hesitation. There are reasons good people might have a hard time saying true things, and I talked about that, too. Ultimately, though, if you want to have meaningful relationships, calling things what they are is part of the deal. It’s also grounding if you grew up with chaos and violence, or spent time trying to make everything okay for everyone all the time. The truth isn’t always easy, but dealing with things as they are is a lot easier than pretending things are okay when they aren’t — or pretending this president should be compared to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. That was not a typo.“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”Sending you a lot of love, friends. Happy Easter if you celebrate. Happy Sunday if not. Either way, thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for being here xo This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

I’ve been feeling weird about the podcast lately, like I wasn’t sure if I should keep doing it, or if I should change the format and get a co-host, or if anyone was listening, and then I just realized there are stats, haha. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check sooner, the dashboard has stats on everything. I just tend not to look. Anyway, I found the stats, but then I was like, I have no clue what a good number of downloads would be for a podcast episode in the first 7 days, so these stats don’t help me. Then I remembered Google, and it seems like I should keep doing this, apparently. So thanks to those of you listening to me spouting off about this crazy time we’re living through, and I hope it makes you feel less alone if you feel alone sometimes, because I know I do. There are days I feel defeated, and other days I feel enraged — and on good days I feel determined, resolute, hopeful, full of the productive kind of fire, and ready with a side of gallows humor. Seemed like a good time to say thank you for crying with me, laughing with me and spending some of your precious time with me. I don’t take it lightly. This episode is about cleaning out my childhood home, having a different definition of being “ready to move in three days” than my brother, finding letters from my dad that elicited some big feelings, and letting those feelings flow. It’s also about Sara Bareilles, dead carcasses in strange places, Plato, and why we need to send all the billionaires packing. Sending you lots of love, friends.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

In this week’s episode, I dug into the idea that people are not a monolith; how we’ll get into trouble every time we conflate the president/leader/head-of-state with all the people who live in their country. It’s clear as day when you think about the (not) United States. Of the 342 million of us who live here, only 77 million voted for this president (I say “only” though I find it astounding there are 77 million people who thought this man was fit to lead). 74 million people voted for Harris/Walz, millions of others did not cast a vote at all, and millions more (anyone under 18, or not a U.S. citizen) were not eligible to vote. It would be inaccurate at best to say “Americans” support this president and the things he says and does, or that “they” are in favor of this war in Iran.It’s the same in any country. There were a lot of keyboard warriors talking about how the Iranian people felt when I woke up the morning after the president announced Operation Epic Fury. You can’t even put forty people in a room and have any reasonable expectation they will all agree about politics, life, ethics, or where you can find the best pizza, so why would anyone think you could talk about millions of people as if they have one mind? It is a wild and unfortunate pastime.There’s such a desire to reduce people quickly, to try to sort them into one box or another: the box of people who think like me (check!) versus the box of people I despise and shall now berate or cease to acknowledge. It’s a hashtag philosophy that makes it easy to other people, which is usually the thing the hash-tagger is railing against in the first place. Meanwhile, children are dying. The world has gone mad when you are only supposed to care about some children dying, and not others. If you can see children dying and go about your business, something has gone very wrong. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism and you are protecting yourself from the trauma of it all, but if you are someone who is affected when some children die, but not others, I would encourage you to please examine that. Any of us could have been born anywhere. You’re a citizen of your country because that’s where your parents happened to end up, and at some point some number of years ago, some man drew lines on a map and named the place where you live. It’s likely a lot of people died so those lines could be drawn, and if there are resources in your country, we can safely bet some other “leader” of a country with a strong militia has tried to come and take those resources from you in the name of “freedom” lol/sob/wtf. Sorry to be the one to say, lines on a map are utterly meaningless because none of us own any of this. We’re on a tiny planet in one solar system in a vast universe. Your president didn’t make this planet, and one day soon he’ll die. Your prime minister didn’t make it, either, and one day soon they will die. Your Supreme Leader didn’t make it, and one day soon he’ll die, too. Ashes to ashes.War and destruction is all b******t. People posturing, mostly violent, greedy men. When the time comes, none of the clothes in your closet will go with you. Your house, however big or small? It stays, you go. The tree in your front yard that you call yours? Not yours. Children are sacred. Love is sacred. The time we get here is a gift, and we should be spending that time in awe. In celebration. Making art, making friends, caring about each other, staring up at the trees, and at night, staring up at the moon and the stars. Holding someone’s hand. Swimming in a creek, digging our toes in the sand. Traveling. And always, taking care of the most vulnerable among us.War is the most ignorant, vile form of ingratitude and stupidity anyone could ever undertake with the tiny blink of time they get on this gorgeous tiny blue dot, where we have everything we need to survive, if only we weren’t so dumb, and if only we would stop giving power to weak little boy-men who have no clue what they ought to be doing while they’re here. The gall of blowing this place up when it isn’t theirs. The gall of killing children and acting like it can’t be helped. They didn’t grow those babies or push them into this world, did they? Meanwhile, children are dying on our watch. It’s well past time we make it stop.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I appreciate your re-stacks so much, and always love meeting you in the comments section xo This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

I was going to send the podcast episode with a micro essay as usual, but I have been hit with a blinding migraine so I’m going to keep this short. Side note — once I read that migraines are caused by “too many thoughts” and I suppose that could be true.It makes me very sad and also enraged, that every time I write about the countless experiences I had with predatory men as a little girl and a teenager and a young woman — and continue to have as a grown woman (with the added horror of having to worry about my teenage daughter out in this mess) — there is a deafening chorus of women in the comments saying, Me, too.I wonder who we would all be if we did not have to spend so much energy assessing our surroundings all the time, and wondering whether we are safe — safe in a literal, physical sense — but also safe to express ourselves, to say no, to speak up, to take up space, to not waste so much time questioning our worth, to not have to fight so hard for basic things like respect, dignity and bodily autonomy — while simultaneously being expected to hold up the sky. I wonder who we’d be if we could jog at 5am or 9pm without thinking twice, if we could walk through an empty parking lot without glancing over our shoulders, if we could walk down a desolate street without feeling the need to put our keys between our fingers, if we could leave our drinks unattended when we’re out with friends…Why do they never ask what men were wearing?I wonder who we’d be if we were believed when something bad happened, when a man did a thing that is painful to repeat, let alone to have lived through. I wonder who we’d be if we could pass a man on a hiking trail and not worry if there was no one else in sight. I wonder who we’d be if the names they redacted were the names of the children, not the horrific men who hurt them.I wonder who we’d be if the good men in our lives worked a little bit harder to show us we aren’t in this fight alone — because it feels that way too much of the time.Maybe we’d smile more. Sending love to anyone having a tough time right now. None of this is easy, but we are not delicate, and we have each other. That’s a lot. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

I’ve been having vivid nightmares lately, and they have a theme: I’m out somewhere, and suddenly someone is threatening me. Last week, I was pushing a baby carriage in a place that wasn’t familiar. It was nighttime, and I was walking next to a hotel. A man passed me and I knew he intended to hurt me, the way you know things in a dream. I picked up my pace and glanced up at the hotel to see if anyone was on any of the balconies, but they were empty. I looked over my shoulder, and sure enough, the man had paused. When we made eye contact he started running toward me, eyes wild. I screamed. I screamed so loudly I woke my dog.Last night I had a similar dream. I was in some kind of village, but everyone was dressed like it was Colonial times. It’s my subconscious, what can I tell you? There was a furious woman chasing me. I ducked into a store. There were rows of bookshelves almost to the ceiling, there was a huge, empty birdcage for sale in a corner, there were umbrellas in a stand — more likely parasols if I was dreaming realistically — or so Google tells me. I ducked behind one of the huge shelves, and peeked around the corner in time to see the woman come bounding through the doors. She knew exactly where I was. I understood she intended to kill me, I didn’t know why. I looked down and realized I had a pole in my hands, so held it up and yelled at her to stay away from me! Woke the dog, again.You don’t have to be an oneirologist to catch the drift. I’m feeling vulnerable, like there are threats coming from every side. The baby carriage represents, no doubt, some feeling I have that I can’t keep my kids safe. No one being on the balconies is the disappointment I feel in people who are going about their lives as though everything is normal. Finding myself in Colonial America is (almost) hilarious. I have to give my subconscious an A+ for use of metaphor. Maybe tonight I’ll dream of Joan of Arc.On the plus side, the moment I open my mouth to yell, I yell. This is new. For most of my adult life, if I have a nightmare and want to scream, no sound comes out. This is a terrible feeling, whether you’re awake or asleep. The feeling of being in imminent danger and wanting to call for help, only to find you cannot make a sound? I take it as a positive change that now when I go to scream in my dream, I scream in real life — it took me years but I have finally found my voice. Perhaps not a positive development for the dog, but I like to think I make it up to him in a million other ways.There are good reasons to have some hope. Liam Conejo Ramos and his father are home. I take this as the most tangible and joy-affirming evidence that our loud, unwavering refusal to accept the inhumanity and lawlessness of this administration — works. It might not work as quickly as we’d like, but it works — and so does our judicial system, some of the time. Democratic U.S. Representative from Texas Joaquin Castro has been working tirelessly on their release. He went to Dilley Detention Center to meet with Liam and his dad Adrian while they were detained. He traveled with them from Texas back to Minnesota. Their attorney, Mark Prokosch, is continuing to represent them. There is a gofundme for Liam and his family if you are able to contribute any amount, it’s going to be a long road. There are judges like the Honorable U.S. District Judge Fred Biery. In his Opinion and Order granting a Writ of Release to Liam and his father, he did not hold back. I encourage you to read his Opinion in full, and I propose we call him Fiery Biery from this day forward. Yes, “Biery” is pronounce “beer” “ee” and no, I don’t care. Here is just a taste:“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us the perfidious lust for unbridled power, and the imposition of cruelty in its quest, know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”We shall see what happens with the DHS bill. The Epstein files are horrific. There’s too much coming at us every day, and no one can keep up, which is the point. It seems 37% of our population is still supporting this administration for reasons that boggle the mind. They seem to feel fine if the Constitution guarantees their rights, but no one else’s — certainly not liberals, immigrants, Black or brown people, or anyone in the LGBTQ community — and also most women, generally. Maybe they’d make an exception for a few people they know, but probably not.Here is a funny thing about strangers. When we walk out the door in the morning, we’re all strangers to most of the people we encounter. We don’t know a thing about them — what they’ve been through, what they’re going through right now, what keeps them up at night. If you crossed paths with either of my children today, it’s likely you would not know they are mine — but they mean everything to me, and I hope with my entire heart that you would treat them the way I would treat your most precious people if we met somewhere, somehow. We all need a kind st

We don’t even get a day to recover anymore, which is the plan and the point. They want to exhaust people like you and me, people who are heartbroken, scared and furious — so we become overwhelmed beyond comprehension, and stop raging. I don’t know what they think. Maybe they imagine we won’t post videos anymore, we’ll stop talking to one another, stop protesting. This is how an organized crime gang would behave if they moved into a neighborhood and wanted to make sure we understood they were in charge now. They’d let one of their own murder a mother of three in cold blood, and not worry about the videos with the five different angles, the slow motion renderings, the 3D models. They’d block local law enforcement from the scene, tamper with evidence, and allow the killer to walk free. They’d hide him, even. They’d send a puppy-executioner to tell a fictional, insulting tale about what happened, without even bothering to get the glaring facts right. Later, when the autopsy results showed she had a pulse for eight long minutes while her wife sat on the ground, sobbing into their dog — eight minutes they refused to allow a doctor to check on her — they’d just shrug. Then they’d sit back and laugh, watching their zombie-apocalypse-followers repeat the party line.Before we could wrap our heads around that, we’d see photos of a sweet, tiny boy in a light blue bunny hat being loaded into an ICE vehicle, a giant gloved hand on his back. They’d lie about that, too. They’d say his dad was here illegally, his whole family was — and not worry about the fact that it isn’t true. Because facts don’t matter, and they know it. They can just say a thing is true. I don’t even think their followers believe it — they understand the game. Daddy tells you what he wants you to say, or he sends Noem, Miller, Hegseth, Leavitt, or Vance to do his bidding. It doesn’t matter, they all spit venom the same, and you take your orders like a good soldier. Yes, Daddy. Understood, Daddy. We’ll go drive those left-wing liberals crazy, Daddy, hahahaha. Will you make us another AI video shitting on them later as a treat?Then they get on the internet and say black is white or wrong is right or good is bad or these people are getting what they deserve and soon America will be white again — like it or not you woke-ass whiners, why don’t you just leave if you hate it here so much?I don’t know to what degree you have to hate yourself to give your blind loyalty to a man who would step directly onto your head if it was in his way, but it must be a lot. I guess the rage must run so deep, you can look at an innocent little boy who is surely traumatized by now — and feel nothing — and be willing to make up stories about his family so you can laugh at devastated strangers on the internet. You can say it was his dad who abandoned him, or that his mother wouldn’t open the door and that’s why this happened, and what were these kindhearted, patriotic ICE agents supposed to do? Drive away and leave him on the doorstep with his mom right on the other side of the front door, begging them to do exactly that, while her husband screamed at her not to open the door — because if she did, they’d take her, too — and then who would be there when their middle school tween got home? You can watch a man shoot a woman in the face three times because of his teeny, weeny, peeny ego, and side with him, and feel not even a flicker of sadness for her, for her three children, for her wife, her parents, or her dog. You just don’t care. She should have stayed home, like you. She shouldn’t have given a crap about her neighbors, then she’d be alive.How about now, I wonder? Alex Pretti is getting dangerously close to someone you’d almost like, minus the liberalism and caring about your neighbors part. He was all heart and courage and kindness, so nothing like you, but you catch my drift. If you’d passed him on a hiking trail, you might not have been sure. He’ll never go hiking again, though. Tall, young, white, thirty-seven-year-old lawful gun-owner with a permit to carry. Totally legal in Minnesota. So now what. Now they’ve executed a white man who believed in the Second Amendment. It doesn’t matter, though. These folks will play whatever game their Daddy wants. A couple of weeks ago they were screaming that Renee Nicole Good should have stayed home, minding her own business. Then she’d be alive. Same people who have no problem that Kyle Rittenhouse drove twenty miles to go to a protest and involve himself in other people’s business. Hypocrisy runs through their veins in place of blood, it’s how it is.Today, a lot of these people were screaming that Alex Pretti put his hands on federal agents and then went for his gun — but he absolutely did not. This is getting so old and tired. This is a painful and horrifying execution, so do not watch unless you have the resources to do that right now, or feel the need to see for yourself. He was there filming. An ICE agent initiated contact with hi

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is about men who hate women and the women who love them. It’s about people (mostly men) screaming at me in all caps that the division and violence in our country is due to rhetoric from “radical left lunatics” like me — and not because we’ve reached a point where 30% of the people in our country would not care if I got shot in the face three times for worrying about my neighbors. They would shrug and say I should have thought about my kids, stayed home, and minded my own business — then I’d still be alive. That’s what they said about Renee Good. That’s what they’re saying about women who are trying to take care of their communities. We’re the problem. What a shock. These are MAGA men, and the women who support them, and I got a very unpleasant taste of the way they think under an essay I wrote recently. There was no room to talk about violations of the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, no willingness to look at actual examples of ICE agents grabbing people from their legal immigration appointments, rappelling out of a helicopter and into a building in Chicago, busting down doors without a warrant anywhere in sight. No ability to talk about children zip-tied and thrown into the backs of U-hauls, some of them U.S. citizens. No conversation about the ways this has been happening for a year.They just wanted to scream at me.People are filming ICE raids for a reason. Nonviolent protest and civil disobedience are as old as Jesus Christ, as any Christian who read the Bible would tell you. So is state-sanctioned murder. Rosa Parks was protesting and committing an act of civil disobedience when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. Should she have stayed home, minding her own business?People filming ICE agents are not trying to impede or harass anyone, they’re trying to keep their neighbors safe, and they are thinking about their children. They’re thinking about what kind of world they’re going to inherit if we’re going to allow a Mad King to overtake our democracy.Greenland and every NATO country is looking at us in shock, horror, and utter despair. Anyone who loves this country ought to feel the same. Men who hate women should never be in power. They are violent and they do not understand consent. Not when it comes to women and girls, not when it comes to countries who do not want to be owned by us.Renee Good should still be here. She would be if an angry man with a gun hadn’t decided to defend his fragile ego because two queer women were too relaxed for his liking, not impressed by him, not intimidated. There’s no such thing as “toxic empathy” — there’s just empathy, and you have it, or you don’t. There is such a thing as toxic masculinity, though, and it sounds like calling someone a “f*****g b***h” after you shoot her in the face three times. All this and more on the pod. Grateful for the men who like and respect women (because, duh), grateful for the people who care about their neighbors, all of them. Stay safe out there as best you can. We love you, Minneapolis. And always grateful for the fantastic, brilliant, strong women in my life — and all women and girls of every background everywhere. Don’t let the b******s get you down.Sending you love.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s podcast episode is full of heartbreak and fury. It’s about Venezuela, Greenland, Colombia, Cuba, and Canada. It includes The Monroe Doctrine, The Roosevelt Corollary, the Authorized Use of Military Force, a screeching Stephen Miller, and an administration with no qualms about doing/taking/killing what it wants — ethics, decency, truth, and the Constitution be damned. It’s about January 6th, five years ago, and how we should have stopped this, then. Most of all, though, it’s about Renee Nicole Good, which means it’s about all of us.I feel sick and have for days. Pretty sure I’m afflicted with toxic shock syndrome, but not the kind we’ve been warned about. I sent my essay out into the ether last week as I do every week. There is one platform where I have a business page with a lot of people (fb) that used to be a place where community happened, where people could have conversations and even disagree without losing their minds, but that is no longer the case. I don’t spend a lot of time there anymore, I simply have the page connected to my other meta account (insta), so when I post on one, it shows up on the other.I started getting alerts from fb quickly. Some of the comments in the thread underneath were so lacking in empathy they made me feel sick in my soul, as if I was talking to people who had been infected by a virus that caused contempt to run through their veins.We’ve reached a point in our country where the people who did not vote for this president cannot have meaningful conversations with people who are in support of the current administration — and in my case, it is not for lack of trying. I have tried. I tried again this week. I keep trying because I don’t know how we fix things if we can’t talk to each other, but the vitriol and smug disdain coming from the 30% of the country who voted for this and are still in support of it — toward people like me who are devastated by what is happening, is breathtaking and horrifying. Truly, y’all are not okay. One man called my business number to say I should not block people. I blocked people who were screaming expletives at me, or hurling insults. Imagine being so entitled you call a woman’s business line because you’re butt-hurt she won’t allow people to be abusive to her on her own damn page. Get a grip, sir.It is legal and a First Amendment right to film ICE raids occurring in public places, and if you don’t understand why concerned citizens are doing that, then you have not been paying attention to what is happening at many of these ICE raids, or you do not care. The second option would be worse. As a small example, Kristi Noem described what happened to Renee Good two hours after she was murdered — like this: She said ICE agents were “snowed in” and “surrounded by angry rioters” and Renee was “ramming her vehicle into them” and the ICE agent was in fear for his life and the lives of the other agents, so he shot her.Then you look at the footage of all the people who were there filming, and thank god they were, because that is not. what. happened. That’s why people go and film, so there’s a record. They are not there to impede, they are there to bear witness and to make sure there’s accurate documentation of what occurs. In too many instances, ICE agents are using excessive force, they don’t identify themselves, and they refuse to say where they’re taking people. Sometimes it’s the people observing who de-escalate a situation, by making sure the ICE agents know they’re being filmed. People are grabbed so quickly they don’t have a chance to call anyone, so they might yell out the name and number of their mom, their wife, their attorney. There were no “angry rioters” on the block where Renee and Becca Good were parked, a few blocks from their house — there were neighbors, filming and observing. Why? Because immigrants in our country are also entitled to due process under the law and some people care about that. There are a lot of hard-working, tax-paying immigrants in our community, mothers and fathers, grandmas and grandpas, people who have been here for decades, many of whom have been doing it “the right way.” Sometimes they get grabbed directly from their legal immigration appointments.No one is being paid to care about their neighbors or their communities. People are not being “trained to weaponize their vehicles.” Left-leaning people do not want hardened criminals walking around their neighborhoods, that’s a lie. It is really something being yelled at about law and order from people supporting an administration that violates the Constitution every day. The gaslighting and hypocrisy are exhausting. It was made very clear to me that there were people in the comments on fb who would not shed a tear or have a kind thought for my children if I was filming an ICE raid to try to help my neighbors, and an agent decided to shoot me in the face three times. They would shrug and say, she got what she deserved. Why wasn’t she home, minding her own busi

Friends, a quick hello on Day 3 of this new year, or Day 4 if you get this Sunday morning. We will not be counting the days of this year generally, just these first few because it’s wild that it’s only Day 3 and … yeah. There are some new people in the mix and in our midst, so I want to welcome you all with a lot of love, and thank you so much for being here. Also, I want to let you know I do a podcast every week, after the essay, and after I’ve had time to meet you in the comments section — which is one of my favorite places to be. Often I’ve had time to ponder further based on what you’ve shared, so I think about the podcast as a co-creation and a conversation we’re having. I may eventually move it to the app so we can see each other in real time if you’re around while I record. I genuinely treasure getting to know you. That will become clear if it isn’t already. Maybe you like podcasts, maybe not. There are a few I love, but I only have time to listen if I’m driving somewhere, so I get it. We are all inundated. But, maybe you do a lot of driving, or maybe you like a voice in the background while you’re folding laundry. Fair warning, I cry during episodes possibly more than most people with podcasts. I cry easily these days and have since my mother died. Maybe it’s grief, maybe it’s hormones, maybe it’s being relatively sane in a world that is heartbreaking too much of the time.Okay, thus ends this session of hello and podcasting with Ally, thanks for coming. Now we can talk about this particular episode and also how unhinged the president is. Fantastic.Why not end the longest year ever with back-to-back trips to the Social Security Office and the DMV? How could you have a car registered to your name, but the wrong VIN number attached — for four years? Why isn’t there an opt-out button that triggers a trap-door with a fun slide that takes people directly to a grown-up sleep-away camp where we could all go when the world feels like too much?I dug into all those questions and more in this episode about why some of us struggled mightily in 2025. The discussion includes love of the Constitution, the three branches of government, our checks and balances, the Supreme Court, and the free press…and the heartbreak of watching all of those guardrails of our democracy fail one by one, simultaneously. The biggest heartbreak of all was the collusion required for that to happen. Feel as you may about the Founding Fathers, I think it’s safe to assume they never imagined a world where so many Americans would pledge fealty to a man so lacking in ethics and morals, betraying the country they claim to love and the Constitution they swore to uphold.I talked about due process, ICE raids, the attack on DEI, the LGBTQ community, women’s rights, the increase in the number of abortions since Roe was overturned, the increase in maternal and infant mortality rates in states with restrictive abortion bans, the hypocrisy of causing people grave harm with no compassion or empathy in the name of Christianity. Those are just a few reasons some of us had a hard time last year.And here on day 3…it looks like we’ll have plenty to deal with in 2026. (Side note, it’s not a new thing for America to decide it’s time for a regime change somewhere in Latin America. Some of you are young, so maybe it’s your first time witnessing a president decide he doesn’t need congressional approval to kidnap a dictator in the dead of night, but I am old enough to remember George H.W. Bush doing this very thing in 1989. See: Noriega! We’ll get back to this because there’s so much to unpack. The Monroe Doctrine, The Roosevelt Corollary, The War Powers Resolution, and the Authorized Use of Military Force, just to get us started. But if you think two things can’t be true at once, for example — Maduro was terrible for the people of Venezuela, and in the simplest of terms he is a not a good man and, it is an abuse of power and a terrible idea to use military force to oust dictators/overthrow governments from countries with resources we want, and then “take them over” with no plan except “we want their oil”I’d say you might want to think again.) Anyhoo, friends, we’re off to a wild, destabilizing start, but that’s how this “peace president” — the one who wasn’t going to get us into any more foreign wars — likes and wants it. Someone pass the FIFA peace pipe I guess. My heart goes out to the family members of civilians who died in Venezuela last night, and those who are scared for their loved ones. It goes out to the family members of our military who are being led by a president who has no qualms about making it known we are there for the oil and there is no clear strategy beyond that. It goes out to anyone who wonders how we are supposed to do this for another three years. One hint: don’t do that to yourself. Take it one day at a time. Take it one step at a time, one phone call, one email, one kind word, one supportive text, one hilarious meme, one thoughtful card,

As the holidays approached this year, I started seeing a lot of people in my feeds expressing the desire to “quiet quit” the whole endeavor. People wondering if they could opt out, not have the big extended family dinner, get a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree, stay in pajamas. I saw this across all holidays — whatever people normally do around whatever holidays they celebrate, they wanted to do the easiest, most stress-free version.For some people it was financial, they did not have the means to buy presents and go to parties, they didn’t want to show up empty-handed or have to explain that times are tough and they’re saving for health insurance. For others it felt too forced to try to pull joy out of the hat in the midst of so much suffering and mental exhaustion.If you’re someone who voted for (gestures wildly and unfathomably) this painful mess we’re in, maybe the holidays were great for you? For those of us who never wanted any of this cruelty, and could not imagine voting for a president who said people were eating cats and dogs, or — you know what? the list of things this man has said and done is so insane, and each one of them should have disqualified him, so — for those of us he called members of the “radical left scum” as part of his lovely Christmas Day message, let us say we had to dig deep to find the holiday cheer.As we approach the end of this fever dream of a year and head toward 2026, I am thinking about the things that are and have been heartbreaking and exhausting, and also the reasons I have hope, and know in my heart we are going to be okay. I know we are. If you have also had a very hard time this year, if you’re tired of the insanity and don’t know how we’re going to get through it for another three years, I’ll tell you how: we’re going to get through it together. We’re going to remember we are all neighbors. Those of us who are likeminded are going to show up for each other in every way we can. We’re going to be the helpers. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”―Fred RogersHappy New Year, friends. Or, “Here comes a New Year!” if that feels more apropos for now. I am so grateful to head into this next year with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Voiceover by the fantastic Andi Arndt I went to see It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve — they play it on the big screen at a theater near us every year — and if that film fails to put you in the holiday spirit you probably have to give up for the season and try again next year. It’s a strange year for all the reasons, so I think there are a lot of us trying. I love Jimmy Stewart. One of his other films, Harvey, is one of my favorite films of all time. If you haven’t seen it, Stewart plays a man named Elwood P. Dowd whose best friend is a huge white rabbit named Harvey who no one else can see.Jimmy Stewart loved the film, too. He loved playing Elwood, a man with no guile who was kind to everyone, and he loved Harvey so much that he doodled him on napkins and scraps of paper for the rest of his life. He’d write “Harvey” underneath, and sign them. One year for my birthday, one of my best friends got me a framed print of one of those doodles. I’m not a shopper, I don’t go in for jewelry or handbags or fancy dinners out, but that doodle is one of my prized possessions. Also, I can’t recommend the film enough if you want to feel good about human beings for a little while, which I always do. I want to feel good about human beings now more than I ever have.I grew up watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and sometimes I think we should all start watching episodes again. My mother could never understand my obsession, she thought the show was so boring. This middle-aged man coming through the door singing about how we’re all neighbors, and asking if I’d be his neighbor, too? Unhurriedly taking off his jacket or raincoat and hanging it up, putting on his cardigan, then swapping his outside shoes for sneakers and tying them while he talked about nothing in particular? For the life of her, she could not figure out why I was rapt at four years old, five years old, six years old. I loved him.We all did as far as I know, I rarely meet any Gen Xer who didn’t grow up feeling like they were partially raised by Fred Rogers. Most of us had parents who needed to be reminded we existed at 10pm, and there he was, taking us on little field trips to learn about the Post Office, or teaching us to think about how things were for other people. Elwood P. Dowd is like Fred Rogers, except he likes to go to the bar. There are all kinds of theories about the film and why he’s seeing a huge white rabbit (a púca). I won’t ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it, I’ll just say I think Harvey is real because that’s what I choose to think — in the context of the entire thing being a film where everyone is a fictional character, of course. I’m not insane.People believe all kinds of things because that’s what they choose to do. I saw a clip on Instagram of Mary and Joseph in couples’ counseling. Joseph was upset because he was feeling erased. Mary said it wasn’t her fault, the Angel Gabriel showed up and said she was pregnant with God’s baby, what was she supposed to do? Joseph said he was just a blip in their story now. Just a sheepherder, shoveling s**t all day. If someone ever wrote a book about them — at which point Mary interrupted and said no one was ever going to write a book about them — and I snort-laughed my coffee everywhere.Once about fifteen years ago the same friend who got me the Harvey doodle came to Los Angeles for a visit. We decided to go see a movie at The Grove, we just drove over after a class I taught to see what was playing next. The Passion of the Christ was the only film about to start. This was before everyone knew Mel Gibson was a wife-beating racist, mind you.We asked the woman behind the counter if she’d seen it, and if it was good. “Yes,” she said solemnly, “it’s really good. It’s about the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ life. It’s a cinematic documentary.” I’m not sure how long we stood there staring at her, trying to figure out if she was serious, but it was long enough to realize she was serious.Many people who identify as Christian and therefore believe in Jesus say they voted for the current administration because they believe abortion is murder so they had to vote for this administration*…but they do not seem to realize this administration would deport Jesus himself and Mary and Joseph, too, if they showed up in the United States today. Brown people from the largest Arab city in Israel who had their baby in Palestine and then walked forty miles to Egypt before emigrating? Without papers? Jesus Christ, good luck and I mean that.Also just because I have to, even though I’ve said it eleventy bajillion times:*The number of abortions has risen and continues to rise since Roe was overturned — a thing conservatives said would never happen, but we all knew would happen. Then they said, well it’s okay, we’re just sending it back to the states! This is what happens when you send it back to the states. Maternal and infant mortality rates rise in states with the most restrictive abortion bans. Women who have the means, tra

I recorded this episode after one of the most sorrowful weeks I can remember. I wanted to be feeling joyful because it’s the holiday season, but you can’t force joy, and it’s very difficult to live in a country where we continue to have school shootings as though there’s nothing we can do to change that.Of all the issues we face here, that’s the one that wrecks me in a way that is hard to describe. Part of it is having school-age children myself — my son is the age the Sandy Hook kids would have been — and part of it is finding it unfathomable that anyone is willing to continue to fail our children this way. It isn’t normal that both of my children have texted me during lockdowns. It isn’t normal that we now have kids who have been in more than one school shooting.Then there was Bondi Beach, people fleeing for their lives, parents diving into pits trying to cover their children with their own bodies. When it seemed things could not get sadder, news of the Reiners stared to emerge.There wasn’t a way to pull holiday cheer out of the hat, friends, and if that’s what you’re looking for, stick a pin in this episode. But if you are struggling with it all and in need of a good cry, then maybe this is for you. Either way, this is not an episode for little ears. I’m sending you a lot of love. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This episode is about a time when I was four, and two kids said I was dying and I believed them. More than that, though, it’s about a person who allowed me to be scared and sad and to grieve openly. I missed my grandma. I missed my old life before my grandma died — when my mom and dad and I lived together, and I didn’t spend three nights in one apartment, four nights in another.I missed my mom when she was happy. I missed mornings at the Jersey Shore with my grandma — my Nanny — the person whose face lit up every time she looked at me, and whose hugs where the best possible place to be. I didn’t know where Heaven was. I couldn’t tell my mom when I was scared or sad because she’d get angry. I was afraid she might decide she couldn’t handle it and leave me at her friend’s farm.I couldn’t tell my dad how I felt because he’d flip the script and make it about him. He’d sob in my arms which was too much for me to handle at four or five or six or ten — or every year he laid his grownup problems at my feet — until I told him I couldn’t take it anymore. That didn’t happen until I was thirteen. So I stopped telling anyone, until that day when I had a nosebleed and thought I was going to die. It’s a gift when someone lets you feel however you feel without trying to fix it, and without giving you the feeling that there’s a time limit. When they hold you tightly enough you know it’s safe to fall apart. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Four years ago today I was on a plane, trying to stay calm. I’d had to throw stuff in a bag and get on an app to find a flight that left a day earlier than the flight I had booked, which was a thing I did in a Lyft on the way to LAX. It wasn’t the plan. The plan was that I was going to fly back to NYC the following day, December 8th, to be there when the hospital discharged my mother into hospice care at home. I’d spent the last couple of days doing the paperwork and switching her into the hospice network, setting up the team to meet her at the apartment where I grew up, where she still lived, where I now seemed to live more than I didn’t. I’d been coordinating times for a hospital bed to be delivered, buying an easy chair that reclined all the way back and had good reviews so the hospice team could maybe get some sleep here and there, figuring out shifts for everyone. She was going to need 24-hour care in addition to me, my brother and my stepdad. You have to know when you’re beat, and I did.I’d had a bad feeling, though. My mother hated the bipap machine. That was the machine that forced oxygen into her lungs, and sucked CO2 out. I couldn’t blame her — her jaw was slack because of the ALS, so they had to use a visor and velcro straps to secure it to her face and around the back of her head. She’d been on a ventilator for 12 days before that, and when she came off the ventilator (a thing they weren’t sure she would do at all) her breath was shallow and weak. She didn’t like the feeling of the “aggressive breaths” being forced in and out of her. She scrawled those words on a notepad — her perfect, Catholic-school-girl cursive a thing of the past. She shook her head at me helplessly, and even that took effort. Her eyes were two huge pools of sadness. She didn’t like the velcro straps, the machines beeping, the tubes everywhere. I can’t write anymore about this right now.I’d gotten into the rhythm of being back in NYC, sleeping in the bedroom that was mine before my brother was born, spending 12-hour days in the ICU with my mom, who was dying. I’d fly back to Los Angeles for a night, hug my kids, make sure they were okay, and then get back on a plane the next day. It had been going on for a month. I never imagined I’d be taking planes like cab rides, and I did not allow myself to look at my credit card statements or even worry about how I was going to handle any of it, I just did it. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve longed for my mother. Sometimes I longed for her in a room full of people, sometimes when it was just the two of us talking. As a child I never felt that I “had” her — it seemed like she wasn’t very interested in me no matter how hard I tried to be good or perfect. If I had her attention, it was because I’d enraged her. We struggled as I got older, because I could see she was in pain. People do not drink like that for no reason. I wanted someone to help her, and to help me by extension. She refused to admit there was a problem. Everyone else refused to challenge her. There’d been so much pain between us. She was hurt, and she’d hurt me. Then when I receded, as any sane person will do if you hurt them, she felt betrayed. I was supposed to pretend the bad things hadn’t happened, and my inability to do that — and later, my refusal to do that — made her furious. As I got older, that response of hers enraged me. At the end of her life, none of it mattered. I would have fought an army by myself with nothing but my broken heart to save her if I could have. I tried. It was enough, though, because she saw me trying. Everyone saw me trying. I would have given almost everything for more time with her, because the ALS took every last thing from her, including her ability to drink. Including her ability to rage. It didn’t happen all at once, the year leading up to her hospitalization was a thing that was so brutal it’s hard to comprehend sometimes. As the disease ravaged her, she lashed out at me in ways that hurt my heart when I think of them. I’m still recovering from it all, four years later. But the last three weeks of her life, when she could not speak anymore…that was when my mom and I started to communicate in the only language you ever really need. It was the only thing I’d ever wanted or needed from her. I finally had her in that way I’d been longing to have her my whole life. Three weeks felt like such a short amount of time to have her, and then to have to let her go. I did make it to the hospital in time to be with her the last few hours of her life, thanks to a huge line of people at the taxi stand at JFK who let me cut to the front. Do not ever let anyone tell you New Yorkers are not kind. I still think of those people and wish I could hug every one of them.For anyone who is grieving or missing someone this time of year, this episode is for you. I will let you know that I had to stop a few times, and there were tears. But that’s okay. You have to let the grief move through you.Sending love

Last week I wrote about what it’s like growing up and existing as a girl and a woman in this world. The response from so many women who relate was overwhelming, enraging, heartbreaking, and also incredible. The “Quiet, Piggy” moment touched a deep nerve in many women across all kinds of borders, because so many of us felt it in our bones. So many of us know exactly what it’s like when a man attacks you, verbally or otherwise, because you are not behaving the way he wants you to behave. Because you have the gall to question him, to speak up for yourself or someone else, to assert your right to exist as a full human being. Because you aren’t being polite, you aren’t “staying in line” or being nice. More power to you.There is a certain kind of man who does not like women, does not respect them, does not consider them to be equal. There is a certain kind of man who thinks little girls are easy targets. I wrote from the perspective I know, but it’s children who are not safe around men like this, not just little girls. They are not the kind of men we want in positions of power. It’s tough when men like these are our dads, our teachers, our bosses at work, a guy we pass on a hiking trail, in a stairwell, or a desolate parking lot at night. It is hard to get across what it’s like to be doing this kind of math in your head all the time, because you can’t know by looking at a man which kind of man he is. To be assessing whether you’re safe, what you need to do to keep yourself safe, whether your daughter is safe. The fury I feel when I think about that last part is impossible to describe. I’m surprised I don’t open my mouth and breathe fire.It’s devastating that so many people support men who are abusive, misogynistic and in many cases, predatory. It will never make sense to me that millions of people did not find it disqualifying when the man who sits in the Oval Office said he “grabs women by the pussy.” He said it. Out loud. If you voted for him, you were okay with that. You excused it as “locker room talk” but it isn’t talk — it’s a way of thinking about women. Good men don’t say things like that. As ever, the comments section under the essay this week is incredible. If you have any doubt whether women everywhere relate and have stories of their own, please go take a look. There are also so many thoughtful, heartening comments made by men. The only way things will get better is if we make them get better, together. Not just for our daughters, but for our sons, too. This isn’t good for any of us.Thank you for being here, I appreciate you so much. If you’re new here, welcome. I record the podcast episodes after I read the first round of comments, so these podcast episodes are very much co-creations. Last thing, Rufus my rescue dog was in the room with me. Turned out he was in the mood to play, not podcast, even though we’d already played and had a very long walk. You’ll hear him once or twice, some things can’t be helped. He’s the best, and so are you. Sending you love.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

There’s a certain kind of person who is so concerned with their own needs, how they’re feeling, and what’s good for them, they really don’t have the capacity to take in much of anything else. You might know some people like this. They can be very charming and charismatic, but after a short time you’ll realize their favorite topic — and the one they circle back to again and again — is them.When they aren’t talking about what’s good for them or what they’re excited about or looking forward to (world dominance! ballroom-bunkers! the end of Obamacare!) — they’re talking about things that really upset them. A list of ways they’ve been wronged or people they loathe — and they can be very petty about it. These kind of people like to assert their dominance as a way of feeling better about themselves. No one feels the need to assert something when they feel confident it’s already understood, and only insecure, fearful people have the desire to dominate and control others. This week I wrote about a time I watched my dad strip my not-yet-stepmom of her power and joy right in front of me, teaching us both that he was the one who was going to call the shots. I was five, and I remember looking from him to her and back again, as the energy in the room shifted, and so did something in my mind. This wasn’t about a teddy bear, this was about permission. She’d done something without asking him if it was okay, and he wasn’t going to allow that.There was more to it — if she and I bonded, that threatened the relationship he’d set up with me. I was supposed to be his tiny confidante, his pocket therapist, his pint-sized affirmer and secret-keeper. If she started buying me teddy bears, who knew whether I’d keep his Extracurricular Olympic-Level Womanizing Activities to myself.My dad was fifty. His girlfriend (eventual third wife) was twenty-four. I was five. Those numbers feel significant. She’d bought me the bear with her own money, but he made us return it. We both got the lesson that she was not allowed any agency when it came to me. Only he was the grantor of joy if there was going to be any.What kind of man makes his tiny daughter return a teddy bear? What kind of man teaches his girlfriend she gets no respect, right in front of his child? She’s allowed to do the laundry, make the dinner, keep the house clean, work and pay half the bills, but she’s not allowed to buy a gift he wouldn’t have purchased … because, why?What kind of man gives $40 billion to Argentina, but won’t feed the most vulnerable people in his own country? What kind of man makes people choose between food and affordable healthcare? What kind of president doesn’t care that 20 million people are going to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums (mine are quadrupling) or that 15 million people will be thrown off Medicaid and the ACA?What kind of administration grants tax breaks to billionaires and huge corporations, but doesn’t care that hardworking people are struggling to buy groceries? What kind of people send ICE agents to daycare centers? In the midst of all these horrors, what kind of man pauses, looks around, and asks, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” All this and more (including the very excellent special elections) in this week’s podcast episode. Love to all.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

“We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the ‘I’ behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing.”― Anaïs NinThis week’s essay and this podcast episode are about the “I” behind the “eye.” You, me, any of us — we are always walking out the door carrying our frames of reference with us, our perspectives, our ideas about how the world works, what we have to offer, whether anyone wants to hear from us. So much of what we’re seeing is influenced by what we expect to see, or by the way we perceive what we’re seeing. I had a rough week, but not as rough as a lot of people. I was reminded that at any time your phone can ring and it can change everything. A single moment on a random Tuesday morning can render most things meaningless, and remind you of what you cannot live without. If you’re smart, the “things” you can’t live without are the people who mean everything to you, and whatever ideals you hold close to your heart — kindness, compassion, the belief that everyone deserves dignity. It’s been a rough time for kindness and dignity. Every day I see things that hurt my heart and make me wonder what has happened to far too many people, and what will become of the country I love. People I once knew are supporting some of the most cruel and heartless acts of callousness I’ve seen in my lifetime, but want to agree to disagree. The government is being sold off for parts, and the people in power are willing to starve the most vulnerable members of our country for political leverage.But there are also people working hard to fight back, to say no, to make sure no one will go to sleep hungry. There are people throwing themselves in front of ICE agents, Attorneys General filing lawsuits, good human beings showing up for their neighbors. No matter what happens, we get to decide what it means when we say “I am here” — we get to decide who that “I” is, and what we expect to see from the people around us. What we will tolerate from our friends, and what we are not willing to accept.We get to look up on a starry night and be amazed, or sit by the ocean and recognize how tiny we are — and how utterly arrogant we’d have to be to think we know how other people should live. We get to be thankful for the chance to visit this pale blue dot of a planet, or ignorant enough to believe we own any of it. It isn’t ours, we’re just visiting, but we belong to each other. It’s really easy to spot the people who know that. They’re the people trying to help.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

One of the harder things about life right now is the constant onslaught of news that feels insane, impossible, heartbreaking, outrageous, mind-boggling, or fill-in-the-blank with your chosen word. We really aren’t built for this and it’s so incredibly sad, because it doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way. It could be so beautiful.I hope you are taking care of yourself, consciously stepping away from the madness sometimes, putting your phone down, getting outside if you can, breathing deeply, connecting with people you love, reading good books, listening to music, and doing anything and everything you can to remind yourself that human beings can be incredible. We’ve been through tough times before, and the most important thing is not to lose hope. Sometimes that’s also the hardest thing, I know.This week, of course, we watched as the president took a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House with no congressional oversight or approval, and no public review. There are at least a dozen other things happening that need our attention – he is directing our military to strike alleged “drug boats” out of international waters based on his assertion that they are carrying drugs — with no evidence, and without congressional input.So we’re just shooting boats out of the water, now, and taking his word for it bad people are on those boats. The administration just approved more oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge which breaks my heart. This president wants to accept a $130 million donation from a friend, Timothy Mellon, to pay the military this month and there are going to be millions of people who think that’s a good thing. It is not a good thing at all, even for active duty service members. Obviously I want them to be paid, along with all federal workers being impacted by the shutdown.I do not think senators choosing not to come to work should be paid, however, nor do I think they should receive top-of-the-line healthcare when they can’t be bothered to to their jobs. I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for their vacation. It’s not good for any American if the president starts accepting anonymous donations or any donations to pay for our military, because we need Congress. We need a functioning Congress to ensure we have a functioning democracy. We, the people, need our representatives to work together to make sure we are being represented. That’s why they are called “representatives.” That’s why we get to vote for them (unless the president calls governors of states and tells them to redraw their maps so we don’t get to vote for them), that’s why our tax dollars pay their salaries.They are supposed to go to our state capitols and to Washington to work for us. If there is a shutdown because our senators cannot come to an agreement, and the party in the majority starts taking huge donations to pay for things, there is no need to negotiate anymore. This president is working to undermine the power of one of the three branches of government in broad daylight and I do not understand why this isn’t the top story everywhere. More on that later this week.For now, in case you (also) encounter people who try to compare Obama’s basketball court to the ballroom, allow me to help. He turned the existing White House tennis court into a court that could also be used to play basketball – so some lines were painted and hoops were added. Even that he did with congressional approval and oversight. It is freaking hilarious to compare these two projects. Like an ant versus an asteroid.When people start telling you the “South Lawn Expansion Project” began during Obama and, “Trump is just finishing what Obama started” that is misinformation. In addition to the tennis court/basketball court mashup, Michelle Obama planted The White House Kitchen Garden, which continues to provide 2000 pounds of produce to the White House annually. She understands the concept of leaving a place better than you found it.You may also hear about a $376 million dollar renovation that happened while Obama was president. It did! It’s so funny, because the people talking about it are so smug. They’re like, “Look you apoplectic liberals having seizures over the ballroom, look what Obama did!” As if he spent $376 million in taxpayer dollars doing upgrades to the White House for himself.What they don’t say is that the $376 million dollar renovation was approved by Congress in 2008 when BUSH was president, before Obama took office, because the Bush administration came to Congress with a Bush administration report, saying inspectors the Bush administration had hired found infrastructure systems that were continually failing and needed to be replaced. Not just HVAC systems but security systems. So yeah, those renovations happened while Obama was in office, but they were approved and put in motion before he was president.CNN later confirmed in a September 10, 2010, segment that Congress had approved the project’s funding

Saturday I went to a No Kings event with one of my closest friends. She’s more my sister than my friend, we’ve been making good trouble together since the 80s. I am so fortunate to have a few people in my life I’ve known since childhood, or maybe it isn’t good fortune, maybe it’s that I hate goodbyes and hold on hard to the people I love. I’m a lifer unless you’re an asshat. It’s such a wonderful thing to have people who can say, “Remember that time…?” And then mention a thing that happened back in elementary school or high school or college, or a night with details we shall take to our graves, a person someone dated or married or divorced, or an update about someone we knew back in the day — who just got spotted on a dating app. That is one of the wonderful things about long term friendships — you do not have to be the sole keeper of your memories. A lot of your memories overlap with other people’s past experiences, they’re intermingled and intertwined, but so are all of our histories, all of our present-day circumstances, and all of our futures, whether we know each other or not. Our fates are tied.This is a reality that was driven home to millions of people Saturday, in this country and around the world. We’re all connected, like it or not. Even if we don’t like it, there’s no way around it — we have to find a way through this, together. I’m not sure what’s happening with the people who are refusing to recognize that there are choices, but they’re limited - you can be a rat b*****d (a phrase my Dad used to use for people who weren’t kind) or a good neighbor — either way, you’re gonna die, and you don’t take anything with you. People remember how you made them feel, though. I dunno about you, but I move away from people who aren’t kind. I don’t want to spend time with anyone who thinks they know how other people should live, or who uses language I find abhorrent to describe people who look, love, speak, pray (or don’t pray), differently than they do, or anyone who thinks it’s okay for some people to be treated without empathy or dignity or decency. I don’t want to have lunch with a person who thinks it’s okay for other people’s children to be zip-tied and thrown into the back of a U-haul, as long as it isn’t their child, because it’s my belief that there’s no such thing as other people’s children. I don’t think it’s an “edgy joke” to say you “love Hitler” or that “rape is epic” or to call Black people names I will not repeat here. I don’t think a person who is somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-five years old can be called a “kid” and excused for saying things this despicable, and I think it’s insulting, embarrassing and far below the level of integrity I expect in a vice president to defend these people and call them “promising leaders.”After Saturday’s record-breaking turnout with more than 8 million people here in this country making it clear they are not okay with the policies of this White House — along with people from other countries who joined in solidarity — the POTUS and the VP took it upon themselves to post more AI garbage on Truth Social and BlueSky, respectively. The president posted a video featuring him — wearing a crown and manning a fighter jet (King BoneSpurs McDraftDodger I guess) dropping feces on protesting American citizens — with a special shoutout to Harry Sisson who got “covered” first. How classy and presidential. The VP’s contribution was a video featuring the president sitting on a throne wearing a crown, pulling out a sword — and then they cut to the footage of Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall in tribute to George Floyd (performative, embarrassing af Kente cloth notwithstanding), as if they were kneeling down to King Trump. No one seems to be mentioning the George Floyd part, and how despicable it is to be using that footage in a gross AI video (it’s the second of the videos linked in the article above). There really is no bottom for these people.Funny thing, I saw the last speech President Reagan gave back in 1989 because Jimmy Kimmel posted it. I’m sure I saw it at the time. I was eighteen then, and no fan of a president who would not say the word “AIDS” for years while so many young men died. But watching the speech today, I find it amazing that his last words to the American people were about our immigrant community. It is worth watching if you haven’t seen it for thirty-some-odd years. It’s worth watching if you have.Then I saw the speech President George W. Bush gave the morning after President Barack Obama won the election. He congratulated President-elect Obama, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden on their “impressive victory” and promised his administration’s help in every way so he could guarantee a smooth and peaceful transition of power. Makes one think of January 6th.I didn’t agree with President Reagan or either of the presidents Bush on policy, but these were adults who did not defile

If you’re new, hi and welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. You might be wondering what’s happening. I don’t mean in this country - I wonder what’s happening in this country every day - I mean with this podcast. Every week I write an essay, and then a couple of days later I record a talk about the topics I wrote about - after I’ve had a chance to read the responses and be in conversations with people - and often commiserate about the insanity of existing right now. This week I wrote about my son, and the time he fell off the monkey bars at recess and broke his elbow. He was six. It turns out a lot of people have fallen off the monkey bars and broken bones. Mostly when they were kids. Also, I laugh when I think of the climbing structures I grew up with, because they were so huge. They were a good twenty feet off the ground. Sometimes I wonder how any of us are still here. Look at this:I fell off a rainbow-shaped metal climbing structure when I was five - right when I got to the highest point and was feeling proud of myself for overcoming my fear - and hit my nose on one of the bars on the way down. I didn’t break anything, but my nose bled like a geyser. It bled so much my friends thought I was going to die and I believed them, because we were five. One of my friends actually said, “Oh no! You’re definitely going to die. People always die when they bleed like that.” I did not die. Anyway, my teachers were very kind to me.Some of you had stories about how incredible your teachers or principals were, and some of you had experiences like we had with the principal at my son’s school, and the nurse, too - disappointing and really hard to forgive.Which brings me to the bigger topic of the essay and the podcast - basic common decency. One of the comments this week (hi, Paul) was that “common decency” is becoming an oxymoron. It is dizzying and heartbreaking to watch people twisting themselves in knots (or not twisting themselves at all) - shrugging off some of the horrific things happening in our country every day. We’re wired for compassion. We’re meant to care about each other because it feels good to care about other people, and because our fates are tied. Historically, when human beings do terrible things to one another, it’s because they’ve decided this person, or this group of people is “other” - they are not like us, they are a danger or a threat to the common good. When you start putting people outside your circle of compassion, you might think you’re dehumanizing them, but it’s your own humanity you’re sacrificing. When you hurt someone accidentally, but you don’t call to check on them because you’re worried about liability and culpability, you’ve already lost the battle for your soul. When you decide one man is more important than the Constitution, democracy, or your fellow country-people, something has gone very deeply awry. For so many of us, it feels like we are living in an episode of the Twilight Zone. I would give almost anything for Rod Serling to come around the corner. If he did, I’d be like “I freaking KNEW it!! I knew this couldn’t be real!” Because it does feel like we’re in the upside down. Like we slipped through a portal. I got into a conversation with a woman who was utterly convinced Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert were assassinated by a “radical left-wing lunatic” and when I explained to her that was absolutely bonkers and that Vance Boelter is a Trump MAGA supporter and had registered in the Republican presidential primary (and that he had tried to kill state senator John Hoffman - also a Democrat - along with his wife Yvette and their daughter Hope), and that he had 45 more Democrats on a list in his car along with 35 abortion providers - she said I was listening to legacy media, and just because I said it didn’t make it true.Me saying doesn’t make it true - the facts of the case make it true. Just like children being pulled out of bed half naked, zip-tied together and thrown into the backs of U-hauls should horrify everyone. Just like people being attacked by their own government for protesting peacefully should upset everyone. Some things are easy to figure out. You have to work really hard to pretend they’re okay when they aren’t - and there’s a cost that comes along with doing that. The cost is your integrity, and I wouldn’t exchange that for anything in the world. Good people are easy to spot. When they make a mistake, they own it. They don’t say mean-spirited, terrible things. They don’t take healthcare away from hardworking people, or free lunches away from hungry kids. They don’t grab women by the pussy. Up isn’t down. Wrong isn’t right. Rod Serling isn’t coming around the corner, but we have each other. If you’re hurting, it’s okay, me, too. If you’re scared, anxious, angry, sad… it’s okay, me, too. We have each other. We fall together and we get back up together. If the monkey bars didn’t kill us, this won’t, either. Sending you love.Come As You Are is a r

I would imagine most of us have at least one childhood memory that has to do with cruelty - and feeling unsure about what to make of it. Being little in a big world is not always easy, especially if the situation at home is chaotic and uncertain. Sometimes kids are dealing with things that are hard to talk about, and the feelings come out sideways and twisted. Sometimes, heartbreaking as it is, kids are dealing with violence or neglect, and it makes them feel weak and small. Then, when they see weak and small beings in the world they lash out. They do unto others, even though they never wanted any of those things done unto them.I wrote (and talked) about a group of kids I came upon once as I was walking home from fourth grade - a group of kids and a tiny mouse and a tall boy with a broomstick. My guess is he and I both related to the mouse - scared and trapped and at the mercy of someone so much bigger - but his response was to stamp out the perceived weakness he saw, and mine was to save the mouse. The mouse was just being a mouse, after all. It hadn’t done anything wrong.There’s bystander syndrome and “groupthink” and fight, flight, freeze, collapse or fawn - all responses that might happen in the face of something traumatic and unexpected. Sometimes people are influenced by someone they consider to be an authority figure, and will obey orders that defy their own moral code. The Milgram Shock Experiment - led by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s - shocked even Milgram himself. I mention this because it is so painful and bewildering to see people we once considered close supporting an administration that thrives on making people suffer. Even children.The other day I responded under a social media post about the shutdown. I explained about the Affordable Care Act subsidies and the fact that we’re in this situation because Republicans are refusing to negotiate so Americans can have affordable health insurance premiums. For example, my premiums are going from $346/month to $1706/month January 1st if the subsidies are not extended.And here is an actual exchange I had with a real human being on social media after I explained about the staggering jump in my premiums and how I could not possibly manage that -Them: Stop using traditional medicine. There are other solutions, both preventative and palliative. Emergency medicine in times of immediate crisis is the only benefit Western medicine provides.Me: There are those of us who need mammograms/ultrasounds and skin cancer checks, but sure, no big deal, I’ll just have a green juice and hope for the best. Them: You can get affordable skin care checks - and for free at certain events. And affordable removal of pre-cancerous skin cells all for less than the cost of healthcare premiums.I go to a chiropractor, hot yoga, hike and do my best to eat healthy all for less than what healthcare premiums cost me. If it’s my time to leave this planet, that’s okay, too. We have such an irrational fear of dying. We fear it more than living boldly. Indigenous cultures are not like that. It’s the fear of death that allows the sick healthcare system to take full advantage of all of us.Me: I’ve been teaching yoga for 30+ years and I am healthy and eat well and all of the above. I don’t have an irrational fear of dying, but I do have children and I’d like to be here for them as long as I can. The point is this is a developed country and affordable healthcare should not be out of reach.Them:Maybe I should just loosen my grip on wanting to live. Adopt a more laissez faire attitude about breathing.Anyway, between the ICE agents macing protesters in the face in Portland (which was peaceful until the POTUS invaded with his thugs), and ICE agents in Chicago traumatizing children - paid for with our tax dollars - and now South Carolina Judge Diane Goodstein’s home burning to the ground after an apparent explosion (she’s the judge who just refused to give DJT access to voter information) we really have reached new heights of violence and mayhem here. People’s rights are being trampled. We just wanted healthcare, and for this administration to honor the rule of law.I’m waiting for his supporters to realize they’re in trouble, too. They are. This is not normal, and it’s not okay. At a certain point, everyone needs to understand these are the people who have no issue with cruelty - they get off on it. They shoot puppies with no remorse. They send Ghislaine Maxwell to “prison spa” with no regard for the survivors who gathered up so much courage to come forward. They’re the grown-up versions of the boys with the broomsticks, and we’re just mice in a bucket to them, but they’ve misjudged. We are not weak, they are. Cruelty is not a badge of honor, it’s an illness and you stop it by continually saying no. Hell no. You refuse to watch your neighbors be treated without compassion while you do nothing. You decide that is not acceptable and you resist and boycott and organize and protest in every way you can

Hello friends. I write to you from my couch, in my pajamas at 2 p.m. on a Saturday, under a blanket, with a migraine. It’s a beast - so far it has blasted through my daily medication Topamax, and the Rizatriptan I took yesterday because I could tell I had one breaking through - and even the Benadryl I took before bed because I could feel I still wasn’t okay. I was in agony all night and did the barely-sleeping “bed hustle” - then got up to drive my daughter to self-defense. In my pajamas. She did not mind, it’s not like I got out of the car. Maybe I should try a couple of Tylenol. Some guy on insta posted this very hilarious thing pretending to be the CEO of Auntie Faw which I’m splitting into two words and spelling weirdly because god knows if I’m already on lists somewhere (likely) - and he was telling everyone HQ was shutting down and they should come get their things. People in the comments were also funny, they were asking about what would happen to their 401k’s and if anyone had Janice-from-Accounting’s potato salad recipe. But part of me was worrying people were going to believe it, and think it was an actual organization, and not a word that means “being against fascism” which is a good thing to be against. My migraine is probably just the stress from the fall of democracy, I’m sure I’ll be fine soon. Or maybe it was the guy who messaged to tell me he was “unfollowing” from my fb yoga business page because I was talking about politics. I guess he didn’t get the memo that I am now responding to people who feel the need to tell me they are unfollowing with pithy remarks so I can create an anthology. “Okay, but I’m keeping that tapestry we bought in Mexico!” Let him ponder that for a minute.I was too tired to say that everything is politics - the way the food gets to your plate, whether you can afford health insurance, if your neighbors are afforded equal protection under the law - it’s all politics. Politics is another way of saying “your philosophy in action” - the way you think the world should be - that’s what you’re voting for when you cast your ballot. So yeah, if you’ve been practicing yoga for a while, I sure hope you care about whether people are being harmed, and if a person who engaged in a heck of a lot of hate speech is being lionized, and if the president is declaring war on states in his own country…and also comics, LOL! It’s not just a thing you do on your mat before you go eat a kale salad at a restaurant - where the person who puts the salad in front of you could be hauled off by an unidentified masked man, thrown into an unmarked van, and lost - as in vanished. Yeah, you should care, sorry if your yoga teacher forget to mention that part. I lost a treasured friend because he’s gone to the dark side, and I know I’m taking that hard because I don’t let people in easily, and I don’t let them go easily, either. Goodbyes are my least favorite thing, so my head is exploding and my heart is bruised and battered, but I’ve been through worse and I’ll be fine.I was just texting with my friend Kate, and I told her I started reading an article this morning about a medication-resistant fungus that’s sweeping the country and prevalent in California and can be fatal - and I stopped reading. As in, I couldn’t tell you the name or the symptoms or what to watch out for because there didn’t seem to be a way to avoid it except to try to stay out of the hospital, which yes - especially if you don’t know how or if you’ll be able to afford health insurance in January. I don’t need to know there’s a fungus among-us. Kate said the murder hornets must be queueing up about now, and I said frogs falling from the sky in 3…2…I missed the podcast recording that would have gone with The Devil’s in the Details last weekend because I was moving my son into his first apartment as he starts his second year of college. So, I did a mashup episode that combined themes from that essay, and this week’s essay, Escalation, thus - A Devilish Escalation. The themes work together, and this episode is about the events that shape us in early childhood.Those events affect the way we feel about our place in the world, our impact on the people around us, whether we feel free to express ourselves, the roles we play in the family system - and how all of that soil we grow in does not have to define us, but it does lend context if we’re trying to understand why we are the way we are. It’s also essential to consider if you’re trying to liberate yourself from thoughts, feelings and tendencies that lead to heartache. I shared about some of my own “origin stories” and also how I stopped repeating patterns that caused me a lot of pain.It’s about gaslighting and hypocrisy and how exhausting it is to be on the receiving end of that stuff, especially if you grew up with it. It’s about how scared I am about where we are right now, and how sad.In any case, I’m going to “take Rufus to the backyard” - I just remembered that’s what helped the last ti

Friends, this week’s podcast episode is not for kids - meaning please don’t listen if you have kids within earshot. I want to give you a content warning because I talked about SA and all kinds of current events that aren’t easy for any of us, so if you need to pass on this one, please take care of yourself. There’s nothing you can’t read below, however. I feel like I am in a world that is becoming harder to comprehend by the day. I know I am not alone in that experience, and I know this is painful for all of us. I don’t believe anyone wants a world full of this much chaos, violence and vitriol.There are a lot of enraged, volatile people out there, and a lot of hurting, exhausted people. I don’t particularly want to talk about Charlie Kirk anymore - I talked about him in the essay this week and in the podcast - but I will say this once more so it’s very clear: political violence is never okay, and no one should be assassinated for expressing their views. Ever. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about people whose views we agree with, or views we abhor. When it happens in our country - and it does - it is never a thing to celebrate. It is never a thing to take lightly. It makes all of us less safe. It is not the sign of a healthy republic.For those of you who feel devastated because you are in agreement with his views, perhaps you might be able to understand what it felt like when Melissa Hortman - Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita - her husband Mark, and their dog Gilbert were assassinated in their home back in June by a MAGA Trump supporter. Vance Boelter dressed up as a police officer and knocked on their door in the early hours of the morning on June 14th. When they answered, he shot and killed them in the doorway of their home. My heart hurts thinking about the last seconds of their lives - the terror, the panic, the confusion and the violence. He had already been to Senator John Hoffman’s house and shot him nine times, and also shot and wounded his wife, Yvette. Their grown daughter Hope was there as well. They survived, but Senator Hoffman has a long and difficult recovery ahead, and no doubt all three of them will be dealing with the trauma of what happened for a very long time. Boelter had a list of 45 additional Democratic politicians he intended to kill. This was premeditated and devastating. I am someone who agreed with Melissa Hortman’s feelings about the country and ways we can make things better. I was dismayed to see that her assassination - along with the other horrendous details of this man’s rampage that morning and his further murderous plans to wreak havoc - did not receive the attention they warranted. Not by a long shot. The President refused to call Governor Walz to express his condolences. “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” That’s what he said when a journalist asked if he’d spoken to the governor. He did not “waste his time” calling to express his condolences to the Hortmans’ grown children, either. Flags were not flown at half-staff, he did not attend the funeral, nor did the Vice President. Vance did not even acknowledge their deaths. Please try to remember the President and Vice President are supposed to be the leaders of the entire country. They are public servants and they work for the people - our tax dollars pay their salaries, whether they need the salaries or not. The job of President and Vice President is not to care only for the people who vote for them. It would seem that someone should let them know immediately, and the rest of the administration while they’re at it. Right after news of the Hortmans’ assassinations broke, Senator Mike Lee of Utah got on X and quipped “Nightmare on Walz Street” - a post he deleted only after Senators Tina Smith (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) talked to him in person, and expressed their absolute horror at his callousness, and grief over losing a cherished friend. I’d like to think we can all agree no one should need to be told that is not funny - that it takes a shocking lack of empathy and decency to post a thing like that in the face of a tragedy of such enormous proportions. Melissa Hortman taught Sunday school by the way. She was a mom. Her children lost both parents and their dog in the front hall of their family home in the most unimaginable way possible. Please note, not a single Democrat got on the airwaves after all the details came to light and said, “THIS IS WAR! WE ARE AT WAR WITH THE RIGHT-WING LUNATICS WHO WANT US DEAD!” Not. One.The gaslighting is a lot, it really is. This will be hard for those of you who liked the man, but try to stay with me. It is a very strange experience to see people in the “spiritual community” and the yoga community praise a man who said things that were openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. I linked so many examples of words coming directly out of his mouth in the essay. People will say, “Oh, you’re taking clips out of context” - but there is no context where i

There are things you can control, and things you can’t. About 98% of things go in the second column. As someone who used to try to manage or predict how other people were going to feel, and as someone who believed I could keep myself safe if I continuously scanned the environment for danger - I’ve given this a lot of thought. There are really only two things you can control - the way you respond to whatever is happening around you, and what you decide to focus on. Here in the states, everyone I know is having to employ a certain amount of intentional cognitive dissonance to get through the day. Intentional Cognitive Dissonance feels like a thing that is uniquely 2025. It’s not the old skool simple cognitive dissonance of yore - the kind of thing that happened outside of someone’s awareness, enabling them to be a pot calling a kettle black. No, friends, it is a survival tool for this particular moment in history. It’s what makes it possible to go grocery shopping while your government is attacking its own citizens. It’s bonkers, I know!You have to be able to turn away from all of the anxiety, outrage, fear and despair sometimes, or you won’t make it. Also, you don’t want to allow these people who could not care less about you and your worries and your kids and your family and your neighbors and the things that keep you up at night - like the fact that you have no idea how you’re going to afford health insurance in January (not normal!) - rob you of your joy, your poetry, your music, your magic. Maybe someday historians will study the unthinkable times we’re living through, and there will be a chapter about ICD. I’d feel certain historians would study this moment in time - because god knows we have made some wild choices - but who knows if we’ll have historians in the future? Maybe AI will be handling the archives, whitewashing history, running code to get rid of the more horrific things we’ve done. There are a lot, and now there are a whole lot more. For all our technological advances, and for all their money, the people in charge are morally and ethically bankrupt. The Supreme Court has decided corporations deserve the same rights as human beings. Corporations are certainly protected in our legal system with a lot more fervor than children or women. Come to think of it, so are guns.The knights of the round table are all pale white billionaires who kiss the ring and normalize an authoritarian who wears more makeup than Tammy Faye Baker, nominates a dangerous, unqualified, anti-science grifter as the HHS director, intimidates Republican senators to make sure he gets confirmed - and then questions his decision to make Covid vaccines harder to get, and says Florida should probably keep some vaccine mandates for school kids. Like polio. Ya think? It’s like he had nothing to do with the horror show he has rained down upon us - and people are going to die because of it. These awful people in the highest levels of our government are angry, vindictive, weak little men - and the women who carry water for them. Now we just blow up boats in international waters and say there were drugs present with no proof. Dang, skippy! Now this administration tries to deport children in the middle of the night over Labor Day Weekend. Now the president sends the National Guard to blue states he hates with governors who threaten him because he’s a child with too much power. Constitution be damned.These people don’t want to be regulated. The rules don’t apply to them. They want everything privatized because it’s never enough money. While inflation goes up and job numbers go down, while they gut Medicaid and the ACA and SNAP benefits and free lunches at school - the potus and his family get richer and richer, and so do all our billionaires. If you aren’t a billionaire, I don’t know why you like this. Do you?But you get to choose your own adventure, or you did, anyway. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen here. Maps are being redrawn, laws are being broken, the Constitution is being violated every day, and yes, there are some court cases being won, but there are a lot being lost, too. Maybe you want to be in a world full of humanoids and AI, where only these pathetic cosplaying tough guys have rights and women stay home churning butter, programmed for agreeability in every room of the house. It’s a choice, I’ll give you that. But it’s a really strange one. It’s the kind of thing that makes our kids wonder if they want to bring children into this world. You can’t control what other people do, but you can control the way you respond. You can decide who you want to be in the face of all this madness and how hard you want to fight for something different - and so much better - than the direction we’re heading. You can focus on all the beautiful people in your life, and all the things that bring you joy, and I hope you do, but I also hope you focus on how you can get your head and your heart in this battle. Who you want to be right now

If you are a newer subscriber, you may be wondering what this is. I’m so happy you’re here, and I hope you’re going to love this as much as I do. Once in a while I do a Come As You Are Conversation where I go “off the page” with a writer I love. So far I have had absolutely incredible conversations with the fantastic Paul Crenshaw, my beloved soul sister Dani Shapiro and the phenomenal Kate Mapother. I could geek out all day talking to other writers about writing, and the conversations always lead to such vulnerable, fascinating, heartfelt, and sometimes very funny places. Because, writers. There are the “practical practice” questions I love to ask - do you write every day, do you have a time of day when you write, do you have certain rituals or things you need before you sit in the chair, do you try to hit a certain word-count, what do you do when the words aren’t coming…?* And then there are specific questions that have to do with the particular writer in the chat. Today I was so happy to be in conversation with the fabulous Dana DuBois. We decided to dive into the topic of: whose story is it? This is a question any writer of memoir or personal essays will grapple with, and the answers may change over time, depending upon the context, or who else is in the mix.Dana and I are both moms, we both have teenagers, we both have ex-husbands. We have aging parents (I’ve lost my mom and dad in the last few years, but my stepdad is still going strong - and Dana still has her parents, but had to put her dad in memory care recently) and know the tricky business of wanting to write about universal themes like grief, loss and feeling stretched in twenty-nine directions at once - in the context of specific events or personal anecdotes.Anne Lamott has a famous quote about this, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I love that and I love her and I believe that to be true, but - I think sometimes life can be a little more complicated than that. I could never have written the memoir I’m finishing now while my mother was alive, which is why I didn’t. Funny thing, I have found the more truthful I am about what happened between us, the more loving it is, even though a lot of it was really painful. There’s a reason so many of our mothers were quietly or not so quietly enraged or resentful or not fully living the lives they wanted to live. There’s a way that river of feeling has been passed from mother to daughter for generations, and I could never have found that current without writing into the center of the wound.So Dana and I talked about how we navigate these waters, what our different “rules” are, when we break them or in what context, and what stories will die with us. If you haven’t discovered Dana yet, I’m so happy to introduce you. If I lived in Seattle I have no doubt we’d be hanging out. Thank you to the fantastic Kate Mapother, Lawrence Winnerman, Untrickled by Michelle Teheux, Wendy Gray and many more for tuning in. I look forward to the next conversation, whenever it happens. Sending you a lot of love, friends. I hope you’re remembering to find some joy, to read, to laugh, to get outside, and to connect with people who make you feel hopeful. I’m off to work on this week’s essay. See you soon.*For anyone looking for practical and potent writing support for days when the words aren’t coming, or help with establishing a writing habit, period - check out my amazing friend Paul Crenshaw. He kicked off these Come As You Are Conversations with me, he knows a thing or five about writing, and he has a whole ‘stack devoted to this very topic called Establish the Habit. Here’s the kind of gold you’ll get in your inbox - This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Of all the things that break my heart in this country - and there are many - our unwillingness to pass sane gun control legislation and keep our children safe at school is at the very top of the list. It is hard to describe how awful it is as a mother to get texts from your kids during lockdowns - a thing I have experienced with both of my children - and feel panicked and powerless and have nothing but the word please pumping through your veins. This is not a normal way to live.It is not okay that our four-year-olds practice active shooter drills, that is insanity. It’s not okay at five, six, or sixteen. The older the kids get, the more aware they are that the adults running the show do not genuinely care about them. Do not dissuade yourself of this very obvious fact, because I promise you it is not lost on them. They might know you, specifically, care - my kids know how I vote and how I feel and that I would do anything to keep them safe - but they also know that a lot of adults in this country vote in a way that perpetuates a “thoughts and prayers” cycle of violence and tiny coffins and grief that never ends. You can’t say you care and do nothing. Kids are smarter than that and they are watching.There’s an old African proverb that the late, great John Lewis used to quote: When you pray, move your feet. Leading up to the election I heard from women who said they were voting Republican because “abortion is murder.” Aside from the reality that states with restrictive abortion bans have a higher rate of infant and maternal mortality rates - if you care about babies dying, then I really hope you’re calling your senators and congresspeople, because if you aren’t you never cared about babies.If you’re one of the people yelling about how this is a mental health issue, I agree and I really hope you’re making those calls, because your president and his administration have gutted funding for mental health support by 2 billion dollars over the last few months. One billion through SAMHSA, and another billion specifically allocated for schools to hire psychologists and other mental health experts through a gun violence bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2022. The 2nd Amendment was written when we had muskets that took a full minute to reload - I’m sure you’ve seen the demos. Today we have military-style assault weapons that fire 83 rounds in that same minute. The Constitution was designed to change with the times - the Founding Fathers might have meant “all [straight, white] men [with means] are created equal,” but they had enough foresight to understand the world would change in ways they could not imagine, and that a document that was supposed to oversee the way our country was governed would need to change with it. That’s why we’ve revised and repealed so many amendments, and why the 2Aers need to grasp that our children’s right to exist through the day far outweighs their right to bring their Call of Duty tough guy fantasies to life. We have more guns than people in this country. We have laws about how many inches have to be between the bars of a crib, or how much a child has to weigh to be out of a carseat, but you don’t want to regulate your precious guns? Also, you don’t care about the Constitution, you’ve made that very clear.Aside from that, no one is coming for your hunting rifles or your handguns for personal safety, as long as you can prove you’re of sound mind. But we need to rethink what we’re doing. We license people to drive a car, because you can kill people when you get behind the wheel of a car, just like you can kill people when you pick up a gun. I’m tired of seeing tiny children shot to pieces. I do not want to hear empty words. I do not want to see men and women who do not really care get rich while our children die. We do not have higher rates of mental illness in this country than anywhere else, what we have is unfettered access to guns and an unwillingness to put our children first. That’s the worst mental health problem we have, and the first one we need to address. We need to go back to the beginning and start again. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s essay (and therefore this podcast episode) is about things that are a matter of opinion - like whether scrambled eggs with ketchup on the side is the way to go - (I vote yes and so does Matthew McConaughey, apparently, while President Obama has very strong feelings that ketchup is for kids) - and things that are not a matter of opinion, like whether the Smithsonian should focus less on “how bad slavery was” and more on America’s whiteness. Sorry, I meant “brightness.” Pretty sure I was right the first time, actually. We can disagree about whether The Sound of Music is incredible, or feels like the answer to how we slow down time - but not about whether the lyrics to “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” are so sexist they sound like they could be lifted from Pete Kegseth’s secret dating profile. You know he has one. Of course Rolf later joins the Nazi party and betrays the family, so it all tracks, but I digress. Since there are some horrible conversations happening on the national stage thanks to the potus, and a certain segment of people who long to go back to the “good old days” and often reference the 1950s - I thought this was a good week to talk about Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. The Board of Ed, what just happened with the redrawn congressional maps in Texas, and Morgan Freeman. It all ties together. Maybe not the Morgan Freeman part, but we can’t let these people steal our joy, or rob us of our resolve.Long live the folks who would always chuckle, grunt, or at the very least, make a throat noise when needed. Those are the people you want to be with in the foxhole, friends. I see you and I love you.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Sometimes I feel like I’m in one of those action movies where there are those six random people who somehow know the world is ending - you know the ones. They have eleven hours to get the word out, and the grid is down and the freeways are jammed with abandoned cars because people had to take off running from the aliens or the asteroids or the zombies - or whatever it is that’s causing the threat. Whenever these six people manage to come up with a plan and they break into some government facility or television station, something major goes wrong, or someone doesn’t believe them, or two of them are taken into custody, so then there are only four people left to save the world. Meanwhile things keep deteriorating or becoming more unstable or precarious or pressing.There are a lot more than four or six people trying to get the word out about what’s happening in our country, of course, but I do understand the feeling of pointing at things that are just as terrifying as giant asteroids screaming towards us - and seeing a lot of other people pointing at them, too - but being astounded as a whole bunch of other folks are not really engaged, or don’t want to look because it’s exhausting, or they “aren’t into politics”, or they just want to go to yoga and chill - or they’re looking at the same asteroids hurtling in their direction and thinking, “Good, yes, I like that because it’s going to hit my neighbor, and my neighbor needs to be taught a lesson.” Do I even stop to explain asteroids and what happens if - nah.It’s very odd to me because I don’t see how anyone can feel good about a lot of these things on any level. It makes me want to remind people that women could not have credit cards, bank loans, or mortgages in their own names until 1974. I was three years old in 1974. So just to be clear, I was alive when women could not get a credit card in their own name. We have not had the same rights as men for all that long, not sure if I need to put this in sparkling lights or hire a band or what I need to do to get across what a huge thing this is, and how easily our rights could be taken away if we are not careful. wE aRe NoT bEiNg CaReFuL*My dad left my mom in 1975, and he did not come through with consistent child support. If my mother had not been able to open a bank account in her own name, that would have made it pretty hard for her to deposit the checks she got from her employer when she ran out and found herself a job to keep a roof over our heads. It’s good that my dad left us in the apartment, though, because if my mom had tried to go rent a place with me in tow, landlords could have refused to rent to her based on the fact that she was a single mother with a child. That did not change until 1988. If you’re wondering why I’m bringing up the past, it’s because the people who opine for the “good old days” are referring to days like these. Days when straight, white men of means had the power and the rights, and everyone else had to fight for theirs. But these guys - the ones in power - don’t even want people fighting for their rights, they want to remove the tools to put up any kind of a fight. See: ICE raids, the SAVE Act, the growing number of states with total abortion bans, attempts to make birth control harder to get, the justice system (continuing) to prioritize the lives of men who commit sexual assault over the lives of survivors, and efforts to end no-fault divorce - off the top of my head.So I’ll just be here pointing at asteroids, because even if we don’t agree about things, I care about your daughters and your moms and your sisters and your grandmas, too. They fought hard so we could have rights. And I care about my friends and my neighbors and my kids, and leaf sheep and the planet and all the sunflowers. But I do not care about men who don’t respect me, I don’t vote for them, and I don’t want them deciding what rights I get to have or what rights my daughter gets to have. You know who those men are? They’re the men who make us unsafe - all of us. These are not just “women’s issues” - women’s rights affect everyone.*If we want to be careful and if we want to be safe, we need to stop voting for men who don’t respect women, and “grab them by the pussy” (how that was not obvious is beyond me and always will be) and talk like Mike Knowles and Charlie Kirk and Pete Hegseth’s favorite pastor - and all the husbands in his congregation who expect their wives to submit. If you missed that horrifying interview, it’s linked in the essay this week, along with everything else I mentioned in this episode along the way.Sending you a lot of love out there. Pace yourself, stay hydrated, check out the leaf sheep linked in the essay if you haven’t - because they understand symbiosis and they know how to shine. This is a really hard time we’re living through, but living through it together makes it manageable. It’s our turn to fight for our daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, best friends, neighbors…anyone who isn’t sa

There are so many things in life that can be debilitating. We really aren’t built for sustained stress, we’re built for short bursts of it - and I’m talking physiologically here. We’re meant to be able to run from the oft-referenced saber-toothed tiger, to race our asses off like our life depends on it because it does, and then to dive into a cave and collapse, catching our breath and waiting until the tiger moves onto other prey - knowing we’ll live to see another day, or at least another afternoon.Evolutionarily (that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?) intense pain would not work in your favor. Stubbing your toe whilst on the run would really suck. It’s not like you’d have the time to stop, hold onto the nearest tree trunk, and allow a stream of every expletive you know to come pouring out of your mouth as you waited for the pain in your toe to subside. You’d end up as lunch that way, your final breath spent dropping f-bombs as the tiger swallowed you whole. Bummer for you, good day for the tiger. Anyone else hearing Circle of Life from The Lion King playing in your head? How ‘bout now? You’re welcome! Maybe now it’s Moana, you’re welcome again.Migraines are not fun, and I know because I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I wrote about them this week because I had the first cluster I’ve had in a while, but also because peri-menopause is…an adventure, a journey, a process, a transition that can go on for years - and because it is not a thing men experience, we haven’t devoted a lot of medical research or funding to understand what happens, and what helps. Fantastic. That sure isn’t gonna change now, we aren’t even funding pediatric cancer research anymore. Just gold leaf for the president.Also, we have a culture that teaches girls and women to be ashamed of bleeding every month, even though literally no one would be here if we didn’t - so I think we can be done with shame now, please raise sons who will grow up to be men who will happily buy tampons/pads etc from the drug store like they’d buy floss, thanks. It’s not a big ask, believe me. Try pushing a cranium out of your vagina. If you don’t have a vagina, you should definitely not scrunch up the face attached to your cranium if someone asks you to buy tampons. Think about that if you need to, that’s all the help I’m willing to offer.Also, there is the stress of not knowing what is going to happen on any given day when you wake up in the country where you were born and cannot fathom what is happening. The financial and emotional stress of not knowing if you’ll be able to afford health insurance in January, wondering what you’ll do if you can’t get mammograms and skin cancer screenings, and if it will be feasible to drive to Mexico to buy medications you used to get through insurance. The heartache of not being able to protect your neighbors, of not being able to keep your children safe, of not being able to stop the madness as we roll back environmental protections and give up on trying to address the very obvious climate crisis, which is more obvious all the time. The rage of watching people who comment as a fifty-four-year-old immigrant selling tamales is tackled by ICE and has a heart attack right there on the spot, and people say, “Well, if she was here illegally, that’s what you get. You either believe in the rule of law or you do not.” Meanwhile their president just cut a deal with a child-raping pedophile-helping perjurer who now enjoys barre classes at an open-air prison camp in Texas, instead of serving her twenty years behind bars, which is the very least she should have done. The very least. How these people can pretend they care about the rule of law is astounding and it’s also insulting.Yesterday CNN aired clips from an interview with a pastor whose name I won’t share here, though I am linking the interview because if you haven’t seen it, you really should. The thing that troubled me the most were the comments under clips wherever this was shared, and it was shared widely. So many people expressed the feeling that “men like this should not be platformed” - but men like this have already been platformed - they are in the U.S. government, at the highest levels. Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Russell Voght, Peter Thiel, Mike Johnson…all of these men are conservative/evangelical far, far right Christian men who are in bed with the Heritage Foundation - and very much enacting Project 2025. A huge part of Project 2025 was eroding voting rights, and women’s rights and the rights of every marginalized group. That’s the SAVE Act, friends. That’s Louisiana v. Callais. That’s all the bans against gender-affirming care, and if you think marriage equality is safe, you aren’t paying attention. They’re coming for it all. Peter Thiel believes women’s suffrage is bad for the country. Please take that in - the Vice President of these United States, the man second in line if our 79-year-old-McDonald’s-eating-sundowning president takes a header off the White House roof

Friends, you cannot talk about Epstein without talking about depravity. If you are a survivor of abuse, please decide whether this is an episode that makes sense for you. This was a rough week for those of us who have been assaulted, and I want you to be gentle with yourself. This conversation is about the system underneath a culture that produces a predatory worldview. People who treat the vulnerable in our society as less-than, who believe the planet is theirs to plunder, who find pleasure in domination and cruelty.This week’s episode is about the water we’ve been swimming in. When you grow up in a culture that teaches you from the time you’re eight that men can expose themselves to you, and as you hit puberty they can grab you and do whatever they like - and there isn’t any recourse, you aren’t going to be protected, if you gather the courage to come forward you very likely will not be believed - the takeaway is that you are not safe in the world. When you grow up understanding you aren’t safe, it affects the way you carry yourself, the way you walk into a room, the way you scan the environment, the way you think about your own value, the things you say out loud, and the things you keep to yourself. When the water is poisoned you build up immunity, you don’t taste the bitterness or feel the way it’s making you sick. That doesn’t happen until later, when you’re old enough to realize when you’re spoken to in a way that’s dismissive, when you’re treated with disrespect, when you’re valued as an object and told to calm down and maybe try another diet - the thing that has been building up inside of you is rage, and the cure for what ails you is to open your mouth and breathe fire.The system protects men like Jeffrey Epstein. Men who prey on young girls without remorse, and set up entire systems so other wealthy, powerful men can prey on them as well. There are even women who will help, women like Ghislaine Maxwell who kept her eye out for the most vulnerable girls, gained their trust, groomed them, trafficked them, and assaulted them along with Epstein. When there is an entire island where this is happening, a townhouse in New York City, a mansion in Florida, and 5,000 names in the Epstein files, it’s because the system is working to protect the wealthy and treat the children as expendable. To be best friends with a man like Jeffrey Epstein for fifteen years, to have two dozen women come forward to accuse you of assault, to say yourself you “grab women by the pussy”, to say vile things about your own daughter, to laugh about how you walked in on young, naked women because you owned a beauty pageant so you could get away with it - and somehow become president, twice - is an irrefutable testament to the way people have been trained to think about girls and women. When a woman comes forward to accuse a man of assault, she is attacked again, this time by the court of public opinion. What was she wearing? How much was she drinking? Does she come from “the wrong side of the tracks”? Is she attractive enough to have been assaulted? What does her social media look like? Women attack as much as men. It is devastating, and it teaches women who have already survived one horror to think twice about going public. Especially if we’re talking about going up against a powerful man. People believe what they want to believe, and far too many people do not want to believe women. Ask yourself why that is.This is a painful conversation about the water, friends. It is not an episode to listen to if there are children within earshot. All children should be safe. No child should have to hear about these kind of people, let alone deal with them. But this issue is pervasive, this is not just about Epstein, it’s not just about the fact that the president has made a deal with Maxwell and she is now in a minimum-security prison camp in Texas and will very likely be released back into society. It’s about corruption and power and systemic abuse. It’s about patriarchy and capitalism and white supremacy. It’s about realizing there’s poison in the water, and speaking out loudly before it kills us all.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This is a conversation about love and loss, about death and dying, about family cycles and family secrets. It’s about the power of coming together to honor someone’s life, the way it helps to mourn with a group of people who also loved the person you love. It’s about the way a place can elicit so many feelings inside you, just the way a certain smell can take you somewhere, instantly. It’s about people who love you all the way, and how it breaks your heart when they go, because of course it does.It’s also about the havoc that is wreaked when a person cannot have the hard conversations. The way secrets linger and fester and leave mysteries for people to unravel on a basement floor in the midst of photographs and tears. My mother was like that, she edited out the things that were difficult, but life is not a Martha Stewart catalog. It made me feel sad to think she might have believed that if she showed her whole self people might not revere her anymore, or that maybe she wouldn’t be safe in the world. I wish I could have told her we’re never safe in the world, but you can be safe with certain people, and the only way to know is to show yourself and realize you’re still loved.Her secrets are the things that slithered between us and made it unsafe for me to get too close. Her unwillingness to be uncomfortable, vulnerable, to ever admit she was wrong about anything or needed help - that is what cost her the most, and it’s probably at least some of what made her want to drink. Blur the edges, numb the pain and make everything look pretty again.This is also a talk about some of the harder things. What a gift it is to the people you leave behind when you create a will. What it’s like to be in a room with someone you love as they are dying, and what it’s like in the hours after. These are not easy things to talk about, but when we don’t talk about them, we set ourselves up to feel unprepared and to be unprepared. I can’t go back and redo the hour after my mother’s death, but I wish so much that I could. I talked about it in the hope that I might spare someone else this feeling. It isn’t an easy thing to carry. Sending lots of love to all, and a little extra to anyone who is grieving xxCome As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This is a talk about losing people we love with our entire hearts. It’s so painful, but we don’t last forever, and neither does anyone else. When we lose people who have loved us unconditionally, the way my Aunt Louise loved me, it really hurts. If you’re someone who has lost a number of important people in a short amount of time (this can happen when you hit the “middle years”) one loss can open the portal to all the others. It’s like a river of grief and somehow you have to learn how to let the river flow through you. You have to let it soften you.In some ways, grief and loss teach you to really live - to be certain the people you cherish know how you feel, every single day. When you understand how fragile life is, and how short, it’s an invitation to use your time wisely - to say the scary things out loud sometimes, even if you don’t get the outcome you want. To do the work that feels important. To not wait for “things to calm down” to really start living. As much as it hurts to accept that you won’t get to hug certain people again, I am a big believer that love doesn’t die. I feel my mother with me all the time, and sometimes I feel her energy moving through me. It’s not the same as getting to pick up the phone and call her, but it’s meaningful. My relationship with her still exists because she’s still my mother, even if she isn’t here. My feelings about our relationship keep evolving, so our relationship continues to grow and change.I talked about my relationship with my mother because as much as I loved her - and I loved her to the ends of this earth and beyond, and still do - it was not easy, and my Aunt Louise stepped in and mothered me in a way my mother couldn’t. Maybe you’ve had people like that in your life, too. They (literally) make all the difference. I cried a lot during this episode because I was overcome with love and grief and loss and all of it. But maybe you need a good cry. Also, if you tend to listen with small children around, please do not do that with this episode. I talked about something that happened the Christmas I was six, when I found something out in a way that I shouldn’t have. It’s about Christmas, and I do not want to be the reason your kids find out the thing I found out. I’m heading east to be with my cousins and attend my aunt’s funeral. I know we’re going to cry a lot and hug a lot, and I might even find the bakery where she used to get me the black-and-white cookies I wrote about in this week’s essay, and buy one for myself. Maybe I can get it down over the lump in my throat. She was the best.Sending you a lot of love. Be gentle with yourself, and call someone you love today.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is about the things we can protect our children against and the things we cannot. I want to tell you that I cried more in this episode than any other, there was nothing I could do about it, and I think that’s appropriate so I left it in. Our new rescue dog Rufus was in the room with me because he was not okay with any other scenario. You will hear him tearing around in the background for the first two minutes providing a little bit of needed joy and the good kind of mayhem - instead of the kind we’re dealing with every day in this country. He does go to sleep quickly. I talked about him for a few minutes, because this adoption happened suddenly and feels like a little bit of kismet.Texas is on my mind, of course. When you have children, it is not hard to imagine how you would feel if something horrific happened while they were at camp, at school, at a playground…anywhere. It is such a painful, terrible thought, but when there’s a huge story in the news and you understand that families everywhere are suffering the most incomprehensible loss imaginable, all you can do is feel it, and try to find ways to help. Please note, there’s no way to talk about Texas (or North Carolina, or anywhere we are having these weather crises) without talking about child loss. My cousin lost his little boy when he was six years old. I know what it is to go to a funeral with a tiny casket, and I am so sorry if you do, too. I always try to speak about this with all the sensitivity in the world, and I can never talk about it without having my heart break all over again. Letting you know in case you need to skip this episode.When my kids were little, there was a mailbox at the end of our block. It was right at head-height for a toddler/preschooler and for a few years, every time we walked, ran, or roller-skated by this house I’d call out “Watch your head!” to my kids. It’s a phrase you say as they’re learning to crawl and aren’t paying attention to the height of the coffee table, or as they fling themselves back on a bed, but don’t check to see where the wall is behind them. It’s one of many things you say when your kids are tiny and you’re trying to teach them to pay attention to their surroundings. When you’re trying to teach them to be safe in this world.At a certain point, you have to face the awful reality that you cannot protect your children from everything. You have to hope that you’ve taught them well, that the world will be kind, and that other people will be kind when you aren’t there. I have this overriding philosophy that there is no such thing as “other people’s children” and that though my children came through me, they don’t belong to me - they belong to themselves and to this world. If children belong to the world, they belong to all of us. It’s our responsibility (and our honor) to watch out for them, to keep them safe. I’m pretty sure that’s called community, and that a healthy society understands this without being told. Thriving democracies take care of their citizens, especially the most vulnerable members. I talked about a couple of things that have happened with my own kids in the last few weeks. My son ended up in the ER with salmonella in Mexico (he’s okay), and my daughter and I had a very upsetting experience right in our driveway last week, up our path, right up to our front door. Predatory men are emboldened these days, not that they have ever been in short supply. We are also okay. Having said that, it is exhausting and outrageous to be in a world where you have to be vigilant every second you are not in your house. It is enraging and not okay. It isn’t “socialism” to want all children to eat, or to believe everyone should have healthcare, clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, access to a good education, and help when there are disasters. It isn’t “woke liberalism” or “radical left TDS” to think your tax-paying neighbors who’ve never broken a law and have been trying to “do it the right way” deserve due process and should not be terrorized by masked men in unmarked vans. That’s just called decency. Flash floods don’t stop to ask who you voted for, and neither do wildfires or hurricanes. We either decide to have systems in place to try to keep each other safe, or we’re on our own. Right now, we’re on our own, and the safety net is only happening if we create it ourselves. It doesn’t have to be this way. Watch your head xCome As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s essay and this podcast episode are about the Reconciliation Budget Bill that was just signed into law by the president, and all the painful repercussions we’ll be dealing with as a result. Since every single Democrat and Independent fought against this bill, I think it’s important we call it the Trump MAGA Republican Reconciliation Budget Bill. I think they need to own the bill they were thumbs-upping themselves over and praying for and clapping about. They got what they wanted, and I think it’s vital everyone (especially the people supporting this administration) remembers that. When children and all of our most vulnerable people across the country lose their Medicaid benefits (children’s Medicaid benefits are named different things in different states, for example in Idaho it’s called the Idaho Health Plan for Children), I think it’s vital the people who voted for this president take ownership of the repercussions of their votes. All of them.When Trump and DOGE - (oh hey, this is gonna be a long aside, but remember when the president’s supporters loved Elon Musk and thought he was this fantastic philanthropic billionaire donating his time because he’s so nice - and not because he was raking in even more dough hand over fist, winning government contracts left and right, and getting all the rocket launches his heart desired, approved without any of that pesky oversight?) - anyway, when Trump and DOGE made cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) months ago, people who work in the agency started voicing their alarm, loudly.They expressed serious concern about our climate crisis and increasing extreme weather events (like our wildfires out here in Los Angeles this fall, and very sadly, like the flooding in Texas right now) and their ability to warn states about impending weather events with such deep funding cuts. Here is a link telegraphing what might happen if DOGE and the president went through with their plans. Here is a link about the further cuts that were included in the Trump MAGA Republican Reconciliation Budget Bill. Here is why they’re so devastating to states like Texas. It is pathetic and exhausting to see the lengths MAGA Republicans will go to try to absolve themselves of responsibility when their policies and priorities lead to tragedy. This was today, folks:No. No one is controlling the weather with space lasers or anything else. We have a climate crisis because we treat the planet like it’s our “personal resource ATM” - we’re addicted to AC, iPhones, and now AI to name a very few. We have extreme weather as a result of our own greed. We have a president who pulled us out of the Paris Accord and thinks “drill baby drill” is a good slogan for these times, because he’ll be dead soon, and really doesn’t care about the rest of us. Musk and crew have their eyes on Mars, don’t get confused and think he’s a friend now. People will die and they already are, and it’s devastating. Is the president in Texas right now, where he should be comforting families? No. He was playing golf yesterday, and having a “victory event” at the White House, celebrating the fact that 17 million Americans will lose their health insurance - but he gets to build more Alligator Alcatrazes. This episode is largely about the pillars required for a democracy to sustain - things like free and fair elections, the rule of law, the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, a free press, due process, and the right to protest. It’s about what happens when those pillars are eroded at warp speed, and 32% of the population still thinks everything is great. And it’s about the need to remain stubbornly hopeful that the 31% of us who did not vote for this, and the 36% of us who did not vote at all, can fight like hell for a much better and kinder future for us all.Sending so much love to Texas. My god my heart breaks for all the families there, and the parents who lost their little girls at Mystic Camp - my heart just hurts for y’all so much. I’m so sorry, there aren’t any words at all. But I am writing through tears.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

There are so many unfathomable events happening in the United States every week, no one news story receives the attention it deserves. I genuinely wonder how historians will look back on this time, and what conclusions they’ll draw from a world gone absolutely off its rocker. Catch and Release is about the disease of hatred. The thing that happens when we loathe a certain segment of our neighbors to such a degree, there’s a constant fire burning in our hearts. That fire grows, and it starts to blaze through rational thought. You know it when you see it because people start to say and do incomprehensible things. I saw it during the wildfires in Los Angeles this fall, when friends of mine lost their homes, the children’s artwork, their photo albums, their children’s sense of security and innocence…and people online said things like, Good! You and your celebrity friends can buy new mansions next week. Boo-hoo, get Gavin Newscum to help you! Those were just a couple of actual things actual people said, and they were not the worst.The political assassination of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman - who was tragically and horrifically killed alongside her husband Mark and their family dog Gilbert a couple of weeks ago, and the attempted assassination of Senator John Hoffman, his wife Yvette and their grown daughter Hope the same night - are already out of the news cycle. That isn’t normal or okay. What is even less okay is that a few hours after it happened, Utah Senator Mike Lee posted “Nightmare on Walz Street” on X, and the always lovely Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a picture of herself aiming an assault weapon. That is a pathological lack of empathy. A vicious, cruel, wholly un-funny level of cruelty with zero thought about the Hortmans’ children, other family members, friends and colleagues in shock. Mike Lee and MTG simply did not care, because Democrats fall outside their circle of compassion. Screw those people, who cares if they suffer, I’m going to laugh while they try to process what has just happened. That is a disease none of us want, friends, and that’s what Part 2 of this podcast is about.Sadly, the Hortmans and the Hoffmans and the entire story is being overshadowed by the Budget Bill, the horror-show happening in the Everglades right now à la the POTUS, Noem, DeSantis - and some sadistic fantasy they’re playing out using our tax dollars to create Alligator Alcatraz - the ongoing feud with Musk, and the latest grift of a presidential fragrance line. More on all that later this week.Trump’s latest financial disclosure showed he made $57,355,532 last year from his cryptocurrency stake in World Liberty Financial, $2.8 million from his watches, $3 million from his “Save America” coffee table book, and $50 million from Mar-a-Lago and his members-only club. Ummm, what? I wouldn’t be talking about this now, but in light of the Budget Reconciliation Bill being pushed through by Republicans in the Senate (with the tie-breaking vote provided by Vice President JD Vance earlier today) - which would gut Medicaid to fund even more ICE, and make billionaires even wealthier - it seems pretty pertinent, and also disgusting. Aside from the fact that it’s wildly illegal because of the Emoluments Clause. But his supporters do not care. I wonder if they will care when they don’t have health insurance.I suppose it’s understandable that there isn’t time to process, to grieve, or even to integrate all the terrible things that are happening, and yet - we’ve never seen anything like the planned assassinations of 45 lawmakers belonging to one political party (in this case, Democrats) in the history of our country. Never before have we had a person so poisoned by political extremism, he has a list of lawmakers in his car, along with their addresses - guns and ammo at the ready. This is not a thing that happens in a healthy, functioning society, and the Hortmans’ grown children are only just beginning to grieve the loss of their parents. The fact that this man was stopped is not the story. The fact that the current level of vitriol has risen to such a degree that this story does not even make it through one news cycle, is. I know we are all swimming in so much grief and stress. Keep reassuring yourself this is not how things should be, and know that if you’re struggling, it makes sense. It means you’re sane and compassionate. Surround yourself with people who understand that, and keep raising your voice. We aren’t built for this kind of chaos and violence. No good person wants to see someone else suffer. So strange the things you have to assert these days. It matters that we acknowledge when decent, kind, hardworking people are harmed. It makes a difference when a lot of us are saying this is not right. You might not think it matters, but the kids are watching. If someone shot me in my doorway, I’d want my children to see the grownups continue to say that wasn’t okay for more than a week, wouldn’t you? Hang in the

I decided to break this podcast into two episodes because I talked about two essays - last week’s, I Know What the Riot Is, and this week’s, Catch and Release. They’re inter-related essays about all the different things we’re going through in the states, so it made sense to talk about them together, but I split the talk into two 45-minute episodes because I thought that would be easier to digest. I think about your digestion, I’m a mom. Sadly, I don’t think these topics are relevant only to those of us living in the U.S.Part 1 is about what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship. Which might sound strange at first, because weren’t we talking about the government and the country? And yes, we were. We are. For many of us, waking up in this country right now is very much like waking up when you’re living inside an abusive relationship and you don’t feel safe. You’re told that what you’re seeing with your own eyes is not true. You push back, and you’re screamed at by people on the internet who don’t live where you live, but still want to tell you how things are. The first 10 minutes is about my definition of healing. The rest is about how we’d really better start to understand what’s happening here. The threat is coming from inside the house. They want us yelling at each other so we don’t pay attention as they dismantle our democracy, sell off our public lands, gut Medicaid, kidnap our neighbors off the street, arrest our lawmakers when they try to intervene, and laugh at a politically-motivated assassination and assassination attempts (we’ll get to that in Part 2). Thanks for your incredible comments under both essays, and under all the essays. You make me think more deeply about all these things. Sometimes you make me laugh out loud. The things you share often bring me to tears, make me know I’m not alone, and shape the podcasts every week. Thank you so much for being here.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Dear Friends,If you’re a new subscriber, welcome! There are a lot of you this week, and I’m so happy you’re here. It truly means the world to me. You might be wondering what this Come As You Are Conversation is all about. Once a month or so I go live with a writer whose writing I love, respect, appreciate, and admire - to talk about - you guessed it, writing. Inevitably, the conversation turns to life, love, grief, inspiration, loneliness, connection - and what it is that draws us back to the page again and again. One thing you can count on with most writers, and certainly the ones I gravitate toward, is that they’re willing to be vulnerable and honest. These conversations are always such a gift, especially during these times which feel so dark and fraught. It’s important life-giving to open yourself up to people who still believe in the power of art, poetry, music, words, kindness, love and laughter. We need these things like we need oxygen these days.So far I have gone “Off the Page” with the wonderful Paul Crenshaw whose phenomenal ‘stacks I cannot recommend enough. He has two - Melt with Me for his fantastic essays, and Establish the Habit, for those of you who want to make writing an important part of your life, and could use a gifted guide. I had one of my favorite conversations ever in life with one of my closest friends, Dani Shapiro. Maybe someday we’ll get her on Substack ;) but not right now because she is writing a new book. You can find these talks in the archive - they make my heart happy, and I hope they’ll do the same for you. Tonight, I spoke with the extraordinary Kate Mapother. Kate is a poet and essayist, and she is currently working on a novel. She’s also one of the best people you could ever have in your corner. We had such a beautiful conversation about grief, longing, writing through these painful times, gender, connection, and whether “letting go” is really even a thing. I know if you listen, you will see why I love Kate so much, and if you go and read her work, you’ll see why I am sobbing into my coffee many mornings a week. Here is the poem I was referencing tonight, but honestly, you don’t want to miss any of them. A big thank you to Paul Crenshaw, Nicole Peattie, Chris Keller, Man In Back, Jennifer Smith, Wendy Wolf who did a phenomenal sketch of us while we talked!! What?! And all of you for tuning into Off the Page with Kate Mapother! I hope you’ll join me for my next Come As You Are Conversation in July.Sending you so much love,Ally HamiltonCome As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I appreciate your re-stacks so much, and always love meeting you in the comments! I’m working on this week’s essay for you, too. Love y’all. Stay gold. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is about uncertainty, the one thing we can all count on. We never know what will happen next - all of our careful plans can be turned upside down on a regular Tuesday without notice - and we, ourselves, may be unsure of how we feel about what’s happening around us unless we pause, tune in, and give ourselves some space to breathe. We don’t know how long we have, or what happens after this. The ability to sit with our own vulnerability is the key to finding ease in this world. It’s also the source of art, poetry, music, love, longing, connection, and all the genuinely beautiful parts of being human. If we get to the place where we can’t sit with discomfort, where every space is filled with noise, where the moment our fingertips hover over the keyboard a machine asks if we want help or suggestions, and we say yes - we are going to lose the essence of what it means to be human. We’re going to train that right out of ourselves, and at that point, all is lost. I almost called the essay “Rage Against the Machine” but it’s bigger than that. Artificial Intelligence might be useful for generating grocery lists or keeping track of expenses, but it’s soulless. It has no intrinsic light, and we need light in order to live. If you’re going to rage against something - and I hope you do - rage against the dying of the light.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This is a talk about grief in all its forms. It's a talk about losing my mom, and feeling like I failed her in the moments after her death. It's about finding three expensive, very similar black sweaters hanging in her closet, and why that broke my heart. It’s about being at war within yourself, and why it’s so important to try to find some peace and forgiveness - not just for your own wellbeing, but for everyone around you. It’s also about who we say we are versus who we’re being in the world. Sometimes it’s hard to read people, and sometimes they telegraph exactly who they are and what they want. It’s about the innocence of a four-year-old, and why that’s worth fighting for - whether we’re talking about the four-year-olds walking and talking in the world around us, or the ones who still exist inside us.And it’s about hyper-normalization and why it matters that we all fight against it, stay awake, and hold onto hope.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you for being here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Thank you Paul Crenshaw, Ellen Sue Stern, and many others for tuning into our live conversation, that was such fun! And a huge thank you to Dani for sharing so generously. You can find Dani’s books, stories, essays, workshops, news, all things Family Secrets, and all of her upcoming events at danishapiro.comI think you should know I did not fix the first few minutes where we are sideways on the screen and then upside down because -1. It is hilarious (thank you for jumping in to get us right-side-up Michael Maren, and please everyone, note that this is my fault because I’ve never gone live with someone I was next to, and did not know we had to be vertical.) * If I fixed the first ten minutes, then we’d be sideways for the rest of it, and also, you wouldn’t get to see how awesome Michael is. * It’s 2025. This is not a problem. It doesn’t even qualify as a blip. Hope you enjoy!Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

“Flooding the zone” is a strategy used to overwhelm opponents in politics or media. You throw so much information into the mix that it is nearly impossible for your critics to respond to everything, and eventually people stop responding to anything - they give up, they turn away, they can’t take it anymore. That’s the strategy being used, openly, by the administration in power in the United States right now. Something dreadful happens, and if you do speak up, you’re told the thing you’re upset about is fine, nothing to see here, just democracy on fire. If you play the game this way, you’re in a constant state of responding to all the horrific things that are happening - and some of them do require your response and your passionate resistance. It can’t be all about resistance and trying to survive, though, because then they are controlling the narrative and deciding what the game is - and this is a terrible game with no winners. They want to plunder the earth, colonize Mars and let AI take over the world. Also, this is not a game, it’s our lives, the lives of our friends, our children, our communities, and our planet. We need to be in a conversation about how we got here, what we want, and how we go about making it happen - and we need to bring as many people into the conversation as we can. We need our own 900-page document, or maybe ours doesn’t need to be that long. I think the things we want are simple, but it’s time to re-think our approach, get clear about our vision, and get to work. Yes, we’re late, but it’s not the first time in history a country was taken over by authoritarian forces before it decided to fight back and remake itself. We say “it” when we refer to a country because it’s a noun, it’s a thing…but it’s made up of people…meaning us. If you start asking yourself, who are we to be having this conversation? we are the we in: “We the people…” Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

This is a talk about impermanence and vulnerability. It’s about losing people you don’t know how to live without, and this feeling we have that things are more solid than they are - that our feet planted here and we can count on that. There are two ways to ride the ride - you can embrace change and open to the uncertainty, love your heart out, keep your eyes open and your mind, too - or you can respond with fear. People who respond with fear want to pin things down, they want control. They plant their flags and pound their chests. They hoard and dominate, but it’s never enough. That’s when they start looking toward Mars.Either way you ride the ride, you don’t get to ride forever. One way feels a lot better than the other. This is also a talk about grief, loss and longing. It’s about understanding there’s no such thing as other people’s children. It’s about missing my mom so much it takes my breath away sometimes, even though we had a complicated relationship. Sending love to all, and a little extra to anyone struggling with Mother’s Day. It can be a tough day for many reasons.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

A talk about the nervous system and what happens when you get used to chaos and danger as a way of life. There’s fight or flight, fawn, freeze or flop, but there’s also a “sixth gear” for people who grew up scanning the environment for signs that they might be in jeopardy at any moment, because that often proved to be the case. It’s a bit like cruise control or autopilot - this still and quiet place inside where you retreat so you can think and do the things that need to get done, even if you are not fully engaged with the “falling rocks” around you. It can be handy in an emergency - people with that sixth gear will probably be the ones to call 911 first - but it can also be strange. There’s such a thing as too calm. I talked about this, and our response to shock generally, in the context of what’s happening in the United States. There’s a moment after something horrific happens when you’re trying to process what you’re seeing. It’s this surreal, liminal space between what makes sense and what makes no sense at all, and a lot of us are existing in that space. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

A talk about the fairytales we grew up on, and how disturbing and mind-boggling it can be when you read them as an adult. There are always messages coming at us from the culture of our time - it’s not just fairytales of course, it’s films, television shows, things we learn from our families of origin, whatever is in the zeitgeist - those messages permeate everything. They are the water we’re swimming in. They help shape the ideas we have about ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it. When you hear stories and see films again and again where there is a damsel in distress and a knight in shining armor who saves the day, or a prince who comes to break the spell with “love’s true kiss” it doesn’t occur to you as a child to question anything. You’re a little sponge. You’re being taught that girls and women need saving. You don’t stop to consider that Snow White is fourteen and comatose when the prince comes upon her in the forest, that he’s thirty-one, and that consent isn’t even in the mix. Sometimes you can reach the middle of your life and realize things don’t feel the way you thought they would, and your best bet is to start writing a better story. You have to be your own hero, and if you need saving, you’d better get busy saving yourself. You’re the only one who can.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

A talk about the gift of genuine, abiding, ride-or-die friendship with women. What that looks like, and what it does not look like. Your best friends will tell you the truth. They’ll tell it to your face, they won’t say it behind your back. They’ll apologize when they hurt you, just like you’ll apologize when you make mistakes. That’s how you build something real, and that’s how you know you’re on solid ground. We need our friends right now, we need to know who our friends are, and that we’re safe when we’re with them. Anything less isn’t the real deal. It’s important to stay clear right now, to call things what they are. You don’t want to point at a dumpster fire and call it a beautiful bond between three life-long friends. If you want to Stay Gold, you have to be gold, first. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

A talk about how hard it is to be living in a country that is breaking your heart and astounding you every day of the week, and how lots of people are having a very tough time right now. There is a lot to be gained by giving people the benefit of the doubt, by trying not to project or assume, by extending compassion wherever you can…but, there’s also a line where you have to take care of yourself. There’s a place where extending too much slack is the same thing as allowing yourself to be treated in a way that doesn’t feel good. A society is just a whole bunch of people, so is a constituency, so is a country. People are just people, and what we do and say, matters, it has an impact. When times are tough, head for the people who have your back, who laugh and cry with you, and who shake their heads when people leave weird comments under your essays. Those are your people, that is community, and that’s how we get through tough times…together. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

A talk about the Signal group chat, of course, but in the context of the larger experience of dealing with people who will never be accountable. People who will look you directly in the eye and lie to you, or deny wrongdoing and then attack you - or anyone else - when called out. People who will assert you did not see what you saw, or hear what you heard. Maybe you know people like this, I do. It is exhausting and disheartening to deal with them, because without honest communication and the ability to acknowledge mistakes, there’s no bridge to stand on. The sub-topic here is men who feel entitled to take what they want, and become furious if you question them. What happens when the country is being run by a cabinet full of people like this, and their supporters remain steadfast? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe