Yum! Stuff that’s provoking + inspiring me (Aug 2025)

This month I’ve been reflecting a lot on the close relationship between delight and grief… (which I’ve written about here too.)

Poet and activist, Andrea Gibson, had such a gift for showing how non-binary so much of life is - especially how close delight and grief are. This poem stretches my heart and leaves me feeling like I have so much more courage and space for embracing all the grief and delight life has to offer.

Clearly one of the ways I’m grieving Andrea’s recent death is to binge-watch/ listen/ read everything they’ve written and said … and I suspect many others are doing the same because I can’t get hold of a copy of their latest book of poetry, You Better Be Lightning, anywhere. Thank goodness for all of their videos and the podcasts they’ve featured in all over the internet. There’s so much wonderfulness in this podcast conversation with Andrea on “We Can Do Hard Things.”

I’m also still taking in everything I can find that poet, Ross Gay, has written and said. He too, offers such skilled words for talking and thinking about how inextricably linked grief and delight are. I enjoyed this conversation in which he describes his “delight practice”. I especially love what he says about how important it is for us to notice and share delight when the world seems to be on fire.

And I loved hearing Brene Brown sharing with Karen Walmrond about her struggles with staying connected to delight in the face of all the fear, grief, and overwhelm of Covid. Karen shares about what she refers to as a “Gratitude Practice”, which has lots in common with my Delight Practice and Ross Gay’s poetry practice that has inspired many of his books.

Our local park is surrounded by large fields of these. Apparently they’re called Wild Carrot. They’re beautiful when they’re blossoming and just as wonderful, in a whole new way, when their blossoms die and they fold up into these intricate pom-poms that sway in the wind. #delight