Upliftment List #13
Your Weekly Dose of Upliftment
A big wave of compassion to everyone who is feeling heartbroken and lost right now. Allow yourself to have moments of joy alongside all the harder feelings that are coming up.
1. Here’s an older clip from The Daily Show in which Trevor Noah goes back to his hometown, Johannesburg, South Africa, and talks with his grandmother about his childhood, apartheid, Nelson Mandela, and life. His memoir, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, is so good, and so relevant to the current climate we are in.
2. Lisa Olivera’s current Human Stuff newsletter, “This is the Time to Practice.”
Everything is a practice, and this is the time to practice, and this is what practice is for: to meet the world and ourselves with a full heart, to find and add beauty alongside the horror, to stay with What Is while also staying close to the self we want to be in the world we find ourselves facing.
3. The original short film of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. (Oh, Marcel, how I love you.)
4. A quote from poet/memoirist Maggie Smith, whose You Could Make This Place Beautiful I’m currently reading and loving:
Do not be stilled by anger or grief. Burn them both and use the fuel to keep moving. Look up at the clouds and tip your head way back so the roofs of the houses disappear. Keep moving.
*Comic Relief Bonus: If you haven’t seen any of Laura Ramoso’s silly sketch comedy videos where she plays a dizzying array of characters, start with my personal favorites, her playing her German mother, and her Italian dad.