š FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS š
I will be going LIVE on ye olde Substack app this Wednesday at 10am PT/ 1pm ET with my sister in Kali-like rage, best-selling authoress and fabulous queen of collapse,
!Join us if you can. I truly cannot wait for this chat. And if you guys donāt have the Substack app ā this is the only good reason to put it on your phone because youāll need it to watch us live. But I will also try and send the recording to your ye olde email inboxes once itās done.
Hi friends!
Well, we made it through the summer of 2025. Back when it was just beginning, I declared this an Old Man Summer, and I was correct, in the sense that old men terrorized us geopolitically throughout the entirety of it.
This was another weird one, but here we are, still breathing, and I love that for us.
Summer is a season, duh, but itās just as much a vibe. And here in Southern California, where that vibe lives eternal, sunny weather is not a seasonal yardstick that any of us can go by. September is the hottest month of the year, October is not much better, and though the days get shorter and we pretend we need to buy new sweaters, Iāve had perfect beach days in late December. None of that matters, though, because Iām calling it now. On Tuesday, I woke up with a burst of energy and started taking care of business in a way that I havenāt been able to pretty much all year. Iām ready for the great wheel of time to turn and reveal whatās next, baby.
New fucking seasonnnnnn! Letās fucking gooooooo!
**SHE STARTLES THE CROWD AS SHE BLOWS AN AIR HORN**
That said, if you need to live out the golden promise of summer until it officially ends on September 22, please do. If you are one of my beloved Southern Hemisphere readers, and youāve been in winter this whole time, then good news for you, this is the last youāll have to hear about American summer from me. And if this summer fucked you up for any reason, any reason at all, and youād like me to come to your house with Tommy Lee Jones to erase the past few months from memory so you can head into fall feeling refreshed and ready to live through what Iām sure will be a thrilling Q4, just say the word. Iāll be there with bells on.
The beginning of summer did not find me this well. As some of you may recall, I was in so much pain from my back pulling an uno reverse that I had to find god. I spent my Memorial Day weekend on a last minute, solo journey to Desert Hot Springs, a desperate attempt to soak my way back to health. It helped a little. And Danielle, the woman managing āMiracle Manor,ā the insane, rose quartz-filled, renovated ā50s motel I stayed at because my usual spot was booked, gave me life with her takes on the aliens coming to save us, and also informed me that the spring water there is full of lithium, insisted that I drink as much of it as I could, and then filled a couple of bottles and sent me home with more.
I had neglected to make any real plans for the summer since I had spent so many weeks just trying to get through the day without completely losing it. Then came the ICE raids here in Los Angeles, and me crashing out when I realized I had to actually finish writing my book proposal because I told an agent that I would.
And then there was (is) the hanging specter of war all over the planet and genocide and famine in Gaza. Not to mention the political situation here in America that just keeps spiraling into the lower rings of hell. If I look at it too closely for too long I run the risk of spending my days lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did.1 May his memory be a blessing.
It was all a lot.
July rolled around, and I had to video chat my psychiatrist to get a refill of my business meth. After we talked about that, he asked me if there was anything else he could help me with. I mentioned to him that I had been feeling very sad, so he did his screening for what I assume was either depression or Victorian-style hysteria, and after he finished, told me he had nothing to offer since I had no discernible disorder other than being āan empathic free spirit.ā It turns out, even though this is not an easy time to feel deeply, they donāt make a pill to fix the affliction of being me. āPlease text me if it gets worse or you canāt get out of bed,ā he said with genuine kindness but no reference to Brian Wilson.
I laughed to myself for days thinking about āempathic free spiritā as a clinical diagnosis, and then, I got my shit together. If thereās one thing an empathic free spirit like me can do, itās forge my own intuitive path toward wellness. So I made a vow to take great care of my body every single day not out of obligation or punishment but out of love and kindness. I did a lot of gentle yoga, the type that is less of a workout and more of a practice. I put myself on a weed diet, and stopped numbing my brain to the extreme, but allowed myself a few hits of the vape if I wanted them because Iām not a fucking monk. I went on a long walk almost every single day. I spent a lot of quality time with my girlies here in LA. And to my great joy, three of my very best friends who live in New York, Toronto, and Berlin, came to visit me. I didnāt even know that was happening until they all showed up on separate trips in July.
By the end of the month, I felt so much better. And then, I rocked up to a karaoke night in honor of my friend Allyās birthday, during which every single person in attendance behaved as if we had signed a contract to go all-in on the collective, shameless pursuit of fun. That night was such a blast that it rewired my brain and reminded me there are few things more healing than having an absolutely uproarious time with my fellow free spirits.
Last year, when I recapped the season, I said that it felt like we were āall under construction,ā and I know that resonated because a whole bunch of you commented and replied to tell me that it did. But it stretches back further than that, I think.
Iāll just speak for myself this time, but if the summer of 2024 was construction season, 2023 helped me draw the blueprint because I got so burnt out from taking on too much work that I promised myself I would never, ever do that again. The summer of 2022 was, of course, the demolition. I got covid for the first and only time and it knocked me on my ass right when my job disappeared. I spent the whole summer trying to feel slightly normal but it wasnāt until November that I made any headway.
Iām beyond thrilled to report that construction is now complete. The summer of 2025 is ending with a ribbon cutting ceremony, because in August, I sat down and really started rewriting my book proposal. Even though work was kind of busy and there were a lot of days when I had to toggle back and forth between pitching brain rot TikTok ideas and writing my womanifesto on how social media made everything crazy, by some miracle, I didnāt lose my mind. I also took breaks and didnāt burn myself out and now I have a 26,000 word draft (!!!) that needs a major edit, but should be ready in the next couple of weeks to make its way into the world.
I knew Iād get it done after I told you all that I would. Iām a lot of things, but Iām not a liar, and I lived in my integrity this whole summer. I had to. It was time. When people didnāt like it or acted out of pocket, which people are sometimes known to do, I had my boundaries and guarded them like a goalie. And once I realized that there was no magic pill to save me from myself, I took accountability and healed my body. I have a great yoga practice going now. I havenāt been this limber or pain free since my back exploded at the end of 2019.
Mine was not a photogenic summer that looks good on the grid, but Iād have to be a pretty miserable person to see the past couple of months as anything but a victory.
Life is not a photo dump and my life is not a transactional fuckfest based on trading mentions and tags and likes. My life is not a movie Iām casting or a one woman show I put on so other people can see the right fragments and get the right ideas about who I am. I want my life to feel good to me, and if it looks good to you peeking in from the outside, thatās just an added bonus, because every day that Iām alive and having this beautiful and nasty and transcendently fun and deeply sad experience of being human is one more day that I get to indulge in the other practice Iāve taken up this summer: Not giving a fuck anymore and coming by it honestly.
Over the past couple of years, Iāve touched on the many reasons why I started writing this newsletter, but I have yet to reveal its truest origin story: The five-month-long journey I took around Southeast Asia in 2015.
In the spring of 2015, I was out of my mind and perpetually hungover from drinking, like, 17 wines every single night. I hated my job and was willing to sell most of my possessions because I guess I needed to shed my skin like a cute, little snake. So I left my life in New York, where I had lived for nearly six years, and flew to Bangkok on a one way ticket. All, really, because I was extremely freaked out about turning 30, which now that Iāve lived through the past decade, feels delightfully, existentially quaint.
While on that trip, I had a long list of people back home who were invested in the drama of the journey for obvious reasons. And so, after a few weeks of traveling around Thailand, I wrote everyone an email update, and got so many replies and forwards to people who wanted to get on the list that I started a newsletter on Tiny Letter (RIP)2 and called it, āE-Pray Liz.ā
When I started writing on Substack, my first subscribers were imported from that āE-Pray Lizā list. I have no idea who reads this anymore, but I hope that some of you who got roped in without your consent are still here.
My dear friend Jessie, a BIAD BFF, suggested earlier this summer that I should revisit the crazy-ass dispatches I sent. But I was hesitant, until I was cleaning out a drawer a few weeks ago, and found the waterproof digital camera that I took on the trip. When I saw these pics of my 30th birthday celebration on a random Mekong River island in Laos, I knew it had to be done:
Stay tuned for a very special series in honor of the TENTH ANNIVERSARY of that fucking trip! I need to dig up the newsletters since Tiny Letter is now defunct, but I think there are at least five or six of them. They were nuts. Canāt wait to reflect. And I must say, I am turning 40 in a couple of months, and while I have been having a bit of a panic about how to celebrate the occasion because I waited so long to plan and want to invite literally everyone I know, not once have I considered blowing up my entire life. I think thatās what they call massive personal growth.
Until next time!
Less Lessons More Blessināsā¢
Liz
Sorry, Iām Canadian! And that means I canāt help but occasionally make a Barenaked Ladies reference. ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Itās gone now, buried in the graveyard of platforms past. And someday, god willing, Substack will be too. RIP in advance!
This is very good news, Mother... you're doing so much better... And I wish this was contagious... but the yoga, and the long walks... just sounds like too much trouble...