The Assemblage Newsletter #75
Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Assemblage. These newsletters go out every Friday (sometimes later) to highlight some of the top works from the past week. We hope these links (all friend links, so anyone can view them) find you in a state of flow, however you define that.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them — that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” — Lao Tzu
Featured Writer
Each week we feature one of our writers and up to six of their essays or poems on the homepage underneath the Featured Essays and Featured Poems sections. This week our Featured Writer is Deborah McNamara. Deborah is a sustainability and climate activist, a yoga teacher, and an author.
Collection
Collections are groupings of essays or poems with an overall theme. You can find Collections on the home page underneath the Featured Stories, Featured Poetry, and Featured Writer sections.
Hall of Fame features 8 different works from 8 different writers that are part of our most popular works of all time (based on fans). This section is a great way to get acquainted with multiple works around one theme, as well as to find writers you haven’t read before or ones you shouldn’t miss. Take a look at our Collection this week and see what you may have missed.
Hall of Fame features one work each from Michelle Elizabeth, Lance Baker, Carrie Wynn, Niki Marinis, Maggie Lupin, George J. Ziogas, Jonathan Greene, and Vanessa Torre.
Essays and Poems From Last Week
You Can Take the Child Out of the Residential School… by Jasmine Freeman
“By the time I was old enough to make the choice for myself if I wanted to see my grandparents or not, they’d already been long absent. You can’t miss what you didn’t have. I resumed life not realizing I’d missed out on an opportunity to learn so much about where I’d come from.”
Devolution by Juliette Roanoke
“But if I’m so disposable,
why must that leash be kept so tight?
Is it that an unrestrained target would be too hard to tame?
You’d need an entire herd of scapegoats to carry away all this blame.”
“I preach wholeness
but live fragmented
a mess of conflicting emotions
knowing what to do
but not how to do it”
Stitched in Time by Connie Song
“Stitched in time
is every love letter I never sent,
scars that never fully healed,
the times I told myself that I was just
a speck of dust
in an overshadowed universe,”
You Don’t Have To Be A Productive Writer To Be A Great One by Melissa Kerman
“Regardless of external influences, I’d still burden myself with standards and vilify myself if I fell short. I gaslight myself worse than any toxic men I’ve dated. You claim you want to be a writer, but then you don’t write? You’re either a liar or a fraud. Actually, you’re both!”
Doing Too Much Leaves You Feeling Like You’re Never Doing Enough by Estrella Ramirez
“It’s time to rewrite a narrative that glorifies your well-being. No more gold stars or #goals for working yourself to a breaking point.
While it’s easy to give accolades and congratulations for the success that we witness, what isn’t talked about enough, is the reality of living this life.”
Weekly Note
“Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” — Zhuangzi
Are you able to flow with whatever may happen? Just remember, you have no choice in the matter. It will happen either way and the more you can adapt to flow with it, the easier it is to accept.
