Monday Matter: Pink plastic gloves and therapy

Your biweekly Foreign Bodies roundup

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

First things first

A little housekeeping (or babbling)

New therapist, who dis?

Look, I’ve been through my share of therapists. The first one blew me away; she was a savior of sorts when I didn’t know what I needed, where I was headed, whether I’d make it to next week. She showed me how to be and why to be and forced me to fall in love with the little things we overlook when we feel weighed down, overwhelmed, shortsighted. Think of sunlight and how it colors the room gold just before it says goodnight, or the way a nod to a stoic stranger can turn them into putty. I’m at the point in my life where I’m happy to be here, which honestly still feels like a miracle of sorts. Pinch me, I’m alive. But as I’m writing about family, migration, all the stuff that once felt paralyzing to discuss, I’m realizing I need a sounding board to make sure I can cope, write and have the capacity to be there for my people, who I’m realizing need to lean on me more and more as I get older. Here’s to session two this week.

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

One song to groove to, cry to, drive to and share

This week’s pick, recommended by Luis A., is Puerto Rico-born urban genre/reggaeton/latin trap artist Gabriel Mora Quintero, professionally known as Mora. The singer, songwriter and music producer gained popularity in 2017 after collaborating with Bad Bunny, Big Soto and others. His debut studio album, “Primer día de clases” was released in February 2021.

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Esmé Wang’s free Unexpected Shape Café: A digital space for ambitious writers living with limitations to talk about their dreams, frustrations, and questions as they pursue the writing life

• In Their Own Words: a new series on the South’s youth mental health crisis from Rainesford Stauffer, who worked on this project with Scalawag through the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, which also helped launch this newsletter in 2018