Monday Matter: Wordle, Pen15 and high-risk stories

Your weekly Foreign Bodies roundup

Every Monday, we send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories we recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz. Roundups are usually written by Fiza and edited by Farah.

First things first

A little housekeeping

Good morning, friends!

How’s everyone doing? I’m typing this little intro up on Sunday morning, hours before I plan to shoot it off to Farah for a quick edit and I’m knocking myself, once again, for procrastinating. My time management has been wonky since the holiday season and I’ve got to get it together as my January assignments pour in. Here’s what’s getting me through ~all this~ right now:

• the mute option on Instagram 🤷🏻‍♀️

• slumber parties with my 30-year-old girlfriends

• scheduling therapy appointments for 2022 :)

• a pair of black vintage octagon-shaped French coffee mugs I found at a local antique shop

• the crispy buttermilk beignets with powdered sugar and tupelo honey from Le Petit Marché

• Wordle and the love story behind the game

• Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter

• the five-minute journal I bought and failed to complete on the very first day lol

• a working heater

• vaccines.

A musical start to your Mondays 🎧

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

This week’s pick honors the renowned Indian film composer Allah Rakha Rahman (A.R. Rahman), who turned 55 years old last week. This instrumental is from one of my family’s favorite Bollywood movies, “Jodhaa Akbar.” According to his famouscomposer.net bio, Rahman is considered “one of the most prolific Indian musicians of his time,” and beloved as a philanthropist in global disaster relief. He was born in Chennai and into a musical family; his father composed and conducted scores for Malayalam films. Rahman was only nine years old when his father passed away, but he continued the family legacy by learning piano and joining a traveling orchestra. He’s since garnered several awards and nominations, and was even named among the most influential people in the world by Time.

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)