Lost at Home: Prompts for thriving while social-distancing

We all have the same basic needs — even when we’re stuck at home. While If Lost Start Here generally focuses on the *places* we go to meet these needs, we’re pivoting and reassessing to find ways to meet them from home. From finding community and connection to discovering your own creative potential, we’ve collected some of our ideas for thriving while social distancing. Have something to add? Feel free to share ideas in the comments below! This is in no way an exhaustive list! (And of course, please share with anyone who may need a boost of inspiration!)

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When Friendship Saves Us (Part 2) : Our Take On Modern Love

Believe me when I tell you that nothing sounds more terrifying to me than a posh British girl who has just transitioned out of her successful career as a modern art curator to focus more fully on our societal responsibility to address mental well-being. (For reference: I am insane, and 50% of the “art” in my house is from TJ Maxx.) 

But a few months after our second babies were born, it was time for our firstborn children to start Kindergarten, and by some stroke of luck, or destiny (or the fact that there was actually only one school in our town) our children ended up being placed in class together.

I sometimes wonder what these days would have been like if I’d understood at that time who she was…who’d she’d be to me. If I’d have felt less lost? Less alone? If we both would have? But maybe that’s the beauty of friendship? There is simply no rush to force its unfolding, no timetable that stipulates where things ought to be; a freedom that allowed us to bumble through the initial unfolding in spit-up ridden fits and starts, baby slings flapping unceremoniously in the breeze as we realized: being together through all of this was just better than being apart. 

There was a time when I thought of friendship as an immature pursuit, that all of these minor relationships were simply buying time until the real relationships began. Surely I’d outgrow the need to spill forth all of the pieces of my life in the hopes that my poor, unsuspecting friends would put them back together. Surely slumber parties and impromptu ice cream binges would lose their appeal? Surely I’d feel increasingly more inclined to hide who I was in the hopes that I’d remain protected, collected, secure. And maybe that’s true. Maybe we do start holding ourselves together more as we age. We smile and respond “I’m great!”, and we shift our conversations to inconsequential topics and we occasionally pop in to therapy when things get bad…but by and large, more often than not, we choose to suffer alone. As our problems gain significance and gravity and weight, we are no longer confident that our friends can bear their burden, no longer confident that they’ll be able to see us through the wreckage of our flaws. Maybe that’s why, when we find someone who does see us (really sees us) and loves us still…maybe that’s why we hold so tight?

Claire was the first person I opened up to fully (partially because she made me feel safe, and partially because I was breaking down before her very eyes and there was no longer a polite way to brush off her concerns).

• “Yes I babysat your daughter today!” (You’re welcome!)
  Yes, I also stayed at the park the whole time because I thought a murderer was hidden in my attic.

• “Yes, we rode our bikes to school pick-up today!” (What a fun and active mom!)
  Yes, I also believe a bomb has been planted in my car and will explode at any moment in some sort of Speed-esque fashion (but minus the uniformly-sweaty-and-bronzed Keanu Reeves.)

• “Yes, my eyes are very puffy because I’m tired!” (#momLife amirite?)
  Yes my eyes are also puffy because I’ve been crying constantly/hysterically/desperately wondering how to escape the confines of my body.

Due, in part, to a series of traumatic events and in part to a less-than-ideal genetic composition, I’d found myself locked in the jaws of anxiety and paranoia, once again — a constant gnawing that quickly escalated to a violent, thrashing attack. And when everyone else saw the smiles and the bikes and the requisite puffy-eyes…Claire saw the bite marks. When everyone else was happy to accept the ‘I’m fine!’s, happy to accept the facade I’d so expertly constructed (and who could blame them?) Claire was the type of friend who was brave enough to look beyond the poorly-bandaged wounds to the disaster that lay beyond. And when she saw me there (the real and broken me) the ‘me’ who had no jokes or quips or excuse left; when anyone would have been justified in their rapid fleeing ... She stayed.

When Friendship Saves Us (Part 1) : Our Take On Modern Love

She’s moving back to England and I can’t come. (Obviously.)

Because the thing about friendship is: you don’t plan your life around people that you’re not having sex with. (Which honestly feels a bit barbaric, to me, but ok.)

Finding romantic love has long been considered the gold-standard of human achievement, evidence that we are worthy of a lifetime of devotion, or, at the very least, that we are tolerable enough to withstand for the better part of a lifetime. Romantic love is a precisely choreographed dance, the steps of which will never be revealed; a high-stakes game with loosely-defined rules and a massive potential for loss. On the one hand we’re expected to foster an impossible level of comfort and security. (We hurl forth our hopes and dreams, crossing our fingers that we’ve found someone who will see them and share them and keep them safe … someone who won’t be sent fleeing wildly in the opposite direction.) On the other, we’re implored to maintain a similarly-impossible level intimacy, eroticism and mystery. (If you’re not popping out from behind the dresser in a French-maid costume or developing a new mental health disorder every month, are you even trying???)

Friendship does not exist on this same playing field, or within this same town, or even within this same earthly realm. Friendship is an ever-available gift from the gods. An opportunity for connection and closeness without ever having to talk about mortgages or school districts or pills for sad penises.

Friendship is unburdened by such trite matters. Friendship does not care about flaccidity, or project-based learning or “interest rates we should really capitalize on.”

Friendship offers a purity that is complicated only by the fact that there is nothing legally binding you to one another. Nothing to say, “if you leave you’ve got to give me a house or a boat or half of your grandmother’s jewelry.” Just this love that lingers in space…vulnerable…subject to the whims of men. 

When I first met Claire, she was sailing a paper boat down a stream, giggling with her young son in a fashion that suggested she was probably a nanny and almost definitely a little bit drunk. (She denies both claims.) I fell for her her all the same. Her lightness, her ease, the way she smiled and laughed, the way I could see her walls…the way I knew before she did that they’d start to fall.

We first bonded over the fact that we both had children. Not that they were similar or that we were raising them in the same way or that they even liked each other, just that they existed and that we had birthed them within the same relative time frame. (This, I’ve discovered, is as good a reason as any to develop an adult friendship.)

The unfolding was slow. I forgot her name multiple times and was forced to introduce her to some unsuspecting acquaintance who found himself lingering nearby so that she’d have to tell them her name). We had no real reason to meet so we’d just happen upon each other, at the houses of mutual friends, at the park, by a stream. (Stalker stuff.)

Years later, when it came time for us to produce our requisite second children, both of us managed to hold out for an ungodly 5 years. While the rest of the world went on to space their children perfectly, precisely, methodically, 2.6 years apart, here we were, bucking the norm, starting over after half-a-decade. (Her, because she’d had a successful career and seemingly unlimited ambition…me, because my body wasn’t very cooperative and that I was busy stock-piling mental and physical health disorders.)

The first time I saw her after having the baby, I forgot to ask the baby’s name, or when she’d had her, or if she was so tired she might die. We just sort of stood there on the sidewalk making small-talk, smiling vaguely … each of us pretending to be ok.

Shelf Help | In conversation with Toni Jones

When we first found out about Shelf Help, we felt like we had found our people. It’s a book club, built around self-help books, that also builds community in real-life. Isn’t that the ultimate combination?

OK, you’re hesitating, and we’re guessing it might have something to do with the genre because let’s face it, self-help can be a bit naff. You probably already have your biases, unconscious or otherwise. 

Don’t worry, in the conversation that follows with Founder Toni Jones, we’ll cover that uncool factor and all the other reasons why Shelf Help is something you might need in your own life. Prepare to change your mind.

Claire: What led you to start Shelf Help?

Toni: I had just left my full-time job as a journalist to become a freelance writer, which meant suddenly spending a lot of time by myself. I was 36 and I’d never spent any time alone. It should have been the dream. I’d quit a job that I hated. I was busy and getting work. But it wasn’t that easy being by myself and getting to know myself. I realized I had spent a long time just ignoring my needs, and as soon as the job wasn’t there as a distraction, it was all back down to me. 

I spent a lot of that time not unravelling but definitely in a bit of a mental health black hole. I was transitioning from this high-octane life to having a lot of time to think about whether I had done the right thing. I didn’t know how to deal with any of it. I knew I didn’t want to go back. I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do but I wasn’t sure which way to go.

I just started reading a lot of self-help. I started taking care of myself in other ways too; going to therapy for the first time (which I found really hard and amazing), doing yoga, attending retreats, and participating in a few support groups like Al Anon. I was also writing more about wellbeing because it was a trend that was coming in. In a way, in trying all these things, I was approaching my own life like I was writing a feature.

Claire: What was the first self-help book that you read?

Toni: Paul McKenna’s Change Your Life in Seven Days, which people thought was hilarious and really weird, because you don’t think of him as a self-help guru. To many people he’s that weird hypnotist on tele but he’s well-trained in positive psychology and NLP. 

Because it was the first self-help book that I read, it really resonated. All these light bulbs went off. I read it slowly; I’d read a concept in that book and then I’d go away and research it. I’d go deep into the black hole of a certain author or self-help concept. Suddenly I was learning all this stuff and I literally could not get enough of it. I was devouring all these self-help books. I was fascinated by it particularly when I started reading about positive psychology and neuroscience and things like Dr Joe Dispenza (he talks about the power of your brain to change and it’s kind of the Law of Attraction but with all the science behind it). 

But I was boring my actual friends with it. They were seeing a change in me—and that does spike people’s curiously—but they were like: ‘we get that you are into self-help, but it’s not our thing but good for you that it’s working.’ I started Shelf Help to find new friends who I could talk to about it. Also, as a journalist, I’m the kind of person who, when I find something good, I just want to share it.

Claire: Tell me about the first meet-up. Was it what you expected?

Toni: Shelf Help started as a local book club at a little wine-bar in west London. The first couple of meet-ups were a bit more earnest than they are now, because I started off thinking I needed to be super serious to be able to offer good support, but I’ve learned—as I’ve got better at running groups and also sharing my own story—that you can talk about the big stuff and still have fun.

Meet-ups today cover all kinds of heavy things; purpose, grief, breakups, fertility, friends, fear, careers…but we end up laughing a lot. They are actually really fun! We don’t just sit there and talk about our problems. People do bring up things that are bothering them and things that they are struggling with but there is usually someone in the room who can help them, someone who can say that happened to me and I did this. The idea is that we can all come together because everyone is fragile. We’re probably going through the same old shit and it’s nice to know other people have gone through it and that they have survived. Everyone leaves feeling positive.

Shelf Help has gone from me saying let’s talk about our problems, and that its ok to share, to a place to move forwards. Now I say we celebrate self-help. It’s about inspiring positive change. We advocate that it’s totally ok to not be ok and that people’s feelings are valid, but there’s a lot we can do to feel better, and so we focus on what’s next and how can we help each other.

Claire: As Shelf Help isn’t therapy but is to the side of therapy, how do you create an environment that is safe and purposeful? 

Toni: What I do is create a space to give people tools to empower themselves. It’s self-help, so I’m never saying that I’m a therapist and that I have all the answers. At each meet-up, we use a different book but the same format. I’ll pull out 5-6 quotes or exercises from the book and every host around the world and on-line will use those questions for discussion. That gives us the framework as we’re going through the session.

For instance, let’s take a recent book Designing Your Life, which focuses on working out different versions of who you can be. I’ll say ‘The authors say… ‘ and ‘This is how they say it will work…’ Then I’ll ask, ‘Who has experience of this...’ 

I’m not saying that’s my advice or opinion, though I’ll share something usually based on my own experience. People understand that I’m not trying to direct anyone in any way. If you have chosen to read this book and come along to a meet-up, it’s because you are interested in the topic and meeting like-minded people. I’m pretty sure the attendees aren’t just there to see me or listen to what I have to say about something. I’m just the host: I bring people together and create an environment. But very much people are coming with their own stories to share.

Claire: It sounds like the book itself is giving you the safe container?

Toni: Yes, the expert in the room is the book. Sometimes we have the author there but not always. In a way, it is like a regular book club where you get together to chat about the different characters and chapters and everybody has a different opinion. 

Also, I’m quite clear that confidentiality, kindness and no judgement are our code of conduct. That’s on our printed materials that we put out. Hosts also read out the manifesto at the beginning of each meet-up, which explains what we are and what we’re not. 

We do have different levels of people at different levels of pain or need. Some people have gone to the doctor and they are going to therapy. They are using this as another tool. There are a million experts that people can google but what they are looking for with Shelf Help is a way to connect to others and a way to connect with themselves.

Claire: The self-help genre has been promoted as being so individualistic, as something you do alone. There’s this idea that you read a book alone and have all these epiphanies alone. With Shelf Help what you are saying is that actually self-help is not solitary, but rather it can be in understood as a collective experience and can be experienced in a social environment. 

Toni: My mission with Shelf Help is to make self-help accessible, collaborative and cool. The idea of self-help is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, you do need to do a bit of that work on yourself, but you also need help to take that work forward. It’s much more powerful when we come together. 

If you’ve got used to sitting at home by yourself, with just those stories that go around your head, often just saying something out loud to someone else can give you a different perspective. Shelf Help gives people access to different perspectives, and entirely different life experiences 

When we did Susan Jeffer’s Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway at our meet-up in London, we had an Indian grandma who had the original copy from the 80s that she’d been given when she first moved to London. She was sitting next to a Gen-Z girl, 22 years old, clutching her brand-new edition of the book. Though it’s a bit of a worry that we’re still dealing with the same old stuff, it was amazing to watch them connect over the same material. They probably would never have met or talked to each other otherwise, but these are universal themes that can easily see three generations apart talking about the same eternal topics.

Claire: As an advocate for self-help books, going to therapy and going on this deep dive into personal wellness, how do you negotiate some of the cynicism that can come into play? There’s definitely an undertone that says that stuff you are doing over there, that wellbeing stuff, isn’t credible or serious.

Toni: Yes, I see that. But it started working for me, and for others, and as soon as something starts working, people want more of it. 

My dream with Shelf Help is that people are not scared to read self-help, that it gets people talking about this genre and connecting, rather than thinking you must be a mess because you are reading a certain book. I believe that the audience is everyone and that’s the whole point. I want people who maybe don’t think they are self-help readers to maybe read an interesting quote or a passage on our Instagram and to go, “oh wow, that’s what’s that book is about.”

Claire: It’s interesting to see that shift, that there is a real thirst for it. That people are going towards it.

Toni: What something like Shelf Help does, and what I realize that I do for my friends and my family, is to give them permission to get curious about self-help. Yes, some people do still see it as naff and cringey, but quietly people will come along to a meet-up. They’ll have read the book and they will want to talk to me about it but maybe not in front of everyone. The interest is definitely there.

Shelf Help is all about accessibility. We make it accessible by organizing free or affordable meet-ups and events as well as via the content we share across various social media. That’s why I now call Shelf Help a platform—the book club is always going to be a big part of it—but we can share all kinds of content too. One day I hope we will be creating online courses, better digital meet-ups, and more events, like author workshops—which means you don’t have to have read any of the books to come along. 

The way that people consume content now works to our favor; we don’t necessarily just have to read a book to be helped by self-help. People can also watch a Ted talk delivered by the author, listen to a podcast or follow them on social media and still connect to the strategies and ideas.

Claire: There’s a criticism that I’ll paraphrase here, that 100% of people who have read a self-help book will read another one. This means in effect that they don’t work. But really the point is not that they are buying another one because the last one didn’t work, but that they are buying another one because it is working. 

What you are saying in effect with Shelf Help is that your relationship to yourself and to other people is a life-long one. That people can have a growth mindset around their own learning. That’s something positive that people can sustain in their lives. You are shifting the perception that self-help is failing if you need more to its working if you need more. It becomes a form of ongoing mental nutrition in a way instead of an ineffectual crutch.

Toni: I think the more that you learn the more you realize you have to learn. If you are looking to a book to fix you, you are missing the point because most self-help comes back to the same finding: you need to start with you. All these books and tools will help guide you but ultimately you need to know yourself, to meet yourself and then start that work.

People say to me how can you read all this self-help and not be fixed? They have this idea that if it’s so great you only need one book. But we’re always learning. That’s what we are here to do, to grow. You are never going to be complete and how boring would that be if you were? What you learn along the way is amazing and is probably the best bit. 

Claire: How do you get over self-help overwhelm/ fatigue (you know that feeling where the 11 things to do to better your life feels like 1000 things to do)? How to do you go from reading self-help to actioning it?

Toni: After feedback from members we’ve slowed down the reading process, to one book of the moment (BOTM) every two months (instead of one book every month). These books require that you delve into yourself or peel off these layers. You need to do the exercises and read it at a pace that allows you to process.

Claire: You give a reading schedule?

Toni: Yes, for accountability and so people can follow along with what we’re doing. Everyone is so busy, and I have to appreciate that reading can be a luxury. We need to allocate proper time to get through these books. It’s very much about reading, processing and then acting on it. In Crazy Good, one of the books we have covered, author Steve Chandler says: “Once for information and twice for transformation.”

Claire: Do you choose all the books that you cover? How do you go about that?

Toni: Yes, I’ve done that so far. I’ve gone on books that I’ve loved and that have made a big difference to me and that I know. People seem to like the fact that they are directed to what to read. Not that I know everything about self-help, but I do get a good vibe for what most people want to know about at the moment, whether that’s happiness or habits or purpose. I also get a sense from everything that I’ve read that this particular book is one that we can dissect together. Now, it has to be available globally cause we’re a global book club and we have loads of engagement in Canada and Australia.

Claire: I saw that you are now worldwide, including Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Why did you decide to make Shelf Help a worldwide movement?

Toni: I want to make the conversation as big as possible and to get as many people as possible talking about these subjects. 

I think these things affect you in San Francisco the way they affect someone here in London: Feeling lonely, and just wanting to connect. We’re so connected and so disconnected. People are just looking for things to do that bring them together. I started Shelf Help at a time that I really needed it, but I underestimated how much everyone else needed it as well.

Claire: Shelf Help fits in this cultural moment, this global phenomenon of being disconnected, and searching for something to fill the void. We’re all going through it. For me, Shelf Help covers those universal longings: how do we connect, how do we come together, how do we help ourselves?

Toni: People do want to connect online but people ultimately want to go to or even start a meet-up. We’re able to create this amazing network and that’s what technology is allowing us to do but really its feeding people’s need to connect in real life as well. 

People want to catch-up or go to events with each other. Most hosts are starting to organize social events in-between book clubs where they’ll go for dinner or a yoga class or a workshop.

At the meet-up in Farnham UK, they seem to bond over their love of cake as much as the books they read. In central London, the meet-ups typically focus on purpose, career and burn out. The one in Pembrokeshire takes place at lunch-time because it is made up mostly of mums. 

I want the hosts be as autonomous as possible. If you want to host a meet-up for me and for Shelf Help, then that’s brilliant. We want you on board. We want as many people as we can get, but applicants have to understand that there’s a certain level of commitment (hosts need to commit to a minimum of 6 bi-monthly meetups, and are responsible for the venue and local members, with some support from Toni/Shelf Help). To scale this movement, I know that it can’t be about me; I can’t be everywhere. 

Claire: You don’t have to be the person in the room, you can create the system for it, but it doesn’t have to be you?

Toni: I absolutely don’t want it to me about me. I’m happy to be the figurehead and I’m glad that people relate to my story. I love organizing the events and managing the network of hosts, but, ultimately, I want to empower people to help themselves and build a community that helps each other. 

Claire: You’re 2 years old (congratulations!). How has the idea for and realization of Shelf Help shifted from when you started to where you are now?

Toni: Two years ago, it was just a book club in Chiswick, west London. Now, I talk about Shelf Help as both a platform and community. We’re all about connecting people to ideas through both the books and other types of content that we share. We’re creating spaces on-line and off-line, with lots of events and meet-ups, and an active digital community. The community is a massive part of it

A lot of Shelf Helpers who are assisting with our second birthday party, are people who are either hosts or come to a lot of meet-ups. I didn’t know many of them a year ago. Now they’re really good friends who are all giving up their time for this celebration. 

I’m finding that people want to be part of what we’re doing. They want to do what they can to help us grow. We seem to call on people who can see a huge value in focusing on their mental wellbeing and who then want to share that message. 

Claire: If someone is interested in getting involved, what’s the best way for them to engage with you?

Toni: You can come to a meet-up, an event or a retreat. Or join the Facebook group, follow us on Instagram, sign up to the newsletter or even host your own local book club.  There are lots of ways to get involved.

Claire: And finally, what’s the one message you take away from reading so much self-help.

 Toni: At its most simple, Shelf Help is about helping people to like themselves more. Because I think that too many of us don’t like ourselves enough (maybe don’t even know how to?) and that everything in life can be made better when we improve the relationship we have with ourselves. 

To find out more about Shelf Help, head to the Website, Instagram, or Facebook.

Cafes for Life: Are Cafes Good for our Mental Wellbeing?

Last night my daughter Ottilie ended up in the ER. It wasn’t serious. That’s not this story. As we walked off the beach, my son threw a stone at her and though she was supposed to duck behind the boogie board, she didn’t. It punctured her eyebrow and off we went to get it glued and pulled back together. 

This morning, at Kindergarten drop-off, Ottilie wobbled. She was worried about the plaster getting wet, worried about the rain forecast, worried about it being Monday morning and that she would be away from me again.

And I wobbled too. I felt her anxiety—felt it with my own, seeping through my body. I carried all of it into the beginning of my week too: The moment I saw the blood streaming down the left side of her face and my son screaming ‘it’s her eye, it’s her eye’. The fear of what might have happened, of washing away all that red to figure out how serious it was, the anger that my son had caused this and that my daughter was in pain. 

I felt it keenly this morning when I awoke, that long evening in the ER waiting room, with kind doctors and nurses paying attention to this little girl still in her beach wetsuit, trying to stay calm and positive as I wanted to vomit into the trash can. And I felt too the effects of that very large glass of rose I used to dull my nerves on an empty stomach when I got home, and the kids finally slept. I felt it again and again, the vulnerability that is our world with children, and the times our lives smash into pauses of the non-self-care kind, but of the nothing-else-matters-because-my-kid-is-hurt-and-I-do-not-care-in-this-or-any-other-moment-how-many-followers-I-have-on-Instagram kind.

But we’re here now. On a Monday morning. With all the feelings. In need of pulling it all back together, to similarly glue the opposing sides of myself. To get back to work, to life. I know I’m supposed to do this: drop off the kids, walk home to my study, sit down and work. But instead I do this: drop off the kids and drive to a café. Sit down and work. Because this, getting myself to a café, feels good to me.

Here, in this bustling space, with the sound of the espresso machine, and frankly quite horrible music playing, here is my solace. This café is the balm, these people I don’t know sitting next to me, are the answer that I’ve found to sitting also with the sometimes ickyness of life. It’s cafés that I turn to for something, some cossetting. I don’t go for a run, I don’t go to the gym, I head here. To cradle a large latte and to feel ok again. 

Home represents something else: maybe a spiraling down, an empty space to fill with feelings, the weight of family needs that populate it. But here, there’s no empty something to fill, it’s already filled to the brim with chatter and other people lives, adjacent to my own. None of this belongs to me, but I get to witness and to brush against other people’s stories, to be distracted from my own. 

Maybe I’m avoidant. But I know I’m not running away. I still bring the crap with me, it just sits better here, perched on a stool looking out at the world. It’s not a ‘let’s not do this’, more of a ‘let’s do this’ but with a blanket of cafeness. Can that be a word? What’s does that even mean here—warmth, people, place?

My life is a long-read in cafes—my coming-of-age story happened not at the Hacienda in Manchester in a period of music that was to become quite defining (Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses, you know), but at the now defunct Cornerhouse café (since morphed into Home) a pretentious enough place that reflected my tendency to rave in my own mind and happily alone. Attending University in Edinburgh it was the Elephant House where JK Rowling wrote some book. In London, actually Caffé Nero (sorry - there’s a nice one in Chiswick). In San Francisco, there were too many to count—this was the polyamorous part of my café love (in a pinch we’d go for Ritual, The Mill, Coffee Bar and the Equator locations). This was when I could get lost in a neighborhood, and find its people lounging in some carefully designed caffeinated environment. 

Then came one of the blows to being a new parent: realizing that toddlers don’t do well in fancy, artisan places—which is why Blue Bottle’s takeaway counter at San Francisco’s Ferry Building does so well for us, and Sightglass doesn’t. And also, the realization, if I could not do anything else in my day with a baby in the sling, too knackered to function in the sleep deprivation months, I could get myself to a café where I knew the barista and a handful of people. They would be kind enough to acknowledge me as a person, not just a mama, and I could have that sensation that I was still a grown up, because going for coffee was something only real adults got to do, right? A little older, my kids now know the equation, playground + coffee shop (the brits do this best: see Bath’s Alice Park Cafe). When we travel, our sight-seeing comes with best guides to coffee shops as much as things to do with kids (thanks The Almond Thief, Moo and Two, Society Café, The Hobo Co, the Hairy Barista, The Hatch and Cargo Coffee – our favourite places that dotted our summer holidays). 

Maybe I’m weird. Maybe this is an unusual anomaly to put out there in self-care (which autocorrects to self-café btw, which makes no sense at all). But there’s some science behind this. And it’s all around ‘minimal social interactions’, which are vital to our mental wellbeing. The NPR podcast Life Kit put me on to this, a study by Dr. Gillian Sandstrom at the University of Essex that she conducted on whether people were happier even through weak ties, i.e. connections with people that we barely know and with whom we have limited contact. In short, she studied the impact on people of their interaction with a barista. She defined two groups, one that had just a functional interaction with the barista, and the other who chatted a little more with them. Then she asked them some questions on the way out of the cafe. Her study concluded that people were more satisfied, connected and happier, if they had engaged the barista, even for just a little while. 

Cafes do this work. The work of connection, of putting people in front of us, with our nods and their smiles, our how are you's and what about the weathers. They helps us. I know that, less scientifically, because for my dad who cares full-time for my mum, a cup of coffee in a café means he’s less lonely. A few words exchanged and he’s a person again not just a carer. 

Cafes are our third spaces, that mythical place between work and home. Sometimes they are even our work locations as I type away on my laptop. As high streets fall apart and our communities fragment, cafes are becoming one of the few places we can actually go to be with others. They are vital to our wellbeing. 

Real-world initiatives are building on this, like the Chatter & Natter tables now in over 1000 cafes across the UK (including at Costa and piloted this year in Sainsbury’s) that sets aside a table for strangers to chat and aims to combat loneliness. This scheme brilliantly responds to two very contradictory things: that 75% of us would like more real-life conversations and that we don’t know how to do this. Ever found yourself sat in a cafe and looking around at all the other people sat alone too who you might be able to chat with if you didn’t feel so uncomfortable about approaching them? Chatter & Natter tables make it easy: if you want to talk to someone, you choose to sit at one of these tables. You don’t need to forge forever friendships, but you can make your day better by talking to a person for the time it takes to drink your coffee, maybe even for longer. It’s an ingenious, and super simple, way of making the world less lonely. Even the guinea-pig themed café in FleaBag had Chatty Wednesdays.

Cafes for us are the main way we get to be in the world while deciding how and if we interact with other people. Some cafes are really getting this by actively building connection into what they do or finding ways to provide sustaining spaces of comfort and intimacy. Some are just making sure they exist beyond the beverages on offer. London’s Drink Shop Do has built connection (and craft and bottomless brunches) into their space with an active program of events and a welcoming style. Brooklyn’s IXV promotes a no-waste, people-first ethos. New Jersey’s The Peccary gets the central role baristas play, and puts their wellbeing, their knowledge of the product and their interactions with customers, at the heart of what they do.

Sometimes it’s in an even more direct response to our mental health needs: In Chicago, Sip of Hope is one of the first cafés where 100% of their profits go towards suicide prevention and mental health education. Wallers Coffee Shop in Atlanta was founded to take on the stigma of depression, through offering music, mental health first aid, even a wall of resources. Dear M&S has been getting in on the act for a while: select cafes have for the past few years been used after-hours for Ruby Wax’s Frazzled Cafes. And there’s even a network of Happy Cafes worldwide, realized in association with Action for Happiness, that count our psychological wellbeing next to the lattes on their menus.

Self-care takes many forms. Being in a cafe is one of them for us. Maybe even for you too?

Tell us about cafes you know that are your respite from the world, or make space for something you need, or that make mental wellbeing part of their impact. Over the next few weeks we'll look more at some of these places and bring them into our guide for in real-life locations that help us better live our lives.

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Discover more places to feel connected

The Saviors We Never Knew We Needed

The sun is setting in San Francisco and I’m roaming the streets barefoot (again).

It’s the summer of 2004 and I’ve just lost my shoes for the fourth time. Seeing as I’ve spent the last hour fighting to stay alive amidst a sea of people, rioting and screaming, it feels like a relatively small casualty.

You might be imagining that I’d just witnessed a burgeoning political movement take shape, that I was standing (shoeless) at the precipice of some groundbreaking revolution (and, now that I think of it, maybe I was...but I certainly didn’t realize it at the time). You may *also* be thinking I was very drunk, tripping my way down the crowded streets of the Tenderloin (which is certainly a strong possibility, but I honestly can’t recall the details.) In reality, I was simply ambling back to my car after a night at The Fillmore...manically happy (albeit a bit bruised)...feeling more alive than I’d ever felt.

I often think back to this time, the early 2000s, coming of age just as the California music scene was coming alive with a new wave of emotionally-charged sounds. (Emo, Screamo, Pop-Punk, Hardcore ... whatever the distinction, there were lots of feelings, and everyone was yelling.)

While I’ve never fully fleshed out the true impact, this much, I know, is true: Packing into a small, hot venue, with all the focus and intensity funneling in one direction is a powerful, communal experience and arguably more cathartic than most other experiences we’re afforded as adults. (Truly, if you have never been allowed to push someone really hard and then sob next to that *same person* whilst swaying, let me tell you, friends: It does NOT disappoint!)

For someone lacking any sort of formal religion, rock shows became my church.

If you were to create a Venn-diagram outlining the commonalities between the two, there probably is a pretty sizable overlap.

(you should draw this)

It makes sense, then, that, in moments of struggle, we look to these idols for direction and guidance, that we take their words as gospel and apply them to our lives; that we pour over their lyrics in search of answers; that we try to align our experiences with their teachings; that we seek connection with other believers; that we stand and chant, screaming their words back to them hoping, this time, that we’ll finally hear them.

Because the truth of the matter is, the reason that we love music is that it offers us a safe place to process and feel—a necessity we’ve, historically, been completely starved for.

We’re a nation of young people being ravaged by mental health issues. Suicide rates and depression and anxiety are all on a steady rise.* But the beauty in this moment, if there is any to be found, is that we’re beginning to accept that mental health isn’t just something to be addressed within the stark walls of our therapist’s office. We’re beginning to look to more than the typical health care provider to carry us through. We’re beginning to see that, maybe, there is healing to be found elsewhere? Maybe there are solutions and connections and answers in our everyday lives? Maybe music is here to save us, after all.

For teens, specifically, there is a power in seeing the people we idolize, respect and trust bringing a vulnerability and openness around these difficult conversations.

Emerging at the same time as this early 2000s emo and punk scenes, To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) was established to reach this demographic of young people.

“TWLOHA is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.”

Traveling with The Warped Tour, TWLOHA brought mental health awareness to a massive audience and served as a springboard for other similarly impactful initiatives. “Wanting to support existing professional help organizations rather than replace them, TWLOHA has invested directly into causes such as Hopeline, InTheRooms.com, S.A.F.E. Alternatives, Minding Your Mind, and (in Australia) Kids Helpline."

The incredible thing about TWLOHA was seeing how it affected not just the fans, but the bands as well. It became clear that fame and success were no more protective against mental illness than anything else. The truth that we all struggle was brought fully, and literally, to center stage.

Working in the music industry over the last few years, I’ve noticed an uptick, not just in the vulnerability bands bring to their live shows, but in the intentional messaging that is expressed, both through their lyrics and through their on-stage admissions. There is a real drive to reach out and let listeners know that they are not alone.

This year alone:

We saw Lovely The Band frontman Mitchy Collins open up about losing friends to suicide , encouraging listeners to reach out, find help, and check in on one another.

We watched K.Flay release an entire album full of deeply personal stories from her childhood with topics ranging from her ever-present mental health struggles to her strained relationship with her father.

Blue October frontman Justin Furstenfeld’s Open Book tour exposed us to his addiction, how he found hope, accepted help and eventually saved himself.

Rainbow Kitten Surprise floored us with their groundbreaking video for “Hide” (please go watch it immediately) and their resolve to secure equal rights and protections for LGBTQ community members by donating a portion of ticket sales directly to Equality NC.

Billie Eilish took the world by storm by bringing an entirely new sound to the world of alternative and pop music, but she also brought stories of living with Tourette’s syndrome, normalizing the condition for sufferers across the world.

Whether they realize it or not, these bands are shifting the way we orient ourselves to mental health.

I remember the early days of attending shows, being lost in a sea of people, hoping, simply, to hold on to my shoes. I remember the days when “HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS?!” was the requisite level of interest a band was expected to pay you. I remember how, sometimes, I’d find myself being crushed against the barriers in front of the stage, how the band would stop playing to say something about loving and protecting each other before launching back in to their set. I remember, in that moment, however brief, after fighting for space and gasping for breath, the palpable feeling of relief.

Today’s bands are doing more than offering brief moments of reprieve from the pain... they’re creating a space where the pain can sit and live as we breathe our way through, creating a space where we can come together in recognition of our brokenness and in awe of our strength, creating a space where, yes, we might lose some shoes...but one where we might find some hope, as well.

* In the United States, the suicide rate has jumped 24 percent since 1999, to 13 per 100,000 people, with the steepest growth in the years since 2006, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

NOIR CITY | Dark City Wanderings

It’s like a religious revival tent meeting, but for cynics. Instead of their Sunday best, they wear their vintage 1940s finest. Rather than speaking in tongues, they wax on and on about who played what character in whatever desperately underrated classic. And Communion comes in the form of a big dose of black and white on the Castro Theatre’s massive screen. You’ll leave sated, exhausted, but you’ll be back tomorrow night for another double feature, day-job alertness be damned. If you’re a true acolyte, you’ll see all twenty-some movies over the ten days of NOIR CITY, the annual film festival of the Film Noir Foundation.

I’ve always loved film noir. My parents apparently never thought it odd that an eleven-year-old couldn’t get enough of The Maltese Falcon; was inviting her (probably confused but at least good-humored) friends over to watch Rear Window; and once VCRs became a thing was trotting home from the movie rental shop with whatever sounded dark: Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, The Third Man. My dad had a particular soft spot for Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and together we tried in vain to piece together the plot of The Big Sleep, which even having read the book multiple times is incredibly hard to follow (Raymond Chandler himself allegedly said the same). But it looks superb.

Eddie Muller, founder of the Film Noir Foundation and organizer of NOIR CITY since its inception, has summarized film noir thus: “The men and women of this sinister cinematic world are driven by greed, lust, jealousy, and revenge—which leads inexorably to existential torment, soul-crushing despair, and a few last gasping breaths in a rain-soaked gutter. But damned if these lost souls don’t look sensational riding the Hades Express.”

So... Did noir make me a cynic, or did something already in Young Me gravitate toward this material, finding there something that made sense of the Evil That Men Do (or, in my case, that mean junior-high-school girls do)? My experience in the music world leads me to suspect the latter—that I was born this way, and that noir gave my imaginings form. And what a form!! Colossal glamour, pithy wit, underworld allure... Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where you could be sparklingly eloquent, successfully self-employed, adept in a fistfight, and irresistible to the ladies even if on the looks scale you’re more Fred MacMurray than Kirk Douglas?

Seeing these movies at the Castro Theatre, alongside fourteen hundred fellow travelers, takes the thing to a whole new dimension. Each evening opens with live music on the fabulous Castro Wurlitzer (recently replaced with an even more elaborate pipe/digital hybrid organ), then an acutely articulate, written-note-less introduction by the Czar of Noir (the aforementioned Mr. Muller), then the dramatic opening of the curtain to start the first feature. Each year has a theme (my personal fave so far was “international noir”), and Muller and his fellow programmers do their best to balance a few better-known titles that most people still will never have seen on the big screen, lesser-known titles that extremely few will have witnessed on the big screen, and one or two that have been saved from actual oblivion, often through a restoration directly funded by last year’s festival ticket sales. This is the goal of the nonprofit that is the foundation: to save noir films on 35mm, as they were meant to be seen. Say what you will about the viability of actual film as a medium for mass exposure to “film”—Eddie’s got a counterargument ready for you.

At this point there are numerous satellite NOIR CITY fests around the country, but San Francisco is where it all started, and where Muller grew up. He still lives here, and treats the SF iteration as the mother ship that steers the rest of the fleet. I’ve read Muller’s introduction to film noir, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (1998), and have for the last couple of decades made little pencil checks next to the titles I’ve personally seen. Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir (2001) is the clearest manifestation of Muller’s career-long vendetta to bring the femmes of noir, fatale or otherwise, from the clichéd sidelines into the spotlight. I dutifully enrolled in Muller’s “continuing studies” course at Stanford University, “The Politics, Passions, and Personnel of Film Noir,” and I even successfully muscled my way into the gang’s inner circle, helping with the ticketing for the annual SF fest.

But at the end of the day, after you’ve completed all the reading and pondered all the theorizing and copied all the fashions and cut way too much school to watch Dialing for Dollars, the point is the theater experience. This is the “why” of the foundation: to save the films, and to show the films, at venues like the Castro. There’s got to be a really compelling reason why we keep coming back to a joint that holds 1,400 seats, puts on shows that last four or five hours, and has less than ten toilets total.

I’ve got a lot of NOIR CITY memories, but a couple stand out. The first is actually from NOIR CITY XMAS, a teaser show that happens a couple of weeks before the holidays, also at the Castro, as a kind of appetizer for the main fest coming in January. It usually features a bleak Christmas movie (I know, right?!) but this year it was Holiday Affair, a mostly-comedy with the odd bleak moment. I remember laughing so hard I was crying, right along with the crowd, fully realizing that if I’d been watching the thing at home on DVD, I would have been bored, maybe even wouldn’t have finished. I described it to Eddie the next day and he said of course that was right, that’s the power of experiencing movies in the theater. You’re physically, logistically committed, which makes you give yourself over to the larger emotive sense in the room. Sadness, injustice, intrigue, romance, glamour, and, yes, comedy are massively, massively magnified. See my religious-revival-tent metaphor that opened this piece.

This is what will be lost if the old-fashioned moviegoing experience evaporates.

Another very powerful memory of NOIR CITY is not even of being in the theater, but of reviewing the pictures taken by the photographer one year. I scrolled through crowd shot after crowd shot—hipsters, non-hipsters, old people, the occasional celeb (Chris Isaak and Jello Biafra have been noted attendees), and views of the stage showing Muller doing his thing. What stopped me in my tracks was a shot of what Eddie sees from the stage. There must be no sight on earth more satisfying than an ocean of folks who’ve paid their money and made the trek to love and support your dream, and gain something soul-satisfying that could be delivered, for us dark cynical believers, no other way.

Photographs by Rachel Walther © 2019

To find out more: website www.noircity.com / Instagram @Noir.City / Facebook @filmnoirfoundation / Twitter @noirfoundation

Paranoia | Like, The Worst Soup Ever

The worst thing about living with paranoia is my inability to trust my own instincts and intuition.

The second worst thing about living with paranoia is that my neighbors are probably going to kill me.

For many years, I simply thought I’d found myself on the unfortunate receiving end of a steady stream of lunatics—some sort of strange manifestation after so many years of obsessively fearing people. If the teachings of The Secret were to be believed, my thoughts were *actively* creating my destiny, a prospect so terrifying I’d opted to stop thinking all together. (Alcohol problem: commence!) But, of course, the damage was already done. My chakras were fucked. Something about metaphysical reactivity (?) or past life regression (?) or crystal disharmony (?) had gone horribly awry. I’d created my destiny, and now I had to see it through. (Great.)

On the nights when I’d peered out my windows 1000 times and noted all of the strange men tracking me, I’d usually remove the grates on my heating system to be sure I’d disabled the cameras. (A violent punch into the vent and a wild wave of my hand should do the trick!) Sometimes, of course, the cameras would be too small so I’d have cover the openings with duct tape. Other times, the men would be circling my house so rapidly that I could scarcely keep an eye on them. Occasionally they’d be plotting with people I knew or driving cars I swear I’d seen earlier in the week. How long had they been following me, and when were they going to make their move?

The interesting phenomenon here was that I had become so adept at justifying these theories, that even the people closest to me didn’t question them. I can almost assure you that it came as a shock to my friends and family when I, of all people, began to wonder if maybe all of these things weren’t happening to me. After all, there seemed to be so much build up…but no real action. 

At my worst, I was certain that the build up was simply an attempt to drive me mad, to knock me off my guard, to render me incapable of fighting back. At my best, I agreed that these impending-death scenarios were improbable, but still, despite my best attempts to shake them, believed them to be true.

So, my mission was clear. It was my job to remain vigilant. To fight. To flee. To curl in a small ball behind the couch and play dead. 

You’re likely thinking that I must have been under some sort of psychological care throughout this time, acutely aware that I was suffering from a combination of Anxiety, Depression, PTSD and Paranoia. To that, I’d respond with a sort of maniacal laughter that would haunt you for a lifetime. Therapy was for crazy people, angry people, people who didn’t have white picket fences and 2.5 kids and nice husbands and 401ks. Not me, bro. I’m cool. (*sunglasses emoji*)

Sometimes I think back to the mash-up of issues I was facing as a perfectly concocted soup. (But less like a regular, hearty soup, set to warm your soul on a cold night…and more like one of those soups they’d serve cold in a school cafeteria: thick and mysterious and generally unpalatable.)

It is so easy to get trapped in this feeling that mental illness defines us, or has broken us, but I’ve gone to therapy now (*pats self on the back VERY HARD*) and read lots and lots of inspirational quotes on instagram (*abruptly stops patting self on back*) and I realize now, that these are not the things that define us. Even the way we stumble through is not what defines us.

We’re allowed to break down and fuck up and do it all wrong. We don’t always have to overcome our setbacks gloriously with the sun bursting through dark clouds. Sometimes we just wake up and try a little harder not to suck, try to not peak out the windows looking for well-disguised murderers, try not to ruin our probably-expensive heating and air system with 16 layers of duct-tape…we wake up and take one little baby step towards healing/recovery/self-care and that’s ok.

I truly have to believe that what defines us is who we are in between these broken times. What defines us, if we even need defining, is the person we are when we have perspective, and coffee in-hand, and all the stars are aligned and we feel like we can shower and converse and meet opposition with something other than hysterical crying. I’d like to believe that who I am is the person I’m able to be when at my best. Anything else is just too much damn pressure.

Now, that I’ve largely overcome my paranoia (again, *emphatically* PAINFULLY patting myself on the back) now that I’m here making soup analogies and talking about sunlight bursting through clouds, I can hardly believe what my life once looked like. And while it’s easy to joke about now…in those moments, it felt absolutely insurmountable. Here I was, trapped in this self-imposed prison, unable to escape, probably destined to die there. I could not leave the house, could not forge new relationships, could not trust, could not love, could not function normally in the world. I was lost, and didn’t know where to turn. 

If you’d have told me then that there were answers, that there were services, solutions, resources, support, people struggling in the same way, I’m not sure I would have believed you. In those moments, I needed that place, and I didn’t know where to start.

For me, If Lost, Start Here is a small step in the right direction. With so much of the world operating under the assumption of wellness, If Lost Start Here is a resource for people who are just unapologetically struggling, or at least those of us who accept that self-care is hard, and self-realization even harder, and self-compassion maybe the most difficult of all.

So many of the solutions offered for “wellness” or “recovery" can feel unattainable to people who are struggling. (How am I supposed to book a "Heavenly Weekend Getaway” when I can’t even go to the grocery store without having a panic attack?) 

If Lost Start Here is less about “Resetting Your Wellness At This Jaw-Dropping Bali Retreat” and more about “700 Places Where You Can Openly Sob Without Judgement”. And for me (huddled in my bed, with my duct tape, thinking about soup) that feels just about right.