Afternoon Delights #01: Carrying Too Many Things at All Times

4th birthday! Annual pledge drive! Discount! +Recent delights

This month, WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE celebrates its fourth birthday! I am so grateful for the ways this space shapes my life.

To honor this milestone, I moved paid sponsorships to Substack! Thank you so much to readers who became paid sponsors on our first, second, and third birthdays. Paid subscriptions make this work possible and honor the labor of mind and body required to produce each essay.

Paying for writing you enjoy means writers can create material that is not beholden to ads and algorithms. And since I am a full-time student, your support is a meaningful part of my income.

From now on—

Unpaid subscribers will receive:

• One public essay per month — no changes! We will keep asking life’s big questions together and explore what it means to live a life of meaning, even against all odds.

Paid subscribers will receive:

• One public essay per month.

• One issue of BETWEEN YOU AND ME per month.

  • BETWEEN YOU AND ME has already appeared beneath 193 essays! It includes personal updates, love letters to life, and favorite things I’m reading, watching, eating, and drinking.

  • That spirit will remain, though each new issue will be expanded to offer more personal insight and storytelling.

  • The first installment was about encountering increased anxiety as my life expanded ways this past year… and how I managed that.

• One issue of AFTERNOON DELIGHTS per month! A lighthearted exploration of delight centering joy, beauty, and pleasure as critical, not extra or nice-to-have, parts of our experience. Think sparkly and light, but with a soul.

• Access to essays in the archive.

• My big-big love and gratitude.

To celebrate our fourth birthday, I am offering new paid subscribers a special discount: 10 percent off for one year!

As I share every year, in this space I remain committed to—

• Facilitating conversations around life’s big questions

• Holding space for the beautiful human inadequacy and honesty we bring to those conversations

• Highlighting topics and ~feelings~ that aren’t prioritized in mainstream outlets

• Exploring healing, pleasure, joy, and beauty as critical, not frivolous components of our lives

• Celebrating art, relationship, spirituality, and connection as avenues to finding meaning 

Readers—

I cannot express how much your energetic and material support means. Your warm reception has helped me, over the past four years, learn to trust my voice.

If you cannot support financially at this time, it would mean the world if you would forward an essay to a friend who’s asking life’s big questions and ask them to subscribe.

With your support, I will continue deepening my experience and pouring myself into writing and ideas aimed towards cultivating deeper empathy, connection, meaning, and repair.

In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, and dedicating myself to ongoing earth care, 1 percent of revenue from this space will be donated to climate restoration and resilience. As revenue grows, so will my donations!

This summer—

In addition to writing and speaking in churches around Connecticut, I am working for the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Faith for Earth Team, which is a real honor. Our work aims to inspire environmental and climate action from a place of deep spiritual and moral commitment. I am learning so much about global interfaith collaboration and diplomacy, which sparks my mind and heart with hope for the potential we humans hold — to destroy, yes — but also to heal together, in relationship.

To complement those ideas, I am also working with the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, where I am helping to bring spiritual and faith-based perspectives to a global environmental joy conference!

As always, I am so glad you are here. Thank you for reading my work. Thank you, paid sponsors, for your commitment to the intention and continued vibrance of WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE.

On to Afternoon Delights.
Take care out there!
—Lauren

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In this era of polarizing conflict, environmental devastation, and way too much to do, we notice delight and insist on joy! This is a practice and a promise. Will you join me?

For four years, WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE has lifted up beauty, pleasure, and joy as critical parts of human experience. The need is twofold: We must learn to recognize our own joy, even amidst trial, and we must commit to removing systemic barriers to joy for others.

To practice recognizing my own pleasure and inviting others in, I give you… AFTERNOON DELIGHTS.

This month, I am delighted by holding too many things at all times, hot pink sprinkles at my neighborhood ice cream shop, guy arranging plants on Italian restaurant patio, stone fruit overflowing from fruit bowl, walking among strangers, and white boomer fear of aliens.

Let me explain—