🎧 Prefer to listen?
Summer of ‘75
When we were home for Thanksgiving, my mom handed my daughter an old suitcase full of slides and a modern day View Master so she could actually see them.
She came across this one of me and my best friend Lori who lived across the street.
We were a year apart in school, but inseparable at home.
I spent most of our time at her house because we could smoke rolled-up toilet paper cigarettes in the bathroom while her mom was at work.
I slept over almost every weekend. We’d lie in bed pulling our Andy Gibb album covers to our lips and obsessing over how it would feel to run our mood-ring-bedazzled-fingers over his hairy chest.
I love this picture.
I love how I’m trying a new trick and she’s holding out her arms to me.
“You can do this. You’re doing it! I’ll catch you if you fall. ”
And me—skating on one leg—trusting and believing her. But more importantly, trusting and believing in me.
On Saturday mornings, we stayed in bed listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 on her Panasonic Toot-a-Loop radio.
(Anyone else have one of these??)
Here’s what gets me. That ten-year-old is gloriously unbothered about what anyone thinks.
She hasn’t been trained by untrained people on how to be good.
She isn’t self-editing to keep the peace.
She isn’t dumbing herself down to charm a man.
She was smart. And she was proud of it.
The thing is, I want to know who I was before culture clipped my wings. I want to know the true identity hiding under the false one I've lived burdened with.
I want to know what it's like to truly be her. To truly be me.
So I'm spending this year intentionally undoing decades of cultural conditioning and surrendering to the unvarnished version of the woman I want to become:
Liberated, full of herself and gloriously unbothered.
And I’m going to do it in real time.
With you—if you want to.
🧠 A few gathered things
I don’t love AI, but every now and then, it turns out something worth saving.
Here’s what I’ve decided I want to be when I grow up.
I love this encouragement for anyone woman who needs a reminder that you are more than what went dark.
📖 What I underlined
People will love you. People will hate you. And none of it will have anything to do with you.
–Abraham-Hicks
❓ A reminder for you:
You’ve been conditioned into believing that staying quiet and small is the only acceptable way to live.
Don’t believe it. You’re not cringe or annoying. You’re fucking magic.
Amie McNee, Author & Artist
Warmly,
Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.
Overwhelmed by biased news? Cut through the clutter and get straight facts with your daily 1440 digest. From politics to sports, join millions who start their day informed.