musts

As of TODAY, here is the list of things that I think are SO IMPORTANT to us right now. These aren't in any particular order, and I'm 100% certain that I've forgotten some important ones.

• Jhene Aiko's albums & songs (spirituality, trauma, empowerment, good vibes)
• Bon Iver's albums (spirituality, good vibes)
• Rage Against the Machine 's albums (history, cultural competence, justice)
• Brene Brown 's books (shame, trauma, empowerment)
• Dalai Lama 's album Inner World (love, teaching, empowerment, spirituality)
• Run the Jewels ' albums (history, cultural competence, justice)
• Taylor Swift (ft. Bon Iver) , exile (spirituality, good vibes)
• Jared Yates Sexton's books and Twitter account (history, justice)
• Philip Yancy 's books (grace, Christianity)
• The Flaming Lips ' albums (spirituality, good vibes)
• Netflix's Midnight Gospel (spirituality, good vies)
• Hunger Games books by Suzanne Collins/movies
• Divergent books/movies
• Russel Brand 's podcast Under The Skin (spirituality, empowerment)
• Khalil Gibran's poems **The Prophet is on Spotify as a podcast/audiobook!!

I will gladly speak or write more about any of these. As a traumatized person, I have trouble talking to my friends and family about my "real" interests (it's called a fawn response; look it up or ask and I'll write more about it), so I love connecting with new friends over random shared interests. So if you want to talk about weird, witchy, spiritual, hippie shit, please let me know.

It was beneficial for me to think about the thinkers that I identify with or feel like I relate to. Some artists just feel like they're talking right to you, you know what I mean? These are those for me. Not all of them; some are surface-level liking. Some are deeper liking and connection.

Another thing to note: for me, these albums are meant to be consumed as albums. They're stories, and I love these stories because they resonate with me in some way. The artist/s poured their hearts and souls into these stories to try to make them palatable for the public, to help us heal in one way or another (whether you realize it or not!) and I think these albums above hold important messages.

If you really want to get into my head, try to apply the content listed above to today's context. Human stories are loops; we've already experienced the things we're going through now. It's like a video game; we keep trying until we make the right choice.

The issues I see most often can be narrowed into four categories, I think (may be edited later): narcissism, greed, pride, and arrogance. I'll make a chart of those eventually, trying to categorize the problems I see into those. I'm an obsessive categorizer; my brain is like a gigantic library filing room, and there is always a little worker in there, going around moving things around into new categories. Humans love sorting the unsortable, for whatever reason. I know I'll never be finished with this task, but it keeps me busy and helps me make sense of the world.

These are things I vibe with and love talking about right now:

1. importance of trauma-informed care and conversations
2. how to achieve racial equity in our country
3. importance of mental health, going to therapy (or equivalent)
4. possibility of alien invasion
5. impending doom/apocalypse
6. order of events for the end of the world
7. having an only fans (yes I have one, yes I want you to subscribe)
8. hating the system
9. being antifascist
10. deconstruction Christianity
11. tearing down patriarchy, r@pe culture, capitalism... tearing down anything, pretty much
12. really loving animals
13. deciding the future of the last generation (gen Z)
14. holistic medicine, herbalism, self-healing
15. being sad
16. being angry
17. questioning the binary
18. how to live and consume under capitalism as consciously as possible
19. internalized misogyny and how to get rid of it (see: tearing down patriarchy)

xo Lauren