Hi! It’s me, Dasha. I hemmed and hawed about Comfort Soup and it was just time to do something else. Thank you so much for everyone over the years who reached out to me about it. I still want to talk to all of you, but be a little broader than “comfort” - thus Notes on Being a Person. Welcome. Obviously, as always feel free to unsubscribe if it’s not for you.

Yesterday, I hosted a birthday party for a 12 year old. If you are feeling stuck in any way, I highly recommend hosting a party for a child. My house was full of the funniest most wonderful almost not kids, they crafted and chattered and drank SO MUCH TEA. (It was a Tea Party, “A Tea for Bea” we called it. If YOU are looking to get into tea and are an 11 or 12 year old girl - Country Peach Passion from Celestial Seasonings is the way to go.)

I don’t have my own kids. For a long tedious list of reasons I wasn’t able to have kids. For many years I was alternately ashamed, sad, enraged, relieved etc about this. I thought about it so much of the time, most of the time if I am being honest. I wanted to write a book called Not a Mother. I felt outside of society. Recently, something shifted. Maybe it’s just being fully planted in the middle of my life now - when a delightful thing happens and you start to shed so many layers that are not serving you and become a distilled, crystal version of yourself.

And my version is not being mad at not being a mom, anymore. But instead, being delighted to have the closest friends in my life, ages 0-100, and being able to host them and 11 of their friends for a tea party.

On a different note, please remember your veterans today. Every family has veterans.

xxd

PS just as it was with Comfort Soup - you may chose to be a paid subscriber, and thank you so much if you are! But there will NEVER BE A PAYWALL on this newsletter. If substack is sending you emails asking you for money, I am truly sorry - I have now tried to turn off every way they can do that - it is one hundred percent not what this newsletter is about and I hate that they do it. ♥