Grateful I got to write my column for 12 1/2 years and grateful it is ending now. And that I got to do the ending well, that it taught me how to find my voice and practice and get better and fast. And that I learned to get more confident at it and stopped worrying if I was good enough.
Grateful the Cambridge/Boston era taught me its lessons/my lessons. All my schooling there — literature, film, screenwriting. Grateful for the education. Grateful for amazing meals, a warm bath of socializing and blurred edges and comfort after my mother died and post 9/11. For my apartment and getting to be creative there, start a blog, hone my voice. Grateful for learning what to avoid creatively, like signing on to other people’s projects b/c I didn’t trust my own. For my young adult years, going to college, loving, my first real true love relationship, the authenticity and integrity of feeling in heartbreak, the true connection shared. For meeting and forging a real life with Brent, the ups and challenges we shared there. The beautiful cats we loved and had to help usher into the next life. For forging true friendships that continue to blossom. For my enriching yoga practice that blossomed there thanks to finding Jenn F's classes. Grateful for the gorgeous retreats and finding my heart center again and learning to TRUST it. For the challenges, being scared, scaring myself, learning what I want and DON’T want, who I want to be and DON’T want to be and who I want to be with and don’t want to be with. For learning it would never quite be “my place,” and that I could never quite get it to care about me and what I do the way I would like to be cared about. And, as such, allowing me the relative anonymity to get as creative as I wanted. Yes, I felt stuck a lot, too, but that also taught me how I don't want to feel. For the fun times — like running karaoke, drunken nights, beach times, dinner with peeps, playing SUC shows (especially the daytime ones) and feeling connected to the community. For the east coast upbringing and its responsibility for my sharp wit and also the lessons about softness. For the grace running through all of it, how life gently showed me the way, met me where I was, urged me along. For the lessons of last year [I basically yadda-yadda-yadda’d the cancer — but that’s what I’m talking about here]. And for seeing that the culture of entitlement and ambition is an illusion — real for those people, sure, but not aligned with my truth. For the walks by the Charles River, dips in the sea at Crane, full moon skinny-dipping at Walden, Gardner Museum, The MFA, Fenway, BU, oysters. Getting to just “be” for a while. As long as it took. Thanks to my homegal/love/writerly buddy Casey Erin Wood and her Ruby Slipper School of Magic for this prompt and mentioning gratitude for the endings. It really helped me to seal the old chapter with some gorgeous melted wax and a heart signet. What are you putting the seal on? I highly recommend taking a mindful moment to appreciate where you have been and how much there is to be grateful for within that and where you are now because of it.
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As I’m listening to Chani Nicholas’ solar eclipse course she asks, “What is leadership?” She goes on to ask: "how do you want to lead?" I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I just finished reading Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth, in which she writes about being your own guru. Yes.
Then the other day I read three successive things talking about Johnny Depp, Joss Whedon and Louis C.K. treating women questionably at best. The guy I wanted, the guy I thought I could be, and the guy I aspired to learn from. Heroes, we call them. But could the universe tell me more strongly that we need to be our own hero? And as women, each others’ heroes as well (and that’s not just for cis-women). Because day after day gnarly ropes of bullshit shit keep getting exposed and it’s becoming clearer that we’re the ones to bring ourselves and each other clarity and strength. “Are you leading with heart? Are you leading with anger?” Chani Nicholas says. “And talking about being collective. The old ways don’t work. The dinosaurs are having their last hurrah and we need a new way of doing leadership. And we are all leaders, right?…We are starting a new chapter or being course corrected or some things are beginning and some things are ending…this is a chance to reset ourselves.” I’ve also been thinking about the Marie Kondo-ing of it all (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing). How when you get rid of a lot of what no longer sparks joy (be it old furniture or defunct "heroes"), it allows you to see how much the things you actually love shine. And then you get to honor those things. And to me it’s not just about material things. It’s about relationships and where you put your time and energy. I got rid of a lot of furniture, for example, that was passed down to me from my sister and parents. It was great of them to help me furnish my house so we could recycle and reuse and I didn’t have to spend a bunch of money. But as I am getting older and stepping more fully into who this person is, I realized I not only get to make choices for myself, but it is imperative that I do. What do I want? Gotta make a lot of choices on the hero's journey. Some as silly as "do I want this chair?" I spoke to a close friend the other day and she was talking about transforming the old mishegas into something useful. To dig into one’s old junk and trigger points and whatnot and, like an alchemical process you might use to smelt metal, create useful gold. Create something beautiful from which others will benefit. I love this. Big beautiful heroes and heroines wielding the golden scepters of our own old wounds. How does that sound? Pretty good to me. So what do you think about leadership and being your own hero? I’m wishing you the best best best at bypassing the bullshit constructs of our society and feeling the power and clarity of your heart — because that, my friend, is what is real. [This week my final column came out. It is bittersweet, but feels good, too. Without further ado, here she blows (I don't think it blows, actually. Ha! I'm proud of my Mercury writing. Was just trying to do a nautical thang)]:
When I started writing this column 12 years ago (when the Mercury began as a free weekly tab) I would send a copy to my dad every week. He would write me notes or we would talk about it on the phone and he would suggest I be less sharp-tongued sometimes or tell me he enjoyed an insight or two. It’s a weird end-of-era time for me, as this will be the last Full Frontal column since I’ve basically moved across the country and it makes it hard to write about things going on locally. But a piece of my seawater-steeped heart is always in Newport. So much has changed. I don’t send these to my dad anymore (his dementia prevented him from reading much) and the last time I spoke to him on the phone he was asking his nurse if he was at her apartment. She assured him he was home. “I built this house?” he asked her. “She’s saying I built this house.” “Yeah, dad, I think you’re at your house in Saddle River,” I told him. Things move exponentially quickly it seems, once you’re there. There is an album by Seam called “The Pace is Glacial.” I think about this fairly often. How you don’t realize how much things have changed until something big happens. Or you go away for a while. I’ve been thinking a lot as well about Thomas Wolfe’s book title “You Can’t Go Home Again.” It sure feels that way and in ever-broadening circles. Anyway, maybe all of that is abstract and me simply spinning off into the ethers. Which I guess is pretty typical. A concrete thing is I’ve loved writing this column. Nico Ecenarro has done a beautiful job illustrating my ramblings and my editor, Janine Weisman, has indulged the living sh*t out of me week after week. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone like Janine willing to publish you and to let you learn and grow. To say, “this is worthwhile,” by putting their hard-won energy and sharp eye on it and making it better. Especially when you write about poop and boobs as much as I do. Ah, then there is all of the music and getting to write about the folk and jazz festivals! And the now-defunct Newport International Film Festival gave me a place to ache in the dark and be moved and inspired by other people’s art and work. Experiences I will lovingly hold and take with me as I explore the next chapter of my own creative expression. I wish you all the feeling of freedom I’ve felt writing here. I wish the ability to express yourselves and the space to feel what you need to feel through whatever avenue of creativity you so choose. My prayer is that with the dissolution of this column some of what I’ve felt — the joy and getting to be whomever you are whenever you need to be — might dissipate into the air and you might get to breathe in some of those magic particles. Because here I’ve been able to be me, visible and vulnerable, and I wish you the same. Jenn Sutkowski may still occasionally find herself on the pages of the Mercury. She thanks you for your time and energy and she thanks this very space, page 4, and all it has meant to her. Find her doing other stuff (and wishing you health and more than wealth: love) at jennsutkowski.com. (This Full Frontal column originally appeared in the Newport Mercury.) When I was diagnosed last year with DCIS breast cancer (stage zero — woot woot) I had a bit of a freakout, then looked around my house. I thought of Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman, which was one of my favorite movies as a kid. All the chemicals and products she came in contact with created a magic slurry that turned her small and then she lived in a dollhouse. As much as I was obsessed with living in a dollhouse when I was wee, thinking I had contracted cancer perhaps from my environmental junk was not living the dream.
In one fell swoop I gathered up all the plastic and recycled it. What about these perfumery supplies, I wondered? I had heard synthetic musk was one of the worst endocrine disruptors and since my breast cancer was hormone receptor positive, who knows? This is what you do, you probably know (at least if you’re me and grew up believing you could fix things with your mind). You go through all the ways in which you could be responsible for your current situation and then figure out a way to fix it. But then you also probably know that one of the hugest lessons in dealing with cancer is learning to dance with the unknown and probably couple with it, too. Because it’s sticking around for the long haul. I knew not to go down the internet rabbit hole in the midst of this scary situation. That is a lesson I learned from having bedbugs a bunch of years ago and reading everything I could and flipping out and putting all my shoes and jewelry in the freezer in plastic bags. I went overboard and still felt like I had no control. That really sucked for someone with control issues. But over the last year I’ve found ways to do better things for myself without getting manic or insane about it (most of the time). Recently I discovered EWG (The Environmental Workers Group) and how you can enter products into their website to find out how good or crappy they are for you (and find EWG-approved items). Yes, this is admittedly a bit of a slippery slope. But I feel a lot better knowing what I’m putting on my body isn’t full of chemicals. I also started getting my makeup from a shop called Follain based in Boston (and on Nantucket). They have a restricted ingredients list and a strong ethic. I also have a friend who started a website called Be Home Well, where she has curated a great family of products after doing tons of research — everything is nontoxic and sustainable. It’s a pleasure to shop there. When she started it there was no one-stop shop for this kind of thing. I learned that looking at cleaner living through the lens of self-care rather than a hustle to fix everything makes it doable. And do things one thing at a time. Because stress is arguably as deadly as anything you’re using in your house. Jenn Sutkowski is not as much of a major eater of cheeseburgers as she used to be but is still an eater of cheeseburgers. Not that cheeseburgers cause any problems at all. Find her seeking magic burgers to cure all at jennsutkowski.com. (This Full Frontal column appeared first in the Newport Mercury.)
Brief but spectacular indeed.
PBS NEWSHOUR | Brief but Spectacular ft. Bryan Stevenson | PBS: This is the moment. I’m aligned with the sun, the moon and the earth. Whether the eclipse really does anything to shift us isn’t really the point — kind of like whether the tarot card is really a mystical tool for divination. The power to change is in us and we can decide to do it at any time and these are catalysts. I just happen to feel that when the air turns cool because the moon is blocking the sun it is a physical reminder of life’s preciousness and the greater truth of the cosmos — it’s a chance to pause and look up to what is bigger than we are, rather than running around like chickens with our heads cut off in the emotional muck of the patriarchy and its emboldened weirdos.
Monday morning I was in that in between sleep and awake time and was thinking what I want to slough and what I want to keep: Slough — self doubt, self attack, giving shits about what other people think, flimsy boundaries, old ways, old writing and falling back on that... Keep + build: confidence, love, who I am in the world, continuing to gather my tribe, courage, more writing, art and sharing that, connection to the muse, honoring myself and my connection to what's true and beautiful, loving up on the beautiful connections I already have. I am really excited for the eclipse and using the energy to continue to shift and solidify what I want and what is good for the world and slough what I don't want. Oh, and, you know, feeling into ushering in the new world by seeing and sensing the connection of the cosmos and what we all share and the TRUTH of that as opposed to the construct/illusion of patriarchy and our systemic bullshit and being mindful about that. No bigs. I’ve been too quiet lately. I have been so tongue-tied around our world. After the white supremacist attack in Charlottesville I was doing some pretty intense emotional triage at home as my husband was very distraught. I appreciate his sensitivity and it’s one of the things I love about him the most. But it sometimes makes things harder during major times of strife because I have to deal with the strife and those effects and then the emotional fallout from said strife. People are talking a lot these days about the mental and emotional load and I just raise my hand and say, “Me too.”
Then there is the mild self-hatred that comes from white privilege and that I should just shut up because I don’t have anything worthy to say and white people have said enough. So I clam up out of unworthiness and trying not to contribute to the noise and YET — it is important to note — that clamming up is really just fear of not getting it right. Saying the wrong thing. Seeing how unfixable all of this feels. And it’s also the very clamming up that has contributed so generously to our current situation where we have a hard time talking about race, etc. The foot goes in the mouth and yet so many who have no idea what they're talking about just spout and spout. That scenario doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I roll around in the mud of the scope of another three and a half years or whatever it will be with this asshole in office and the emboldening of domestic Nazis. It seems insurmountable sometimes and I want to move to another country and then I'm like, “Oh, right, humans are there, too.” Then my dear writer-sister and heart-centered-flaming-arrow of social justice, Sara Alvarado, sent me a newsletter this morning that recently moved her. In this piece Kelly Diels writes about how now is NOT the time to clam up: "This is not the time for those of us who are committed to justice and doing The Work to pull back or be less visible. “This is not the time for us to voluntarily make less money or invite deprivation and struggle into our businesses and payrolls. “This is the time for us to do MORE of what we were already doing. “As a collective, we need to amass even more influence and power and money. “We need to train and influence more people. “'You will not replace us.’ “WATCH US DO EXACTLY THAT.” BOOM MUTHERFUCKING BOOM. She goes on: “Now is not the time for you to be less visible. “Now is not the time to turn down the volume on you and your work. “Now is not the time to take a revenue hit or voluntarily struggle.” OK. So I’m getting out the oil can and lubing up this squeaky mouth — that was supposed to be a reference to the Tin Man and how I feel rusty right now but it kinda came out sounding gross. But then we need some humor right now, too, yes? So here are some things I’m doing:
I'm pretty sure "steeeriike" is used in baseball, not bowling, but that's about par for the course (golf?) for me and sports. I just had to add this video my friend Al posted last night of probably one of my only strikes ever. Once in a blue moon shit right here. And I act like I don't care. Because I have to be emotionally detached from bowling since I am so terrible at it and it hurts my thumb and ankle.
Once as a kid at a birthday party at the bowling alley in Ramsey, NJ I ended up getting my finger stuck in a bowling ball and nearly had to get a ring cut off my finger because Jenn + sports = disaster and there are so many jokes in how me 'n balls don't mix. But here we are winding up and letting her roll at Lanes & Games, a Cambridge, MA institution, that will be closing in a few weeks and replaced with luxury condos, because: Cambridge. But my friends and I had one last hurrah and it was really fun. Only one person had a ball fall on her head (because: beer) and she didn't end up with a concussion and it wasn't me. I'm only slightly bruised today. Lanes & Games: forever in our hearts. (Also I need to figure out how I can get a pair of these bowling shoes. I've always wanted them.) There may be no crying in baseball, but that’s why I much prefer music to baseball. So pack the tissues and get ready to let those feeling through at the Newport Folk Festival. It’s good for your spirit.
This is the first year in a long time I won’t be attending the festival. That in itself is something to cry about. My sisters and my husband and I usually all go. We have some things going on in the family this year and the timing didn't work out for anyone. Luckily through the power of technology you can usually catch some lives sets from the festival online. So here are some sets I’m sure I’ll cry through, from afar. Wilco on Saturday! Never miss a chance to see Wilco! They feel like a warm bath on a psychedelic day. When they closed Friday night of the festival in 2012 my husband and I were misty the whole time. I especially loved “California Stars” and “Airline to Heaven.” (You can find this set on NPR’s website.) Go see the Fleet Foxes on Friday! I have the best memory of walking down the path by the Fort Stage in 2009 with my sister Mary Beth and hitting that spot where the speakers are super loud. Fleet Foxes were were playing “Sun It Rises” and I’ve never seen my sister so happy. She didn’t even really have words, was just smiling and shaking her head. Someone caught a photo of her in front of a huge tie-dye flag with a peace symbol on it and I swear it’s a picture of her soul. Tears were shed. (You can find this set on NPR’s website as well.) My husband was unable to go to a lot of the festivals with me for years because of his job as a cook. But then finally I dislodged him from that thankless kitchen in 2008. He started crying practically the moment Brandi Carlile began singing. I hadn’t warned him about involuntary face-rain. I’m bummed we won’t be there to cry together through Michael Kiwanuka singing “Cold Little Heart” on Sunday. But the festival isn’t just about cathartic crying through songs! There’s always other cool stuff happening. From the Newport Folk Festival Facebook page: “Stop by the Newport Festivals Foundation tent this weekend to learn how you could win this one-of-a-kind Lucius 7" record. Big thanks to Lucius and Electric Lady Studios for this awesome donation to help the Foundation and it's education initiatives. #folkfamily.” You can always dry your tears with some (hopefully free) merch. In “Murder In the City,” The Avett Brothers sing, “Make sure my sister knows I loved her / Make sure my mother knows the same / Always remember, there was nothing worth sharing / Like the love that let us share our name.” It gives me chills even thinking of it. So, please go see the Avett Brothers Saturday for me, folk family, and know that the name we share is music. Jenn Sutkowski hopes to catch Nikki Lane, Suzanne Vega and Whitney’s sets online, and hey, will someone bring her a Mediterranean plate and some Tallulah’s tacos? Find her crying over spilt music at jennsutkowski.com. (PS. This is a would-have-been Full Frontal column had I gotten it to my editor extraordinaire, Janine Weisman, in time to actually make it into the paper this week. So I'm posting it here instead.) Gosh, I hope you all slept better than I did last night during the full thunder moon! Two things that helped: Drawing, and this awesome flower essence blend called Flora-Sleep from FES Flowers. I love anything with the word "quiescent" on it. Even if this is, you know, the only thing I have with "quiescent" on it. (FES Flowers rocks. Their Yarrow Environmental Solution is excellent too.) So much love to you! Quiescent times and transcendent rhymes!
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It's me, Jennifer Bernice (rhymes with "Furnace": it was my Granny's name) Sutkowski• More details about my writing here. Archives
March 2024
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