It's been 1 whole year of ✨ MJC-mail✨!!
+ our regular August catch-up 🥰
Woah, we've been keeping up with each other via this newsletter for an entire year - that's wild!
And some of you have been here even longer, since before MJC-mail (shout out to my OG Is It Just Me Or… subscribers!) 💜
Thank you for sticking around, engaging with me in the comments, engaging with EACH OTHER in the comments, sharing your lives, generously offering to buy me a coffee, and just generally being a group of humans who have significantly restored my faith in the internet. I love it here and I'm so grateful you like it, too. 🥰
So, shall we talk about August?!
We've gotta start with the highlight…
UK Black Pride! I had such a beautiful time volunteering to help bae run the Wellbeing area - I met gorgeous people, heard inspiring words and soaked in all the love that was around us. Plus I wore these incredible tinsel hot pants that made booty shaking even more fun.
I even made it out to a whole other festival the day before UKBP!
All Points East festival with bae and bestie 🥰 ngl, whenever I find myself at music festivals my internal dialogue instantly becomes “what are we doing here?? I don't get it. What do we do now?? Are we having the fun yet?? I miss being at home.”
BUT we got ourselves settled in with some good food (hello Korean fried chicken 👀) and let the rain pour down on us while Stormzy frolicked around the stage, which turned out to be pretty close to euphoric (a whole crowd singing Blinded By Your Grace as the heavens opened and we all got soaked made all the previous questioning worth it!) 🌧️
In other friend news, it was Michelle's birthday!
We spent a weekend splashing around in a rented pool and pretending it was way warmer than weekends in the UK have actually been 🌞
It felt so restorative to just be playful and silly with some friends, and celebrate one of my oldest body positive pals who's friendship has grown so far beyond being IG friends 💖
P.s. Michelle also writes a newsletter on Substack these days! It's called
and it is excellent 🌱Speaking of IG friends, I went to two book launches this month to cheer on pals for their new releases!
Another woman I'm a fan of?
This one. She continues to wake me up with bouncing joy, hold me gently and encourage me to rest, stand by my side no matter which space we enter and makes me feel like I really have a partner in life. So yeah, it's going pretty great with bae. 🥰
In fact, another major highlight of the month was watching a huge project come to life that Char created with a friend to raise money for LGBTQ+ people facing homelessness.
The Big Queer Poetry Show brings together incredible queer poets who perform to the warmest, most supportive crowd, all to raise funds for Stonewall Housing 🌈 they've raised around £10k so far which is hundreds of overnight stays for unhoused queer people. I spent the whole night filled with so much pride. It was the best 💖
And lastly, this newsletter wouldn't be complete without a bit of Queen Gemma, would it?
We've had a couple of great weekends doing our usual routine of pampering, socialising, and eating at the finest establishments only 🍟🍔
All in all, it's been a wonderful August - I've focused less on myself and more on other people, let days pass without needing to be super “productive”, gone with the flow and looked for the joy. My nervous system is super grateful 🥰
Could we have more empathy for ourselves when we're low energy?
"Why am I tired all the time??"
"I had x hours sleep, I should be fine!"
"Eugh why don't I have more energy??"
Some of my most self-critical moments happen when my body is screaming at me that we're tired, and my brain is refusing to accept it. We should just be able to keep going - keep producing, keep socialising, keep working.
I don't think we have anywhere near enough recognition of how tiring this life is. The things we have to do to make a living, the relationships we maintain, the self-development we do, the day-to-day to-do lists, not to mention those of us managing illness or mental health issues. Of course we're tired! Sometimes in the body, sometimes in the soul.
And telling ourselves that we shouldn't be tired fixes nothing. Pouring guilt on top of fatigue just makes it harder to rest. What we need is less judgement, and more restoration wherever we can get it. Less unreasonable expectations, more empathy for our human limitations. Less pressure to just keep going, more permission to rest.
Let's stop telling ourselves that we shouldn't be feeling the ways we're feeling. We feel how we feel, and it's perfectly understandable. 💜
Transcript: Hello my loves! Today's one minute reminder is to check whether you are holding onto old narratives about who you are, that no longer fit. For a long time I have identified as the sad one - the one in the family who’s always stressed about something, the one in the friendship group who’s always down about something. Even through I've always been good at outwardly being positive and appearing happy, my internal self-identifier was “no, actually deep down I'm quite a sad person”. And obviously I still get sad sometimes and I have my own mental health stuff to manage, lately I have less and less been the sad one. I have made space for more ease, and let go, and been present. And part of me is scared to let go of that self-identifier of being the sad one because there's safety in having that identifier. But there is also limitation - because to some extent, the way that I see myself is the way I will continue to be. So I am working on letting go of that narrative about myself, because it does not fit the version I am becoming. And maybe you have an old narrative about yourself that it's time to start questioning, too.
Alright angels, that's it for this time! I always always welcome you to share in the comments - either your life updates, your highs and lows, your big realisations or small joys. I also invite you to comment back to someone else if you feel like connecting and showing a little extra love 🌞
Take the best possible care and I'll see you soon!
M
💜
Thank you for calling out the nearly invisible normalized judgement around needing rest. You're spot-on, and speaking as someone who absolutely has a habit of judging herself for needing rest, you've given me lots to think about. Thank you. ❤️
So much joy in a month! And happy anniversary - a huge accomplishment! ❤️🥰