Hey friends,
How are you? I really want to know. Reply to this email and let me know. Sending hugs, love, and peace.
As I write to you, at 11:46pm the day before this email will hit your inboxes, we don’t yet know if the ceasefire in Gaza was extended. I know many are working hard to make this a permanent ceasefire. I hope we have good news by the time you’re reading this in the morning.
Fuck war.
Anyway, here are a few things I think you should read, watch, listen to, and consider as we approach the weekend:
🎧 PODCAST TO LISTEN TO
This week, I invited my friend Meike Ziervogel to join me on the Let’s Give A Damn podcast. Meike is the founder of an award-winning publishing company in the UK and is the author of five novels! In 2018, she transformed a failing needle art workshop in the Shatila refugee camp into a sustainable independent business, providing a monthly income to 100 refugee women. In 2020, she set up Alsama Project with Kadria Hussien, a Syrian refugee living in Shatila. Meike is now the CEO of Alsama and has shaped it into one of the most innovative and successful NGOs serving Syrian refugees in the Middle East.
Meike inspires me so damn much. Don’t miss this one! Listen to our conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
📚 BOOK TO READ
My friend Juli Boit is an incredible human. She, along with her family and an incredible team, runs Living Room—a community-led nonprofit providing hospice and palliative care services to adults and children in Western Kenya. This month, she wrote her second book called Brave Love: A Nurse's Story of Courage and Compassion in a Kenyan Hospice. I’m reading it now and it’s a truly fantastic and hopeful book. Buy it!
📺 VIDEO TO WATCH
Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Gabor Maté, two humans I look up for a myriad of reasons, recorded a converstion recently that I think is worth your time and attention. One line in particular from West stopped me in my tracks:
“When you watch precious human beings being literally killed, crushed, demeaned, degraded, day after day, it makes you think that this particular historical moment has a certain grimness and darkness that others don’t.”
If you’re like me, you’ve seen countless images and videos of slaughtered Palestinian children and adults over the past few weeks. May we never become callous to such things. And may we continue to demand a ceasefire and a free Palestine in every way we possibly can.
🎶 SONG(S) TO LISTEN TO
Allison Russell is one of my favorite artists on the planet. She’s absolutely stunning. Last year, she released a song with Brandi Carlile called You’re Not Alone. The entire song is wonderful but these are my favorite lyrics:
Wish that I could keep you from
Sorrow and harm
None of us is here for long
But you're not alone
I hope you add this hopeful song to your regular rotation of inspiring tunes. Oh, and I’ll be seeing Allison live Thursday evening at the Music Hall of Williamsburg and then I’ll be recording a conversation with her on the podcast Friday morning. Stay tuned!
🧠 QUOTE TO PONDER
This week’s quote comes from the last part of one of my favorite poems. Mary Oliver is one of my favorites and I love the last few lines from In Blackwater Woods:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Read the full poem here. It’ll bless you.
👋🏽 GOODBYE!
That’s it for this week! Thank you for reading. I'm truly grateful. Consider forward this email to a friend? Or send them this link so they can sign up. And you can always email me about anything. I’ll be back next week with good news and steps we can take together to make our world a much better place. We have a lot of work to do. Love y'all.
Peace and love,
Nick Laparra