Oh my goodness, I did enjoy this one. And it stuck with me for a few days because of the level of details and authenticity. It's September 1939. A handful of women librarians who call themselves the Secret Society of Librarians are gathered in an attic flat in Bloomsbury, in London's West End, for their annual weekend of gin and grumbling about their male bosses. Then the radio announces that Britain is at war. Before the night is out, they've made a vow: if people can't get to the books, we take books to the people. The book follows two of these women. Joyce is a mousy, rule-following library assistant in Camden, London. Dorotha, their founder, is home in Łódź, Poland, where the war has already reached her. Soon she's trapped behind barbed wire in the Łódź ghetto. I loved the mobile library. Joyce has wanted a library on wheels for years, and her boss calls it ridiculous. Then the Blitz starts, the boss runs off to the countryside, and Joyce ends up with a secondhand six-wheeled black Ford "behemoth" with mahogany shelves and room for two thousand books. Joyce can't drive it. But Dorotha's teenaged sister Adela, a Jewish refugee who learned to drive farm trucks back in Poland, can. They name the van Nan, after a tough old woman they meet in a bomb shelter. At the launch, a newspaperman sneers about "women drivers and a van full of bodice-rippers." They take it out anyway, to air-raid wardens, to Tube shelters, and to a barrage balloon crew of women (they operated and maintained large, hydrogen-filled balloons tethered by steel cables to defend vital targets against low-flying enemy aircraft) who can't get enough whodunnits. (One volunteer quietly asks Joyce to reserve her a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I laughed out loud.) The Blitz. Wow. It's vivid, and it doesn't hold back. A library's glass ceiling explodes, and the ash of thousands of burned books swirls through the air like a snow globe. Joyce spends nights wedged on a stopped escalator at Liverpool Street station. She reads The Secret Garden aloud in a street shelter while the bombs fall, providing small moments of relief to citizens as they huddled in an effort to avoid the bombs.

Charlene mentioned the gut-brain axis, and I understood the basic idea that our gut and brain communicate with each other. But understanding the words and actually understanding what they mean are two completely different things. So naturally, I went down a rabbit hole. 😂🐇🕳️ The first thing that clicked for me was that our gut isn't just a tube that food passes through. It's an entire environment filled with microorganisms—our gut microbiome. Some of those microbes help break down parts of food that our bodies can't completely break down on their own. In the process, they can make substances called metabolites. Basically, microbes eat or transform something and create something else. Some of those metabolites can then interact with our intestinal cells, immune system, and other parts of the body. That's where I started thinking, Okay...this is a lot bigger than digestion. Then I learned that the gut and brain have several different ways of communicating. One is the vagus nerve, which is a major communication pathway between the brain and internal organs. Another involves hormones and chemical signals. Our immune system is involved too. And then there's the enteric nervous system, which is basically a huge network of nerve cells built into our digestive system. But the part that really connected the dots for me was this: The communication goes both ways. Think about being extremely nervous. Your stomach starts hurting. Maybe you suddenly need to use the bathroom. Maybe food sounds absolutely disgusting. Or maybe stress makes you want to eat everything you can find. Those aren't necessarily separate things happening randomly. Your brain, nervous system, hormones, immune system, and digestive system are constantly communicating with one another. And information can travel in the other direction too. What's happening in the gut can influence signals going back toward the nervous system and brain. That made the phrase “gut feeling” much more interesting to me.

Oddly enough, my homework helped me get there. I've been learning about how our minds work—how our thoughts, attention, perceptions, and past experiences can influence how we interpret what's happening around us. At the same time, I've been thinking about something Charlene said about mindset. Then the two finally collided for me. I've realized that I spend a lot of time waking up already thinking about everything that's overwhelming. What needs done? What am I behind on? Who needs something from me? How am I going to manage all of this? I've even found myself thinking about giving up on some of my own dreams because everything feels like too much. But then I started wondering: What if changing my mindset doesn't mean pretending those difficult things aren't there? What if it means learning to notice what else is also true? Life IS hard sometimes. I don't want to deny that. I just don't want to spend every waking moment dreading it. I can be overwhelmed and interested in what I'm learning. I can struggle with school and remember that my education is connected to dreams I chose for myself. I can have responsibilities to other people and still make room for the life I'm trying to build. I can have a difficult day and still notice something that makes me laugh, something beautiful, something interesting, or something I genuinely enjoy. Maybe a more positive mindset isn't about forcing myself to think positively at all. Maybe it's about widening my view. Instead of telling myself, “Don't think negatively,” maybe I can practice asking: “What else is also true?” So that's my knowledgeable question for everyone: How can we practice noticing and enjoying the good things that are genuinely present in our lives without using positivity to dismiss the difficult things that are equally real? And what might change if we practiced asking ourselves “What else is also true?” when our minds become focused on everything that's wrong or overwhelming?

I'm home alone today, sore, and taking it easy. I took my meds, heated up a sausage-gravy pot pie, grabbed my orange juice and water, and settled into my chair. Then Snapchat reminded me that filters exist. Well…challenge accepted. 😂 Somewhere between ridiculous hair, giant eyeballs, glamorous makeup, a screaming egg 🍳, and eventually becoming a golden queen 👑, I realized I was genuinely having fun. And throughout my self-care journey, I learned something valuable today. ❤️ Maybe I don't have to polish everything before I let people see it. I didn't plan this moment. I didn't research it. I didn't turn it into something productive first. I wasn't trying to teach anybody anything. I was sitting in my chair being an absolute goofball because it made me laugh. And maybe that counts too. I've been learning that self-care isn't always another task to complete or something I need to do "correctly." Sometimes it's eating something, drinking enough, resting when I'm sore, taking my medication, laughing at myself, playing with ridiculous filters, and allowing myself to simply enjoy being alive in that moment. The lesson didn't come before the play. The lesson came because I let myself play. Maybe everything doesn't need to be polished before I share it either. Maybe sometimes being authentic, messy, goofy, thoughtful, serious, ridiculous—and completely myself—is enough. So here's today's highly scientific self-care progression: 😌 → 😂 → 👁️👄👁️ → 🍳 BLULULUL → 👑 Apparently enlightenment comes in mysterious forms. 🤣❤️

Can self-care unintentionally become another form of pressure or perfectionism? We hear so much about what we should be doing for ourselves—meditating, exercising, journaling, eating well, maintaining routines, getting enough sleep—but even healthy practices can begin to feel like another checklist we're failing to complete. So here's something I've been thinking about: How do we recognize when self-care has shifted from supporting us to becoming another expectation we place on ourselves? And on the days when our energy or capacity is limited, what does realistic self-care look like for you?