Hungry For: Erin Shetron

Hungry For is an ongoing conversation series exploring health, nourishment, beauty, and what we’re hungry for.

Dearest Reader,

Creating this newsletter week after week—writing to you and wondering how my words and heart will land—is at once one of the greatest loves of my life, and something that often feels fraught and lonely.

Maybe writing in general is like that. Maybe my personality and life path are like that. I’ve always been a bit anxious. I’ve always been a bit (or a lot) of a loner.

There was a beautiful stretch, though, for about two years when money was less scarce and I could invest in an editor and newsletter whisperer. One who not only took an exacting red pen to the words I share—cutting through precisely this sort of ramble and helping me get to the point. But who also sought to understand what I was trying to say and, above all, what lived in my heart. Someone who, through my writing, saw me and saw my heart and saw our shared humanness—even where we differed.

This quality is so rare and so deeply needed.

And there aren’t many people across my life who have offered it to me in just this way, through conversation with my writing—which, far more than speaking, is where I feel connected and fluent.

But Erin Shetron did. She offered it so beautifully, and so wholeheartedly, and with such a special combination of Yin-Yang, of receptivity and clarity, of softness and strength. This is a testament to Erin’s skills as an editor, yes. But more than that, it’s an expression of who she is as a person.

You can hire Erin to be your newsletter whisperer here, and find her own vibrantly alive, playful and powerful writing in her newsletter, FREQUENT CRIERS CLUB. Below, I’m thrilled to share her responses and bright, bright energy with you.

Health feels like energy flowing freely through my body. Some days it’s fast and I feel excited, nearly manic, full of exuberance; most days it’s slow and I feel heavy, gentle, tender. Either way I know I’m in health when my mind and body can exist in easeful, harmonious flow. I guess that’s all a little nebulous.

What I mean is, I’m a sleepy girl. I have chronic conditions that make consistent energy an impossibility. So when I say health feels like energy flowing freely, I just mean: I honor the energy that’s there, cultivating and supporting it as best I can, and I try not to ask too much of it for too long. Importantly, I try not to let it depress me when I’m drained. That is the ease, the flow. Nonjudgment. Acceptance. Honor the energy.

Body: Strength training with my sister, Turkey Hill Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, a new latex mattress topper, nightly showers, making love, eating more berries and broccolini (because fiber), and taking so many magnesium supplements: citrate, glycinate, liquid drops (because ADHD, gut stuff, muscle tension).

Mind: Cate Hall and Sasha Chapin’s new book You Can Just Do Things, my work with writers, sudoku puzzles.

Spirit: Looking up at the tree in my backyard, turning off my phone, listening to googly eyes and Mallrat and SZA and Tems and Mk.gee. Writing my newsletter about staying tender; crying. Reading love poem after love poem. Related, following and reading Chen Chen. My clients’ writing. My nephew saying “RiRi!!” when he sees me. His giggle. My sister’s beauty. Friendship.

I am hungry for cheek kisses. I am hungry for compliments between strangers.

I am hungry for grooming each other like our primate cousins. Let me brush your hair, you can pop the pimples on my back.

I am hungry for a break. I’ve decided to take one, finally, at the end of August. I feel guilty about it because I took one to move across the country back in April, but goddess I need a real one without 10-hour driving days and sick dogs and the works. I need a break that involves dancing, my body in wild waters, belly laughing with friends, walking in woods.

I am hungry for justice. I am hungry for peace. I am hungry for furious, loud, disruptive resistance. I am hungry for the human fucking spirit.

Goddess I’m not sure I know. Actually, that’s not true. I do know. It’s about doing right by your self and doing right by others. Being gentle. Fierce. Direct and honest and loving and warm. Turn your phone off sometimes. Kiss. Eat a warm vegetable. Make freaky art or go enjoy some, depending. We cannot always consume, we must create. Kiss. Get a haircut. Tell someone you like their haircut. More kissing. Move your body in ways that make you feel hot and strong and like a poem, like a fucking river rushing. Move it in ways that give you pleasure and in ways that give other people pleasure if you feel like it. We owe each other so much—the old adage about not owing anyone anything gets it wrong. We owe each other all we’ve fucking got, because all we’ve got is each other. I think that’s living beautifully.

Erin, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful, tender, fierce life with us. I’m grateful for your way of being in the world, and for the chance to introduce your work to the PERFECT HUNGER community.

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana