Recovering roundup, 🌺 May 2026
Being rejected from writing residencies, knitted cannoli earrings, RIP 2010 internet confessionalism, what I'm reading and listening too, photos
⚡️UPDATE—THESE HAVE BEEN GIVEN AWAY⚡️
I’m giving away 5 signed copies of How To Be a Rich Old Lady by Amanda Holden. Enter by replying to this email and CHANGING THE SUBJECT LINE TO “RICH OLD LADY” (open to paid subscribers only).
If you’re a free subscriber, I’ve set aside 2 additional signed copies for you. You can enter to win those by becoming a paid subscriber, then forwarding me your receipt at contact@hollywhitaker.com.
Hello from Palermo, where I’ve been for the last three weeks on a self-appointed residency after being rejected from MacDowell, which was, I think, around my tenth rejection from a residency.
To date, no residency has wanted this lady to grace its premises1, which at first very much sucked and made me feel like not a real writer, or at least not a serious or literary one, but has actually come to feel like something of a blessing. Because I keep mistaking institutional knighting for the thing that grants me legitimacy when I know full well from my past that all badges ever end up doing is pulling me further away from myself. And I also keep forgetting that I detest institutions once I’m granted access to them.
I share this because time and again I hear from writers who don’t see themselves as writers, who are usually waiting for some external authority to finally make it official, or some thing to make it official—an agent, a book deal, a fellowship, an MFA program, a number of likes, how well your writing is known. I want to normalize how invasive that feeling really is, and I want to confirm that it will never be extinguished by anyone’s authority but your own. Because you can sell half a million books and still not feel like a writer because of this thing or that; because the club won’t have you. When the only thing that has ever made me feel like a real writer is declaring myself one. And writing.
Below are very many links from the past few months, some photos of my cute Italian residency, what I’m reading and listening to, etc.
Last week I wrote about apologizing for apologizing and being sorry as architecture. Up next is a two-part podcast on the intersection of hormones and neurodivergence, addiction, and trauma. After that is a broader life update + book update.
Much care to you.
Holly
Recovering Round-up, May 2026
Famesick by Lena Dunhman is the best thing I’ve read all year for multiple reasons. First, it’s written so well—massive run on sentences you have to read three times, the feeling that she took her damn time with every single word choice. It’s also juicy as shit. But the biggest reason I love it is for the same reasons I loved Adult Braces by Lindy West or All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert: because it shows how much of what we see online is such a fantasy that matches nothing of the interiority or the actual lives lived by the humans we measure ourselves against; how even they never lived up to their idea it.
The public self as a fiction—and how our culture (and selves) expects us to measure our private, unstable, unfinished lives against other people’s performed coherence—has been something I’ve been watching and thinking about since I started writing this newsletter, given I started it in the thick of a personal implosion that ran concurrent with the height of my public visibility. More than ever, I feel like maybe just maybe we’re ready to burn this fucker down.
#1 Being All Of It (and Welcome!)
I’ve tried to write this newsletter for the past six months. For much of that time, those attempts were fruitless because I could not string sentences together at all. Everything sounded like a journ…
Related: This Instagram post on what everyone is doing to give the finger to billionaires [free], which is great, but that I wanted to reply to with “Not using Spotify and also not using Insta or social for half a decade and at the apex of my ability to turn my fame into cash, thus losing out on hundreds of thousands but really millions of dollars in audience building in exchange for my mental health and ethics and soul.” But how do you say that about Instagram, on Instagram? IDK. But it did get me thinking a fuck ton about the people who have done extraordinary things to divest from the machine at great cost, who we don’t hear from because they have left. And there are a lot of them. [free]
Related: If you love this newsletter, read it even occasionally, find it of use, find value in it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It helps more than you think it does. And yes this is related bc friends, it fucking costs big time to destroy your fictional public self.
Related: Devon on everyone missing what tf Lindy West’s book is actually about [free]: “This is a book all about being a famous author and internet person for multiple decades running, and the almost inevitable tensions that this role creates between the temporary, narrative self that has to be crafted to tell a coherent story, and the messy changeability of being a real person who ages, endures new traumas, recovers from old ones, reevaluates all their evolving relationships, and can see almost any situation from about a dozen different angles at any given time.”
Related: My recent essay on this very subject [free]
Related: “The End of Guru Energy” [$]
Related: This oldie but goodie on the many permutations of Adrienne Rich and how she was “stable, but unfixed,” which feels like a nice thing to aim for [$]
Related: The end of reality tv politics [$] This is a great read, but an even better way to understand how we got “Reality TV Politics,” is to watch thes documentary The Century of The Self [free] , one of my all-time favorites. Great for nerds.
Related: Why we fall for narcissistic leaders [gift article]
Related [$]
This song on repeat and repeat and repeat [free but plz pay this lady and buy her music]
My friend Gracie Coates (who made the music for co-regulation), is on tour with her band Gracie and Rachel (I’ll be at the Kingston show, plz say hi if u r there)
scrolling girl dinner diaries is more sane-making and fun then scrolling instagram or the news [free]
Erica Chidi on mother hunger and the shadow side of mother’s day [free]
I was recently featured in Kinfolk Magazine’s “Clean” issue [$], which unfortunately is only available to paid subscribers of Kinfolk. It basically said what I say here in this newsletter, plus it has some very beautiful photos of me by Hannah Rosa Lewis-Lopes
Everlane has always been greenwashed trash; there is no fucking “good” fast fashion company. There is only good marketing, good investors, and the potential for us to ship our trash to space, AND ALSO I am wearing an Everlane sweater in this above photo, which just goes to show how impossible it is to be righteous anymore, even when you want to so badly
Rebecca Campbell’s 3am downloads [free]
“If you cannot hear the ancestors grieving, you’re too busy.” [free]
This list of where Stephanie Danler likes to go in NYC [free]
“There is no mental health wellness retreat you are offered after you figure all this out.” [free] From Carla Ciccone’s new newsletter Too Sensitive, on how there’s no wellness reatreat for what happens after figuring out you had an invisible disability for 40 years that impacted every area of your life and for which everyone blamed you. [free]
We got sober. Then we got our ADHD diagnosis. This is what happened next. 🎧
This is the FOURTH part of the series After Quit Like a Woman: Exploring how neurodivergence, hormones, and cPTSD reshape recovery I talked about here.
Related: how late in life ADHD diagnoses are spotlighting the link between hormones and ADHD [$]. I’ve been on an estradiol patch for about a year with micronized progesterone and I cannot explain to you the difference because it is so, so massive
Related: What Does Extreme Wealth Do to the Brain? [$]
Related: Luxury addiction [free]
Related: Neighborism [$]
“My weed addiction” [$]
Hormone linked to morning sickness may help reduce alcohol intake [free]
What happens when you drink sparkling water everyday [free]
Watching: TV is one of my biggest comforts and there’s almost too much good stuff. Some favorites of late: Widows Bay; Midnight Mass; Beef Season 1; Margot’s Got Money Troubles; DTF St. Louis; The Rooster; Bugonia; (Pluribus, Paradise, I’m sure there are more…). I am def watching Euphoria, but I don’t recommend it.
Alcohol stocks take $830 billion dollar hit [free]
Related: As Europe drinks less, Big Alcohol turns to Africa [free]
Related: Is there an anti-sobriety movement [free]
Related: Not just sober curious, but neo-temperate [$]
📸 from Palermo
Actually, one did, but then I found out it was gonna cost about $5k; lols.
I love that you took yourself to Palermo. And that photo of you is STUNNING.
"....all badges ever end up doing is pulling me further away from myself." Gah, yes. And yet I keep thinking I need the badge for admission to this writerly life. Thank you for your transparency, always. I have started and stopped my own book proposal more times than I can count because of my deep fear of legitimacy. I am a writer and I am so damn close to finishing this thing. And if my thing doesn't get picked up by an agent, I'll still have it and it will always be mine.
Thank you, Holly. For the reminders that it starts with us, always. We don't have to earn our right to write.
And this round up is going to feed me for a while. TY!
“when I know full well from my past that all badges ever end up doing is pulling me further away from myself.” Ugh yes