I quit! I’m cured! Congratulations me! I’m perfect! Or why I am taking a break after 8 years of intensive therapy to stop looking at game tape of Ls and Wins and start experiencing all the ways I will be always be okay.

This one is about how I use social media to tell me how to feel. And how I use other writers’ motivation to tell me what’s wrong with my storytelling when I need to trust my own intuitions around my emotions and my work processes. It’s also about happiness and finding meaning.

You know what’s impossible to mask? Being a tourist who knows NOTHING. This one’s about how traveling makes me way more Autistic and how weirdly great it feels.

Week two in Japan. This one is about enthrallment and how any intensely joyful feelings also hold grief. And how I’m reparenting my inner teen by revisiting the most hilariously, bizarre fashion wormhole.

I am Japan and working MANIC hours and feeling spectacular. This one is about not immediately vilifying erratic behaviors and accepting quirks with humor, openness and loving support. This is about affording yourself grace and asking the question: what if I am not in trouble or doing bad things but instead I am CRUSHING.…

You ever get burnout from trying to avoid burnout? I do. Plus, remedial affirmations for people who sorta don’t believe they work. The world is a sad, cruel place. Please be gentle with yourselves.

When I say have a gentle day what does that mean? How does a dog wear pants? What does being kind to yourself and your cognitive needs actually entail? For me it’s been a lot of tiny things that I am never quite convinced is real or will make a difference. Also, how being tired makes me feel like I’m under attack and how that unfolds.…

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom! The writers strike is over and what that means inside my brain. Bees! It means bees. Also, how you can have FOMO for F’d up bad things because there are so many bad things for authors and creators to contend with. And how to find some gallows humor and gratitude in all of it.…

Guess what? I’m Autistic. What that means for even more gentleness and how I arrived at the decision to be assessed.

This is about conversation and audience. Media platforms (RIP Buzzfeed and Twitter) as well as safe spaces to create story and work out individual truths. It’s also about banned books, how it feels to have banned books. Plus, how AI storytelling technologies are not it. Plus, the director Joanna Hogg and the feeling of unwritten dialogue.…

This one is about what it’s like to feel your feelings. And how growing up as a Korean immigrant made feelings unsafe since anything outside of ‘gratefully chill’ was an insult to parental sacrifice. This is also about the Netflix show Beef.

This one is about scheduling. And how for creative work, the line between social engagements vs career obligations can be confusing. Plus, how I can tell if I really REALLY don’t want to go to a work thing that masquerades as a fun thing.

This one about how abundance feels dreadful and terrifying! And how to ease into the reminder that this is what it is to want and wish and actually do the work.

Learning when to trust your instincts and when to listen but intentionally ignore them in order to seek growth and do scary, vital things (in my case, ask people for money).

This is a reflection on Adderall and creative work. And where I’ve landed on taking it as it relates to writing my novel. And how much I’ve learned in eating disorder recovery about how to frame struggles with neurodivergence. TL; DR self-loathing quickly outlives its usefulness as a tool or energy source!…

This one is on how I want ADHD medication to be a magical solution that doesn’t affect other aspects of my brain. And how seductive it can be to believe that my unmedicated state is a purer kind of creativity.

This one is about emotional sobriety and drama addiction. And what dread and doom feels like in my body. Plus, the stunning revelation that I have been a maniac with my mom and not solely the other way around.

My memories are coming back. They’re not chronological and they don’t feel profound but as there’s been more healing and thawing and the fear is lessening, glimpses of my adolescence are returning. I’m remembering what it was to be inside a body I hated in a family I loathed and being totally petrified and overwhelmed and I am so grateful! It’s alm…

This is about moving as an emotionally sober person and how it sucks that I’m not totally dissociated but how I know it’s also better for me.

How I was diagnosed with ADHD and how being medicated and genre-aware of this hostage situation known as MY BRAIN is helping me be gentle with myself. And also how, as a dissociative person, diagnosis seems wild unreliable since it requires me to be the one who knows how I’m FEELING.

You ever have total semantic satiation around words like depression or anxiety? How I define the terms so I actually know when they show up in my body and my thoughts. When I’m convinced everyone is mad at me and that’s why I can’t make a decision? Depression. When I stop chewing, talking, clenching, smoking long enough for my teeth to chatter? Anx…

Do you ever cry and then sort of watch yourself cry and don’t believe yourself? Like, it doesn’t make sense that you’re still feeling some type of way about a thing or else that you can’t possibly be feeling so awful about the one super obvious thing because that means you’re textbook and also possibly boring or unhygienic or mentally unwell or tir…

How I do affirmations so as not to eye roll myself to death when I say them. Also, a few observations around how feelings move and become trapped in my body. TW: binging and purging.

Eating your grief vegetables, mourning apocryphal parents and trying to race back to work to minimize feeling.

When the feelings around being tired makes you so much more tired… and perfectionistic and critical. Aka the one where every time I say “tired” take a drink (of water).

So wait, I have to grieve and STILL have an eating disorder and ADHD and a hilarious narcissist mother? Surely I deserve a reprieve. On feelings of butthurtness and the lack of a pause function for other dynamics.

My dad died last week and yesterday we had his funeral. This one is on grief.

There are a lot of things wrong with the way we live our lives. While the average American spends 90 percent of their day indoors, we continue to feel completely disconnected from our food sources, and are lonelier than ever, especially in light of this pandemic. My guest Becca Piastrelli, author of a new book Root & Ritual, believes we can offset …

Writing a debut novel that becomes a New York Times bestseller is an impressive feat. Doing it over 10 years while raising children and working a full-time job is simply awe-inspiring. Angeline Boulley is the author of Firekeeper's Daughter, a layered Native American thriller. She is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indi…

How do you relate to the country of your birth, if it’s a place you’ve never visited? And when does nostalgia go from being something beautiful to an illness that keeps you from living in the present moment? Our guest today, Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese American poet whose strikingly beautiful debut novel Home Is Not a Country is deeply informed by …

Continuing with our series on women in the literary arts, today’s guest is Mary H.K. Choi, a Korean-American New York Times best-selling author. Mary has written three young adult novels and has been published in The Atlantic, New York Times, and GQ. Her latest book, Yolk, is the story of two estranged sisters who slowly heal their relationship aft…

The conversation around identity has evolved greatly in recent years, and this progress has been so important for many people. However there is still a long way to go to a more inclusive and accepting world, and we are joined today by someone who is adding a beautiful and complex voice to the discussion! Meredith Talusan is a transgendered woman, b…

The heroine’s journey has historically been ignored, cast aside, and devalued, which has lead most of us to idolize and play out the hero’s journey in our own lives. On today’s episode, Gail Carriger, author of The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Fiction, breaks down why and how we can begin to reclaim the heroine’s journey…

Alongside raising three children, working as an editor, and practicing as a spiritual psychologist, Anita Kopacz spent seven years creating the magnificent work of art that is Shallow Waters, her debut novel. Part historical fiction and part parable, Shallow Waters deals with deep ancestral trauma through ritual storytelling. The heroine of the boo…

Hi heroine, We are starting the new HEROINE season on Thursday, August 12th. Today I’m releasing the teaser and announcing the line-up of a badass guests. We are going to be focusing on the heroines at the center of these women’s books. As you can see, it’s going to get very literary and very nerdy! The questions we get to explore: Can we learn fro…

In her new book, Comparisonitis, Melissa Ambrosini talks to Majo about the very common disease of comparisonitis and offers actionable tips and strategies to heal yourself from it. • What Melissa was like as a little girl; she was outgoing, bubbly, and confident. • Melissa’s experience of being 12, losing her self-assurance, and comparing herself t…

There is a wonderful, abundant thing happening in my writing career and I’m finding myself resorting to false modesty and derisive, catastrophic talk when I discuss it with other people which is only freaking me out! Do you do that? What is that? Do you know how to stop?

The way I can also weaponize gentleness to isolate, restrict joy and keep my life small. And how it’s often a weird trick I use to indulge in workaholism and achievement addiction.

This is about my personal misconceptions around self-esteem. And how I confuse it with ego. And how collectivism and the immigrant experience as an Asian-American makes it really hard to know what you want. Plus, the dysfunction inherent in immigrant households with intergenerational trauma.

This is about how all feelings are complicated. How most joyful things are bittersweet and how love is almost painful to hold in your body. I also talk about how leisure and pleasure isn’t modeled for a lot of us in immigrant families and how difficult it is to get out of a transactive mindset about careers.…

I am in Texas with my family and feelings loom large. This is about how perfectionism can afflict every moment and decision. And the contradictions inherent in loving a deeply flawed family in real time vs loving them as a platonic ideal from afar.

I have been an author for four years as of this day. This is about how making art is teaching me how to receive love without feeling as though I owe everything back. This is about true abundance and how I felt like I knew what the word meant but also really didn’t.

A lot of people have been asking what can we do? What if the action you can take is small, self-serving, scary and ultimately entirely radical? What if instead of doing, what if, in this moment of trauma, you let yourself be?

Is being more of an asshole an antidote to non-confrontational Asianism and resentment? Maybe? But maybe not in the way you’d presume.

On healing in the absence of apology.

On the failings of Asian parents and how that makes us desperate to protect them.

This one is about the utility of feelings. And how feeling feelings can seem so pointless and how ripped off I felt yesterday about recovery and healing and therapy when all the work can still lead to depression and despair. I only want to feel feelings if it leads to healing or “better creative work” and maybe that mindfulness is the recovery. And…

This is about being Asian in America on this day.

If you have ever disappointed a loved one by following your truth, you will know just how painful it is. And although it hurts, not living in alignment with your life’s purpose will ultimately cause you much more pain. Sahara Rose has been there, let down her parents, and now wants to help you overcome the fear of judgment and criticism in her new …

I talked to absolute ledge and internet iconoclast Adam J. Kurtz AKA @ AdamJK AGES AGO but figured Cyber Monday was the perfect time to unleash this. Mostly because we both find the entire concept of Cyber Monday sort of hilarious? In any case, we get really vulnerable and honest about how success can be weirdly tinged with shame and dish about our…