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Mia Levitin
When my father died of brain cancer two months ago, my best friend said she was getting on a plane to be with me. This was no small offering: flying cross-country mid-Covid is no mean feat, not to mention the Herculean task of arranging the logistics for her three kids in her absence.
I begged her not to come — worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to spend with her after she’d gone through all the trouble and that I wouldn’t make it through the eulogy without crying if I saw a friendly face in the audience. Luckily for me, she didn’t listen.
It would have meant the world already if Melissa had just hugged me and turned right back around, but once on the ground, she did everything she could to support me: beaming kindness as I spoke at the service, rolling up her sleeves to help with the wake, and sharing a much-needed drink afterwards. After the heart-wrenching experience of watching my dad deteriorate, the gift of her presence was a salve on my soul.
If you Google how to be there for someone who’s grieving, among the suggestions is to ask your friend how they’d like to be supported. Stunned by the shock of loss, however, I didn’t know myself what I needed. True thoughtfulness, it seems to me, is taking the time to consider what a friend might appreciate. Knowing better than they do themselves? That, I’d call love.
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Mia Levitin is a literary critic and the author of The Future of Seduction. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram @mialevitin
Satu Fox
I do not like volunteering. Commitment and being helpful are not at all my jams. But because I was too polite to say no to the nice people at the Orchard Project when they said I was planting and taking responsibility for an orchard in January 2021, I went along with it. I thought I’d signed up for a mailing list! But okay, I have an orchard now. I’d gotten into going for walks during 2020 and realised Nature is actually cool and makes you feel happy. I was ready to do the soothing solitary activity of watering an orchard every two weeks for the spring and summer (20 litres per tree, once a fortnight; more in a heatwave). I’m not an early riser but I got up early on Saturdays, even before the dogwalkers who made use of the plot of land in a different way (don’t get me started), and lugged big bottles of water up the hill to my apple, pear, plum, greengage, apricot and fig trees. I found myself wondering what the trees were up to and if they needed “mulching”. I already knew falling in love wasn’t about fate. But showing up for my trees, vulnerable and in need of someone, showed me that your orchard grows most green where you water it. You pick a patch of earth and just care for it until it turns into something, or not (the fig has failed to thrive). The orchard did eventually come with people, who gravitated towards it because they also wanted to care for something. That’s its own kind of love story, for another day.
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Satu Fox is a writer and orchard keeper. You can find out more about her orchard here.
Charlotte Fox Weber
At a moment of loud desperation, I wrote an email to Leslie Bennetts, a journalist I'd never met. From what I could see, Leslie was a 70 year old salty feminist New Yorker. I was living in a small cottage in West Cork at the time, with my loving family. It was 2am, and rain pounded on the tinny roof. My new-born stirred beside me. I stroked him with affection, and felt a creeping loneliness crowd me. Full of love, I still wanted more. Something different. It was the ordinary identity crisis of matrescence, plus a disturbing and complicated grief, and my devoted family couldn't grasp this hinterland within me. I felt secretly alienated from my surroundings, as though I couldn’t fully participate in my life. I turned to my sleeping baby and told him in a whisper how much I loved him, and how I needed to do this, so please, could he stay asleep and let me.
Without full awareness, I’d narrowed my viewpoint. I craved expansion. Reaching out to this stranger propelled me forward with a madcap sense of motion and possibility. There was a big world out there, and reminding myself of this began to resuscitate something within. My voice hopped as I typed, and I was emphatic. It felt irrational and probably inconsequential, but writing to her mattered to me.
Emailing this woman was a strange thing to do in the middle of the night. But the risk of embarrassment, of Leslie judging me or blanking my message, was less than the potential value of connecting. Leslie wrote back a warm and uplifting message. Her bold voice made me feel like an instant insider. You get it; I get it; we both understand these struggles that are hard to explain to others. She made it possible for me to begin to tell my story, for me to even know my story and make sense of my experiences. She held space for me.
Let this matter, I told myself when I questioned taking time out to let this new relationship in. A year and a half later, she’s officially my fairy godmother. We banter over texts, phone calls, and we joyfully met in New York over the summer. ‘Our story is nuts,’ Leslie said. Her speaking manner is fabulous and heartening, and her crisp and surprising descriptions crackle with energy. ‘We got intensely close simply because we wanted to. If we’d been chicken shits, we’d never have gotten to know each other.’
Loneliness, chance, and scrappy determination opened us to an unlikely and wonderful love. The verge of despair was the scenic route to expanding life.
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Charlotte Fox Weber is a psychotherapist and author of What We Want, a book exploring human desire, which will be published by Wildfire in 2022.
Catherine Bell
My husband Dan died of cancer in June 2021, 6 months after his diagnosis.
One afternoon recently, I started reading some of my diary entries from the months before his death. I'd been frightened to read them before, but that day I was ready. I opened the document and it was beautiful to find clues to him there that I’d forgotten: the careful way he ate his cereal in the same grey bowl every day, how he said hello and sure and crikey and cripes, the little rice cooker he cooked our rice in while we waited for an Indian takeaway (because both took 15 minutes), the piece of blue fabric he cleaned his glasses with, and how when he was dying, and could no longer speak, he would take my hand, put it on his heart and look at me intently and it felt like he was trying to tell me: 'that's where you live.'
When I closed the diary, I sensed him all around me. I'd found him again in my descriptions of those objects and rituals and words we shared from morning to night; things repeated over and over until they became ours. And none of the things were particularly grand, but as pieces of us they were now precious. Remembering him in this way, helped me reconnect with the world again, armed with some of Dan's sturdiness and sense I miss so much.
Oliver Lunn
I never expected to fall in love with a cat. I always thought they were cold and unaffectionate. I always used to say, I’m a dog person, not a cat person. And yet, it happened. I fell in love with a cat. He was a stray cat that followed me and my wife home one night. We couldn’t get rid of the little guy. He was skinny and had little white socks. He meowed loudly and headbutted my leg desperately. We let him into our flat, gave him water, and the next morning took him to our local vets. They fed him up and named him George. They also said they couldn’t keep him any longer than a day. So back he came to our flat. What could we do? It’s not like we didn’t try to find him a home. We posted on local message boards, we called rescue centers, we even put a paper collar on him with a message, AM I YOUR CAT? PLEASE RING THIS NUMBER! Nothing came of it. He ended up sleeping under a fern, just off the street outside our building. Eventually my wife got him a little hut and warm blankets. He spent his nights outside and his days sniffing around the flat. He’d hop into empty shoe boxes and climb bookshelves. He was playful, yet he held onto his tough street persona, refusing to sit on my lap.
I didn’t fall in love straight away. I had to get to know him. I discovered he likes his bum scratched while he eats, he doesn’t like the hoover, and he definitely doesn’t like it when I choose the Felix cat pouches instead of his favourite Whiskers. He got to know me better too, and is now relaxed enough to curl up in my lap. He’s not so tough. Sometimes when he spends the night inside he’ll wake me up at 4am with a soft paw on my cheek. So yeah, we’re pals now and we know how to respond to each other. I know now not to expect him to be like a dog, all bouncy and needy. I’ve learnt not to smother him with hugs and call him Mr Porgie in a stupidly high voice.
Despite him clawing my arms and weeing in the washing machine (it was one time!), I’m thankful to have George in my life. He amuses me. I can watch him do pretty much nothing and still find him funny. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I’ve become one of those annoying people who love their cat just a little too much and will jump at the chance to write about it in a newsletter. All I know is I’m happier with George in my life and I’m thankful he followed us home that night. He makes our flat feel like a proper home.
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Oliver Lunn is a collage artist. You can find his collages here or at Oliverlunn.com
Sareeta Domingo
For me, a kind act from a complete stranger can often seem like one of the starkest reminders of the human capacity for love. At the start of this year, I found myself in the midst of an extended stretch of time in hospital. With the pandemic raging, I was also left by myself to contend with it all. Throughout my stay, I experienced wonderful care from my nurses and doctors, but for a follow up procedure during my stay, I had to be awake in a stark operating theatre—not the most welcoming of environments even when on your way under a full anaesthetic, let alone with the help of only a mild sedative. While medical staff bustled around me, I found that one nurse seemed to be there solely to speak to me in her calm, lilting Eastern European accent. She gently held one of my hands, cold from the ventilation and medication, between the soft warmth of her own. It was such a tender gesture that I could genuinely feel love emanating from her. It’s a sensation that I can so easily recall. While it may have just been part of her job, it was a part that this woman clearly approached with such a degree of care that I still carry it with me—a small, beautiful act of love.
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Sareeta Domingo is an author and the creator, editor and contributor to Who’s Loving You: Love Stories by Women of Colour—Out in Paperback in February 2022
Esme Benjamin
In the first year of the pandemic I lost a dear friend, two grandparents and a pregnancy. As a society, we are good in the immediate aftermath of loss. We send flowers and cards to the grieving, drop lasagne round and offer kind words, but there is a point at which grief can become unpalatable to outsiders. It’s hard for most people to know what to do or say when grief lingers like mine did. Despite pasting on a smile at social gatherings, my presence was a dark cloud in every room I entered.
Leaning into the sadness was an effective coping mechanism. I listened to Nora McInerny’s podcast Terrible, Thanks For Asking, and read Suleika Jaouad’s incredible memoir Between Two Kingdoms. I spent time connecting with friends of mine who were processing grief of their own: Ali, whose dad died of COVID; Lisa, who was surviving lockdown alone as a single woman; Pallavi, who was finding her joy again post-divorce. “How is your heart today?,” we would Whatsapp back and forth. “I’m mad at everyone and everything tbh.” There was no need to pretend to be alright. I wasn’t, and neither were they.
The comfort and understanding found in these friendships was a life raft through those lonely, painful months. “I’m so sorry x” bouquets are such beautiful gestures, but receiving the support of these women when I was at my messiest – raw, broken-hearted, unapologetically pessimistic – was exactly the love I needed in 2020.
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Esme is a writer and journalist, and you can follow her here.
Tahmina Begum
They say music is the world's love language but I believe it to be food. I come from a line of fantastic cooks, those that invented the native Bangladeshi recipes we eat today. Bengal generally has influenced the world in its cooking, be it in East Africa or across the Caribbean, so it's always been such an honour to inherit a palette that is innately various.
Yet it's only been these past four weeks that I have grown the urge to cook for my loved ones and therefore, in turn, feed myself. My parents have gone back to their motherland, in Bangladesh and I've become a sole carer for my younger siblings (eldest daughters of immigrant households, I see you) so in that time I've found myself smelling spices and tasting dishes to get it to be the closest to my mother's. And most times, while I am cooking, the doorbell rings. It's another auntie dropping off food as a way to say, "You guys all good? Did your parents call — how are they? I made a bowl of pakoras. I love you". They always make it seem like it's nothing, like this little love isn't anything much, but it always is. Be it the auntie who dropped off four containers of curry, some bhorta, a dessert shemai and a large salad among some spicy pasta, or the one who drops in to leave freshly fried handesh at the door.
The ways in which all these aunties and uncles share food to make sure we're all alive and eating (most of us at home are adults that can also cook by the way) is a way of expressing love. It's very simple. It's in the thinking of someone else, the care in which you want bellies to be happy and full and to always make sure you know you're not alone. So I want to learn to cook as great as the aunties and uncles before me so I too, one day, can drop off food randomly out of consideration, love and kindness to those around me. All for no reason. It's a tradition I wish never dies out. And don't worry, I won't forget to bring the fruit.
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Tahmina Begum is a writer, editor and creator of The Aram newsletter. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter
Helena Lee
There are certain friends I don’t see enough of. One of them is Jenny. We only crossed over for a year at school when we were 11 years old, before she went to Singapore with her family. We stayed in touch, writing letters to each other – mostly long, sprawling, non-sensical things that sowed a kernel of a bond, that somehow grew with the distance. Jenny never fit in any particular structure of my school, university or work friendship groups. Despite both of us having young children of similar ages and living in London, we haven’t managed to physically see each other for a while. She’s not on social media, so the only way we find out about each other’s lives is with the very occasional text or phone call.
I had a big birthday the other day. An envelope dropped through the door, and I pulled out the card inside. It was rudimentary and handmade, and thick with pages; the numbers on the front cut out from glittery blue paper, my favourite colour, that stood out against the black. I knew exactly who this was from. The paper was bound together with red ribbon, each page revealing a handwritten word that together, by the end, had formed a simple sentence that expressed affection and friendship and love.
In this world of quick fixes, whatsapps after-the-event, and non-replies, this gesture took me back to the thoughtfulness of our youth. It made me consider how apathetic I’d been in not reaching out to her more, and how grateful I was to have her spend time thinking about what was going to make me smile. That afternoon, I picked up the phone and dialled her number. It was so good to hear her voice again.
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'East Side Voices | Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian Identity in Britain' Edited by Helena Lee is published on 20 January and available for pre-order
Marisa Bate
I had spent much of life since March 2020 doubting myself. When Covid hit, work dried up and without it, I’d lost myself. This crisis of confidence was a domino effect, knocking into stumbling blocks of low self-esteem that had built up over a lifetime. Everything came tumbling down.
Fast forward. It’s September 2021 and I’m at Heathrow. I’m finally taking the research trip for the book I first pitched three years before. I wouldn’t say my patience paid off; I didn't have any. But time had done what it always does; it had kept going. And here I was.
And then there I was. For six weeks. Discovering myself again. The self with purpose, confidence. ‘Finding yourself’ is so often a back-packer cliche. Until it’s not. And then it feels like taking breath after months of quiet suffocation.
And so I found myself. I found myself talking to old ladies from Chicago in restrooms in Columbus, Ohio. I found myself chatting to strangers on buses, at long wooden bars, in queues for coffee. I found myself in women’s homes, compiling their wisdom. I found myself laughing with a chain-smoking 74-year-old.
I found myself when I crept into giant American hotel beds and watched CNN at the end of long days. I found myself in the reflection of a Greyhound bus window. I found myself when I made friends with young women in the Mexican restaurant two blocks down from my Airbnb and they’d give me free beer and ask interesting questions and tell deeply personal stories.
And so this year, I had a little love affair with me, the old me, or maybe the new me, or maybe the me that’s been there all along. And I had a little love affair with the big, wide world again. And just like all love affairs, it wasn't a perfect fix. I still shadow box with self-doubt. But that’s the magic of a little love affair - in some ways it changes you, and in others, it reminds you precisely who you are.
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Marisa Bate is a writer and author, and also has a newsletter about women and writing. You can sign up to it here Writingaboutwomen.com
Kelsey J Barnes
Danielle and I became friends the minute she saw me, a stranger, crying on the floor of a train station. It was the evening of a Taylor Swift concert and the friend I was going with gave away a meet and greet to a different friend. At that time I was 16 and with all of the emotions that come with being young and desperate to meet the person that's music has buoyed you during those emotional moments, it felt like the end of the world. Danielle just happened to be running by with her own group of friends that she attended the gig with and immediately stopped to see what was wrong. A day later, she ended up getting an extra ticket and called me to see Taylor with her and the rest is history. It's been 11 years since then and to say we are each other's person is an understatement; we're each other's best friend and go-to when we need to discuss anything and everything, and we even got to meet Taylor together last year and tell her our friendship story. Friendship is born the same way love is; it finds us in the most unexpected of places, bringing two people together in the strangest of ways, and intertwining their lives together, forever.
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Kelsey is a writer, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram
Alison Barrow
To many eyes, it is simply an ordinary bench in a railway station concourse (Marylebone). Many countless faces and feet pass by everyday, nothing remarkable here. But it holds a good place in my heart, this bench.
Three years ago this week, one brisk December evening, in the midst of the movement and crescendo of the travelling many, I sat down here alone and waited.
With me I carried some months of shock, bewilderment and distress following a big betrayal of something we call marriage, after my husband told me (on my birthday - another story) ten months before that he was leaving me for someone else. Sadness and confusion thinly veiled by the regularity of work, bolstered by the conviction of resetting myself independently, a strengthening for my fractured family, resolved. A heavy time.
The week before the bench-sitting I’d bumped into a stranger at the train station. He helped me put a reluctant ticket through the barrier, and moments later, after my elbow accidentally jagged his side, we found ourselves leaving the station together. Impetuous. We walked and talked and laughed. It felt new, a bit lovely. Very Brief Encounter, you might say. After parting, he made a suggestion to meet again. I was unsure. I mean, nearly 30 years of one life and then suddenly the chance of some sort of another, so soon? But then a wise soul said to me you have nothing much to lose. At the very least you have a chance to make a new friend.
So here I was on the bench. Small, cautious expectations, worn-in boots at the prospect of walking. Book in hand, words dancing across the page, unread, spooling in distraction. Minutes stretched. More minutes. Movement, passing, more passing, station announcements, then an approach and a stopping. And then a voice.
‘Are you waiting for me?’ he said.
And - it turns out that - three years later, two years of striding out, talking, sharing... both apart (a lot) and together (often) ... much laughter and travelling and wondering and learning, reading in silence, walking in lockdown before the sun awoke, holding hands, (not holding hands), handwritten notes left for the other to find, meeting new friends, family, being in the moment, planning and just not planning, surprise text messages, just because, hours of cooking and stirring and serving, many, many times of just simply being -
It turns out that, yes. I was waiting. Only I didn’t know it till that moment on the bench.
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Alison Barrow is a book publicist and you can follow her here
Kate Leaver
I have this recurring dream, where I’m at a One Direction concert and I can’t find him in the crowd. I panic, and wake up desperate to know he’s safe. Cannot fathom a world in which he does not exist. Could not cope without him by my side.
His name is Bert. My tiniest, greatest friend. A 58cm-long, 10-kilo, four-legged angel among us. A precious, flawless creature who lives to eat, sleep and cuddle. Who can smell sadness and knows to wedge his little snout into my neck for comfort. Who makes me love him more with every snort, trot, self-righteous bark and tap-dance on floorboards. Who can vomit directly into my hands or snack on fox poo, and still have my limitless affectations.
A TikTok video tells me the signs that your dog loves you (holds eye contact, leans against you, checks in on you, falls asleep with you, curls up on pieces of your clothing) and I cry into the scruff of his little neck because he does every one. He licks my ear sleepily in response and I know the love between Shih Tzu and human woman is as real as any other.
He is my dog, he is my heart.
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Kate Leaver is a writer, author and the creator of the ‘Who’s a good dog?’ podcast.
Alex Holmes
'My friend and I had canceled dinner plans. Both of us in therapy, we lay in the dark in our respective homes and relayed how much the sessions were overwhelming for us. I said, let's go for a walk instead. So, we decided to walk through the quaint and quiet town of Harrow on the Hill, and we talked and talked and talked. There was a beautiful French creperie we found and we ordered herbal teas and talked some more. It is beautiful when someone holds space for you. When they can behold you, and clear space for your story, and in return, you simply do the same. I haven't been held in this way for a long time. It can be hard to find someone who actually sees you, and is joining you in the process of you becoming. It is the moments like this that are engaging. We don't need big dinners and fancy restaurants. We only need each other. We need others. We need small moments of true connection.'
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Alex Holmes is the author of Time to Talk and the host of the Time to Talk podcast. Follow him on Instagram.
Arielle Tchiprout
Moving house is known to be one of the most stressful life experiences you can go through. So when my fiancé, Laurie, and I were finally told (after months of bad news and back-and-forth) that we would be able to move into our new flat the day before the final stamp duty deadline, with only four days to pack up our entire lives, we mentally prepared ourselves for a week from hell. I frantically called my older sister, Kat, and she immediately said: ‘don’t worry, we can do it together, I’ll help you.’ I thought she’d come round and help us for a day, doing the usual thing of appearing useful while shuffling things around. Instead, she came around every single day, morning until night (she works a flexible job, so thankfully she was able to do this), created a neat organisational system and pretty-much packed everything into boxes. She brought snacks and played music and made the whole experience fun, which we never thought would be possible. While Laurie and I were still dealing with the stress of talking to solicitors, dealing with cancelled moving vans, and occasionally lying on the floor from exhaustion and anxiety, Kat took over, sorting everything out for us. She absorbed our stress and reassured us everything would be fine. She even helped us carry all the boxes into our new place, when we ended up having one removal van helper instead of two. I thanked her profusely, and every time she batted me away with, ‘don’t be silly, that’s just what family does.’ And each time, I disagreed. Families help each other out, sure, but easing our load in such a huge way (doing a job that, objectively, is pretty shit) was a choice - and, I think, a profound act of love.
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Arielle is a writer and editor, you can follow her on Twitter or Instagram
Huma Qureshi
I get terrible PMT. I have no way of knowing how it compares to anyone else's but every month it explodes, and every month, in spite of an app on my phone that supposedly tracks it, I fail to spot the signs and so it shatters me, and I feel blinded. The only way I can describe it is that I feel, for a few days, like the world is terribly blurry and I can't properly see, and I am feeling, fumbling in shrapnel, to find my keys. When this happens, I am exhausted but also exhausting to those around me. Everything takes me twice as long; I break things; I lose things; I forget a piece of myself. It happens without fail. My mouth feels permanently dry and when I open it to speak, terrible things come out and I cannot seem to stop it.
I was in this state of mind a few days ago when I said some things to my husband in a voice that did not sound like mine; I can't bear to repeat what I said because I don't want to remember. I know only that I wanted retaliation. I was picking a fight, but I did not get one. Instead my husband went to sleep sadly and told me that he hoped I was okay. In the morning, the fog began to lift, like rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, and with it came the realisation of all the things I had said the night before. That same morning, my husband had left early to drop the car off at the garage for servicing. When he came back, he knocked on the bedroom door gently. I tentatively opened it and asked him what the people at the garage had said. This was, I suppose, my way of mending things. He started saying something, but I couldn't hear, all I could think was: you are so good to me, and I hurt you so, so much. I burst into tears. I'm so sorry, I said in between catching a breath. He let me stand in his arms and touched the back of my hair. I know it's not you when that happens, he said, I hate that it happens but I know it's not you. I cried some more. I am aware that perhaps someone else would not let these things go; they might bear grudges, call me difficult or weird, think I meant what I said, or make some patronising sneer about it being that time of the month. But he didn't. He did not pick a fight. He never does. Sometimes I feel undeserving. Most of all I feel loved.
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Huma is an author and her short story collection, Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, is out now
Emmett de Monterey
It was a cold April afternoon. The low clouds looked like rain. Hardly the weather for a picnic outside. But I hadn’t seen Caitlin, one of my dearest friends, since before Christmas, and the Tier 4 restrictions, that meant it had been anything but merry.
I have cerebral palsy, and walk with crutches, so a government mandated stroll would have been difficult. After my GP advised me to shield, my world contracted to a tight four walls. I waited, and worried, watching images of midday-silent cities on my laptop, hoping that the noise would return. I sat on the sofa with my boyfriend, talking, not talking, suddenly so grateful for him. We stood on our balcony every Thursday night, clapping for the NHS, but the gesture felt increasingly empty. I tried to write, but couldn’t. It seemed so stupid, no use at all.
If I had had a difficult lockdown, then Caitlin’s had been so much worse. Her partner David had been diagnosed with cancer in 2018, and was really ill when the pandemic began. I didn’t know him as well as I knew Caitlin, but he was the kind of man you always wanted to find yourself sat next to at dinner. One of life’s enthusiasts. I liked him such a lot, and loved the way he looked at Caitlin. They decided to get married in the summer of 2019. The ceremony took place in their living room. Caitlin sent me a photo, David, always elegant, in navy silk pyjamas. He smiled at her as if she was the only person in the room, the only person in the world. David died in March 2020. Caitlin went from being his bride to his widow in barely nine months, but I think their marriage was happier than most. Ringing her after the funeral, she told me that when David left their home for the last time the whole street had lined up to say goodbye.
Caitlin stopped at Fortnum’s to buy our picnic. Black truffle crisps and Burgundy. We laughed at the absurdity of eating such posh food on a bench, dodging raindrops. How English. We cried, then laughed some more. We hugged, before springing apart, realising it wasn’t allowed. We toasted David with the good wine, and when it was finished Caitlin went to the cornershop for more. I felt so lucky to be alive. So priviliged to have known David. To still be there, sitting, shivering, beside my friend. We’ve shared better meals since then, but I’ve rarely had better afternoons.
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Emmett de Monterey is a writer from London. His first book, a memoir, Go the Way Your Blood Beats will be published by Viking in June 2023.
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