5 Things Not to Miss
1
LITTLE HAPPIER
I’m Lucky to Have a Mother Who Is Lucky
With Mother’s Day around the corner, I was reminded of something my mother said a few years ago about being lucky—and why I’m lucky to have a mother who is lucky.
2
MARIA SHRIVER’S SUNDAY PAPER
Simple Truths to Navigating Complex Times
I spoke with The Sunday Paper, Maria Shriver’s terrific newsletter, about my new book, Secrets of Adulthood, and a few of the aphorisms that have struck a chord with readers. As a writer, it’s always so interesting to me to learn what ideas from a book resonate most with readers. Sometimes I can predict it; often, I can’t.
3
GRETCHENRUBIN.COM
Why Whimsy Is Having a Moment
Recently, whimsy seems to be having a moment. It’s popping up in online conversations, design trends, and just about everywhere. Embrace the whimsy! We all need a touch of humor and delight in our lives.
4
Our New Puppy Taffy Is on the Scene
One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “Choose the bigger life.” Ten years ago, that aphorism helped to convince our family to get our family’s first puppy, Barnaby. And now in 2025, it has convinced us again. Our new puppy, Taffy, has arrived!
5
THE KETTLE
The “open door” approach to parenting young adults
Meagan Francis, who writes and podcasts about parenting and family life, and I had a wonderful conversation about parenting with an “open door” mindset after the kids grow up and leave home.
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INTERVIEW
Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, artist, and advocate. She documented her odyssey of illness, healing, and self-discovery in her bestselling memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. Her new book, The Book of Alchemy, is out now and has made a big splash.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
A: My go-to tool for being happier, healthier, more productive and more creative is journaling—so much so that I wrote a whole book about it, The Book of Alchemy. I’ve been keeping a journal for as long as I can remember, but when I was diagnosed with leukemia at age 22, it became a lifeline. It helped me navigate not only the upheaval of illness, but also the bewildering aftermath, when there were no doctor’s orders or discharge protocol to guide me in rebuilding my life.
The journal is the place I go to make sense of this wild ride of being human. It’s where I record memories—where I keep on nodding terms with the people I used to be, as Joan Didion advised. It’s where I go to get creatively unstuck, where I give myself permission to dream. One of my very favorite prompts is something I came up with called “The Five Lists,” which I initially did every New Year but now do more regularly—especially the fifth list: “What are your wildest, most hare-brained ideas and dreams?”
The journal is where all my best ideas spring forth. Because it’s something I do purely for myself, because there is no wrong way to do it, it’s so freeing. I credit my career to it, and I also credit the strength of my marriage, the depth of my friendships, and the quality of my life to it. It’s no exaggeration to say that for me, the journal has not only been life-altering, but also life-saving. I use my journaling practice to tap into that mystical, seemingly divine trait that exists in every human, creativity. And that creativity gives me the power to alchemize whatever troubles me—whatever I consider base or worthless—into something precious, like lead to gold.
Q: Do you have a Secret of Adulthood? A lesson you’ve learned from life the hard way; something you’d tell your younger self?
A: What I wish I could tell my younger self is that nobody will care about your SAT score or how voluminous your course load is or how many all-nighters you pull—not a single person has ever asked me about any of those things. But more than that, no one has ever come up with a big, daring, or innovative idea by trying to get a gold star. You do that by breaking the rules, by pursuing the projects that don’t necessarily make sense but that you feel called to anyway. You do that by following your intuition without knowing where it will lead you.
So maybe don’t make a plan. Take classes in subjects that you know nothing about, but that intrigue you. Instead of confining yourself to a singular purpose, allow yourself to experiment, to play, and to grow. Because whenever I’ve let go of those plans—either willingly or due to outside forces, like illness—I have counterintuitively done my best work. It’s in those moments of fallowness that I have gotten quiet enough to hear my intuition. That’s when the ideas start to spring forth, when inspiration returns to my body, when my excitement rekindles itself. That’s when I feel a gloriously hopeful sense of possibility.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
A: There are three simple habits that come to mind, the first being one I already shared about: journaling. The second is holotropic breathwork, which reminds me to… well, breathe. That may be something our bodies are supposed to do automatically, but whenever I get frazzled and fried and overtaxed, I often find myself holding my breath or taking shallow, quick breaths, and a belly-deep guided breathwork meditation always offers such a powerful reset. And the third habit is spending time with my dogs. I start every day either in a city park or out in the woods with my three pups. Having a schedule dictated not by my needs (which I’m really good at ignoring) but by these creatures that need to go outside is so good for me. I believe that wherever dogs are happiest, humans are too, so I try my best to let them guide me.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful?
A: Live every day as if it’s your first—wake up and experience the day with the sense of wonder and curiosity that a newborn might.
Q: Has a book ever changed your life – if so, which one and why?
A: Yes, definitely—though it’s hard to narrow it down to just one! But if I had to choose, I would say The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which is about two teenagers with terminal cancer who fall in love. I read it about a year after my initial leukemia diagnosis, when I felt as lost and isolated as I had ever been. That book became a friend, as did its characters. It showed me not only what I needed to let go of, like the hurt I was holding onto because certain friends hadn’t shown up for me, but more than that, it showed me the type of connections I wanted to cultivate—deep, meaningful relationships with a wide range of loves, from family to friends to romantic love. I began to study people who loved and were loved well in return and to build those types of relationships. Now more than a decade and two leukemia relapses later, I find joy and comfort in those many and varied loves. They sustain me in more ways that I can say.
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