How A Chicken Sandwich Could Save Your Life

👋🏼 THOUGHTS FROM ME, TO YOU

Dear Biddies,

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness never spent $5.49 on a Popeyes Classic Chicken Sandwich after popping a Sundae Flowers gummy. As an influencer, I’m constantly sent PR packages filled with nutritional supplements promoting gut health, prebiotics, probiotics, bionic vision, supplements to help me sleep and supplements to help me stay awake. I opt out of trying most of these, but yesterday, in what I would call either a moment of desperation or a moment of depression, I decided to pop a Sundae Flowers THC-infused mochi gummy.

I should preface this by saying that the few times I had dabbled in the world of cannabis while I was #youngwildandfree in college did not go over well, so I’ve mostly stayed away in the last decade, preferring to take the edge off with a cocktail, running, or rage screaming into the void. Since I’ve been sober and taking SSRIs over the last year and a half, I’ve really eschewed all mind-altering substances stronger than my morning iced Nespresso, but NGL: depression has been kicking my ass lately. I’ve upped my dosage of Zoloft from 50mg to 75mg, I’m scheduled to begin talk therapy again, but the earliest availability to start isn’t until mid-June, and so here I was, the week after Memorial Day, feeling the crushing weight of hopelessness while wondering why running, upping my meds, and watching self-help YouTube videos wasn’t nipping this shit in the bud.

I took the Sundae Flowers gummy not expecting to feel anything (it looks like a Sour Patch Kid for fuck’s sake), and then about an hour and a half later, as I was using every last bit of my willpower to put on eyeshadow so I could finally bring myself to film one video this week, I felt…free. Like a weight had been lifted off my chest, and the sudden realization that maybe I wasn’t a fraud, a failure, and too far gone, I was indeed, just depressed.

Three hours later, Dave and I were somewhere on i-95 South driving towards my parents’ house for the weekend when we stopped at a rest stop for a light dinner at Popeyes before the actual dinner my mom had waiting for us at home. I say this without a hint of irony: the Classic Chicken Sandwich is unequivocally the best fast food chicken sandwich I’ve ever had. You could’ve served it to me in a restaurant on a plate and charged me triple for what it cost and I still would’ve thought it was worth it. And lest you think that my taste buds were somehow altered by my Sundae Flowers appetizer, I assure you: Dave, uninfluenced by mochi gummies in the driver’s seat, also agreed.

And so there I was, somewhere on the interstate eating a Popeyes chicken sandwich and realizing that I didn’t forget how to be happy, I just forgot that we all need a little help sometimes—some of us from our friends, some of us from our medications, and some of us, from an unsuspecting PR package and a fast-food chicken sandwich.

One of my favorite follows on Instagram is @billymurphyart, a contemporary artist who draws cartoon bears paired with shockingly simple, yet effective motivational messages. This morning, I woke up and saw this on my feed:

I feel more like a cowboy today than I have all week, even if I don’t feel 100% cowboy yet, and what I know now is this: that if a total of $8.29 and an Instagram cartoon could make me feel better, then maybe it was never about the money, the food, the gummies, or the cartoon, it was always about giving yourself permission to let go. So whatever you were holding onto this week, I hope you let that shit go the way your innards let go of themselves after a night of heavy drinking and late-night pizza. Joy doesn’t always show up in the ways we expect them to, so here's your unsolicited spiritual guidance for the week: Let the chicken be sacred. Let the gummy be grace. Let the meme be medicine. Healing doesn’t have to look like enlightenment. Sometimes it looks like surviving the day with just enough hope to try again tomorrow—and smelling vaguely of Cajun fries while doing it.

With love and aggression,
— anna

⁉️  ASK ANNA

Dear Biddie,

When I was in my twenties, I met a guy who made me seriously consider ruining my life for 36 hours while I was on a girls’ trip in Punta Cana. At the time, I was in a long-term relationship that I had wanted to end for months, but kept losing the balls to do so because we lived together, and because there wasn’t technically anything wrong with my boyfriend, I just felt dead inside when I was with him. Punta Cana guy was the opposite of everything my boyfriend was—tattooed, irresponsible, and untethered by the demands of a job that requires you to pay taxes. I immediately went back to NYC after the trip and broke up with my boyfriend, panic-searched for an apartment, and miraculously found a place willing to approve me and allow me to move in three days later.

A month later, Punta Cana guy came to visit me in New York. I expected fireworks. Instead, I got a man standing awkwardly in my kitchen asking if I had oat milk. The magic vanished the moment real life stepped in. He wasn’t freedom. He was just the decoy that reminded me I wanted it.

What I realized then is what I’ll offer you now: sometimes we attach all our unmet hunger to one person because they represent a version of ourselves we’re desperate to return to. A freer, more alive, less autopilot version. But that person isn’t always the solution. Sometimes they’re just the spark that reminds you you’ve gone numb.

Maybe this guy from two years ago isn’t your future husband. Maybe he’s just a lighthouse for the part of you that wants out of something. Not necessarily your relationship—but the version of your life that feels too small, too polite, and too invested in dinner parties where no one says what they actually mean.

You don’t need to blow up your life. But you do need to ask: what part of me have I silenced in order to be “happy”? And what would it look like to let her speak—without needing to sleep with a ghost from the past to feel her again?

You’re not crazy. You’re just craving aliveness. Don’t confuse that craving for a person. That’s how people end up crying in Ubers with their wedding dress in a garment bag.

With love and aggression,
— anna

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💄 BEAUTY BANTER

• Skin Banter: 

  

  Kate Somerville EradiKate Acne Spot Treatment: This is the tiny pink bottle I reach for the second I feel a zit trying to ruin my week. It smells like sulfur and regret, but it works—like, wake up and it’s already shrinking works. I dab it on with a Q-tip like I’m casting a spell on my hormonal chin, and honestly? Sometimes it feels like the only thing in my life that follows through. Not cute, not glamorous, but deeply satisfying in the way only a vanishing pimple can be.

• Make-Up Banter: 

  

  Laura Mercier Bronze Color Infusion Talc-Free Matte & Luminous Duo. I bought this thinking it would just add a little warmth to my face. What it actually did was make me look like I’ve been sleeping well, drinking water, and casually thriving. The matte side deepens what my cheekbones are already serving, and the luminous side adds just enough glow to make people think I have my life together. This is the only duo I trust to fake inner peace and outer radiance at the same time.

• Hair Banter

  

  K18 Biomimetic Hairscience Molecular Repair is not your average hair mask. This is therapy for your fried, over-bleached, emotionally damaged ends—except it works in four minutes and doesn’t require crying in a parking lot. It repairs hair from the inside out using actual science (like, molecule-level science), and somehow makes your strands feel like they’ve never met a heat tool or breakup haircut. Tiny bottle, massive ego boost.

🗞️ ANYTHING BUT POLITICS BANTER

The headlines you may have missed while politics dominated the headlines.

1. These New Dating Trends Will Make Finding “The One” More Fun This Summer: Apparently, dating in 2025 is no longer about finding 'the one'—it’s about 'wildflowering' and getting into 'explorationships' (yes, these are real words now). Wildflowering means dating outside your usual type just to see what blooms, and an explorationship is basically dating with vibes and no exit strategy. Think less soulmate, more mutual curiosity with decent lighting. If modern dating apps have left you emotionally concussed, this might be the rebrand your love life needs.

   👉 Read the full article here before someone invites you into an explorationship and you pretend to know what it means.

2. Ben Griffin quit golf, became a loan officer, almost lost his house—then came back and won $2.1 million on the PGA Tour. This is not a golf story. This is a you-thought-it-was-over-but-it-wasn’t story. It’s for anyone who’s ever walked away from their dream because life got hard or bills got real, and is now wondering if it’s too late to turn back. Spoiler: it’s not.

   👉 Read the full story here before your inner saboteur convinces you you peaked at 29.

3. Gen Z is allegedly the most depressed generation alive—but a few rogue Zoomers have somehow cracked the happiness code. Their secret? Less doomscrolling, more touching grass. Some are journaling, some are praying, some are just not rotting in bed for six hours watching true crime on TikTok. Revolutionary.

   👉 Read the full article here before you blame your mood on Mercury retrograde again.

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