This Is Why You're Wrong About Your Life

👋🏼 THOUGHTS FROM ME, TO YOU

Dear Biddies,

Four years ago, I started my Instagram account to spectacular failure. I spent the first two years counting single-digit follower growth while cosplaying as a home decor blogger and then a fashion influencer. One day, after I had spent about six hours filming and editing a video of me jumping around in different outfits, Dave turned to me and said “how cool would it be if one day, you had a video go viral and hit a million views?”

One would think that my husband’s optimism would inspire a feeling other than anger in me, but I recall feeling nothing but rage. “That’s never going to happen, it’s so hard to do that, you’re crazy,” I told him. In retrospect, I wasn’t angry at Dave, I was angry at myself for feeling like the little I had achieved was all that I was capable of. I had tasted so little success and so much failure in the decade after college that I had forgotten that failure, and for some us, lots of it, is a key ingredient in the recipe for success.

In the two and a half years since proving Dave right, I’ve realized that sometimes the best story we can tell ourselves is the story where we get it wrong. The story where we think we’re writing the ending instead of realizing we were only writing a chapter—albeit a depressing chapter full of Chads, dead-end jobs, and calling your ex because you’re drunk and lonely, but a chapter nonetheless. It’s the chapter we all go to the movies for because nobody signs up to watch a movie where the protagonist doesn’t struggle. These days, if one more person tells me to go manifest my dreams, I might just throw my non-existent vision board at their head, but what I can say is that perhaps it was never about manifesting, it was always about having the courage to continue writing.

Your life is an epic—a long, narrative story about a legendary hero who battles dragons, warlocks, evil curses, and overcomes all impossible quests on the journey towards death. The hero, in this case, just happens to have your name, and in the end, what you may come to realize is that the dragons, warlocks, and evil curses also share your name. My dearest bad, maybe sad biddies: you are your own greatest hero and your own worst enemy, and wherever you may find yourself this Friday, I hope you know that you don’t have to stop writing just because the evil witch in your life won the battle for now. Write the next chapter where you turn that witch into dust and then smoke the ashes out of a pipe while sitting in your throne of victory. Or, don’t do the latter, because smoking someone’s cremated remains sounds both disgusting and aggressively not-FDA approved.

Either way, you’re doing just fine, and I hope you remember that for every catastrophic ending you concoct in your mind, there’s one more happily ever after waiting for you, if only you dare to just keep writing.

With love and aggression,
— anna

⁉️  ASK ANNA

Dear Biddie,

It’s not that you need more sense, it’s that you need less of it. My greatest weapon in life is my lack of sensibility, because in my thirty-four years, I have come to learn that sensibility is a prison. You don’t feel old because you are old, and if you have any doubts about that, go talk to an eighty-five-year-old, you feel old because society has told you, sensibly speaking, that you’re too old for another relationship and another life where your partner doesn’t cheat on you. Fuck sensibility. Fuck the fact that we, as a collective whole, make a 49-year-old woman who has overcome a divorce and a cheating partner feel like this is all that is left for her. And fuck that other woman. In world where we, as women, are constantly being told to extend grace to those who deserve it the least, I urge you to extend grace to the only person that matters in this situation: you.

In walking away from the philandering douche canoe you fell in love with, you unknowingly fell in love with yourself. It takes almost a Herculean-level of self-worth, love, and courage to walk away from a man who you loved and maybe still love a little right now. But, you’ve only gone halfway. You’ve fallen in love with yourself only enough to walk away from him, but not enough to realize that you can walk yourself towards another love and relationship where you don’t get cheated on. What you must now do is fall further in love with yourself and the possibilities that lay before you because unless your plan is to die tomorrow, there is always more time, more men to fall in love with, and more ways for life to surprise you.

You walked away, in part, because you wanted to set an example for your three daughters, but you must also set an example for them in how to believe in the path that lies ahead, not just in the path that lies behind. In their moments of self-doubt and heartbreak, they will look to you for hope that what feels like an ending is only just a beginning, and there is no better way to set that example than to start believing in it yourself. Show them that while life can be undeniably cruel to us all, it can also be wildly beautiful, and there is beauty to be found not just in the allure of a budding flower, but also in the deep roots and quiet power of a seasoned oak tree, rich with rings of survival.

With love and aggression,
— anna

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💄 BEAUTY BANTER

• Skin Banter: 

  

  I rotate through a lot of SPFs, but this one’s earned a permanent spot in my lineup. First Aid Beauty’s Hydrating Mineral Milk SPF 45 goes on like silk, disappears like my will to text back, and leaves my skin looking calm, dewy, and suspiciously well-adjusted. No cast, no crust, no chaos—just skin that looks like it hasn’t been rage-scrolling at midnight.

• Make-Up Banter: 

  

  Milk Makeup Hydro Grip Primer is my makeup’s ride-or-die. It grips like a stage-five clinger (in the best way), keeps everything in place through humidity, tears, and bad decisions, and somehow makes my skin look like I’ve been drinking water and minding my business. It’s the kind of product that makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

• Hair Banter

  

  This is the dry shampoo I reach for when my hair is 80% oil and 20% regret. Dae’s Fairy Duster is a non-aerosol powder that poofs into action, soaks up grease without the ghostly residue, and gives my roots the kind of lift that screams “main character energy” instead of “I gave up.” It smells like a citrus vacation I didn’t go on but definitely deserved. It turns questionable hair decisions into an aesthetic.

🗞️ ANYTHING BUT POLITICS BANTER

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

1. Kermit the Frog gave the University of Maryland’s commencement speech, and somehow I’m both crying and rethinking my entire life plan. He talked about dreams, friendship, and leaping together—and then sang Rainbow Connection in a cap and gown. It’s unexpectedly profound, deeply wholesome, and honestly? One of the most moving graduation moments I’ve ever seen.
   👉 Click to read the speech that somehow outdid every TED Talk you’ve ever cried to at 2 a.m.

2. All You Need To Manifest Your Dream Life Is 17 seconds: I’ve spent most of my adult life rolling my eyes at manifestation. I don’t recite affirmations, I don’t journal to the moon, and I’ve definitely never whispered my desires into a glass of water. But apparently, all it takes is 17 seconds of focused thought to bend the universe in your favor? I hate how intrigued I am. It sounds like nonsense. It also sounds... kind of doable. Damn it. I might try it.
   👉 Click to see the method that’s making even the skeptics consider lighting a candle and giving the universe a little side-eye.

3. I Tried Intermittent Digital Fasting For 5 Days — and I've Never Been More Rested: A PopSugar editor tried digital intermittent fasting—no screens from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. for five days—and the results were shockingly wholesome. No doomscrolling. No waking up to 37 notifications and a mild existential crisis. Instead, she journaled, walked, and actually slept. Turns out, ditching your phone for 12 hours might be the most underrated wellness hack of the year.
   👉 Click to read what happened when she stopped waking up with her phone and started waking up with her life.

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Share Brutal Banter with a friend and you can get more ways to feel better from me, to you, because we all get by with a little help from our friends and your internet fairy godmother (ahem, that’s me).

1. One referral: Get the f*ck back up a playlist (for days when life is kicking your ass). Never underestimate the power of a well-timed song to hack your brain into believing that you’re not dog shit.

2. Ten referrals: Get an exclusive pack of handwritten notes from me to remind you that you are, indeed, enough. Use them as your phone wallpaper, save them to your favorite camera roll folder, and remember that nobody ever got to be where they are without starting from where they were.