Why not liberate your spirit and light up your brain?
The Wanderlife newsletter from Jessica Becker is a Superstack of mental and real-world explorations for people who love to wander and are open to life. Here is that invitation you are ready for and the spark that might just make your own journey more interesting.
"We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain," wrote the author Tom Robbins, and yet I have generally felt a little guilty about agreeing with him. Shouldn't I be doing more than that?
Yes, and. In 2024 it feels important to state that a dominant culture of greedy overconsumption and needy overactivity is leaving us depleted. Folks are overwhelmed, angry, anxious, and depressed, all at once. We know it and feel it. It’s sad that too often we think we need to fix ourselves when we are suffering from a sick culture that needs healing.
I see it, I resist it, and in a spirit of rebellion, I will share some of what delights me here.
You’ll find pithy ‘postcards’ from places near and far to liberate your spirit, photos that tell a story, handwritten musings to light up your brain, and deeper dives into the Doll Collection Dinners - my family’s culinary explorations inspired by my father’s wanderlust.
Who I am
I'm a Midwesterner who loves living on an isthmus between two lakes and wrote for years about local issues here. I’m also a mother to two daughters and, when they were young, we co-created a playground review for our city. The nine-to-five portion of my week is spent working for a cultural non-profit and there is so much more to say, but I’ll just leave it here: family life flows and my interests wander toward the light.
These days I’m writing a collection of personal essays that have helped me to understand that my grandmother was a yogi, I’m genetically predisposed to care about birds, and it’s a stroke of luck that my dad didn't get thrown in a Stasi prison in East Berlin. As I get more comfortable with the Substack platform and community, I may share little snippets from these stories here.*
I've had a blessed 48+ years of following my own curiosities. But I also have serious dedications that have held true for decades (yoga studies and gratitude practices, biking in all weather all over town, taking photos and making collections, keeping in touch). These passions define me, they are the rituals that make up my days, weeks, months, and life.
Wanderlife is my 49th birthday project and a present to myself. It’s a place for me to liberate my spirit, share my writing, be myself, and maybe light up a few tired synapsis.
Wanderlife: A little something shared about once a week
Wanderlife with Notebook: Short stories, personal reflections, and unexpected explorations based on travels near and far (influenced by folks like Keri Smith, Dervla Murphy, and Martha Gellhorn).
Doll Collection Dinners: Wildly fun adventures in the kitchen inspired by a collection of seventy-two dolls from around the world - we’ll be cooking dishes from Poland to St. Kitts, Malawi to Korea.
Gratitudes: Published on Mondays, always handwritten, a riff of my Sunday evening ritual.
A photo share: Pictures past and present, because photos tell such rich stories and we all could use a minute to stop scrolling and stare at an image, don’t you think?
Here’s your invitation!
The Wanderlife newsletter is art for arts sake and is free to read. It’s a playground for myself and anyone who wants to play along. Not that writing isn’t work. I do believe that people should be paid well for it, I just don’t want to stay true to a timeline or worry about the value of my words here. So if you want to chip in the price of a cup of coffee, Thank You. If not, no worries.
Truly, this is some hard shit we are living through here on planet earth. Yes, and the world is stunningly gorgeous. People are ridiculously kind, silly, and creative. I’ve found that what catches the sunlight in a particular moment might just change my mind forever. Friendships are worth it, art is worth it, and I want to live my life believing that every trailhead is an invitation.
I’m happy to have your company and grateful that you have taken a few minutes to linger, loiter, and even lollygag around with me for a bit. I want you to enjoy this journey so please stay in touch, comment, and let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
PHOTO CREDITS: profile picture by Clint Greendeer; hat series by Willa Becker; coat in my closet stitched and shot by myself, Jessica Becker.
* On a blank sheet of paper she’d draw a flowing, fluid line that swirled and criss-crossed around the page. The amorphous shape opened up blocks of space that we worked together to fill, our heads leaned in over the project. She pressed hard with the crayons and her breath smelled of coffee, which neither of my parents drank.
- From a personal essay called "Becoming a Bird Lady" about being a mother and the daughter of a mother experiencing the current of dementia.
