Laurie Anne King

THE FERAL WILDLING
There is something stubborn and soulful inside you that refuses enclosure.
It may have waited years, whispering politely.
Or it may be rattling the bars.
My newest Substack essay is now live on
The Cost of Being Human.
Come sit by the fire. Bring snacks!
https://open.substack.com/pub/laking1111/p/just-you-sweetheart-the-feral-wildling?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

JUST YOU, SWEETHEART.
Humans have always built fences.
Around land, knowledge, and, tragically, most around belonging.
The hardest fences to see are the ones we build inside ourselves.
A new essay arrives Sunday.
The Cost of Being Human.
Subscribe to get it hot off the press…
https://substack.com/?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

What remains when the performance ends?
The quieter performance.

The version of ourselves that learned how to be agreeable, capable, useful, dependable, and easy to receive.

The version that got us through.
The response to this essay has reminded me how many people are standing in this territory right now.

If you missed it, you can read it here:
What Remains When the Performance Ends?
https://open.substack.com/pub/laking1111/p/what-remains-when-the-performance?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Many of us were taught how to be useful before we were ever taught how to be honest with ourselves.

So we learned to carry things.
Responsibilities. Expectations. Identities. Other people's comfort.

Until one day, something in the body begins to refuse the bargain.

What Remains When the Performance Ends?
A reflection on grief, survival, aging, and the selves that once kept us safe.

https://open.substack.com/pub/laking1111/p/what-remains-when-the-performance?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

There comes a point when the energy required to keep being who you've always been exceeds the energy required to change.
Something in you is tired of negotiating with what it already knows.

The strange reckoning that arrives when the self that carried you for decades can carry you no further.

One of the more difficult realizations of adulthood is that life is not negotiating.
Not with our plans.
…our timelines.
…our ideas about what should have happened by now.

This week's Substack essay is for anyone who has ever found themselves exhausted from trying to hold everything together while waiting for life to finally cooperate.

The Bargain I Kept Trying to Make with Life.
Read here: https://open.substack.com/pub/laking1111/p/the-bargain-i-kept-trying-to-make?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

For years, I thought I was waiting for this and then that.
It turns out I was waiting for something else.

The Bargain I Kept Trying to Make with Life is now live at Substack.

It is about expectation, disappointment, hope, and the quiet agreements many of us make with life without ever realizing we've made them.

The ones that only become visible when they stop working.
Read here: https://open.substack.com/pub/laking1111/p/the-bargain-i-kept-trying-to-make?r=12mqa9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true