Three Small Personal Updates
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Three Small Personal Updates
-Driving into Paris today to pick up Oscar who is coming back from New York after two lovely weeks hanging out with cousins. We have missed him so much! It will be great to have him back.
-We built a bathroom vanity from scratch — and I love how it turned out so much! We used 4 lengths of steal, reclaimed oak hardwood from another room in the house, and a vintage double schoolhouse sink that we found on Le Bon Coin (the French Craig’s List) for 20 euros. The house was once a blacksmith workshop, so I’m trying to keep or add metal and industrial touches where I can. Here’s a 90-second version of the build. Here’s a long and detailed version of the build.
-My book is out in Japanese! And the Japanese version is so dang cool. I love it. You can watch me flip through it if you’re curious. In addition to the US edition, there are now 10 international editions — some are already published and some are in the works.
-UK edition is available now.
-Japanese edition is available now.
-Spanish edition is available now.
-Brazilian Portuguese edition is available now.
-German edition comes out soon — I just approved the cover 2 days ago!
-French Version comes out in January. I have a call next week to discuss particular edits for the French version. Very exciting.
-Italian version is in the works.
-Polish edition is in the works.
-Portugal Portuguese edition is in the works.
-And last week, I received news that a Chinese edition is in the works!
I can’t wait to see it in a dozen more languages.
Still Thinking about Sinead
I was so sad about Sinéad O’Conner’s death (she died on July 26th at age 56). I find my reactions to celebrity deaths so unpredictable. I did not understand this would hit me so hard. But here I am, a month later, still thinking about her life and her influence.
Her shaved head was a really big deal to me as a teenager. While I was sorting out the rules of femininity and figuring out what amounts of time and energy I was willing to give to things like hair and makeup, she was this very present model of rejecting all of that. I grew up in a world where being valued by men for my looks was presented to me as THE priority I should focus on. So her rejection of finding her value via the male gaze was very important to me.
I’m really sad she’s gone.
Office Hours — 3 Day Sale!
Probably because it’s back-to-school season and people are busy calendar-ing and making plans and tackling projects, but I've been getting so many Office Hours requests! What are Office Hours? It's where anyone can book a meeting with me to discuss the topic of their choice.
I schedule these through Calendly and I've had dozens of these meetings and they are truly so much fun. People ask me for advice about upcoming trips to France, about interior design projects, about religion and current events, about parenting, and so much more.
A year or so ago, I switched to the Intro platform for meetings. It's been great for business inquiries and business consulting. But business consulting is expensive, and I know the prices are out of reach for people who want a more casual conversation with me. So I'm reopening my affordable Calendly appointments — and offering a 3-day sale!
You can book a 30 minute appointment — 3-Day Sale Price: Was $85, now $65! (Save $20). Meeting times are available for the next few weeks, and you should book right away to make sure you get the spot you'd like. I look forward to chatting with you.
(Want to talk business? Fabulous! I'd love to speak with you — please use Intro to book a business consultation.)
A Few Things
Here are a few things I’ve been wanting to share with you:
-In Scientific American — The first ever study on period products using blood to test absorbency instead of water just came out. And guess what? Absolutely none of the period products on the market absorb anywhere close to what they say on the packaging.
This means every time a doctor has tried to gauge blood loss based on period product usage they have been totally wrong.
I can’t even process this yet. I’m so mad. The first ever test with blood!!! I mean I knew they showed the weird blue water in advertisements, but I would not have guessed in a million years that they never tested these products with blood — let alone actual period blood — and had only used saline.
We hate women so much. Our culture absolutely detests and devalues women’s bodies and goes out of our way to avoid learning about them.
-From National Geographic — A miracle plant from 2000 years ago, called Silphion, apparently cured diseases and made food tasty, but was thought to have been eaten into extinction. Now, a Turkish researcher thinks he’s found it again. (It doesn’t say this in the article, but someone on Twitter mentioned this plant was used anciently as birth control.)
-From Gothamist — according to new data, more than 13,000 rent-stabilized apartments in New York City have sat empty for the past two years. So shocking and frustrating in light of the pressing housing shortage.
-In the Guardian — No OB-GYNs left in town: what came after Idaho’s assault on abortion. The article points out that Idaho is the first and only state to stop tracking maternal mortality rates. !!!
-In the Washington Post — a new study shows that people who endured even mild cases of COVID are at heightened risk two years later of two dozen medical conditions including lung problems, fatigue, diabetes and certain other health problems typical of Long COVID.
-In the New Yorker — Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule: How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in. It’s by Ronan Farrow so it’s excellent as expected, but still so hard to read. I have zero patience for Elon Musk.
-From Time Magazine — She Wasn't Able to Get an Abortion. Now She's a Mom. Soon She'll Start 7th Grade. In post-Dobbs America, some girls can travel hours to get an abortion; some can't. This is the story of one of them. She was raped. The nearest abortion was nine hours away.
I think that’s it for now. Feel free to comment on anything above, or whatever’s on your mind. Late August can be so odd — half the people I talk with feel like summer is long over and their kids have been back in school for two weeks or more. The other half is at the beach on summer vacation. Whatever your August is like at the moment, I hope it’s a good one. I’m thinking of you.
kisses,
Gabrielle
In re: hating women/ignorance of our bodies: In 2012, Virginia proposed women seeking an abortion get a “trans-vaginal” ultrasound. One state rep, male, in particular went hard on it...until he went home and absorbed a full-body blast from his wife, who asked him why the hell he thought it necessary to force raped women to accept a metal probe into their vaginas in order to check a box pre-abortion. He at least had the guts to admit this on the floor. He had thought the process just another ultrasound, where the scanner stays outside the body. As he explained this on TV, you could see the recognition dawn in the eyes of his (mostly) male colleagues.
They control our bodies and they can’t be bothered to learn how they work.
Your renovations are inspiring on so many levels, but I particularly love how you re-use and recycle materials in a way that's affordable, eco-conscious, and chic!
I too took Sinead's death hard, for all the reasons you mention ... plus one more. Some media outlets and gossip rags implied that Sinead's death was caused by grief over her son's suicide. Like her, I have a son who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. The implication that a mother can't (or shouldn't) survive a child's suicide — that the grief and guilt are a burden too difficult to bear — has been with us for a long time. And as my therapist has tried to convince me, it's not doing any of us any favors.
I'll always feel responsible in some way for my kid's struggle with depression, if only because there's a family history on my side, but I'm trying to acknowledge that we each have our own journey in life. Pinning Sinead's own mental health struggles on her's son's "outcome" is not only unfair to them both, it distracts from the wealth of societal inequities to which she was subjected early in her life and career.