Amanda Lee Burkett is a creative consultant and the writer behind YOU CAN TALK ABOUT IT, BUT ONLY WITH ME — a fashion newsletter that’s part-diaristic, part-voyeuristic, always fabulous, and often makes me miss New York. She also serves as Air Mail’s Market Editor, where she recently launched their new style column, Dress Code.

Below: notes on overcoming claustrophobia, being a pork maximalist, and her and her boyfriend, chef Flynn McGarry’s, very chic apartment.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health is positivity! I am at my most healthy when I have an honest and positive outlook on who I am and how I live.

Health depends on freedom and autonomy. Right now, I have that. I’m very lucky.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle is a work in progress. I’m trying to manage myself but not judge myself.

Monday to Saturday, I work at home during the day. My weekly newsletter, You Can Talk About It But Only With Me, goes live on Sundays, so I often work most of Saturday — I don’t mind. I reserve Friday and Saturday evenings for relaxing by myself or having dinner with friends.

Monday-Thursday evenings, I usually have an invitation that is important for me to attend. I have recently joined the team at Air Mail as the Market Editor for their style section, Dress Code, where I share a weekly dispatch on stylish happenings. I find myself having a lot of 5pm coffees.

Sunday is reserved for resting and catching up with my boyfriend, Flynn. He’s a chef so his hours are…unique. We have kept our Sundays clear for the better part of five years.

How do you start and end your days?

I say bye to Flynn. We always say something nice to each other/wish each other luck on whatever the day holds. It’s not a deep meditative encounter, but the daily confirmation of “I’m on your team” is the best way to start the day. Once he’s gone, I pull my laptop into bed. After I read Lena Dunham’s Famesick, I ceased having shame about working in my bed.

I have three jobs, two of which I told you: my writing and editing. Those are the things I feel OK doing in my bed. The third job is consulting, which I do at my dining table with my notebook and an iced coffee or matcha from Gem Home.

I have the most incredible clients. During the week, I chat with them and execute the strategy I built for them. Working with creative people and helping them find unique ways to express themselves has given me purpose and fulfillment. Celebrating with them is the best feeling.

The end of my day, usually, is coming home from a dinner or party or real-friend gathering of some sort. I make sure to wash my face and my feet. And I’ll talk with Flynn when he’s done with work. If I wasn’t out already, we’ll have a glass of wine together. He built our dream bathroom, which has a soaking tub for him and a rattan chaise lounge for me.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

Smoking changed everything. I started smoking when I was 19 and like magic, I lost the fluff that hung around my hips and face — like POOF! I was so skinny. I was eating as much as I always did — I love to eat — and the nicotine set my metabolism on fire. I couldn’t put on weight AND no one was accusing me of an eating disorder.

Before this, let’s say 14-19, I hated my body as much as you could possibly imagine. I fantasized about chopping my inner thighs off. Can you imagine? It still breaks my heart.

I came from a skinny house. Not an almond mom house, but a house where everyone was thin no matter what they ate. Instead of eating healthier, I was advised — frequently — to eat a lot less. Black coffee, no sugar, no carbs, no dairy, crash diets, running track, gym memberships, SOUL CYCLE... Nothing worked. I would cry about it a lot and really felt like I had nowhere to turn. I was always completely healthy by medical standards, but like many girls, I was convinced that I was too big.

And in an instant I had seven years of everyone telling me they would kill for my body. There were only a handful of moments where friends told me they were worried; I remember my mom once looking at me and bursting into tears. But mostly, it was amazing.

I came from a skinny house. Not an almond mom house, but a house where everyone was thin no matter what they ate.

Until one day, it wasn’t, and in January of this year, I quit smoking. You can read more about that decision here. Today, I’m in a place I never planned to return to: middle school, where my favorite jeans (now-$600 jeans that ironically I worked my ass off to get for trade) won’t button. I was recently told at a vintage store I was not thin enough for one of the skirts I was holding. When I left, I texted a friend who I knew would know what to say. She said, 1. Fuck him, he wants to wear your skin, and 2. You’re perfect.

She kept me from reverting to my past self whose answer was always to become thinner. I am determined to live the opportunity that I did not allow my younger self to pursue: acceptance.

I’ve been fighting the magnetism of disordered eating my whole life. It will probably never go away, but it has never felt less powerful.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

I saw a specialist a few years ago for claustrophobia (ex., I could not and did not take an elevator for four years). It was controlling my life and had stripped me of my dignity; I had debilitating shame.

I did not fix this issue with self-healing. I remember Flynn finally telling me: We don’t know how to help you, but you can find someone who does. Because of this, I found Sarah. Sarah is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist who was funny, tough, and very pregnant, which I thought was awesome. She was leading me through my lion’s den while managing all three of our heartbeats. With her help, I can take elevators and ride the subway — two things that were unimaginable to me for years.

If you are suffering from a phobia, please know: you have all of my empathy, it’s not your fault, it’s not funny, or a piece of information people should feel comfortable spreading about you. Be kind to yourself and on a strong day prioritize treatment. It will work.

I brought all of this up because yes, sometimes you cannot self-heal, and I needed to learn that. But Sarah did teach me how to box breathe, which is a form of self-healing that protects me from my wild mind often.

In the traditional sense: I do not get sick often. My friends say I deny sickness when it infects me — I’m too busy to be sick! There has not been much that hot lemon water and some sleep couldn’t temper. I am grateful.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

I am in therapy (that I pay for myself — more on that in a bit). I’ve been with this therapist since 2020, having her in my corner has been life-changing. She has taught me to rely on myself above everything, take matters into my own hands not just sometimes but every time, and claim responsibility for my own happiness. She has given me pride. Shoutout Brooke.

When do you feel the most nourished?

This will probably be a first for Health Gossip, but getting paid nourishes me.

Financial independence has always been a huge priority; my mother taught me that it was one of the only things that guaranteed freedom. I watched her transform her own life — in her late 50s — by changing her career and making her own money.

I didn’t know until very recently that I could get paid for my…unique skills…because they took a while to reveal themselves. At 26, approximately 15 jobs later, I am getting paid to be me. It’s not easy, but even when I’m looking at a bit of debt, I see the value in handling it myself.

The only thing more nourishing than seeing the money come in, is spending it: on a home I love, on people I love, on things I love, on a life I love in the city I always wanted to live in.

How do you reset?

Social life in New York mostly revolves around drinking. And if you work in media or a creative industry, the drinks are often unlimited and free — which sounds great, but it can spiral pretty quickly. The only way I survived dry January was by staying in my house!

One to two days without drinking a week is my goal, and that is my reset. When I drink a bunch, I can’t sleep, I get super anxious, and the next day is easily wrecked. I try to be honest about drinking; I think people have a lot of shame around it and can sort of...suffer in silence. It’s slippery, and everyone is so different.

I don’t want to burn out, I don’t ever want to move away or blame New York — so getting a handle on it has become more important to me. (My psychiatrist says this is common during the second half of one’s 20s.) Let’s talk about it more!

Do you have a favorite meal?

My all-time favorite meal has to be crab pasta with caviar, which is what Flynn made for our friends and family this past Thanksgiving. That will always stand out to me as a special meal because not one of our twelve guests cared that we were not doing a traditional Thanksgiving, and we all had such a fun night. Because of him, I have learned and still do learn so much about food and eating with the seasons. I eat something from Gem Home every day and have dinner at Cove at least once a week; if you have not yet been, summer is a great time to try!

An additional favorite meal is a beautiful Italian sandwich, which even I can make after shopping at our local Italian grocer, DiPalo’s, who makes the best mozzarella in the world. Living in Little Italy is incredible.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I wish I could tell my younger self that all of her dreams are going to come true before thirty. It’s not really advice, but if I told me then about me now, she would have cracked up.

For real advice, I would tell her what my father always told me plainly: “You are great.”

And I would also tell her to laser hair removal literally everything. I bet my mom would have paid for it then and I wouldn’t have to deal with it now. I probably also would ask that she find a way to get Accutane. The people with the most beautiful poreless skin always confess to doing it in high school. I regret nothing except for these two vain things.

What advice would you give to the person reading this?

1. You can change your outlook at any time. You can go from negative to positive right now. Good news is coming. Something good happens every day.

2. Be yourself. I don’t think I’m so goddamn unique, but I am the only me there is, as are you. Find ways to embrace it, find ways to enjoy it.

3. If you are lucky enough to meet your basic needs, give the rest of the money away, use it for pleasure, don’t hoard it, don’t worry about it. Spend money with abandon. Make room for more money to come in, make room for more things to bring you pleasure.

   1. Never become a billionaire.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Something that really puts me off in my teeny tiny slice of the world is when people say there is too much of something, too many Substacks, too many podcasts, even something as stupid as there are too many DJs, we need EMTs. I get it, it’s funny, and it’s true — but don’t let anyone tell you it’s too late to do something. All you have to do is be unique and try hard to be good.

I want other people to see the opportunity of being alive, the blessing of being healthy, and the benefits of being positive.

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Kelly Chapman () is a culture writer and the co-editor of Secret Ballot, a Washington, DC-based “cultural salon in newsletter form” (I contributed to their issue on steak). You may also know her as X’s Audrey Horne.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being able to sleep on your back in the middle of your bed with your arms over your head. Singing for the joy of it. A generative spirit. Thinking of new things to make or do or see. Being able to do 30 pushups in a row, or hold a plank for 2 minutes straight, or run three miles without feeling like dying.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Civilized. I’m in a much less social period of my life. I thought I would hate it but I don’t. It’s like a temporary state of enforced rest. It’s making me become more mysterious, a quality I thought was out of reach for me in my twenties (I’m 32 now). I’ve also started working out a lot more frequently, getting my steps in, going to Pilates three times a week. I drink natural wine and wear weirder clothes than I used to. I’m trying to explain myself less, to match.

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Ginger Jones (@plaything______) is a poet from California.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Freedom.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Right now I’m living and working on a farm in northern New Mexico. I spend most of my days outside in the sunshine. I weed gardens, hoe fields, build structures, fix whatever is broken, care for animals, ride horses, and swim in creeks and lakes whenever I can. I like being dirty. I like making my body useful. Physical labor quiets my mind in a way nothing else can.

How do you start and end your days?

Farm life wakes me up at six. I stretch for half an hour, drink black coffee and Xiao Yao San tea for my liver, then feed the chickens, collect their eggs, water the greenhouse, check the fences, and feed the other animals and eat. Breakfast is usually three fresh eggs and half an avocado. I also take a B-complex and omega-3 supplements. Hours will go by before I speak my first words.

In the evening I water the gardens and cook dinner, usually chicken with whatever greens are growing nearby. I make a shandy with beer and lemonade and watch the sky change colors while I talk to people I love on the phone. After a while I go inside and sit on my bedroom floor and write until my eyes get heavy. I crawl into bed naked and silent with the moon watching over me. Sometimes I play music to lull myself to sleep.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is what to do with pain. A few years back, two old friends of mine died just a month apart. One overdosed on fentanyl and the other killed himself while high. I was so overcome with grief that life became almost unbearably precious to me. I now know that grief is just love with nowhere to go, so you give it new places to live. Whenever I choose beauty over bitterness, kindness over resentment, presence over fear, I am more alive and thankful to live life beautifully because I know love is infinite.

There are things you can’t see but your mind still recognizes. Sometimes what I feel is more true than what I know.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

I’m not interested in understanding myself too much. I’ve become very protective of my own mystery. There are parts of myself I don’t want to fully understand. I think the soul deserves some privacy. I heal when I release myself from expectations of knowing. I want to be the kind of person who can humanize herself. I want room to become someone I haven’t met yet. That feels closer to healing than certainty ever has.

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Med Gold writes about male-female dynamics and the American condition.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

That’s a great question. On the surface, being healthy means “doing that which slows decay and death.” Exercise and proper diet. I imagine someone running on a treadmill while eating a carrot. But merely extending the length of time that you aren’t dead isn’t necessarily good. If you aren’t pursuing the enjoyment of life, there’s no point. Living well matters far more. That’s the difference between merely existing and being alive.

Being healthy means embodying health. This mode of being requires more than just frequently raising your heart rate and not giving yourself diabetes. Health is downstream of your relationship to yourself and how you manage reality.

The concept of “mental health” has been diluted by people who just want 3-day weekends, but it’s a serious matter and goes much deeper than your mental state. What does a “healthy mind” even mean? No negative thoughts? Images of sunrises and cute kittens? A blank slate?

No. Humans are animals with physical needs. We are programmed to avoid death. Men are programmed to fight enemies and impregnate women. Women are programmed to nurture children and attract men. We’re competitive beings who just happen to be aware that we exist. An honest mind isn’t supposed to be clean.

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Sakura Smith is the creator of Bagel Bunny, hand-rolled bagels made using a starter passed down from a Japanese monk. She writes about her travel and food escapades on The Bunny Diaries.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health is ever-changing and a balancing act. Beyond all of the minute details, being healthy is wondering what makes me feel the best. What food? What drink? What movement? What people? Health is a practice of learning to listen to yourself.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My lifestyle is definitely in a transition phase right now. My fiancé and I are traveling this year, and so much of making myself feel good is dependent on the routines that I have in place while we bop around. How do you feel while being in a bunch of places with one suitcase? Simply accessing different ingredients or herbs has been super interesting. Taking care of yourself in a new place is an exercise for sure. With this, I am practicing control and less control.

How do you start and end your days?

This depends on where I am going. I usually wake up and immediately brush my teeth (oil pull when I have time). I can’t do anything until I brush my teeth and put on my contacts. I drink room-temperature water and then make tea. When it is a slow day, I will meditate in the morning, but if it is a fast-paced one, I will do it in the evening. I try to move immediately, otherwise I just don’t have the will. These days, that either looks like boxing, stretching on my floor/yoga, or going to walk in Yoyogi Park. This is dependent on my menstrual cycle and general mood and time management.

I always get a coffee at my favorite shop in my neighborhood and sit and read or use this time to call people around the world. I say hi to all my neighborhood friends and dogs. This part of my routine brings me probably the most joy. When you are in an ever-changing state, I find a physical place to have routine extremely grounding.

I end my day as chill as I can. My favorite time is dinner, I feel like I live a whole day only to sit down and have dinner. It is the celebration. I like to eat grilled or steamed veggies, a protein, and rice. If it were up to me, I'd eat rice porridge for every meal.

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Rose Lyddon is a writer and researcher with a focus on theology, medieval history, and contemporary culture. She writes the newsletter, Keep Your Mind in Hell and Despair Not, and has had work published in Unherd, The Mars Review of Books, and The Spectator.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I’ve had pretty serious mental health symptoms since I was a child, so my priority has always been to figure out and manage whatever’s going on with my mind. Over time, I’ve come to see that my psychological and emotional health is always connected to the physical, spiritual, social, and environmental domains. A big focus is keeping my hormones balanced and minimizing stress, but I also need a lot of stimulation and like living in a big city where there’s always something going on. I find that what I need to stay well changes frequently, so the most important thing is to be attentive and respond flexibly.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I’m not a lover of routines. I like having the freedom to do whatever I want day to day. My worst nightmare would be having a mortgage and working a nine-to-five, batch-cooking all my meals on Sunday, probably something like lentil stew that’s full of phytoestrogens and promotes endotoxin in the gut.

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is a London-based nutritional therapist and founder of Full Serving, a practice for whole-body health. On her newsletter, she takes a practical, fuss-free approach to all things health and wellness, considering the intricacies of people’s real lives rather than striving for total optimization (see: her case for breakfast soup and a sweet treat, or her guide to eating out).

Those interested in working with Kat 1:1 can schedule a consult here.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means feeling good most of the time, for a long time. Energized in the day, relaxed at night, and having enough strength, discomfort, joy, or sadness relative to what the experience calls for, rather than chasing an unrealistic state of constant perfection. When you’re healthy, you can do “imperfect” things and still feel good.

It relates to the idea of being adaptable, which to me is a key tenet of health. The opposite is rigidity — inflexibility with ideas, inability to deal with friction, body feeling all stiff. Not great.

If I can feel good in a packed morning train, stay resilient during challenging times, and feel great sunning on a beach…that to me is a good indicator of health. Healthy most of the time rather than hoping and waiting for the right conditions.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Instinctive. A bit hodgepodge, in a good way. My lifestyle is really a mashup of being super present for short spurts, then allowing space for creative projects, spontaneous socializing, and whatever unexpected thing lands on my plate. I’ve learned to trust my choices without constantly questioning them when it comes to health — that alone has lightened the cognitive load considerably. I also live and die by my Google Calendar; everything that matters to me goes in there. I’m no longer a time optimist and it’s freed me. Get real, do what you say, stop overcomplicating it.

How do you start and end your days?

Open the curtains so daylight can stream in. Head to the kitchen to boil the kettle so I can rehydrate with hot water — I’ll go for about half a liter first thing. While that’s happening, I brush my teeth, light an incense cone, and send a “morning” emoji to my parents who are halfway across the world. Then I’ll eat a couple of bites of something before heading out for a walk with my boyfriend. I tend to leave my phone at home.

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Lauren Rothery is an American writer and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Television, was published by Ecco last year. You can read her short fiction in The Baffler and elsewhere.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I think lately that a healthy person is like a healthy old tree, invisibly altering the local air. You breathe easier next to them.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Chaotic just now. I ended a long relationship recently, and moved back to New York. I’m subletting while I look for some place I’d like to stay longer. I spent the better part of six years in Europe, being in love, writing, riding on the back of a motorcycle, climbing up mountains, moving around a lot. I wrote and published my first novel. It was wonderful. But I’m tired and I’d like to sit down.

How do you start and end your days?

I wake up early, sometimes before sunrise, and start the drip coffee. I try not to look at my computer or turn on the lights. I just bump into things a while if the sun’s not up. When I’ve got the coffee made with whole milk and honey, I go sit in the front window at my bedside and think. It probably looks meditative but it’s the opposite. I’m not trying to be present in my body, but to let my thoughts roll. There’s a tug of resistance sometimes, the impulse to do something. I ask myself, What’re you, in the FBI? What’ve you got to do at dawn? and go back to aimlessly thinking. After a while, I’m comfortable. Then, very comfortable.

I do hot yoga every morning. I like to go alone. I like to listen to Beck on the walk. I like to sweat and chat with the same people at the same time every day. I’m a highly fidelitous person. I rarely get bored of what I like.1 In terms of cumulative physical results, hot yoga yields a nice mix of softness and strength, and it feels like giving my insides a shower. After class, I shower my outsides and have some fruit or a PB&J. Water. Orange juice. Desiccated bovine organ vitamins. Arnica tablets, if anything feels sore. Then I write for as long as I can. Sometimes at the park with my notebook, sometimes at home with my computer. If there is a friend to see, I like to see them in the afternoon.

I take a walk around the neighborhood in the evening, then watch an old movie. I love The Apartment. Last week I watched it twice. I’ll watch anything that Billy Wilder was even remotely involved in. If Billy Wilder lit somebody’s cigarette on set, I’ll watch the movie. I think if you’re having a tough time in your life, it’s good to be made to laugh and cry by someone dead. Gives you a sense of proportion.

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One of the most interesting parts of running a questionnaire-based newsletter is watching the themes and archetypes that naturally emerge. If I asked you to describe the Health Gossip Girl, you could probably come up with a list: flower essences, dry brushing, nightly herbal infusions, daily grounding… (Or, as put it a few months ago: the “friend who’s constantly referring to her osteopath.”) You know the type, probably because you are the type.

Lately, another characteristic has emerged, what friend-of-the-letter Carlisle has called the lymph nymph. The lymph nymph remains deeply attuned to the state of her lymphatic system on a daily, if not hourly basis, frequently engaging in self-massage, tapping, brushing, and jumping. Some people question the lymph nymph, uncertain if her lymphatic system actually needs to be manually pumped (it does), and yet, she persists — snatched, based, and glowing.

Today’s guest, , both fits this mould and departs from it. Ash is a true Renaissance woman, a master herbalist and folk doctor who, in a previous life, was a renowned fine-art photographer. On her X account, she posts some of the most truly esoteric (as in, not often spoken about) takes on light, breath, beauty, and, yes, the lymphatic system.

Below, she opens up about the late-stage Lyme diagnosis that forced her to step away from her photography career, the long unraveling and rebuilding that followed, and her slow life on the prairie today (“where every lake meets the sky”). Enjoy.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Living within the rules and laws of proper right relationship, where our body, minds, and spirits are integrated within the greater sacred hoop of nature. Vital in a way that aligns with greater goods and our life purpose.

Health, for me, deeply equates to a physical and emotional vitality and resilience that is embodied and lived on those levels, with a healthy nervous system and adaptable capacity. A body that is nourished enough to be harmonious in its purpose and in what we need from it.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I am a total loner at present. I live and breathe herbalism, Eastern medicine, and creativity from a house tucked into a hill that I lovingly call OMOTH (“Old Man on the Hill,” so named for the lovely old weeping Spruce along a sandy creek out back).

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Jess Jobst (@jess__jobst) is a designer, producer, and motorcyclist. She writes the Substack, .

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy, to me, is a symbiosis of the mind, body, and spirit. It's as much to do with my mental wellbeing, emotional sobriety, and my environment as it is with my actual body. It's about being alive and awakened, living in sync with nature and the universe.

When I can, I stay away from any regimented routines and let my body sleep when it is tired, intuitively eat, etc. I have become so much more aware of how my body functions by paying attention to it acutely. I try and live in sync with the natural rhythms of the seasons and my menstrual cycle, etc.

I'm one of those people who need their space to be clean, enticing, comfortable, quiet, calm, and decorated well. I cannot do anything in a messy room — this affects my mind and my ability to function. I need to curate a beautiful space with art, handmade objects, books, and well-designed furniture to surround me, and a lot of light to feel good and inspired. It needs to be a peaceful environment. I am usually listening to some sort of new age, environmental, meditation music in the background, and there are fresh flowers on my table. My nervous system craves being grounded, so that is very much to do with setting the stage for that.

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A little-known Lily fact is that I used to be somewhat Soundcloud famous. It was a formative period of time, one that led to some of my closest friendships and a years-long flirtation with living in Europe. After starting this newsletter, interviewing my ultimate music idol, and simply outgrowing a good amount of angst, the arc felt complete. It was time to move on.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re hearing from , a Los Angeles-based music journalist and host of Bandsplain, a music podcast exploring cult bands and artists. Yasi is, it turns out, a major Health Gossip fan, and also runs a fabulous Substack of her own, where she’s sampled the music tastes of guests like Alexis Page and Petra Cortright.

Her approach to health mirrors much of this newsletter’s ethos, prioritizing simplicity over optimization. “I’m most interested in leaving room for delight,” she writes. In spending time with loved ones, “even if they insist on keeping their living room lit like the hostage-breaking room at Guantanamo.”

Read on to hear more about her daily routines and journey from leading a party girl lifestyle to weightlifting, raw milk, and going to bed by 10pm.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

My ideas of health have changed a lot over time, but right now, I would say health means cultivating balance, authenticity, and alignment with your highest Self. More granularly, the aspect of health I’m trying to work on now is regulating my nervous system.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle is pretty chaotic, but in a natural way. I’ve tried to fight that a lot in the past, but the truth is it’s just how I function best. I’m never going to be the person with the completely organized office/car/closet or a neat and exacting schedule and that is fine.

Some days I work nine hours straight, and some days I work in short, intense bursts, and some days I can’t work at all. I have to be a bit vigilant about honoring those days, because I tend towards workaholism. I try to move every day, be outside some part of every day, and eat often and well. It's important for me to connect with my friends and family every day, even if it's just texting or FaceTiming. I’m most interested in leaving room for delight, rather than planning or optimizing. Less rigid scheduling, more magic.

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is the creator of Health Gossip, which she launched in early 2023. The name appeared to her in a dream.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Our capacity to receive and participate in the world around us. To meet life fully; to appreciate and cultivate beauty. To give from an overflowing cup.

When I feel most healthy, I feel most clear, like I have the energy to fully shine my light and give that light to others. When I feel least healthy, it’s when I’m only thinking about myself.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Urban-ascetic-contrarian.

How do you start and end your days?

I start most mornings walking outside, often while sipping from a cup of warm broth or herbal infusion (lately: nettle, hibiscus, and dandelion root).

Over the past few years, this has been my most consistent, and most necessary, routine — originally born out of a desire to normalize my circadian rhythm, only to realize it had a ripple effect on my overall mood, energy levels, and sense of peace.

I firmly believe that the way we start our days determines the spirit of that day. It’s important to connect to ourselves and be conscious of what we’re consuming in that vulnerable, post-waking state.

Before I leave the apartment, I’ll oil pull, take a flower essence (if I’m working with one), and drink mineral water with any empty-stomach supplements.1 Lately, I’ve also been doing a lymphatic + dry brushing routine, which I’ve written about elsewhere.

When I return home, I focus on nourishment: breakfast, which normally looks like some combination of a raw carrot salad, eggs with sheep or goat’s milk cheese, and sauerkraut. Now that it’s warmer out, I’ve been enjoying a smoothie with wild blueberries, coconut milk, and bone broth protein. I drink matcha or coffee most days, usually at a cafe.

I really value movement and seek to always be out and about, ideally only home in the early morning and late at night. I don’t want to live in a city forever, but am grateful for the flaneur lifestyle that it permits.

After breakfast, I leave the house to start my workday (outside of the newsletter, I work in marketing). If time allows, I’ll either go to the gym before work or during my lunch break, where I do a mix of calisthenics, weightlifting, and pilates depending on the day.

I walk for at least an hour every day, ideally listening to nothing, breaking my “music fast” at the gym with trashy Belgian house music and religious chants.

By evening, I’m usually quite exhausted, and like to keep things simple: Cook a nice meal, keep the lighting dim, read or write, clean, take a bath...Lately, I’ve been allowing myself to go to bed as soon as I feel like it, sometimes as early as 9pm.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

Of course. Many moments. I think I may be going through a moment right now.

The first was a series of accidents in early childhood, which feel a bit minor now but definitely had an impact on my overall outlook on health and expression. At the age of five or six, I was in a park showing off to a friend “how far I could jump” off the curb, then jumped straight into a tree trunk. I got stitches. Around that same time, I was “ice skating” in socks on the hardwood floors of my father’s house and face-planted. It didn’t particularly hurt, but my face was bruised for a week or so after (which, to a young girl, almost felt worse than a broken bone). I put sparkles on my nose in an attempt to make the bruises more palatable to my kindergarten audience.

In both of these experiences, I think I realized — literally faced — the fact that my actions had consequences, and, to a lesser degree, that my self-expression had to be tempered or controlled in order to stay “safe.”

(This shyness would carry me into college, where, I later learned, a friend of a friend thought I was a Russian exchange student.)

In the moment I’m in now, of once again becoming conscious of my “health,” a similar theme is resurfacing (maybe because I’m living in the same city where I grew up). I’m noticing the rigidity that has become my default over the past few years, despite leading a fairly spontaneous, bohemian, connected life. I’m reminded of a sculpture an old friend once titled after me: “Lily, All Buttoned Up.”

In my heart of hearts, I don’t relate to this rigidity. Inside, I feel like a wild, freedom-oriented woman, one who lives in the country with her family and a black convertible Jeep Wrangler Sport. And yet, I still find myself defaulting to the monochrome urban costume; to blow-drying my hair. Perhaps these are the last gasps of a Falsified self.

I think it’s the work of a lifetime to be fully expressed — and even then, there’s always a gap between who we are and how we’re interpreted. With time, I’ve learned to not be so focused on narrowing it.

And what a blessing it is to have that interiority; to have something, some place, that’s just for us and God.

Do you have a spiritual practice?

After a period of early-20s agnosticism and flirting with pop spirituality (more on that below), I am reengaging with Christianity again.

This has been a process, and one I’m still very much in the midst of. As someone who is naturally quite curious and mutable, I’ve noticed a resistance to committing to an organized religion, and also a lingering attachment to systems and practices that run counter to it. But I think whenever we feel resistance or fear towards something, that’s a sign that we must pursue it. Alas, there is no Perfect Christian.

My journey through and out of New Age spirituality has been winding. After a series of awakenings in the years following 2020, I felt a veil being lifted and wanted to explore everything on the other side. What began with Rudolf Steiner and the Christian mystics evolved into a deeper engagement with astrology, Human Design, manifestation, and eventually Kabbalah. I was hooked.

But, like many, my relationship to these systems and modalities was ultimately that of a dilettante. I never fully committed to any one path, preferring to create my own spiritual system rather than anchor into a singular Truth. This left me confused, circling myself, with endless rabbit holes to dive into and no clear place to land. It also fed a kind of narcissism, where I was more focused on “fixing” myself and reaching a higher state of consciousness than being present with the world around me.

With time, I’ve found that the latter is actually a far more spiritual, and far more difficult, pursuit.

When I attended Divine Liturgy for the first time, something clicked into place. I finally felt held, like for once it wasn’t all up to me. I remember walking in, met with the haze of burning frankincense and timber of Byzantine chants, and understanding, on a visceral level, what “God-fearing” really meant. The acknowledgment of a higher authority, of divine law; of the reality that there are things objectively “right” and “wrong,” and that our actions have consequences — these are all truths that our modern, pleasure-oriented society loves to dismiss. Returning to them has given me a sense of peace that affirmations and chart-reading never quite did.

There’s a quote that I recently rediscovered from one of Manly P. Hall’s lectures, where he says that we can change human laws, but divine laws are meant to change us. Religion reminds us of the moral universe.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

As someone who doesn’t often trust the popular narrative, I’m a self-experimenter by nature. In the past few years, I’ve reoriented much of my approach to health to be less informed by external advice or “experts” and more centered on my own inner knowing — with the understanding that it will guide me to the right modalities and people, should I need assistance.

(That’s an amazing prayer, if you’re struggling with some sort of perplexing ailment: God, bring the people and modalities into my life that will help me heal.)

People sometimes interpret the self-healing question quite literally: Do you believe that you, alone, can heal yourself? But, by virtue of being alive, we’re always in relationship — to our environment, to the people around us, to ourselves. In my view, when we aren’t in right relationship with those things, that’s when symptoms and imbalances arise.

I’ve said this before, but I think in order to be “healthy” in our current conditions, we have to live a bit alternatively. This is, in part, why I’m drawn to the guests that I am, and why the newsletter doesn’t feel so literal in its approach to health and wellness. I’m far more interested in hearing about someone’s goat milk water-flossing routine or pregnancy dreams than the 30 supplements they take every morning.

When we see people going deep in the biohacking direction, I think it’s because, deep down, they know they’re living in a way that is quite unnatural and feel the need to balance it out. But the way that we “balance it out” matters, especially when we consider how many things are marketed to us that we can simply create for ourselves, through living, or simply find in nature.

Sometimes, I really feel like the people who don’t think about their health much are the healthiest.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

I haven’t been to the doctor in over a year, and don’t really feel the need to now (beyond getting bloodwork done). Diagnosis is a kind of spell-casting, and the practitioners that we choose to surround ourselves with matter greatly in our healing journeys. Everything affects everything.

The most life-changing doctors that I’ve seen have functioned more like teachers (the true meaning of “doctor”). I feel like I’ve spent the past few years integrating what they have taught me.

When do you feel the most nourished?

Rolling around in the grass in the sun, temperature 65-82 degrees. Laughing with friends at a beautiful dinner, ideally one made by us. Acknowledging my needs, and allowing them to be met, without retreating into the (perceived) safety of solitude. Experiencing the abundance of nature and thinking, What more could I possibly need?

How do you reset?

These days, sleep and slowing down are often the best ways for me to reset, particularly if I’m feeling depleted or drained. Following my move out of NYC last year, I’ve felt myself entering an entirely new chapter. The transition out of the old and into the new has been a bit destabilizing, requiring a level of slowness and patience that doesn’t always come naturally to me. I’m learning how to tend to and be present with the beauty around me, rather than living out of pure utility. I’m learning how to be a woman, rather than a girl or a machine.

On days when I’m not working, I’m a big fan of having my phone on airplane mode and doing something super simple, like taking a leisurely walk or reading in the park. I’ve been revisiting fiction, most recently Natalia Ginzburg and Louise Glück.

I think it’s our right as women to rest as often as we please.

But, in other moments, it’s action that we need. When I’m feeling stagnant, I love to shake, dance, run, sweat. Talk to strangers, or God, or myself, out loud. Get out of my head. Deep clean my apartment. Do the things I’ve been avoiding.

These actions can be restoring or depleting, depending on where our systems are at. I often return to the phrase, “The opposite is the medicine.” If what you’re doing isn’t working, go another way.

Do you have a favorite meal?

In recent years, I’ve found that repetition works well for me (this is the case for meals as well as routines). My digestion functions best when it knows what to expect, especially if that food is local and in season.

Currently in rotation: baked chicken thighs, steak tartare, homemade bone broth, baked Japanese sweet potatoes, ground beef and rice...I agree with when she says that gym bros are enlightened beings. An underrated health “hack” is reducing the number of decisions we make per day — and keeping meals simple, predictable, and meal-prepped is a great way to do that.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Honor your vision and don’t sacrifice your truth for a temporary high. The right ones will come if you let them.

What advice would you give to the person reading this?

Have the courage to go your own way.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Physical skills. Cloudbusting and weather modification awareness. Gyms with natural lighting, 432 Hz music, and structured / spring water on tap. Tan lines. Healed male-female dynamics. PDA. Discernment.

The throughline of all of these is less energy spent on reacting and more energy spent on creating. The latter will lead to the desired outcome of the former, anyway.

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Brigid Blue Wallace (@brigid.blue) is a farmer living in New Jersey. I didn’t know much about her before inviting her on, and truthfully didn’t need to. Longtime readers of the newsletter will know that “good-on-paper” credentials often make for a boring interview. The less obvious the guest, the better.

You can find more of Brigid on TikTok and her baking Instagram.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy is like winning the golden ticket of life. Sometimes you don’t win the golden ticket, and sometimes you do, and you try to keep it in mint condition, but over time it bends and folds and wears down. Sometimes you accidentally leave it in your pants pocket and put it through the washing machine, and find it all crumbled up in faded pieces. Health is the will to live. It transcends the flesh. It’s the spirit in the flesh.

Animals can smell health; it’s the first thing they do when they meet each other. We do it too. It’s a sixth sense that women, in particular, have. I can smell a rat from a mile away like a prize bitch hound, and I feel most healthy when those senses are sharp. When I want to know if one of my animals is sick, I see how the rest of the pack is responding to them. Every living creature has its own special value and contribution to the collective consciousness of the group.

For me, most of my desire to be healthy is due to my fear of death. I suppose my healthiest day will be the day I make peace with the fact that I’m going to die. I’m a body for God to experience life on earth through, and right now I don’t want it to ever end.

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Matt Blackburn (@mattblackburn) is the founder of Mitolife, a wellness brand rooted in mitochondrial health and his CLF Protocol — a framework that looks at aging through the lens of cellular stress and energy.

I first came across Matt’s work years ago, and have since come to admire his willingness to (publicly) change his mind — a quality that feels increasingly rare in the health space today.

On his podcast, Mitolife Radio, he’s tracked many of these changes, revisiting earlier positions while exploring topics like iron overload, high-dose melatonin, and the neuroprotective benefits of tobacco. His approach aligns closely with the Health Gossip ethos, viewing health not as a variable to optimize, but as the practice of tending to your life as a whole and iterating as needed.

You can find more of Matt’s work on Instagram and his website.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means using resilience instead of avoidance. You can be in an electric vehicle without getting a headache, and can go into big cities without feeling sick immediately from all of the electromagnetic radiation. Supplementing the right vitamins and minerals in the right amounts and forms — on top of a balanced diet, including animals and plants — creates this resilient state.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle includes a healthy blend of technology use and nature immersion. Being 100% off-grid creates a unique challenge when juggling two or more wood stoves in the winter and operating heavy machinery to clear snow or downed trees. Living by myself in a cabin in the woods has given me rugged resilience and a sort of initiation into manhood that I didn't receive in my younger years.

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is an herbalist and the author of Naturally (2025), a beginner-friendly guide to herbalism and beyond.

I’ve found Rachelle’s approach to living — and, by extension, health — to be truly refreshing, an example of how, today, living “alternatively” doesn’t necessarily mean living in rebellion, but living in truth. As she wrote in a recent post, “When we’re brave enough to act according to our convictions, I believe, we end up resembling our truest selves.” She continues:

“What I want to see more of in the world…is an example of how to live differently. How to leave a life, for more life; how to leave a marriage, when nothing exactly is wrong. How to change radically and honestly, despite every pressure not to do so.”

You can find more of Rachelle on Substack and Instagram.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I have come to know the deepest state of health as one that requires, and results from, our living the lives we are meant to live. Meaning that no amount of biohacking can compete with existential misalignment.

To me, health is a state of aliveness — body, mind, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Beachside-jungle, pleasure-seeking, surf-addicted flowing — which could not be more different from the lifestyle I maintained until about two years ago.

I’ve been studying health my whole life, which means I know how to push my body (and brain) to the limit. I did that, working essentially nonstop from the time I was barely an adult. Through my move to New York (no money, no friends, no job, etc.), and many wild years in the fashion industry, through building my own businesses (herbal product lines, herbal cafe-apothecary, a private practice, classes and workshops, endless amounts of content…), and writing my book (Naturally). Then, suddenly, I stopped.

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Today’s guest is the one and only , the writer, actress, and director perhaps best known for HBO’s Girls (2012-2017). Critics-a-many have called her “the voice of her generation”; more recently, friend of the letter, Courtney, dubbed her the “patron saint of Substack.” Her second memoir, Famesick, is out now.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Growing up in the height of the diet-obsessed 90s and early 2000s — Snackwells cookie commercials on TV, my mother and her friends all drinking a confounding daily powder called Ultraclear, which tasted like a vanilla-infused crayon, speedwalking for their lives — I didn’t realize it, but I thought that being healthy meant being thin. I started eating Lean Cuisine with my grandmother when I was eight, and I wanted to have twig-like arms swimming in my thermal, delicate ankles sticking out of my Pumas. Soon, jeans got tighter and tank tops got smaller and puberty came and my body started to change, which coincided with a spike in profound, fight-or-flight anxiety and painful periods (which, I was told, were just a fact of female life, like deciding whether or not to get an underage belly button ring from the place that also made fake IDs, or having a man expose himself to you on the subway).

Looking back, I can put together the emergence of my chronic health conditions like a detective going into a fugue state of newspaper clippings and red string. But at the time, it felt like everyone else was moving around in a body that made sense, could do its job, and mine was always glitching.

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John Doe (@pain___house) is a poet from Michigan and the author of Autumn in the Pain House (2024). He lives on the West Coast.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I’ve been blessed with consistently good physical health throughout my life. To me, health has always referred to mental health and sobriety. I’m often very ill mentally, I have been addicted to almost everything. I’m healthy when I’m living a life in line with an Alcoholics Anonymous program and the DBT principles set forth by Marsha Linehan.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I recently relocated to the West Coast from Michigan. Besides one very troubled year in New York when I was 19, this is my first time leaving my home state. I feel very inspired here. The landscape is dramatic and my lifestyle includes a lot of driving. This is by design, I detest public transportation. Spending time alone in cars is, in my opinion, the closest we get to whatever happens before birth or after death.

Moving here has been one of many changes I’ve made since releasing my first book of poetry in Fall 2024. Another change has been semi-departing from Twitter. For people who are familiar with my writing or Twitter, this is a big change! I posted non-stop every day for almost two years while living an underemployed, celibate, cortisol-fueled life.

Now I have a wagey job that aligns with some of my interests. My drive to work includes a long bridge soaring over a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I have a girlfriend. I don’t know if I can live this ‘dopamine detox health chungus’ lifestyle forever, I would probably get bored, but I’m really enjoying how things are right now.

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is an indie product developer and beauty brand strategist. Obsessive Into the Gloss readers — which I assume many of you were — may remember her from her days at Glossier, which she helped launch alongside Emily Weiss. You can read more about her health and beauty escapades on Self Involved.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health is the feeling of freedom and ease in mind, body, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

The past year has been a bit weird because my mom got diagnosed with glioblastoma last June and I moved back home to Buffalo temporarily. I’m still in the in-between space of my “real life” in NY and then posting up in my childhood bedroom. It’s been a really expansive experience and an unsolicited test of my own resiliency. My world quite literally got turned upside down.

Because I had already been very dialed in on my own health when this happened, I doubled down in Buffalo as a way to stay sane. I do best with routine, so really the only thing that shifts when I’m not sleeping in my own bed is my diet. I’m a much better eater in New York than I am in Buffalo, the junk food capital of the world. Otherwise, I stick with my morning supplement/injectables routine, found an amazing Pilates studio in Buffalo that’s randomly owned by my childhood ballet teacher (a sign from the universe), maintain my twice daily meditation schedule, keep in close touch with my group chats, and ultimately it has been really nice to be with my family.

I stopped drinking last May because I was testing out some new protocols and wanted to eliminate any variables. It was meant to be temporary, but I just never picked it back up. It’s been kind of a blessing in disguise. I didn’t necessarily drink a ton before, but I noticed that as I got older, I wouldn’t have a physical hangover the next day but an emotional one — morbidly depressed, totally anxious about every little thing. If I had been drinking last summer under all that stress, I would’ve totally lost it.

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is the author of ten books, including Leave Society (2021) and Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change (2018). You can find more of his recent writing on The Paris Review, Granta, and his Substack, Tao Lin.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Daily poop. Experiencing nature. Feeling peaceful. Reading books that reduce fear, like The Truth About Contagion and Life After Life. Caring for and loving something — hard with humans, can use pets.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Working on my writing while caring for my cats and detoxing my liver and learning.

How do you start and end your days?

Start: exercise and meditation. End: talking to myself, my spirit guides, and my soul about my day and my upcoming dreams.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

I had chronic nosebleeds as a child. A doctor scalded the inside of my nostril to try to stop them. It didn’t work. From then on, I engaged with mainstream medicine many more times due to lung collapses, chronic pain, and other acute and chronic issues. Each time, my trust in it decreased. By my mid-thirties or so, I’d lost all interest in conventional medicine. I haven’t been to a dentist or a doctor since 2015 or so. I believe the body’s best healer is itself. I’ve been working on a book titled Self Heal since 2022. I put it on hold in 2024 because I had insomnia, chronic pain, and eczema. I’ve had these since my twenties but they were getting worse in 2024 and I was confused.

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is a health and wellness writer + content creator, with a focus on bioenergetics and ancestral beauty rituals. Her medicinal makeup brand, Fauna (seed oil and synthetic-free, and made with edible ingredients), will be launching soon.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means so much more than just “not being sick.” Being healthy is about your having enough energy to feel amazing, sharp, excited, inspired and motivated for life. For your cells to have the energy to function optimally — they are the building blocks of every organ in our body! And our metabolism is how our body creates energy, it's controlled by our thyroid, and is the root of all health.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I live a very non-toxic, holistic, and “crunchy” lifestyle. I have chickens for eggs, I make all of their food from scratch, mill my own flour, bake sourdough, make cheese…I'm obsessed with nourishing through nutrient dense and ancestral foods. It's very Weston A. Price x Ray Peat! Infused with the rituals of ancient princesses, which happens to align very much with what they teach.

How do you start and end your days?

I am obsessed with the morning and night routines of ancient princesses. There is a lot to pull from that is now scientifically backed to improve your sleep and health, while feeling incredible and nourishing.

In the evenings after making dinner, I always make sure to turn off all the regular lights, and turn on only incandescent, red light, or candle light. I use blue light-blocking glasses if I'm on a screen. I charge my phone in the bathroom; it's close enough to hear the alarm, but far enough I don't use it before bed or in the mornings. Plus, it makes me get out of bed to shut it off! I love hot baths, herbal oils, beeswax candles, and mulberry silk sheets.

The morning is *very* specific.

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