#69: Molly Young
"Every mistake that you or your friends could commit has been committed a thousand times before."
#69: Molly Young
(@mollybethyoung) is a writer and publisher with work in n+1, the New York Times, The Poetry Foundation, and others — including her email-less Substack, The Life and Errors of Molly Young. Grab a copy of Privacy (2025), her zine about pregnancy (“…sort of”), here.
Health Gossip with Molly
“I think I’m a Scorpio”
New York, NY
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
A rich intellectual life, a sensual worldly life.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
A mix of comedy, tragedy, and blessing in ever-shifting proportions.
How do you start and end your days?
Day in the life = black coffee, dawn surf, wake the child, dance, family breakfast, take child to daycare, write as much as I can (aka work), fetch child from daycare, have an adventure, family dinner, write more, read deeply for hours, sleep.
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
As a child I had a prominent visible deformity that caused me to become aware of how difficult it can be to have a body. It gave me a capacity for mercy and gentleness toward others.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
Reverence for nature, reverence for mystery, reverence for art.
What’s your relationship to self-healing? At what point in dealing with a symptom do you feel the need to see a doctor?
When the danger of an untreated malady surpasses the risk of iatrogenesis.
Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?
Modalities: surfing, laughing, sex, having a martini with a girlfriend, gamboling with my child, taking a bath :)
When do you feel the most nourished?
When I wash ashore after a soul-cleansing wipeout.
How do you reset?
Psilocybin. Traveling. Lucid dreaming. Making a new friend.
What types of food are you typically drawn towards? Do you have a favorite meal?
Passionfruit eaten from the vine in Mexico, halved with a utility knife and scooped barehanded. Always in my kitchen: cultured butter, olive oil, whole yogurt.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Every mistake that you or your friends or your culture could commit has been committed a thousand times before. So, read more history — because only by learning from the past will you be able to make thrilling NEW mistakes in the present! Start with The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant; it’s like 100 pages long.
To the person reading this?
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” —Julian of Norwich