#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
What would you like to see or create more of in the world?
Mercy.
Molly’s favorites
Notebooks by Emilio Braga
Fine French lingerie
Huile Antique Iris de Malte by Buly: “A few drops in the bath, after the bath, before bed.”
Sticky Bumps Surf Wax
Brick device for iPhone: “It helps me reach my ideal of spending under 30 mins/day on my phone; anything more makes me feel like I am willfully pursuing abuse at the hands of total fucking losers (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg).”
I love this. Love Molly’s answers <3