GABRIELA YARELIZ

This Week’s Favs 3.12.26

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This week, we went from 60F to 39F. It’s literally raining/snowing outside. The weather is wild. My torso is less on fire thanks to a plantain oil tincture I made. This stuff works. March feels so busy, and I haven’t even gotten to the taxes part of the to-do list. My body has been crashing and burning a little, but hanging in. I am basically sipping out of those little Cymbiotika pouches every two hours.

Here are some of my favorite things from the week.

I read Emily Frisella’s book Relationships First. Great principles and a quick read.

I think my next read will be Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh and L.A. (Did you know Eve Babitz and Steve Martin dated? I loved learning that…) Part of my many 70s rabbit holes.

St. Denis Medical has been too fun, and Palm Royale has been very entertaining (tardy to the party).

Posts I enjoyed:

let’s hang out like we’re back in high school by Le Secret Club by Gabrielle

All of Jon Haidt’s After Babel’s posts. This was an interesting recent one on After Babel by Casey Mock: Meta’s Legal Team Abandoned Its Ethical Duties

These boots are giving March Madness:

Racing-ok Boot
Jeffrey Campbell
brand:Jeffrey Campbell

Laura Wasser’s “Divorce” capsule for Reformation. I had seen this a few weeks back, and it’s still on my mind. Pretty genius and fun move from the nation’s most famous celebrity divorce attorney. It’s giving boss-she-didn’t-need-the-settlement.

Add this Paul Maurice (PoMo) gem to your watch list:

This man is such an icon in my book. I want to be like him.

This podcast was excellent (I love a Hubes or GP moment, and here we have them together– fate):

This was a thought-provoking conversation with interesting perspectives:

Vita Sidorkina launched her app The Core:

Felice Chan‘s Chinese Medicine course.

Here is to hoping this cold spell breaks soon.

Spring Transition Outfits

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Spring reset.

I love a good spring reset. Mine has consisted of better sleep, taking out caffeine and continued and progressive strength training. It will be a matchaless spring. Dr. Stolberg’s tea has been my go-to along with gynostemma (they call it the poor man’s ginseng).

In this new warmth, some interesting outfits have made their appearance and debut on the trains—

A woman with olive green capris, ankle boots and a navy coat. (She also had an impeccable tan).

A woman with a white base and a black leather jacket. Very bold to wear white pants and sit in a train car.

A lady wearing a striped white and black shirt and black tiered boho skirt with Mary Jane’s.

Von Dutch jeans and a Juicy Couture tote (very nostalgic). This lady had pink hair and was cursing someone out on her phone.

Another woman had a shirt tucked into jeans, but the jeans were cropped and she had fun socks with brown loafers.

People are resetting their wardrobes and dusting off their sunglasses. A brighter morning awaits.

For me, I have swapped my thick navy coat for a lighter blue jacket. I feel like I am fluttering above the surface.

My readings from Simple Abundance have all been about reflecting how you feel on the inside by your external presentation.

What are you reaching for this spring? Any pops of color? Is it time to put away the boots? (I am thinking it’s too soon…)

The Goddess Review

By: Gabriela Yareliz

There are some wild product reviews out there. They can be the most fun part of the website— kind of like the comments section. Here is a review that recently caught my attention—Luna Bronze.

Today’s review is about this self-tanning bronzer from Revolve. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad one. There are five stars, but the start is a bit rough. It was “collecting dust.” This one is all about the element of surprise.

Love the details of “half-assed” application. she is a “GLOWING Mediterranean goddess.” She is brown, y’all. Look ma, no mit. Boom. “Loyalty for life.”

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Resplendent

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This morning, it was really dark. Darker than I remember a morning in a long time. I had to turn on the lights to force myself to get ready.

After that darkness, I got on the train. When we hit the bridge, the sunshine was splayed out everywhere— I hadn’t seen that level of brightness in a while. The morning was resplendent. Spring is near.

Wisdom from Martha Graeff

Words and advice by Martha Graeff:

“1. Not everyone who loves you knows how to show up for you;

2. Peace is more valuable than being understood;

3. Boundaries will cost you relationships and then save you;

4. You can’t heal in the same environment that hurt you;

5. Being strong for too long teaches you when to rest;

6. Some people are on your side as long as you stay the same;

7. People meet you at the level they’ve met themselves;

8. Energy doesn’t lie, even when words do – trust your gut;

9. Being needed isn’t the same as being valued; [and]

10. True connections are RARE.

Protect them. Keep them close and give back.”

Daylight Savings to 1997

Shall we take it all the way back to 1997?

The Olsen twins had those little bangs and short hair. Stacks of American Girl catalogs and magazines. Home videos. Music video channels. Shakira didn’t speak English. Phones were attached to a wall. Long distance calls were done with calling cards. The 101 Dalmatians were all the rage. We were all Disney princesses. Recess was for doing flips on the bars. Arthur was the hottest show on PBS.

Take us all back.

Hard

“Doing hard sh*t is the gateway to everything you want in life. It changes your brain chemistry. You’re not overwhelmed. You’re under-challenged. Easy choices create fragile minds. Friction creates stability. When your life is built around comfort, fast dopamine, instant delivery, and constant distraction, your nervous system forgets how to handle resistance. So the smallest inconvenience feels like a crisis. A soft life creates a loud mind. Anxious. Reactive. Restless.

Friction quiets it. Lift something heavy. Say the thing you’ve been avoiding. Turn the phone off. Go for the run when your mind starts negotiating. Every time you choose hard, you collect evidence. And once your mind has enough evidence, it stops panicking. Hard doesn’t just change your body. It changes what you believe you can handle. And that changes everything.”

Matty Fusaro

Are We Healing From Casual?

By: Gabriela Yareliz

One of my favorite things Nina Van Horn warns about in Just Shoot Me! is her theory that J.Crew and casualwear are destroying society. She had no idea it would be so much worse than J.Crew. J.Crew is formal compared to what we wear on the reg.

It was the 90s after all. And now, here we are. Everyone is watching Love Story and trying to imitate JFK Jr. or CBK.

While most written pieces about the Love Story effect focus on people’s inclination to imitate and not have any sense of personal taste, or the idea of the “power of mystery” (as someone who has gone down the Kennedy rabbit hole— was it mystery or just plain toxic?)— I am more just wondering if this will have an effect on how we show up.

I am full convinced our environments affect how we show up. Bad culture, systems that fail— none of this inspires us to show up in a dress or heels. We dress for survival, oftentimes. I mean, Tampa’s airport (TPA) just banned wearing your PJs to travel. Truth is, though, that with the state of travel (chaos), you are 98% likely to be delayed, stranded and/or sleep in the airport or in some unplanned location.

Suddenly today, I saw ads for Charles Tyrwhitt in my train car, and about six guys who looked like they were dressed in Charles Tyrwhitt from head to toe. This felt different.

Do people care more about how they are showing up? Will 90s fashion or just formal dress have a renaissance? And if it does— what does this say about us? What is changing inside of us? Do we feel this will fix something else that is broken or is it a sign of healing?

Unsent Letters

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Have you ever written a letter you never sent? Have you ever kept unsent letters?

I recently finished a book that relied heavily on preserved correspondence, and I have to admit, some of the most interesting correspondence was the stuff that was never sent.

The unsent letters can be the most unhinged, and also, the most honest. Sometimes, what remains unsent was always destined to be so. Sometimes, it’s a soul detox. Sometimes, it’s a double-down.

I like Janet Malcolm’s thoughts on unsent letters:

“The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the not sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message we have no intention of sending is.

By saving the letter, we are in some sense ‘sending’ it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence.”

What would your unsent letters reveal about you? What has gotten your ‘extra vote of confidence’?

Sarah Dessen is Back

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I saw a guy with the tip of his hair flicked up with hair gel. It was such a 2003 moment.

Speaking of 2003– I was thinking about the two writers who had many of us (me specifically) in a chokehold during the early 2000s.

One was Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, writer of the Alice series. So many of us grew up with Alice. The books were a series where we follow Alice McKinley from elementary school to old age. If you read them, it’s hard to forget her friends Pamela and Elizabeth and her older brother Lester (and his girlfriends). And, of course, Patrick. Alice grows up with her widower father and her older brother Lester in a fairly stable home. She deals with the normal adolescent stuff. These books were gems. Reynolds Naylor, a kind legend. That woman sent me a package in reply to a letter I sent. I will never forget that.

Then, there was Sarah Dessen, who wrote one of my favorite characters ever— Halley Martin from How to Deal (movie) and Someone Like You (book). Sarah Dessen’s books were sort of the other side of the coin. They lacked the stability Reynolds Naylor gave Alice. Her books were often focused on a young woman who is going through trauma— usually her parents’ divorce, moving to a new town, being an outcast. Sometimes, she addressed heavy topics like domestic violence. She showcased young women going through adolescence while also swimming deep in some of the hardest things life can throw at us. I don’t know how she did it, but I am forever grateful, and I clung to it.

A scene from *How to Deal* the movie based on two of Dessen’s books. Halley Martin is portrayed by Mandy Moore.

Dessen gave her characters edge. One of my favorite Halley scenes in the movie is when she chops off all her hair. It’s a moment of metamorphosis. A snapshot on a timeline. Take it from someone who has been exactly there— when a teen girl lops off her hair, some deep internal growth is happening. The cutting off of the blanket that culture assigns so much beauty and value to is often a rejection of something or someone and certain ideals. It’s a shedding of sorts. It’s a coming into one’s own without frivolity.

Why am I thinking about the gifts Reynolds Naylor and Dessen have bestowed on me? After years, Sarah Dessen is releasing a new book called Change of Plans. I saw NYC announced on her book tour. As someone who has read every single one of her books, it caught my attention and made me smile. It made me wonder who has filled these gaps and made their mark on the young women of today.

I wonder if the audience for Dessen will be teens or the millennials like me who held onto her books like a life raft. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.

God bless the writers who dug up these characters and breathed life into them somehow. They were characters that served as guides and friends along a difficult journey. I will never forget a Dessen book I bought at the airport on my way to camp, Lock and Key. I only read it on the plane. While everyone slept on the return flight to Tampa (or wherever we had scheduled landing— I think it was Tampa), I finished that book and cried in my seat quietly. It was one of those books where I felt like a different person by the last page. Something inside of me healed a little.

Those stories are stamped in those of us who lived them deeply.

I am glad Dessen is back to bring us back into her world of docks, bikes, music and healing. We will forever hate Spinnerbait! Iykyk