Ampersand Gazette #124

Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …  

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Men Are Onto Something.
Quitting Is Great. 

I couldn’t do it anymore. I had a toddler to chase and a baby to feed and a home to manage and a book to write and a body I didn’t recognize and a life I felt throttled by. I just wanted everything to stop. So I reacted the way I did whenever I faced what I optimistically called a setback: I worked harder. 

What about men? Despite all the “take it like a man” narratives, men often quit, especially when conditions are hard and stakes are high. Not all men, obviously (or women, either). Under stress, women downshift but make it through. Men under stress go to extremes. They take more risks and walk away with nothing or all. It tracks with what the masculinity scholar Richard Reeves argues about how we’re raised: Boys are like orchids. They are fragile and protected. Girls, he says, are like dandelions—surprisingly tough. 

For most of my life, I was the cheerfully-die-trying dandelion type. And then there I was, squarely in my 40s, expecting to reap the benefits of all my life’s hard work but instead frenetically pushing harder as I failed more. Now I think those men were onto something I missed. Too much grit can work against us. What is the point of overcoming every obstacle if the effort leaves you exhausted and stuck? In a marathon, there’s a finish line. In life, we can grind forever. 

Society bombards us with messages of perseverance. Our head-down tendencies start early. Girls learn to work. Boys learn to win. A man who chooses to rest probably doesn’t think of that choice as quitting at all. But for women, the options feel self-defeating: Take the rest and feel guilty or skip the rest and feel exhausted—and mad. 

The joke is on us. We forget that surviving is not the same as success. Giving up on things that don’t work is the only way to find things that work better or to go farther than before. If we treat quitting and persevering as opposites, we lose. 

Looking back, I realize: Women do quit, all the time. We quit on ourselves. 

I don’t pretend to have a magic solution. But I can at least recognize that just as quitting is a choice, so is not quitting. Now when I’m grinding, convinced the finish line is just one push away, I ask myself a simple question: Why am I still doing this? “Because I can” doesn’t automatically mean that I must. 

Excerpted from an Opinion Essay by Lindsay Crouse in The New York Times
“Men Are Onto Something. Quitting is Great.”
August 30, 2026 

There was a time when I thought I’d go mad repeating these same words over and over again: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s yours to do. Mostly I said them to women, those Virginia Slims ladies who wanted it all—home, family, career, all—and believed they could have it. 

Years later I remember reading in some coaching article: You absolutely can have it all—just not at the same time. Clichés both, but things become clichés for a reason. 

A lot of us have a fear of quitting—anything. The reason is because we’re afraid if we quit that we’ll never work again. It’s a vague momentum fear that we elevate into an equally vague momentum theory. I must keep going at all costs. Certainly, that’s what Ms. Crouse found. 

For this reason, I’d like to recommend a quarterly practice that I think you’ll find both useful and fascinating. Block off a couple hours to yourself. (I know you’re busy—just DO IT.) Then sit with your calendar from the last three months, and rate your experiences. Lunch out. Flat tire. Huge conference. Playdate. It doesn’t matter what you’re rating; it matters that you’re rating it. Oh, I forgot to tell you the scale you’re rating on: Fulfillment. Did this fulfill me? 

Now fulfillment is an interesting idea. Because a lot of things can go together to create fulfillment, which, in themselves, are mostly meh. Call to set up dentist appointments for the year. Ho-hum. But if taking care of your family’s health is fulfilling to you, then this call is part of the path to fulfillment. 

Don’t be too fussy either. Go through your calendar in twenty minutes. Annotate your ratings. Do a little bit of quick calculation. On a scale of 1-10, ten being the highest, how much of the last month contributed to your fulfillment.  

Now look at the next quarter. Where are you going to block out time for your fulfillment—your direct fulfillment? Can you find a couple hours a week to commit?  

The thing of it is that if you’ll do this, you’ll find that your nose is against that grindstone far less. You have fewer resentments. And a lot more fulfillment. We just need to train our brains to recognize it. 

The night before my youngest brother John started public school, my mother got down to his level, and said, “John, repeat after me. ‘My mommy is the mommy who brings the paper napkins.’” I howled. She had three older children who thought nothing of volunteering our mother for thirty cupcakes several times a year. 

My mom got clear about what she was willing to do, and what she wasn’t willing to do. Cupcake-baking no longer fulfilled her. (And maybe it never had, but she did love us, and sometimes, that meant thirty cupcakes.) She enrolled her youngest in her plan. Then she had far more fulfillment, far fewer opportunities that she wanted to quit, and a whole lot more energy. 

If you’re not going to prioritize you, Belovèd, who do you think will? Is this mine to do?—regardless of your ability to do it—is a very valuable question. 

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It’s your road and yours alone.
Others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.

Rumi 

The Question: 

How can I stay focused on my own road? 

&mpersand Answers: 

My immediate thought about this was from the world of driving. It’s easy. You stay focused on your own road because you wish to keep yourself, your passengers, and the rest of those on the road safe. But that’s a mandated focus. In fact, it’s legally mandated. We might recognize it as the common good. 

What about when you’re walking? The most important thing to remember is that it is your road, and even if you have company on it every once in a while, it’s still only yours. Because walking is so much slower than driving, there’s a lot more opportunity to be distracted. 

One of the things that few of us ever question is whether we are interested in our lives. Are you? Interested in your life? You’d be surprised how few people are. Interested in their lives. 

And isn’t that a sad state of affairs? For heaven’s sake, this life is the most important one you’re having right now, and if you’re not interested in your own life, isn’t it time to do something about that? 

Even if you have a dead-end job, are in a marriage that’s falling apart, are foundering under a mountain of debt, interest in your own life is your responsibility. And I don’t say that to hand out guilt! But instead, to remind you, even if it seems like your every minute is scheduled, you still have private moments during a day. Read a book. Call a friend.  

The fastest way to get interested in your own life is to show interest in the life of another. 

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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …  

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 I had some insight this week into how and why this writing process is different from any others I’ve experienced. I’ll share that in a minute but first let me brag please. 

I wrote 8,000 words this past weekend. And each and every one of them just flowed out of my hands.  

This is what I meant by obedience. I’d been studying a particular topic—no spoilers here—for a long while, not sure how I wanted to handle it. No, that’s not right. I thought I knew how I wanted to begin it, and oh, yowza, was I wrong! Anyway, I did finally happen upon the way in to the subject, and that’s why the writing of it flowed so easily.  

The insight came from a comment of my husband’s. He said we’ve been spending a whole lot more time around a whole lot more people, and he’s totally right. COVID allowed us hermits to be hermits, and for we who are hermits, it was heavenly. (Not so much for the extroverts, sad to say.) But dialysis means spending time in a busy dialysis unit; this particular one has thirty chairs, and each one is usually full.  

So that’s thirty people, plus all the caregivers who whip around to adjust this or readjust to get a blanket or fix the television or hand out meds or stop the incessant alarms that burst from the delicate machines like killer wasps or whatever their latest task is. What it means is that it takes me longer to fall into that solo writing space—because there are LOTS of distractions.  

Anywho, 8,000 words in one weekend has pushed me over the two-thirds mark on Betrayed. So why is this writing process different from any others? Because my life is so different. I know better than to think my writing won’t automatically reflect my reality. 

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Please make this indie author happy. Choose one of my series, and read all of them. Then review all of them. That’s the way others find books. 

You could start with The Subversive Lovelies, which is a completed five-book series about Gilded Age women who simply refuse to follow the rules.

This is a real picture of the four buildings the siblings inherit that starts their whole whirlwind of proper social disobedience—the Scandalicious Sisters indeed. 

Or, there’s always Mex Mysteries … the first one is Oklahoma! Hex, and it’s free. There are eleven of them so far, please, be my guest! Oh! And it’s still on the Metaphysical Bestseller List!!! Or maybe your cuppa is one of the five butch-femme romances in Boots & Boas, which is an ongoing series with many more planned.  

There’s always the option of starting with one series and reading them all! That’s what I do when I fall in love with an author. 

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Many years ago, when I was still working on Broadway, friends got tickets to Cats from me, and then invited me to dinner with their friends after the show. It wasn’t an unusual way for people to thank me, and they proposed meeting at 21—a famous restaurant, where I had never been. When they arrived, they introduced their two friends as Christina and David. Then the fun began.  

The staff treated “Miss Christina” with an unreal form of deference, and other indicators eventually led me to the conclusion that I was having dinner with none other than the notorious Christina Crawford! My friends hadn’t bothered to mention that. Well, the rest of the evening was Christina explaining how she came to write Mommie Dearest. Essentially, her therapist made her do it. 

Now, how, you might ask, does Christina Crawford’s memoir path touch my favorite editor (and husband) Tony Amato? One of the things he taught me years ago was that sometimes I have to write the book I would never publish first. It doesn’t really matter the vessel—book, essay, postcard, email, memoir, fiction, nonfiction, you name it. Sometimes we have to just blurt out the words as they come, and only later is it time to bring an editorial eye or pen to it. 

Only because she was Christina Crawford did that book ever see the light of day. She needed Tony Amato. 

I’ve seen Tony do this with several clients, and the process is amazing. He holds your story, your emotion, your conclusions whilst you slam it onto the page. If it turns out to be a book, or part of a book, or a radio play, or something else entirely, Tony is skilled at choosing the right moment for your story. 

So if you think there’s a … written something that is banging on the door inside you to get out, consider allowing Tony to hold you while you no longer need to hold whatever the story alone. His first session is exploratory for you, and for him. Find Tony Amato here. 

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Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality by Massimilla Harris & Bud Harris  

As is so often the case in my reading life, one book, the one I recommended in the last issue, has led to another. Sometimes I think that bibliographies in nonfiction books are my favorite chapters.  

Here’s the blurb: 

In this exceptionally readable book, Jungian analysts and authors Massimilla and Bud Harris dynamically weave their own personal and professional experiences in the form of rich and compelling stories, providing a down-to-earth book available to a wide audience. 

A Book for Women...for Men...and for our Culture... Imagine within each of us, there is a deep, powerful source for living lives of love, creativity, and fulfillment. To imagine this foundation for life and the energy it produces is to imagine ourselves and our world filled with the influence of the archetypal feminine—her passionate creativity, love, and ageless knowing. Personally and culturally, this force—which lives at the heart of our lives—has been diminished and wounded until it seems to have retreated beyond the horizon, in a world filled with rationalism and an anxious search for the material "good life." 

This is a powerfully moving book that goes beyond gender roles into the soul of the archetypal feminine, exploring how it has been damaged and traumatized, and finding out how this condition affects all of us. Through the myth of Medusa, the authors create an inspirational guide for healing, revitalizing, loving, and nurturing the archetypal feminine as we awaken our own voices and transform our fate. 

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Generally speaking, I find Jungian analysis fascinating. Taking the universal myths and fairy tales and showing us how to use them for growth and healing is both a viable and a valuable way to assist humankind in our need to change. The Medusa Myth, as given the Jungian spin in this book, is riveting.  

I particularly enjoyed when the authors shared their own personal work with Medusa. This pair doesn’t take on the alleged objectivity so falsely promised in Freudian analysis. The analysts in this book are persons who are healing and growing through the Medusa paralysis as well as their analysands and readers. Their humanity shines in this useful retelling. I recommend it. 

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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one? 

There’s no reason you should know
who this grinning man is, but I happen to,
and I find him a consistent inspiration,
which is how he warrants being a sign. 

Well, not just him, Tim Dolan,
but also his company,
which is called
Broadway Up Close,
and is the première theatre tour guide
in the ♥️ of Times Square. 

Tim, like me, is a theatre history geek.
He knows more about Broadway and its buildings
than anyone I’ve ever known,
and his

E*N*T*H*U*S*I*A*S*M

is contagious! 

The word itself, enthusiasm,
means to be inspired by God.
For real. 

So Tim is our sign
because his very existence
demands that we look for our own
enthusiasms,
and pursue them. 

That’s what we’re doing here
on Earth.
All of us. 

Tim has his; I have mine.
What’s yours? 

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I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we? 

Until next time,
Be Ampersand 

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P.S. There have been some inquiries about donations and tax deductions. Sanctuary, the organization which umbrellas all of my work is a 501(c)3, and donations are fully tax deductible. Donate here using this address via Paypal. Or send a check snail mail to: Sanctuary, 16 Van Gaasbeck Street, Kingston, NY 12401.