Today’s TDWS with author Amy Gabrielle started with grief and somehow wound its way through widowhood, dating apps, feminism, sexual reinvention, OnlyFans, Substack community, and what it means to rebuild a self after the life you expected disappears.
Amy joined us to talk about her memoir Widow in the City — a very GenX story about losing her husband, trying to survive early grief, and then throwing herself headfirst into dating, sex, fantasy, and self-discovery in midlife New York.
What stayed with us most was the way she talked about grief not as a clean, linear process, but as something strange and contradictory. Sometimes dissociative. Sometimes liberating. Sometimes deeply funny. Sometimes devastating.
We also got into dating app rhetoric, the Burned Haystack Dating Method, the politics of female sexuality, online community, GenX feminism, and the increasingly blurry line between intimacy and performance on the internet.
Thank you Dr. Amber Hull, ShālahBPookie - TheRebelCrone, Courtney, Yanni Hamburger, Lynn, and many others for tuning in, and to Karen Marie Shelton and Yanni Hamburger for moderating with moxie.
Thanks for listening!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
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