In January, I quit therapy. I told people (including my therapist) that it was about the money — specifically, that I was about to have a lot less of it. I had just been laid off from a job where I was, in retrospect, wildly overpaid; without it, I could no longer justify the $300-per-session fee. (My therapist, of course, didn’t take insurance.)

And it’s true — it was about the money. But also, I … wanted to quit.

I first found my therapist after I lost a pregnancy in 2022, and for a long while, our time together was helpful. Lately, though, I was using our sessions to cycle through the same three objectively dumb topics: the way I was constantly making plans I didn’t really want to keep, my worries about whether I ever would (or even could) write a second book, and my increasing anxiety at work. I would bring up the same issues; she would give the same advice. Nothing changed. (Well, until the universe took care of my job.)

Did you have “Trump praises fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter” on your election-year Bingo card? Us neither. Melinda French Gates is resigning from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but not without an additional $12.5B for her charitable work. Louisiana could become the first state in the country to categorize mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances. Liam and Olivia are still the most popular baby names in America. Someone needs to settle the intermittent-fasting debate once and for all. MDMA therapy could be legal by summer, but many advocates are sounding the alarm. And what the hell happened to Anya Taylor-Joy on the set of Furiosa?

Sign up to get Brooding, a subscriber-only newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.