Field Notes: June 2026
Integrating an experience with ourselves, Brain Care Score, and much more
Hello, dear friends!
Happy first day of summer, happy Father’s Day, happy Sunday, all the things!
I hope you are finding a happy note in your days.
For me, one happy note was a concert this weekend with Dar Williams, a national folk musician whom I adored as a high school and college student, and who lives close by now in the Hudson Valley.
She played yesterday at a free music series, in a church with an vibrant stained glass window behind her, singing songs I’ve known for 20+ years in her gorgeous melodic voice — The Christians and the Pagans (1996) and The Babysitter’s Here (1993) — and songs I had never heard before with a local shine — like The Hudson (2005).
Have you ever heard a song that somehow transports you to a different era in your life? You can’t quite pinpoint the exact mental room, but there’s a sort of musical scent in the air with the sensory transportation to a different age. Say, 16 or 20. Oh, our bodies. Our cells somehow remember so much, even if our consciousness can’t rouse the details.
And with that, friends, it’s time for Field Notes, a roundup of interesting things I’ve run across this month.
If you are new here, welcome! Here’s a sampling of past Field Notes:
I hope you find something useful, illuminating, or delightful for you below.
Take care,
Brianne
Find your Brain Care Score
Dr. Lucy McBride in her newsletter shares the Brain Care Score, which is a simple quiz that gives you a number, followed by concrete things you can do to help protect your brain and lower your dementia risk. (I appreciated that I didn’t have to give my email address to receive my score.)
Read the post and take the quiz (from the Global Brain Care Coalition).
How to Integrate an Experience into Who You Are
Tanmeet Sethi, MD contemplates the three stages in clinical research medicine and so much in life: preparation, experience, and integration. She writes that we are familiar with the first two, but integration “is the part that almost never happens. Nobody teaches us how.”
She continues:
“Integration is not debriefing. It’s not journaling once and moving on. It’s not ‘processing your feelings’ in the way that phrase has become shorthand for something we’re supposed to do quickly and then stop talking about. Integration is the active, ongoing practice of allowing an experience to become part of who you are.”
Dr. Sethi uses her son’s graduation from college as one example, and psychedelic-assisted therapy as another — and that’s what is in the post’s headline — but integration is applicable and possible in so many situations.
So what does integration actually look like? Dr. Sethi shares a few things she’s seen work, in herself and in her patients, including naming the transition, identifying what you want to bring forward, and creating a small ritual.
She emphasizes: “It doesn’t require a therapist or any medicine at all. What it requires is the willingness to treat your own significant experiences as deserving of more than a quick recovery and a return to normal or a new baseline.”
Read the post.
Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth
All newborn babies have a lack of vitamin K, so the standard protocol has been to give them a shot at birth. More parents are declining that shot, and the very rare cases of babies with vitamin K deficiency bleeding are rising, according to this investigation by ProPublica.
Read the article.
The Power of Micro-Progressions
This is a wild conversation between Tim Ferriss and Jerzy Gregorek, a weightlifting coach who helped a young man with cerebral palsy slowly go through a radical transformation.
Listen here or read the transcript.
A New Study for Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Needs Your Help
Dr. Jen Gunter shares that “Researchers are testing a wearable nerve stimulation device that may reduce menstrual bleeding.” They need 80 participants for the trial, ages 14-45 with a history of heavy periods. “The hypothesis is built on preclinical work showing that vagus nerve stimulation modifies platelet function and improves clotting.”
Read the post.
How Do You Find the Resilience to Keep Going?
Jessica Slice, disabled author of Unfit Parent and many other books, answers a question from her mailbag:
How did you find the resilience to keep going when you were hit with such an unexpected maelstrom with your daughter? I find that with the passage of years and with a succession of health issues (on top of the CFS, I have post concussion syndrome, had breast cancer) my emotional gas tank or inner resilience is getting smaller and more fragile.
Her full answer is worth a read, but this is what sticks with me:
My Dar days go back to the mid-90’s, and I’ve seen her live many times. What you said about being transported is completely accurate! Especially songs like February, Iowa, Traveling Again. So many good ones!