the Empathy List #132: What is PLAY for?

Don't let fascism steal your joy - pick up a puzzle. (+ Last call to join the launch team!)

A bit of bizness before our regularly scheduled programming…

My book releases in ~ one month. (*tries not to hyperventilate*) Amid holiday festivities, I KNOW you won’t remember my book— duh! Cause you’re plugged into your churches and families and neighborhoods and PTAs! (That’s why we get along so well!)

So, can I ask you a favor right now? Go preorder the book.

If you’ve already preordered the book for yourself, tell a friend to go preorder, and voila, you’ve created a mini book club. Or if it’s in budget, buy a copy for that friend. You know they’ll love it, AND you’ll be helping out this newbie indie author. ;-)

Also… today is the last call to join the launch team!

If you like what you see and want to read an early copy with a (zoom) room of genuine, artistically minded, inclusive Christians, join my early reading club. This launch team will be joyful and heartfelt, and I’d love to see you there. (Scroll to the bottom for the launch team details.)

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Hello friend, Liz here.

PHEW, my inbox is insane right now. It’s either “DEMOCRACY IS DYING IN DONALD’S GRUBBY PAWS” or “GIVE ME EVERYTHING IN YOUR WALLET.” I hate adding to that noise. Usually, I break from email writing in December for that reason. Who needs one more to add to the large, loud pile of unopened mail?

However, this year, since I have a book coming out (oh, you hadn’t heard?), I do not have the luxury of taking the holidays off, not really.

If I’m honest, this has put me into a state of overwhelm. This is not my normal rhythm and my body knows it. I am humming and rattling at all hours, barely able to shut down when night arrives, a machine in my own body.

(I’M FINE, REALLY)

I have a hunch this state of being is not purely a Liz problem, nor a “debut author launching a book in a crumbling capitalistic empire undergoing revolution” problem. Because the holidays are like this for many of us—so frantic, so expensive, so sticky sweet, so overstimulating. Add to this the hum of the next American presidential administration preparing for war and, well, who isn’t having nightly panic attacks? (Actually, I’m exaggerating, but I know some people who are and I love you very much.¹)

In times like these, Americans are tempted to make every second count. Our hobbies must be productive. We must learn to protest as we sleep. We must shop til we drop, until we deplete even the dregs of the bank account. We must squeeze every drop of goodness from these holidays. Yet I know you and I cannot be whole and healthy humans with the snapping dog of productivity at our heels.

So I have adopted one vital practice to get me through this season of over-working (and that I actually need in every season):

I play.

That’s it.

I make time for PLAY.

My friend

K.J. Ramsey

recently wrote about her new obsession with tetris — yes, the video game tetris—as a recovery tool from her second double-knee surgery. She started playing the game because a new friend raved, and she and Ryan found the experience calming.

And then she found that researchers have done research on the effect of tetris on the brain: playing tetris is calming, centering. Playing games like tetris may be a shortcut to mindfulness. (Who knew?)

Illustration by Eline van Dam

While tetris isn’t my game of choice, play has also become essential part of my grown-up life.

As a child, I was often described as serious, responsible, older than my years. I had older friends and longed for the autonomy of adulthood. As a teen, I heard these descriptors as a compliment (mostly); but now what I hear is that I did not have the opportunity to be a child. I grew up before my time. And no doubt, I also received far less opportunity to play—in safe, low stakes, nonjudgemental community.

Play is the way that children learn to be human. Researchers will tell you that play is the single most effective tool for children in consolidating their lives, and it should make up a significant portion of their education. Play helps children develop resiliency and emotional health. Play teaches relationships. To a child, play is their engine of learning, feeling, being. And not being allowed to play seems to have detrimental effects well into adulthood.

Consider this fascinating story from The Hechinger Report:

In 1966, when psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Brown was assigned to a commission to investigate what led University of Texas student Charles Whitman to kill 12 people in one of the country’s first mass shootings, Brown and his colleagues considered many different aspects of Whitman’s background. The student had access to firearms at home; he had witnessed abuse while growing up; and he had a difficult relationship with his father.

But Brown was struck by one other factor that came up in the commission’s discussions: Whitman had experienced play deprivation, or an “almost complete suppression of normal play behavior,” as the commission put it, while growing up.

That finding motivated Brown to ask more questions about play and its role in healthy human development. In the years after the shooting, he and a team of researchers interviewed men who were incarcerated in the Texas Huntsville Prison for homicide. When the researchers compared information about the inmates’ childhoods with a population outside the prison, they found that the comparison group could provide abundant examples of free play in childhood, while the group inside prison largely could not. “The parallelism between their play deficiencies, and the objective problems in forming trusting social bonds with others seems very significant,” concluded Brown in a 2018 article.

When psychologists studied both the UT shooter and incarcerated men, comparing factors from their early influences and lives, they discovered a throughline of “play deficiency.” Put this way, it seems that play is a vitamin of which you and I can become deficient. Our bodies and minds, needing the benefits of play as all mammals do, become malformed in its absence.

Illustration by Eline Van Dam

As someone who experienced enough play deficiency that, before entering college, I believed I was not an imaginative person (HAHAHAHA), I have found adult play to be healing. Adult play provides many of the same benefits that make play so useful for children—when adults play, we too receive dopamine, build our relationships, make unexpected connections and meaning out of our day-to-day living. We also learn to focus deeply, to cultivate creativity, and to develop resiliency in a low-stakes endeavor.²

Additional benefits I have found:

Play connects me to my body (I spend most of my time in my brain! Seated in front of a computer!).

Play teaches me to release my perfectionism (‘cause, let’s be real, I’ll never knit the perfect scarf).

Play encourages me to laugh at myself.

Play provides needed distraction when I feel overstimulated (including by bad political news).

Play has also taught me that every game, season, recipe ends. That no season lasts forever. That there will always be an after party. You can move on and continue beyond this moment of frustration, pain, despair. Pain has taught me resilience.

So, what kind of play do I enjoy? Depends on the season. Lately, I’ve graduated to 1,000 piece puzzles (I could only do 500s for a very long time!), and I’ve been lucky enough to find some Charley Harper puzzles at my favorite thrift store. ;-) I’ve also been listening to Louise Penny’s mystery series, Three Pines, on audiobook. I’ve been walking over the lunch hour in slow circles around the neighborhood, often dragging my husband along. I’ve bought cat treats for the cat that has adopted us (we named him One-Eyed Jack… because he has one eye…), and I occasionally sit on the porch, placing the treats strategically so that I might be able to pet the poor guy someday (he’s too terrified to be touched, though he follows us around when we’re outside in the yard). And I love love love cozy games, including the most recent Zelda release, Echoes of Wisdom, which my son saved up to buy for the family/himself (Mario meets Zelda? Yes, please).

Anyway, I’m sure you have plenty of your own favorite things to do when dread looms. But take this as a reminder to take your need for play seriously: play is not tangential, but essential to our being as humans. This is your permission slip to enjoy your life, even when your life seems to be too. much.

Now, please excuse me as I follow my own advice and finish my latest puzzle on the counter before I jump into another interview on the press tour for my book… ;-)

Thanks for reading, my friends!!

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

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An Invitation to Join an Early Reading Book Club (aka Launch Team…)

Friend, if you plan to buy and/or read my forthcoming book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible (available for preorder now!), I want to invite you to an early reading book club (aka Launch Team).

In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a book launch team is a grassroots hype team for an author releasing a book. ;-)

Over 4 1-hour meetings during the weeks of December 30,2024 - January 25, 2025,⁴ we’ll be reading and discussing from a digital copy (via Net Galley) that my publisher is offering to all you early adopters.

In between our book discussions, we’ll have other fun stuff such as:

-a publishing Q&A,

-a chance to meet Jeremy, the artist behind the book and my life partner!

-an “Ask Me Anything” (or two? depending on time?),

-a chance to win a 12-oz bag of from my favorite fancy coffee roaster in my city—I’m a third-wave snob)—for hosting your very own Saturday morning book club!,

-and a surprise in the mail (spoiler: it’s art! I’m sending you risograph prints of the art! They’ll be so pretty! And we just found out Jeremy’s fine art collages in the book were recognized as exceptional by an industry magazine 🥹).⁵

To join the launch team / reading club, there’s a few prerequisites (listed in order of priority):

1. Pre-order and try your best to read Knock at the Sky. ;-)

2. Attend at least 1 out of 4 Zoom book club meetings between the weeks of Dec.30 -Jan.25, 2025, hosted by yours truly and my hilarious therapist friend, Ashley Ward. (Each will last for 1 hour.)

3. Share about the book with 1 IRL friend.

4. Review the book on the site where you preordered (Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.) during launch week and if you have an account, copy/paste your review to Goodreads, too.

If you cannot commit to a launch team or a four-week book club, THAT’S OKAY AND I STILL LIKE YOU.

Here are other ways to support me and the book:

1. Like and share my posts about the book on your social media channels.

2. Request your local library to stock the book.

3. Host an IRL book club with 2-4 friends. (Or suggest to read the book with your long-running book club.) I’m planning to make an appearance at 25 book clubs this year, and I’d love to come to yours!

4. Suggest the book to your church leaders as a resource or potential curriculum tool for your church.

5. Convince your church small group to read the book.

6. Invite Liz to speak to your organization or church.

7. If you’re a writer, write a review of the book wherever you publish your words (blog, Substack, social media channels, IRL community newsletter, etc.).

I’d love to have you join the early reading club. Seriously, I enjoy you all so much and I cannot wait to see your faces!!! (Um, hi, I’m an extrovert.)

But even if you cannot join, please know that you are a gift to me and I’m delighted you’re part of this Empathy List community. *heart eyes*

1. I’m actually not having panic attacks, just exaggerating for effect. Although I have been battling insomnia. Praise the good Lord for Zoloft!!!!

Scientists have found that play enhances the lives of children in five areas:

2. Brings joy: Play taps the brain’s reward centers, leading to the release of dopamine and the benefits of that joy hormone throughout our bodies (including “better memory, attention, creativity, mental flexibility and motivation”);

Makes meaning: play links disconnected ideas together, allowing children to make sense of their lives;

Teaches decision-making: taking charge of play allows children to develop the characteristics of “executive functioning,” a phrase that describes “how we focus, plan, remember instructions and juggle tasks”;

Cultivates problem-solving and creativity: by returning to the same game over and over, children naturally iterate on their original experience, adding elements or getting better at accomplishing their particular goal. Of course, this innovation on a small-scale becomes second-nature, teaching kids to be adaptive and resilient;

Practicing relationship: kids practice low-stakes negotiations with any of their partners-in-play and gain the opportunity to wrestle through differences of opinion and personality. These early interactions provide the building blocks for healthy relationships into adulthood.