About Esmé Weijun Wang
A sanctuary for people who feel deeply in a world that often feels like too much
Hanif Abdurraqib, MacArthur Genius Grant awardee and best-selling writer, once said, “I’ll stay as long as staying gives more than it takes,” and those words spoke to me enough that I still refer to them years later.
As for me? I'm author, speaker, and teacher Esmé Weijun Wang, and I created this newsletter, REASONS FOR LIVING with Esmé Weijun Wang because I know what it's like to search for those crucial, critical reasons to stay.
As someone who lives with schizoaffective disorder (and plenty of other diagnoses, both psychiatric and physical), I've spent my entire life navigating the tender landscape between safety and danger. I've been to the edges—those territories where continuing on feels like an impossible ask—and I've found my way back again and again. Not through platitudes, or toxic positivity, but through the accumulation of small, true things worth staying for (because I believe that trying to pinpoint One Big Saving Grace is too hard so much of the time).