We Belong Together

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Cannonball with Wesley Morris (produced by The New York Times)
Episode: We Belong Together
Date: June 16, 2022
Hosts: Wesley Morris & Jenna Wortham

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Overview

In this intimate and reflective episode, Wesley Morris reunites with Jenna Wortham after her extended break to discuss the many ways people maintain connection, especially through long absences and tumultuous times. The conversation weaves between personal stories about friendship, the challenges and beauty of solitude, the physical experience of separation, the importance of community (from family to grocery store encounters), and the healing power found in intimacy, water, and everyday joys.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jenna’s Return & The Meaning of Absence

• Jenna shares her experience of being away for eight months to work on a book (“Work of Body”), diving into themes of dissociation, trauma, and learning embodiment.
• She describes her struggles with re-entry into New York City, feeling disoriented and questioning, “Where is my body in space and time right now? I don’t know.” (03:30)
• Jenna reflects on the challenge of maintaining relationships with her two young “nibblings” (nieces/nephews) during her absence, touching on the inevitability of being forgotten as part of childhood’s nature.
• The emotional return home is described vividly as one child enthusiastically greets her, but the baby asks, “Wait, what’s your name again?”—a humbling, grounding moment about the fragility of memory and presence in loved ones’ lives.
  • Quote (Jenna): “I’m your tita Jenna. Don’t forget it.” (06:26)

Keeping Friendship Alive at a Distance

• Wesley confides his anxiety about losing connection during Jenna’s time away, underscoring the depth of their long-running friendship:
  • Quote (Wesley): “I was really interested in what could change… what would the disruption of our daily, weekly, hourly, by-the-minute relationship be like?” (06:39)
• They reminisce about a treasured video Jenna sent from upstate New York—chopping wood in crocs and short shorts—which Wesley jokingly calls “dyke history” and suggests she belongs on an HGTV show:
  • Quote (Jenna): “That was the beginning of the departure… I wanted you to witness this transformation so we could keep talking about it.” (08:47)
• Both cherish their text exchanges, including a moving one after Sidney Poitier’s passing, illustrating the comforting rituals in modern friendship.
  • Quote (Jenna, reading her own text): “I wish I could invite you over for a meal. I feel like you really need it right now. Just know my door/table is always open, no matter where I am in the world.” (10:49)

Community, Identity, and the Restaurants of Life

• The pair discusses a NYT article about how restaurants address customers regarding gender—prompting laughter and a deep conversation on language, inclusivity, and representation.
  • Wesley intends to generate a thoughtful dialogue about gendered greetings; Jenna notes the first restaurant profiled is named “Gay4U,” and delights in the community’s small victories.
    • Quote (Jenna): “Not the first restaurant being called Gay for you… we are taking over.” (12:11)
• Their playful banter highlights the joy and resilience in queer community, even in the seemingly mundane.

Loneliness and Its Antidotes

• Jenna candidly admits the hardest part of her sabbatical was anticipating inevitable loneliness. She cites a NYT article: “Being lonely can be as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day,” and questions the compounded health impacts for people who face both loneliness and racism.
  • Quote (Jenna): “I had no way of knowing what that lonely would look like, what the texture would feel like… would it be a bottomless pit, a spiral?” (13:52)
• She describes her intentional choice to stay near water everywhere she lived, recognizing water’s sensory comfort as a source of grounding and solace.
  • Quote (Jenna): “That briny smell and that sound and the sight is just familiar. It’s comfort. It’s home.” (15:35)

Water as Metaphor and Memory

• Jenna’s voice notes often include references to water—sailing, swimming, floating—creating metaphors for return, ancestral memory, and Black liberation.
  • Quote (Jenna): “There’s something about, you know, African Americans in water… It’s always a return.” (17:16)
• Communal swimming becomes both an act of pleasure and remembrance: “How lucky and how unlucky,” she observes, honoring the complexity of Black relation to water, past and present.
• Living on a small island, she learned the beauty of being known in a community:
  • Quote (Jenna): “It became very safe and it became very lovely… something I looked forward to, which is being known and letting people in.” (18:37)

Community, Tragedy, and Everyday Intimacy

• Wesley recalls the Buffalo supermarket shooting and the role grocery stores play as centers of sustenance, interaction, and hard-won intimacy in Black communities (19:00–21:00).
• They reflect on the loss of such spaces and the resilience required to maintain them, especially amid collective trauma and loneliness.

The Ongoing Work of Connection

• The episode circles back to the fundamental need to intentionally nurture (“water”) relationships, appreciating the work done to keep them alive, even in absence.
  • Quote (Wesley): “We watered it. It was being tended, because look, here we are.” (21:41)
• Jenna describes her state on returning: more open, “protective over that openness rather than being closed and protective over that closedness.” (22:04)
• The mood is one of hopefulness:
  • Quote (Wesley, quoting Jenna): “Buckle up, baby. It’s gonna be a ride.” (22:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Reentry & Recognition:
  Jenna: “The baby tilts her head up at me and goes, ‘Wait, what’s your name again?’ … I said, ‘I’m your tita Jenna. Don’t forget it.’” (06:26)

• On Everyday Rituals in Friendship:
  Wesley: “To like overuse this water thing – we watered it. It was being tended…” (21:41)

• On Loneliness:
  Jenna: “Loneliness is for me very fear based. And the fear is that I’ll be alone forever. No one cares about me and I’m gonna die. And these are all like childhood voices that pipe up in times of insecurity.” (16:34)

• On Blackness and Water:
  Jenna: “It’s always a return. And it’s an honoring… we get to have this entirely new experience of this body of water that those before us did not have the privilege of experiencing.” (17:27)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:39–02:40 — Opening voice message, Jenna’s return, setting up the episode
• 03:04–06:37 — Jenna on leaving, writing, relationships with family, reentry
• 06:39–10:00 — Wesley on friendship, the cherished “axe” video, rituals of connection
• 10:06–12:49 — Text exchanges, the meaning of community care
• 13:38–15:44 — The realities and dangers of loneliness, personal strategies
• 15:56–18:37 — Water, Black memory and healing, communal joy and intimacy
• 18:37–21:41 — Buffalo, grocery stores as community, tending relationships
• 21:44–22:18 — The state and work of friendship, replenishment
• 22:21–22:37 — Anticipating what comes next, hope and joy

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Tone & Style

The conversation is earnest, playful, and deeply personal. Wesley and Jenna seamlessly move between laughter and frank discussions about race, loneliness, joy, and cultural memory. Their rapport is full of humor, affection, and a shared understanding cultivated over years.

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Conclusion

This episode, filled with stories about absence, reuniting, community, and healing, offers a compelling meditation on the ways we stay woven into each other’s lives—across distance, hardship, and the passage of time. Jenna and Wesley’s candor creates a space of intimacy and honesty, affirming the hope that “we belong together,” even when we’re far apart.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, hold up.

[B]

This is your minute, your day to.

[A]

Play, to make, to move, to move through, to explore. It's your body to rest, to nourish, to grow.

[B]

It's your mind. You know, it's your place, your life to love, to dream, to change.

[A]

It's your world to understand the New York Times. Find out [e-mail] yourworld voice message received from Jay Wortham.

[B]

Hawaii, December 2021. And also, I had desperately wanted to paddle to an island since I've been here because it's a thing that people often do, and you can, like, anchor the boat and snorkel and, like, you know, I totally get it. And at the same time, I also often read the news. And so I know just how many people are swept away into the ocean every year. But my man, he was like, just, he said, let me see your phone. He said, put a dot on this map in the middle of the ocean. Was like, swim, like, paddle towards that. Sometimes no is also the best answer, despite how you know, amazing what needs to happen. Looks like I came back. I said, kevin. He said, y' all didn't make it. I said, kevin, has anybody made it? That's really the riddle I want to leave you with. Has anybody made it that you have sent out there anyway, my dear, my beans are soaking, my greens are cleaned. I made sorrel this year for the first time. So that is steeping. And I'm feeling pretty good. What are you doing tonight?

[A]

Jay Wortham?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You sent me that voice note from Hawaii while you were gone for a long ass time writing a book.

[B]

I did.

[A]

And now you are sitting across from me in New York City in a studio.

[B]

I am. Here you are dressed like a vision in cream.

[A]

Confirm parfait.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Absolute parfait.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

So I think we should just start. I'm Wesley Morris and I'm.

[B]

Ooh, sorry.

[A]

You didn't know what's gonna come out of there. Who's that?

[B]

There's some cobblers in there. Whew.

[A]

I'm Wesley Morris.

[B]

I'm Jay Wortham.

[A]

We're two culture writers at the New York Times.

[B]

This is still processing the original blend.

[A]

And today on the show, we're gonna talk about how we stayed connected while we were so far apart.

[B]

Wesley.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Good to be with you. I've been away for eight months working on this book that's called Work of Body because it's about the work of the body. It's about dissociation. It's about, oh, my gosh, life it's about trauma, it's about embodiment, it's about trying to figure out how to live in one's skin, which now I acutely understand. Coming back to New York because the whole ride on the subway here, I was just sort of like fighting, like, where is my body? Where is my body in space and time right now? I don't know.

[A]

Subway will do that.

[B]

But, you know, I left the city, I left my apartment. I was upstate for a while at a residency. I swam in a lake every day. And then I was invited out to the beautiful islands in Hawaii by family, friends. And I've been thinking so much about friendships. I've never left New York for that much time. So it felt inevitable at some point that the day to day communication, or the week to week communication, whatever it looked like, was gonna break down on my side too. I knew I wanted to disappear. I wanted to take Michaela Cole's advice and I wanted to not be afraid to disappear and see what would happen. And I have these two little nibblings in my life. These two toddlers.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That I love so very much. And, you know, we would FaceTime and I could see that they were changing. I could see them acquiring more language and having more mobility and just I'm like, are they going to remember me? A fundamental part of childhood is that you forget things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I had to really reckon with how it would feel if I was a part of their past that they had been jettisoning. Right. Like there was something about losing the years I spent feeding these children beans and rice, you know, holding them when they wouldn't stop crying, helping them get ready for bed, taking them to the park. Like, if they forgot all those things, it would just feel like I had lost a fundamental part of my life too. But I had to accept that that was a possibility because that is human nature.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I knew reentry was gonna be tough. But even though I was in this period of acclimation, I was like, I gotta see these babies. So I roll up and as I'm walking down the street, it's like my pulse is kind of racing. I. I can see them. And at this moment, the four year old looks up and sees me and just starts bouncing in her chair.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And then the little one just starts running in that kind of Gumby kid way where their hands are flailing and their legs are flailing, and she just barrels into me. She's like, I missed you. And I'm like, I miss you too. And I scoop her up, and I'm swinging her around. I'm like, all this emotion, all this energy. The baby's looking at me, and she's, like, getting swept up and reaching up towards me and grabbing at me, and I'm just, like, you know, trying to catch my breath. And the baby, like, tilts her head up at me and looks at me and goes, wait, what's your name again? And I was like, wow. Really? And it was just so. Wow. This is the spirit of the city humbling me, letting me know, don't ever get too big for your britches. So I looked at her and I said, I'm your tita Jenna. Don't forget it. And she was like, okay. Welcome home.

[A]

Yeah, welcome home.

[B]

It was perfect.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was so perfect.

[A]

Well, you know, if I'm being honest, I was a little nervous that when you left that I wouldn't feel connected to you.

[B]

Ooh.

[A]

I was really interested in what. What could change. Right. What would the. What would the disruption of our daily, weekly, hourly by the minute relationship be like? So I don't delete any of our communications because they're gold to me. And you sent me a video that I will cherish forever.

[B]

What was it?

[A]

Well, it's about nine seconds long. You sent it from upstate New York while you were at the beginning of your leave. And I'm just gonna ask you, do you remember the day you turned into Jack Nicholson at the end of the Shining and, like, picked up an ax?

[B]

100%.

[A]

So basically, you've got this axe, and you're in, like, your short shorts and.

[B]

Your tank and crocs.

[A]

And crocs. Because you. You didn't change.

[B]

No.

[A]

And the wood was stuck to the axe.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you just kept taking the ax.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And swinging until the axe went all the way through that log. That was stuck to the axe. It was amazing.

[B]

That was dyke history. That was deep. A deep moment. I was preparing the firewood.

[A]

All right, P. Bunyan.

[B]

I loved it. That's. That's right, P. Bunyan. That was a moment, too, of just having been inside for two years. You know, like, really just having rode out the peaks of the panini. So to get outside and to be able to be that physical after so much stasis.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Was so invigorating.

[A]

Like, it just seems hard. And to watch you do that and to hear people cheer, it just felt like the release of an amazing energy. But I'm curious, like, why. Why did you share that with me?

[B]

Hmm. Because that was the beginning of the departure I had just left. And because I knew this year of rest and relaxation and book deadlines was going to be transformative, it felt like the beginning, material evidence of what that transformation might look like. And I sent the video to you specifically because I wanted you to witness this transformation so we could keep talking about it. But I also knew that you would know I wasn't trying to brag, and I also wasn't trying to show off.

[A]

Ah, yeah.

[B]

That you would get it and know me and know that it's coming from a place of triumph. Yeah. Just being mindful of the luxury of being able to take a sabbatical and not wanting to flex it.

[A]

All I got from that video, I mean, one of the many things actually, was, we need to call hgtv because move over, property brothers.

[B]

I know.

[A]

I would just love to see you in a cabin with an ax.

[B]

Me too.

[A]

And now that I know more about what it meant, I kind of love it even more.

[B]

Aw. But I have to say, Wesley, I love your text messages, too. I saved them all. Like this exchange we had after Sidney Poitier's Homegoing. Oh, January 8, 2022. You wrote, Did I ever tell you that Oprah and Denzel and Hallie and Will and Jamie and a bunch of other people like that would go and sit with him over the years? I replied, I'm glad to hear this. Too often we die in isolation, without community. It brings me a lot of joy to think about that love and that support system. I wish I could invite you over for a meal. I feel like you really need it right now. Just know my door slash table is always open, no matter where I am in the world.

[A]

That's kind of what I mean. I don't know what the end of my life is going to be like, but I do kind of hope people are coming through to say, we love you. Do you want some pudding?

[B]

Mm. Mm.

[A]

I will also say this is unconfirmed. I heard it from one of the people in that list of people that that is what happened. It doesn't matter. Some version of that.

[B]

Some version of that for him.

[A]

So, speaking of such things, the New York Times, where we work, they put out a whole story about. About how to address people when they come into restaurants with this from the.

[B]

Standpoint of gender overdue.

[A]

So you walk up to the host, and the host is like, sir, here's your seed. And I thought, this thing is speaking our language. This is a conversation we've been having for years.

[B]

Ladies, ladies, ladies. More dessert. Ladies how are you doing, ladies? Look, I was a server for many, many moons. I get it. But we know better now as a culture, so let's do better.

[A]

Yes. And I forwarded you this thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Fully expecting to continue our dialogue and to talk about some of the finer points in this article, but instead, what I got was this.

[B]

Not the first restaurant being called Gay for you. Yes. You thought you were sending me an article that would affirm my spirit in seeing the ways that both our paper and this nation were letting go of the gender binary in ways that, you know, I would care about.

[A]

I really, really was. Yes.

[B]

And the first image is from a restaurant called Gay for your. I'm like, we are taking over. I just got so delighted by our community. And that's. That was as far as I got. It just.

[A]

That went right by me. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know what you did, Wesley. You read this whole last thing, but you missed the point.

[B]

I was laughing so hard.

[A]

You laughing was the thing I guess I didn't know I needed when I sent it to you. I thought I was trying to, like, stoke some intellectual conversation.

[B]

Well, that, too.

[A]

Okay, let's take a break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk about loneliness and its antidote.

[B]

Wesley, the hardest thing about leaving for almost a year. Okay. Was knowing that at some point, I was going to get really, really lonely.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I had no way of knowing what that lonely would look like, what the texture would feel like. Would it be a bottomless pit, A spiral? Devastating, exhilarating. And I honestly don't have a lot of experience with that. Right. Like, I've. I've gotten very good at keeping the lonely away with all the material trappings of my life in New York. And this very paper ran a story about how bad loneliness is for your health. I believe one of the stats in the story is that being lonely can be as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes.

[A]

What?

[B]

Lonely people. Yes. Get sicker than not lonely people.

[A]

Can I ask a math question about. Just. I'm sorry. I'm struck by this. Like, what does racism plus loneliness equal?

[B]

I mean, read the obituary section, baby, I don't even know what to tell you. Like, this whole year, we can name them all.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I wanted to disrupt my life. I wanted to disrupt my relationship to the city, my relationship to work. But I also know myself, what I like and what I need to feel at home. And for me, that is always a body of water. Huh? So every place I went, I made sure to be very close and in some places extraordinarily close walking distance at times to a body of water. That kind of briny smell and that sound and the sight is just familiar. It's comfort. It's home. It's home. So there were these moments when I would feel really adrift, actually. Right. Like I don't know where I am.

[A]

It's a great word.

[B]

I don't know what I'm doing.

[A]

It's a great word.

[B]

Why am I here? Why did I leave everything again and I would just get to the water?

[A]

I mean, you sent me a lot of voice notes that had to do with water, but I was struck by how you sent me this one particular water oriented voice note.

[B]

Wesley. I've been on this water almost every day. I have sailed on it, I have swum in it, I've swum across it and back several times because a few of us were out there just like in our little canoes or kayaks or rowboats, just kind of floating, telling jokes and laughing and then kind of getting sucked back up into the moon was really, really, really profound.

[A]

Wow. What did the water do for your sense of loneliness?

[B]

Oh, God. It just, it was the, it was just the ultimate reminder that I was not alone. That loneliness is for me very fear based. And the fear is that I'll be alone forever. No one cares about me and I'm gonna die. And these are all like childhood voices that pipe up in times of insecurity. And so when I'm feeling lonely and I go into the water and I'm reminded in a deep way of all that came before me and who all still walk along aside beside me, pretty much I'm not alone, you know, and it, and it brings me a lot of comfort. I'm always me here. I always know how to swim. I always know how to be in the water. I know how to learn to be in water.

[A]

There's something about, you know, African Americans.

[B]

In water, of course, you know, it's always a return.

[A]

It's always a return.

[B]

It's always a return. And it's an honoring and it's, it becomes this sort of celebration as well as a grieving moment that we get to now be on the water voluntarily, that we get to float on it. We get to have this entirely new experience of this body of water that those before us did not have the privilege of experiencing. And when I am floating on a lake with other black people and looking up at a full moon, it's like, how, how lucky, you know, how Unlucky and how lucky. And one of the biggest things that I learned while I was away was the beauty of intimacy. I had the real grace of living in a small community and, you know, on a tiny island where you really can't hide. And that, for me, is not a safe thing. But it became very safe and it became very lovely. And it became something that I look forward to, which is being known and letting people in.

[A]

I hear that. And there's a way that you're talking about community and intimacy and how it reminds me of what I imagined that community was like in Buffalo before that shooting happened last month.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that community that that shooter went into in Buffalo, that had been talked about as having been a food desert where there's no place to get fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. And the community that forms around the acknowledgment of a lack and the solution of a lack with tangible products that nourish you, the idea that this person who is. I'll just be extremely generous and say he was suffering from loneliness. And I just can't shake the idea that these people, black people, had found something that was more than an oasis, right? It was a source of sustenance. This little community in the store. And so many of us live in these deserts, and it's rare to get something like this, like a whole supermarket where there was none before.

[B]

And you can imagine how grocery stores can also function as communal intersections, right? You get to know people who are shopping at the same time. You get to know the managers, you start to talk to the cashiers. You start to have this knitting together and this familiarity and this intimacy. That's also something that's been really hard won and hard earned after the last couple of years. I mean, grocery stores used to be this place of terror, right? Like, we didn't know, like, were we gonna get sick from just touching the same roll of paper towels. And so there's this experience of being able to go back in, get what you need, say hello. And for some people, especially older folks, I mean, that might be the most hang out interaction you have all day. That's right.

[A]

I have to say, though, that when these sorts of things happen, it does make me appreciate this thing that we have, you and I. And I think that there are these moments where you have these disruptions.

[B]

And.

[A]

They just sort of reinforce what was already good about a place or a relationship because you have maintained it. I mean, to like overuse this water thing, we watered it. It was being tended because, look, here.

[B]

We are, here we are.

[A]

How are you feeling about being here where we are?

[B]

Really, really tender. You know how pretty dusty and burned up I was when I left. So it's nice to be back. You're shining to be replenished, right?

[A]

Like a diamond.

[B]

And I will say that I do feel more open and I feel protective over that openness rather than being closed and protective over that closedness.

[A]

Wow. Wow.

[B]

What do you think it's gonna be like now that I'm back?

[A]

Oh, to quote you to you. Buckle up, baby. It's gonna be a ride.

[B]

And that's our show. Still Processing is produced by Alyssa Dudley and Hans Buto. It is edited by Sarah Saracen and Sasha Weiss.

[A]

The show's mixed by Marian Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello.

[B]

Digital production by Mahima Chablani and DEZ Ibaqua.

[A]

And our theme music, as always, is by Kindness. It's called World Restart from the album Otherness. And we just want to thank all of the people who helped make the show. Yes, Alex, Bill Haneef, Margot Harle, Isaac.

[B]

Daphne Brooks, thank you all for holding it down. You kept the roof over our heads. And last but not least, shout out to Gay4U, bearer of untold joy and vegan delights, who was not able to survive the pandemic as a storefront, but like a beautiful gay butterfly, has transformed and is now a popup. Check them out. And also come to Brooklyn.

[A]

Also, this is our last episode. A little bit for a while. Not forever, just for a little bit. Little tiny bit.

[B]

Thank you for listening. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for always reaching out in between seasons. We hear you, we see you, we appreciate you.