f*ck i love you

Kieren Brittkovich is a counsellor and transition specialist who is finishing a master’s in conflict analysis and management. Before that, she cycled across Canada and converted a school bus that she then lived in. She also spent ten years building The Lady Alliance, a community that grew to 24 chapters across North America and helped women and non-binary people find their way into the outdoors.

She also happens to be a good friend of mine and one of our co-hosts for the first Deep End retreat with Anna McClean and I that happened this October on Vancouver Island. We recorded this conversation beforehand, so you’ll hear us talk about the retreat as something still to come. If we pique your interest, you can learn about future retreats at deependretreats.com.

We talk about why she seeks out change, the phrase “brave for a girl” that steered a decade of her life, and the burnout she only recognized once COVID shut everything down.

Then we get to the part I’ve been turning over ever since. Kieren said that if you’re not designing your life, you’re letting it happen to you. I’ve spent most of the past two years functionally disabled, and the agency I had went toward healing rather than toward shaping a vision. So I pushed back. It turned out that what she meant and what I heard weren’t the same thing, and working through that gap is my favourite part of this episode.

In this conversation:

* Why Kieren loves it when plans fall apart, because it means she gets to plan again

* How being called “brave for a girl” became the seed for The Lady Alliance

* How fear, knowledge, and safety shape who gets to feel at home outdoors

* The moments she’s proudest of, when someone realizes they can do the thing

* Burnout, COVID, and knowing when to hand something you built to someone else

* Why the come-down after a big push or a flow state deserves planning too

* “Design your life or let it happen to you,” and what that sentence asks of people whose capacity has been taken away

I’d love to know what that sentence brings up for you. Tell me in the comments.

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Amrita Ahuja and I have been in some version of this conversation for nearly a decade. I’ve taken her Groundwork course, been coached by her, brought her into client work, and spoken at one of her retreats. Now Groundwork is a partner to The Deep End, which gave us an excellent excuse to record one of our conversations.

Amrita’s work begins with a question that sounds almost suspicious in 2026: can you be productive and at peace?

Groundwork offers a practical way to manage the emails, tasks, decisions, and ambitions that fill a life. But the practical system rests on a bigger question: what happens when we stop using achievement to try to feel safe?

We talk about growing up in survival mode, the strange belief that the next completed task will finally bring relief, and why people are hungry for a different relationship with work. We also get into the part I couldn’t let pass quietly. When illness takes away your capacity to work, what does it mean to be told you can choose your state of mind? I push Amrita on the pressure to perform resilience, and we work through that tension together. It’s the part of the conversation I’m most glad we had.

Eventually we find our way to deep work: the pleasure of following an idea without having to justify every minute of it. And why making space for that might require more than a better calendar.

In this conversation:

* Amrita’s childhood experience of survival mode and the origins of Groundwork

* Why “I’ll feel better when I finish this” keeps moving the finish line

* Simple systems, ritual, and the possibility of peaceful productivity

* Disability, forced rest, and the limits of resilience as advice

* Work as identity during illness and economic upheaval

* What a different environment can make possible for our attention and creativity

Amrita is the founder of the Groundwork System and a partner to The Deep End, the deep work retreat Anna McClean and I are hosting October 12–16. You can learn about the retreat at deependretreats.com.

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What if the smallest unit of civilizational change is a conjunction? A love story about language, attention, and words that build worlds.jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com

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What the Cascadia Subduction Zone can teach us about compounding, cascading, invisible economic risks — and why nobody is pricing them in. More at jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com

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What scuba divers know about surfacing that knowledge workers forgot: depth needs limits, and your workday has none. Deep Work, part 2, read by Jenn. Full essay: jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com · deependretreats.com

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On burnout-by-nobility and the modern violence of overwork — why making space for depth is an act of rebellion. Deep Work, part 1, read by Jenn. Full essay: jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com · deependretreats.com

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Welcome to The New Good Life f*ck i love you — Episode Published: March 22, 2026

About This Episode

After a long period of rest and recovery, Jenn returns with a relaunch of f*ck i love you — and a name for the idea she's been circling since she started writing here.

This is the essay that introduces The New Good Life (tNGL): a framework for the civilizational shift already underway, rooted in bell hooks' love ethic and the radical idea that wealth, wellbeing, dignity, and deep relationality aren't utopian — they're emerging right now, just not evenly distributed yet.

Jenn also walks through FILY's new architecture (four sections, one publication), explains why she's folding everything under one roof, and asks — with characteristic awkwardness — for the thing none of us are supposed to ask for.

In This Episode

What "The New Good Life" actually means — and why it needed a name

The old social contract, its collapse, and what we're building instead

The 10-3-1 principle and FILY's new structure

The Lemmings metaphor: what the fracture of community actually looks like

A direct ask: how to support this work

Links & References

FILY on Substack

Pathways to Prosperity: Navigating Structural Transformation

All About Love — bell hooks

Project Baseline — Shawn K & Dave Foulkes

Support the Work

Paid subscriptions start at $9/month. One-time support via Buy Me a Coffee. Or just share something you loved.

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In this raw and intellectually intimate conversation, Jeffrey James and Jenn McRae dive deep into the crisis of connection, exploring how transactional approaches to relationships are fueling a pandemic of loneliness. They examine how OnlyFans, AI companions, and other technological "solutions" reflect our collective failure to build and maintain the muscles of relationality in a culture that systematically undermines human connection.This conversation is part of an ongoing exploration of love ethics, relationality, and how we might rebuild our collective capacity for meaningful connection in an increasingly transactional world. It's a passionate call to recognize that our loneliness crisis isn't a technology problem—it's a cultural one that demands we cultivate new ways of being together.

***

00:01:01 Origin Story: When Jenn and Jeffrey First Met

Our hosts share their personal history, tracing back to their first encounter in 2011 at the "blue house" in Vancouver and how their relationship has evolved over 15 years from romantic partners to the deep friendship they share today.

05:40 From Partners to "Core People": Evolution Beyond Traditional Labels

Jeffrey and Jenn discuss the limitations of the word "friend" to describe their relationship and reflect on how they've maintained a meaningful connection that transcends conventional relationship categories.

09:06 Fierce Abiding Love: Jeffrey's Love Ethics

Jeffrey shares his philosophy of "fierce abiding love" - a practice of staying present through conflict, offering benefit of the doubt, and maintaining generosity of spirit even when relationships get challenging.

14:00 The Friendship Crisis Among Men

Jeffrey reveals a troubling pattern from his therapeutic practice: how many successful men have zero friends and no place to process difficult emotions outside their romantic partnerships.

18:15 The Loneliness Pandemic: A $400 Billion Problem

Jenn shares research on how loneliness affects one in six people globally, contributing to 100 deaths per hour and economic costs exceeding $400 billion annually in the US alone.

19:28 Transactional vs. Relational Engagement

The hosts explore how transactional approaches to human connection—whether with chatbots or other humans—create loneliness, while relational approaches activate our social engagement systems and promote wellbeing.

23:14 The Rat Park Experiment: Connection as Antidote to Addiction

Jeffrey uses the famous Rat Park experiment to illustrate how properly nourished social connections make us less susceptible to addictive behaviors, whether those are substances or technological "solutions" to loneliness.

26:37 A Future Worth Living In: Jeffrey's Radical Imagination

In closing, Jeffrey shares his vision for a future worth living in—one with deeper connections, devotion to something larger than ourselves, and a commitment to being connected over being right.

***About the Hosts

Jenn McRae is a writer and transformation strategist practicing in Victoria, BC, Canada. jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com thepermissionlessprof.substack.comJeffrey James is a psychoterapist and soul guide practicing in Boulder, Colorado, USA. jeffreyjames.coach jeffreyjames676896.substack.com

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A live conversation with Mark McGrath — former Marine Corps officer, OODA synthesist, co-host of the No Way Out podcast: transformation, John Boyd's OODA loop, cultural immune systems, and the Guardians of Decay. More at jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com

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This is a recording of a talk I gave at Big Bear Retreat Centre, July 9 2025. The talk shifts focus from individual systems to the larger systemic pressures that create overwhelming stress in our lives. Introduced by Amrita Ahuja Groundwork CEO and founder, the conversation begins by acknowledging "the Impossible Task" —the reality that we are consistently asked to do more than is humanly possible, and that the resulting feeling of failure is not your fault. When Amrita passes me (Jenn McRae) the mic, I frame our current moment as a massive "historical transformation" , the "death rattle" of old systems that are no longer working. This forces a distinction between simple change and true transformation, which requires a breakdown of the old way of doing things as new ones are being built.

We talk about how these dying systems manifest as "urgency culture" within our organizations, creating environments where individual efforts to find peace and balance are often rejected by a "cultural immune system" set to crisis. The speakers explore how our individual autonomy eventually hits the limit of the system we're in. The antidote proposed is a return to "relational practice" and a courageous willingness, especially from leadership, to "throw out the rule book" and create new, more humane ways of being and working together. This is a call to action to recognize the crisis, reject personal blame, and begin the work of birthing a new world.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferangelamcrae.substack.com/subscribe