While taking Alexa Chung on a video tour of her Chicago home for British Vogue, Tavi revealed, among other things, how she’s coping with a recent breakup. Now, remember: Tavi is a highly evolved teen, so when enduring a breakup there’s no Instagram stalking or listening to that Taylor Swift album over and over. Instead, she listens to David Bowie (“an androgynous alien who doesn’t sing about love”) and healthily channels all those feelings into a “self-help wall” that looks a lot like Oprah’s vision board, minus the whiff of middle-aged desperation and Oprah’s chai.
It seems easy to make (required materials: graph paper, markers, deep thoughts) and like a good thing for female humans of all ages to have. If you’d like to replicate it, here are a few examples from Tavi’s own self-help wall:
1. An inspirational mantra that was not originally written to inspire: Tavi chose “Live through this” as her guiding manifesto (the title of Hole’s 1994 album).
2. A “things to look forward to” list: graduation, moving to New York, wearing new clothes, appearing on Broadway.
3. A “just be like” list: In order to be her best self, Tavi seeks to emulate Patti Smith, David Bowie, Abbi and Ilana, Wayne Koestenbaum, and some other people that I, an adult, had to Google.
4. A self-portrait: She recommends drawing the ideal self to help manifest the ideal self. The ideal Tavi is the one who sits in the window and listens to Janet Jackson’s 1986 album, Control.
I hope she saves all of these pages, because they will inevitably end up being the contents of her self-help/memoir proposal in the near future.
