Jonathan Saint Shapiro

Writer. Musician. Entrepreneur.
Stories about identity, reinvention & being human.
The Room + new essays

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Pain has a strange authority when you’re inside it. Because it’s happening now, it starts making claims about forever.

#MentalHealth #Healing #Mindset #SelfWorth

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

The hardest part of healing wasn’t learning to love myself.

It’s realizing I had spent most of my life making other people responsible for whether I was allowed to feel okay.

#MentalHealth #Healing #NervousSystem #SelfWorth

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

At twenty-two I walked into 75 Rockefeller Plaza with a cassette and the real belief that my life was waiting for me upstairs.
I handed it to a stranger. Then I went home and waited.

Free to read. Link in bio.
#WaitingForMyRealLife #ColinHay #LongIsland #FiveTowns #writerslife

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Sixty years ago today, The Doors signed with Elektra Records. I wasn’t born yet. But in throughout life, Jim Morrison bwas one of those artists I kept looking to. The quote is Jim’s. The older I get, the more I understand what he meant.
#doors #quotes #jimmorrison #60years

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

@aimeemann Thank you, Aimee. Your songs found me in some very dark places and brought me back to myself.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Some pain doesn’t just hurt you. It tries to recruit you.

It tries to make you colder. Less generous. Less willing to care.

What fascinates me is how often that fails.

Because after everything some people have this almost unreasonable desire to give something good away.

[John Densmore @JohnDensmore]

60 years ago, we unofficially signed to Elektra Records! It was a real ‘wow’ moment - we had actually made it.

Next thing you knew, we were putting up our own billboards, recording albums, and playing shows all across the world.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

For everyone who ever spent a Saturday working a sales floors.

Not visiting one.

Working one.

#RetailLife #RetailProblems #RetailWorkers #IfYouKnowYouKnow

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Get in the Mix. If you shopped with us, you heard it a thousand times. It was more than a catchphrase. It was an invitation into a world Rene and I built. Fifteen stores. Eight brands. Welcome Home Wednesdays. Pink bags.
Then we walked away from it all.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Ego doesn’t always look like ego. Sometimes it looks like loyalty to a version of yourself that stopped being true. That may be the hardest kind of growth. Not becoming more. recognizing that the version of you who saved your life was never supposed to run the rest of it.

#Ego

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

I used to think confidence was walking into a room knowing I belonged there.

Knowing the answer.
Knowing the plan.
Knowing exactly what came next.

That’s easy confidence.

The harder kind is built when none of that is true.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

I was sitting in my backyard when I noticed a brown rabbit in the grass. I watched him. He was incredibly calm.
“Look at the little rabbit.”
My wife looked across the yard. Then she went back inside. She returned holding my glasses.
I had spent ten minutes bonding with a leaf.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

The work is the visible part.

What made the work is the part nobody gets to take.

Your taste. Your scars. Your timing. Your failures. The years you spent becoming the person who could make it in the first place.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

I was nineteen, on somebody else's mattress, when my whole life walked through the door at 4 AM.
Link in bio.

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Imagine treating the most important, impactful, influential woman’s basketball player ever like a piece of shit. Insane disrespect.

By the way shes got 25 and 9 assists and is 5/6 from 3. And they HATE her for it #freecaitlin

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

I used to think the difficulty was the diagnosis. Road's hard, so I must be lost. Must've missed a turn somewhere. Everyone else seemed to be cruising and I was climbing. Took me most of my life to consider a different explanation. The road wasn't hard because I was lost.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

We all have something we can’t use, can’t throw away, and still aren’t ready to let go of.
New live on Substack. Link in bio.

[Chuck D @MrChuckD]

They Changed Everything 1986 RT ⁦@IAmKRSOne⁩ ⁦@OfficialRakim⁩

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Simons says get the fuck up.

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

https://t.co/UC0ubMCv11

[Jonathan Saint Shapiro @JonSaintShapiro]

Ronnie's. Pies Plus. The Chambered Nautilus. Pants Patio. Pic-A-Pak. Trees. Jildor. Romeo's. Harvey's Place. The Cedarhurst Theatre.
If those names mean something to you, we probably passed each other on Central Avenue.