Dear Secretary Duffy, I am writing to thank you for initiating America’s Golden Age of Travel. I thought you’d like to know how it changed my travel life. [published on Substack July 2026] https://janetbestdart.substack.com/p/the-golden-age-of-travel?r=2twahq&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

https://janetbestdart.substack.com/p/on-weeding-and-writing?r=2twahq&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [Published on Substack May 2026] Dare I admit I like to pull weeds? I slip my fingers around the grasses that took over my garden during my year of cancer treatment. They spread like—well, like weeds—filling every bare patch of earth, threading themselves through the heart of a Shasta daisy, racing faster in the flower bed than in the lawn. Hungry for water. Fo

I missed his first steps. His first words. His first everything. Janet with baby, 1975 What do you do when you learn—half a century later—that your infant was treated like a lab animal? That your love was withheld not by accident but by design? https://janetbestdart.substack.com/p/i-discovered-my-baby-was-used-in?r=2twahq&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

All the while I've been writing. It seems to be all the energy I have, because I can sit and move my fingers. My fingers, which flew over...

Sometimes when you speak your truth, you lose friends. When I wrote about my reactions to HBO’s The Synanon Fix several months ago, I received kudos from some ex-Synanon members, and a definite chill from others. That silenced me. For a while. https://open.substack.com/pub/janetbestdart/p/speaking-my-truth?r=2twahq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I finished this quilt the day after I finished my memoir. Mixing colors and piecing fabric together helped me piece together my life in...

"Oh my God. All these decades later, I still look at shaving my head through the lens of living in a cult. It made sense at the time. No!...

Melancholy. Anger. Despondence. That's how watching HBO's The Synanon Fix left me.

My first reaction struck me: I need to toughen my gut – right out of Synanon lingo. Not, what the hell is she talking about? No, I was...

HBO's documentary starts today. I always experience a little dread when these documentaries come out. Will it be another sensational,...

https://open.substack.com/pub/janetbestdart/p/synanon-was-the-granddaddy-of-all?r=2twahq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Once you've bought the party line, life is simple. Your main goal is to show everyone else the way. Your life has direction. You can be...

https://substack.com/profile/171147806-janet-best-dart/note/c-46237498?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2twahq

https://substack.com/profile/171147806-janet-best-dart/note/c-45312882?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2twahq A must-watch. I lived...

Then, one day, my baby was moved five hundred miles away from me to be raised in a community school.