Donna Sheridan Summer: A Character Study
You don't need to go abroad to find adventure and romance this July.
My dear readers, it is July 1st, and I am OFFICIALLY in my last year of medical training as a psychiatrist. July 1st is the new year in academic medicine, and for me it is year TEN (aka PGY-6, post grad year six after the four years of med school) and it feels awesome.
I had my last call weekend last week, and over the past two months, have been on call basically every other weekend. It has been busy, and my regularity on here has been poor. I’m so excited to be moving into my last year of training, to have my weekends open for the first time in 8 years, and to have space to play again. As always, thank you readers for your patience at the times when my life in medicine demands more of me and makes writing regularly more difficult. I think we are almost out of the highly intense part of that era of my life.
Now let’s get on to July’s theme…
Donna Sheridan July: A Month Worthy of Your Journal
Listen, you’re never going to get a serious version of me that isn’t revisiting romcoms, musicals, and pop culture. It just isn’t the form I live in. I want to advocate in this month’s theme, though, for why Donna Sheridan is a character that is particularly important to consider or have as a muse in July 2026.
If you haven’t seen Mamma Mia (one and two, duh), consider this a spoiler alert? Honestly, I’m not sure how any of my readers would have not seen these movies though, it feels like my readers and avid watchers of this movie as a Venn Diagram would be a circle.
1. Between the raucous joy of the World Cup in the US and the videos online, you don’t even need to travel abroad to have an adventurous, exploring summer.
HEY—before you check out, yes this means my readers who are happily mothers and wives and constantly battling it out with their kids’ laundry and summer camp schedule. Adventure and romanticism are not only reserved for single women before age 25. It is part of the strange way our world teaches us to view ourselves that we only get access to certain parts of our humanity at certain life stages. So, even if you’re not trying to go date a Scot in a kilt at your local bar, this still applies to you.
Travel and adventure open us up through novelty and positive disruption. This month, we are being consistently shown online what happens when patterns are disrupted and new minds meet. We’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years only being shown the pain and suffering that happens when difference meets and causes political panic. The World Cup is showing us the more important part of living in a global, melting-pot world: we are greater together, and way weirder, than when we are apart.
Actually physically going to new places is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. Given the current economy, current events, and the current shenanigans happening for those of us with student loans, I would hesitate to cut ourselves off from adventure just because it has to happen at home. For most a majority of humans in our history, all drama and excitement happened at home (just ask one of the great Russian novelists) (Yes, I’m referencing Tolstoy while extolling the values of Mamma Mia).
2. Donna Sheridan is depicted very much as Hot, Cool Girl. She and her friends are also sort of losers, but remain open to life despite it.
She’s alone a lot. The one dude of three that she loves leaves her, somewhat out of the blue. She’s left pregnant and 22 and with a dream. Her friends are quirky. She’s smart, and blonde, and beautiful, but there are MANY aspects of her life in both movies that aren’t exactly what someone would post openly on socials today.
Her primary drive, despite it all, remains one of openness and a desire to taste and see the world. In the first movie, she re-opens up to her past. In the first movie, we see that openness at her launch to Greece and into young adulthood.
I believe I wrote about this 6 months ago, but my theme song for this year is this song from Glee. The song itself and that it is from glee, and telling almost 10,000 of you this (AGAIN, no less!) is almost enough of an exposure to being loser-ly enough. We are too held back by our fear of being seen as a loser, odd, ugly, too late, too much, too little. What if you asked how you can purposefully try out being those things, and noticing that you survive it?
3. You cannot convince me this cinematic world is not a Matriarchy.
Female friendships are centered. The mother-daughter, or caregiver-dependent relationship is central. Becoming, over and over, is central. Men being silly and dancing and emotionally open. Everyone finding their way to connection by the end.
Though there is romance in these movies, the romantic connections never seem to quite be center screen. I don’t say this to say the men and romantic concerns of the movie aren’t important and delightful—but for this being a romcom musical, the themes don’t focus primarily on romantic fulfillment as the main story.
Summers of love and desire and flirting and “dot dot dot…”, and yet, it seems we’re always talking about what a big life means for the women in this movie.
4. You gotta flirt with life like you mean it.
July is high summer, and it’s juicy. It’s sweaty and loud and crowded and robust. It asks to be tasted.
I once had a philosophy teacher who thought that sexuality, as a broad concept, was not to be thought of in how limited and restrictedly as we think about in our society. He viewed it has how our body relates to the world, and that sensuality was a much bigger part of it than we give credit.
Donna flirts, endlessly. I would argue that her flirting with the world isn’t just in her romantic twists, but in her endless openness to new starts, to wanting to see and feel the world, to her curiosity and boldness. Flirting is close to playing, and playing is being open to making something new with someone. There is a reason all of these words often get tossed in together.
You can have a torrid love affair this month—or three. You can also ask yourself where all the playing went, the creativity, the openness, the seeing what feels good in the moment, and try to find it again.
5. A life worth journaling about.
You start to journal more, and it impacts how you live. You start to live more, and it impacts how you journal. A life worth journaling about is not all about having some big, fantastical events happen to you. Journaling invites you to pickup the sands of your mundane hours and feel the grit as it flows through your fingers back out to sea. It is, as ever, that prayer that is attention. The gift of it is that this attention then plants us more firmly into our lives.
Your journal can be a junk journal, a sketch journal, a “Dear diary”, morning pages, commonplacing…the list goes on. It can be any daily thing that asks you to pick up your life and express something about it. The main thing is taking your own life into your hands and being curious and loving about it.
Today is July 1st, 2026, and you won’t get this evening or this week back. How would you like to use it?
Talk real soon,
Margaret of Bad Art Every Day