why i left substack for a year
...and why i came back
i’ve been mostly off of social media for a good part of the last year. partly because it was just too much. too much noise. too much heartbreak. too many opinions. opinions about too-muchness and not-enoughness that left me feeling paralyzed. partly because i have hard time maintaining healthy boundaries with the thing. (does anybody actually know how to do that?). and now more than ever i just want to divest from meta (and other) platforms that enforce policies that make their spaces unsafe and use the currency of our attention to mine and sell our data.
the problem is that when i leave social media entirely i feel disconnected from community and uninformed about the issues i care about.
last year, i started a substack called weaving wild. it was about love activism and community care – bridging the gap between new age spirituality and activism (basically learning to move from love and a feeling of connectedness rather than hate and fear in activist spaces). i only wrote a couple of posts and i recently decided to take them down. i don’t think there was anything wrong with the message (i still think that’s what’s needed and am personally striving to that end), i just don’t think i’m the right person to build a following off that particular message. my activism is in its infancy. i’m still learning how to show up in community. i also find myself moving further and further away from associating with new age spirituality. it was a really helpful stepping stone to develop a deep devotional practice but the more time i spent in new age spaces, the more problematic many of the ideas felt. in fact, it led to a whole new experience of ‘not-enoughness’ that i’m happy to be on the other side of. that said, there are already really incredible, beautiful, love-filled people out there who have been doing this work for a long time (adrienne maree brown comes to mind!) with lots of resources that already exist.
all of this is to say, i’m starting fresh! going forward, this substack is (probably mostly) going to be about my own personal transformations and the ways i grieve and embrace change; as well as my death doula perspective on the cultural death midwifery needed in our world right now. i plan to share my visual art here, my word-witchery, journal prompts, oracle and tarot spreads, many, many links to the people and things that i love and anything else my heart is moved to share.
***if i’m being totally honest (which is sort of my thing), another big part of why i stopped posting on substack was because i didn’t ‘get it’. i didn’t find it super user friendly and didn’t really understand all the features. maybe as i inch closer to forty i’m just less inclined to want to learn new things – especially techy things. but now that i’ve decided to divest from other platforms, i have a renewed excitement to figure this one out (which is a relief for my soul because long-form writing is my favourite way to feel seen). if anyone has any tips for someone who is newish here, they would be very happily received!!***