An Attitude Shift toward Substack

(Yes, on Substack)

Dear Companions,

Perhaps a great mile marker of my journey is my attitude shift toward Substack.

It’s not that I forget about it. It’s just what was freeing about being so sick: I didn’t care. My purpose was simply to express what was happening to me. And yet, I also cared so much. Too much? Because it was all that was happening for me.

I went from someone who rarely talked about her inner world, not even her pregnancy, to someone who felt compelled, on one of the worst days of her life, to write her first post, to share about things like crying, IVF, and so on.

And this was the only thing I did in a week. To take some lesson, some reading, something I was experiencing, and encapsulate it into a post. To make the week alive, worthwhile.

Each post, for years, caused me pain. Pain from concentration, pain from expression, pain from the pressure of publication. Sounds silly, but that’s the truth of illness and autonomic dysfunction.

Every step of growth was mirrored here. Eventually, as I got more breathing room in my situation, this became a place where I moved beyond my illness, to discuss healing. The first time I laughed. Even sometimes politics!

Or a place where I began to think obsessing about building Healingvrse.

Or a place to share more about what can hep others, like post-traumatic growth research. The pain from writing or sharing slowly withdrew…

Ultimately, as I have to be more video-centric for Healingvrse, I realize this will likely remain the place to chat with friends. Not so much about conversion or anything like that… just a place for self.

Like this very post. Written freely. But also because I can feel a bit of hesitancy coming back. A bit of, hey, these people don’t want to read about that. Or hey, this isn’t good at all, why are you doing this? Or hey Substack doesn’t really convert, it’s not a high growth platform, so what’s the point…

My illness called for a place to be my true self, so I need to keep her clean, like my goldfish does her tank.

If all my illness did was establish a place like that, I am grateful.

But the compulsion to do so is gone. And so I have to figure out a balance.

A balance between the lack of compulsion, and the duty to upkeep.

The balance between moving beyond the past, but still being somewhat stuck in it.

The balance of daring to dream again, when having still a limited body.

The balance between optimizing limited time toward things that will generate real results, and preserving my heart, and all of lessons on life I’ve learned.

That in your darkest moments, no result in the productive real world matters. And yet, when you emerge from the darkness, how happy you are to find the threads toward your life, some successes, your network, to connect back to.

Like if George Clooney had survived at the end of Gravity (uh, by simply pulling on the rope back to the ship, duh).

No neat tidy ending here today, just another evolution in my view on writing from the heart I wanted to share.

With much love from the Healingvrse,

Rebecca