Welcome to The Privilege to Feel!
January of 2024 marked five years of being a published author and public speaker. I saw something once that said the spaces between, where it feels like there’s not much going on, are the places offered to us to refocus, process, and recover. While I am very much a working writer and continue to fill my calendar with speaking gigs, a year ago, I did not have a huge, all-encompassing, *book deadline* looming over my head. I decided to take advantage of that.
My newsletter has historically been a Thing that made my publisher happy. It was something I felt I had to do to appease publicity and marketing teams and didn’t offer much other than a way for me to promote my books and events while sharing a little bit of my life. I saw what many other writers were doing with their Substacks, and thought I could use mine as a way to return to the roots of my writing career. It became much more than that.
Fifteen years ago, I was a single mom who cleaned houses for a living. Publishing snippets of my “Still Life with Mia” was a way for me to stay connected and reach out through debilitating loneliness. Most people probably didn’t know me in my LiveJournal and Wordpress days, but that’s where I got my start as a writer. I shared photos, lyrics to songs I played on repeat through our countless hours in the car, and mainly recorded this little life I had with my daughter. I wanted to hold space for beauty and moments of connecting with her, because I knew it would get lost in our day-to-day lives.
Things are a bit different now, of course. I moved us to Missoula, Montana, finished college, and started publishing my words in places I’d only dreamed about. My first book was published six months after I turned forty, and my second came out right after I turned forty-five. Somewhere in there I managed to inspire a show that would become one of the most watched limited series on Netflix.
The last six years have been a constant bombardment of people telling me what I should write, where I need to go, and what I need to do in order to keep my career’s momentum moving in an upward trajectory. I haven’t had much time to think about what I want to do. I haven’t had much time to do the thing that got me there: WRITE. But, like, for fun. Most of all, I haven’t had the chance to ask questions like What the fuck just happened? and get to know myself in this new context and how millions of people knowing my name has affected me fundamentally.
My body remembers scarcity. It wasn’t that long ago that we were hungry. My inner self doesn’t trust the success. It’s constantly on guard, waiting for the floor to drop out from under me. When I was struggling to pay for housing and food, I couldn’t afford to stop and try to process the fact that my car not starting would send me into a panic attack, I just had to figure out a way to get to work. I couldn’t afford to feel.
This space, for now, is my attempt to process all of that.
Note: I have turned on the option to pay for this newsletter, but payment is by no means required to access my most-recent posts. Writing this newsletter is part of my job, and I believe in a world where people are paid for their work. If you find value in this newsletter, and are able to afford it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. I deeply appreciate the compensation for my invested time.
THANK YOU for being here, for all of your support over the years, and your continued passion for awareness and advocacy for lifting up the millions of Americans who live in poverty.
xo.
-step.
