Dear Friend —
When I started putting this newsletter together my intention was to create a space where I could share and document what my experience of taking a year long sabbatical from social media would be like.
And in some ways, I’ll still be doing that. But as I was preparing to take that social media sabbatical, something interesting happened…
When I started to piece together a strategy for how I would still work with clients and navigate entrepreneurship without highlight reels and doom-scrolling, I started to get lost in the “how”. I got carried away with complicated automations, and email funnels, setting up new buttons where there weren’t buttons before and drowning in a to-do list that was growing longer every hour.
With more and more pressure mounting as each new day in the shiny new year started to pass, I became totally overwhelmed by how I would pull all of this off — and just when I started to get curious about how I had gone from a simple decision to sign out of an Instagram account to total anxiety and overwhelm, it dawned on me.
I was scared.
I was terrified actually, and fear was now the one in the driver seat, creating this ridiculously long, complex strategy.
I thought I was taking a leap of faith by trusting that I could still be successful and run a business without social media, but turns out I was just building a big complicated net to catch myself after the leap. Scarcity had taken over and convinced me that without social media, I would experience lack and complacency and there’s no way I’d see another opportunity without it so I’d better prepare all backend systems to support me should this leap of faith totally fail.
Sometimes what looks like a solid strategy is actually a lack of faith.
When I decided to leave my consistent paycheck back in 2016 to start my wedding and event planning company, that was the “BIG” leap of faith everyone was taking. Quit your job, bet on yourself.
But I believe there’s a new leap of faith that we’re being invited to take today.
One that says, “I’ve never slowed down before, and it doesn’t feel safe, but I’m crazy enough to believe that there’s something beautiful waiting on the inside of this stillness for me. Even when everything and everyone around me appears to be moving full speed ahead.”
That’s what I really wanted: stillness, presence, rest.
This sobering realization only provided even more proof that social media had created even more of a distance between what I thought I wanted and what I truly desired for my life.
The truth was that it wasn’t just time off of Instagram and Twitter that I was craving.
What I was really craving was to sign off, and live my life. No plans, no strategies, no automations for offers and services to sell. To just sign off and do all of the things that are right in front of me everyday. To stop buying the books and READ the books, to stop adding the daily walks to a to-do list and TAKE the walks, to stop listening to the podcasts telling me I need more sleep and GO to sleep. To stop dreaming about healing and just heal.
What felt like reckless abandon, turned out to be my fear and anxiety convincing me that it can’t be that easy. I can’t just sign off for a whole year. Convincing me that if I’m going to do this there must be a back up plan in case it doesn’t work out.
If signing off social media to go live MY life doesn’t work out, I must have a back up plan?!
If that sounds crazy to you then just imagine the shock it gave me as I sat in front of all my lists and strategies and plans to commit this “wild” act of deleting social media like a mad scientist trying to find a cure.
I’m laughing now but it’s so easy to get stuck here in this place. Where it feels like self-honoring and putting our needs first is so far from easy and familiar. I wonder if that’s where you find yourself right now, and if you’re reading this laughing along with me but wearily nodding in agreement that’s it’s way too hard to put yourself first these days.
I guess you could say that’s what I’m doing here. In this space I’ll be putting myself first as a sort of experiment while you witness my journey and find glimmers of permission to do that for yourself.
I’ll be exploring self care, travel, wellness, joy, self love, time freedom, and ease. I’ll be writing to you from the good places and the scary places as I redefine what productivity, worthiness and success look like for me.
And while I’m not a huge fan of fear I know that it’s in this terrifying place that I’m the most aligned. It’s uncomfortable and we all know what happens outside of comfort zones.
I hope you’ll see this space as our place to share, a place where you can come and find permission too. Free from all the noise calling you to do more, rather than do what’s aligned. I hope you’ll take what you need and leave what you don’t. I hope you’ll find little invitations in each letter I write to you. Invitations to the ease, and joy, and satisfaction you deserve to have.
I even hope you’ll invite someone you know so they can find the permission they need too…
And please know that I’ll never write to you as someone who has it all figured out. I’m just here trying to make sense of it all and believing that by sharing just some of the truths I find during this time will make someone else’s journey a bit lighter.
Because we are all just figuring it out.
We’re doing the best we can and trying to build a life that feels full of all the goodness we can carry while providing for the people we love. We’re human beings doing really hard things, and unlearning things we thought we had to do and shedding should’s and must’s.
I’m excited about this, but I’m still scared.
And doing it scared is the only way I know how. I promise to be honest and share the resources (books, learnings, products, tools, and more…) that are helping me get through and to share everything I’m learning and have learned with you along the way…
So much love,
M.