This is really hard for me

Elle Woods, come at me

Friends,

I used to really struggle with asking for help. And although I’ve gotten much better at asking for and accepting it in the past few years, it still makes me feel like an ungrateful burden.

How silly.

Anyhoo.

In the past few weeks I’ve gained a whole slew of traction thanks to a post that has been shared quite a bit. I published the essay back in July. At the beginning of March it had 12 likes. At the end of March it was nearing 500. Thank you.

That might seem like a small number to some but it’s a huge number to me. I started writing 18 months ago because I had so much in my brain that I just wanted to organize. I felt that my job limited my intellectual pursuits but writing gave me full freedom.

Then I started writing and learned that writing is like really, really hard. And I was like really, really bad at it.

Yes babe, it is.

Regardless, all I want to do is hand people the information that they deserve so they can feel understood.

We’re not alone

About a month ago I was scrolling through YouTube with my friends partner. He comically wanted to watch an interview of his therapist on a local talk show. We turned it on and listened to his therapist talk publicly about imposter syndrome. His jaw was on the floor.

He’s talking about me!! He exclaimed multiple times.

Holy shit he’s talking— we just had a conversation about this!!!

After working 1:1 with eating disorder clients for years I’ve learned how many people are not just keeping secrets, but doing so because they believe they are alone. They fear that no one understands them and sharing might be met with invalidation. But no one is alone. Our experiences are collective. If you have experienced something, so has someone else. Not just one, but many not just now but throughout history.

That’s one of the reasons I started writing - to have a broader reach. I’ve heard so many nearly identify stories that I’ve been committed to learning about the social, historical, and scientific evidence that supports it all. And to know that doing so helped almost 500 people feel seen and understood means so much to me.

My Ask

If you’ve felt seen by my essays and want the topics to be explored more, I have a commitment: they will.

The catalyst that sparked my writing 18 months ago was the idea for a book - and although I’m still working on it, I’ve spent most of my writing time (which is very minimal) on substack. Working on my skills, research, and creating a following (because, like, publishers need that).

Although I’d love to dive into what this book is - AI exists so let’s not. But essentially, the book is a commitment to exploring our relationship to diets in a way that I have yet to read by any other anti-diet author. It’s evidence is comprehensive yet topic is broad. Because frankly, I think the anti-diet leaders are regurgitating a lot of the same information and consequently reducing diet cultures inception to the same few predecessors. And although they’re right, there is so. much. more.

Soooo here’s the thing. I currently have no income, am mostly living off my modest savings, and am working 30-40 hours per week in exchange for food and housing. When I had a job, researching and writing took up an insane amount of my time. Now without a job… writing is even less sustaining. And unlike other professionals-turned-published I have yet to have a well-paying career, can’t afford a home (unlikely that I will), and don’t have a partner to subsidize my life and work.

So what I’m asking is…. if you want to see more and help me reach more people, will you support me?

You can support this work and mission by upgrading to a paid subscription of only $5/month or $50/year. And you can cancel at any time without offense. If substack had a feature simply to pledge, I would offer it, but they don’t. Instead, you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the button below.

At this moment, the subscription upgrade is a donation to support my work. I know that I’m supposed to offer more but:

• My intention is to reach people who need to be reached. Therefore, full access to my essays and community will be “free”.

• As I’ve learned from food blogging, any work to market myself takes away from my writing. And I have minimal time to write. This very post so far took 47 minutes I had reserved to write an essay.

With time, I may be able to offer more. But I hope that you can have some good faith in supporting my writing.

Thank you for following and supporting me :) Even if you cannot financially support me, it would be great to hear from you all.

XOXO,

Stephanie