Creating Space & Spaciousness
and/or staying alive
Hello Lovely Subscribers,
I’ve missed you all so much. I’ve missed the Substack community. Right when it was feeling like things were really getting going here the new semester started, my health took a swan dive, and I got overwhelmed with doctor’s visits, institutional toxicity, and book revisions.
For weeks I’ve been telling myself that I’ll send a newsletter, and for weeks I haven’t sent a newsletter. For the past week especially I have been debating whether or not to pause paid subscriptions. I landed on yes. Yes, I am pausing paid subscriptions until May 30th.
How will this affect you? Well, most of you are free subscribers. If you’ve been wanting to access my archives but been held up by the paywall, this is your opportunity to access almost four years of archives for free.
Many of you became paying subscribers so you could join in on monthly get togethers, some of you are paying subscribers for archives access, and some simply because you enjoy my work and want to create an equal exchange. I am grateful for all of you. For the next two and a half months, you will not be charged for your subscription, whether you are yearly or monthly subscribers.
A week before paid subscriptions resume, I will email everyone and let you know what’s happening. I’ll probably do this twice.
Once the newsletter resumes in late May, you can expect monthly opportunities for community and more regular newsletters. I will be done with coursework. Done with my book revisions. Hopefully in better health. I look forward to that, and I hope you do, too.
For now, I’m not going anywhere. You will hear from me many times before May 30th! But I needed to pause things for some pressure relief of my own.
Meanwhile, if you know someone who would love to read my writing, please forward them this newsletter and let them know everything is free for now.
I’d love to hear how you’re doing. Please tell me in the comments? How are you taking care of yourself (or not)? What’s something beautiful you’ve seen in the past month? What are you working on or letting go of? I’ve love to know.
If you’d like to continue supporting my work while I take this much needed break from the newsletter, you can always do so via ko-fi.
Take some well-deserved rest, River. Appreciate you modeling this for your community here.
Rest and restore! We will all be here when you are back. I feel you so much on the pressure, I have the same in my newsletter but sometimes I allow myself some rest. I write about deconditioning from systemic issues in a poetic ways and I feel the pressure is a way for me to learn. How do I strip myself of the production pressure? Can I be of service and still take a break? I grapple with all these questions so much, and I think that it is so important to allow ourselves and think of ourselves as valuable even when we cannot give 100% as creatives. This is just my thought process and as everything it is constantly changing. I hope you return with even more people supporting you! Much love ♥️