This Is For The Ones Cracked Open By Life

For the hearts trying to heal. For the souls looking for their permission slip to live. Let's share this space, and let the light in through the cracks.

As I make the transition out of my old forms of professional writing (two decades as a copywriter for major international nonprofits and fashion brands, as well as a lifestyle journalist and interviewer published in newspapers, magazines, and books), I feel compelled to remember why we’re here. On my particular Substack, yes, but also in life.

Because life is short.

Remembering its brevity helps us stretch our little moments, and live in the beautiful truth.

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Though I’m now in my mid-30’s, there is a part of me that is only 20 years old. Because it’s only been 20 years since a cancer diagnosis gave me the permission slip I needed to stop being the character everyone else had defined for me: the nerdy outcast reading alone in the library. The well-doer who ever broke rules but was also incredibly lonely. The ‘good girl’ AKA the people pleaser.

It still breaks my heart that it took coming that much closer to death for me to give myself a chance to live - and as the person I wanted to be.

After chemo, I returned to my ‘normal life’ finally able to see I’d been working far too hard to fit in – and failing. It didn’t take long for me to pack up and get out of there.

First, to London, at 18 for a fresh start as a tiny fish in a big pond. No one knew why my hair was short. No one knew I’d just been ‘the sick’ girl. I was able to introduce myself as the person I wanted to be, the person I knew I was deep down.

Restarting this Substack isn’t much different. The years and jobs and mentors have been good to me over the years, while I spent my career writing for and about other people. In truth, I have always been scared to tell my side of the story because I was ashamed of the lessons I had to learn the hard way in the past 20 years. As I’ve learned to accept myself and my vision for my life more fully, I can see: they couldn’t have happened any other way.

I had to date the wrong people. I had to put myself in harmful situations. I had to burn out. I had to make some…regrettable choices. I also had to practice bravery, courage, compassion, and conviction. I had to go against what felt familiar, what was said to be the status quo. I had to challenge convention and become what seemed to be every woman’s nightmare: single in my 30’s, in order to find my true life partner at the right time. I had to quit promising jobs to becoming a starving artist. There were dreams that had to be lived out, even if they burned, fizzled, then faded off into the night. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Every time I think there have been missteps or mistakes, I’m proven wrong. Every time life has cracked me wide open, by breaking my heart or ripping the rug out from under me or taking away whatever comfort I was relying on, I am shown that it is through those very cracks where the light gets in.

So this Substack is for the truth seekers.

For those trying to heal…maybe forever.

For the ones who’ve been cracked open by life, broken apart and taken down,

…and who still dare to chase the light.

For those ready to give themselves permission to be the person they want to be, rather than the person everyone tells them they should be.

For those brave enough to accept how short and precious this life is, and live not in fear of that fact, but be liberated by it instead.