What’s all this?
Welcome to my new Substack - my email newsletter, I’m calling it “Only Connect”. Substack is a writers and readers community where we are shielded from the divisiveness of social media. It is technically a subscription-based platform, but you don’t need to pay for Only Connect. Unless you want to of course, there’s a pledge button should you care to join.
This is my way to “prepare the soil” for new ways to share work, including audio content, and interact with readers in a positive environment. It’s been (ahem!) a bloody long time between newsletters, but I am levelling up to send out my Sunday Blog each week.
But now.
1. Sunday Blogs
I started my Sunday Blog on 29th August, 2021. Inspired by the Seth Godin book The Practice - Shipping Creative Work, I took it’s core message to heart. “We don’t ship the work because we’re creative. We’re creative because we ship the work.” I needed to write regularly and hit publish, godammit. So I did. I have.
On Sunday 18th Feb 2024, I published my 123rd Sunday Blog. 123 Sunday Blogs in, I’m experimenting with reading them out and adding in more background that I don’t always want to share on socials. It’s at the top of this email.
I’ve read out today’s Sunday blog, Sydney with Taylor as well. I’m still experimenting with how all this works so am sending that out on Wednesday. But you can read it now, if you want!
2. Speaking Gig - Bare Faced Story
For Perth peeps on this list, this Thursday 29th of February I will celebrate the extra day of the Leap year by doing a Bare Faced Story! A bit like The Moth, it features story tellers sharing real stories. Above you can see me from the Women’s Health Week event I spoke at in September 2023. I loved doing that story - about my birth experience. The theme of Bare Faced stories this Thursday is all about taking a Leap of Faith. So I’ve gone a bit further back in time, to talk about getting pregnant in the first place. The event is at Old Young’s Distillery out at Henley Brook (tix still available if you are interested) on the link below.
Some history - if you care to read it
In 2014, ten years ago (!!), I published a memoir. I called it “Not My Story”and it debriefed a single incident trauma I survived on 2002 at the age of 36. So please take care before you click on the link.
The title reflected my belief that this incident would not define me. It had taken me twelve years to hit “publish” on the memoir, and I drew a line in the sand in 2014, and was forevermore An Author.
But 2014 was a different country. At the time I had a magical belief in “a platform” to get your work out into the world. I didn’t really understand that social media usually reflects how well known you are. It doesn’t really make you well known. Not usually.
The real purpose of a platform is to connect. To share with others. Hence, this new newsletter is called Only Connect. Connection is a recurring theme for me, as this blog link above elaborates on.
Anyhoo, ten years ago I meant to create an interview series on trauma and recovery to help get my book out in the world. But somewhere along the line of the hours and hours of online courses I took to finish that project, I choked.
I can still remember the heated, confusing and unsafe online training session, an audio call jammed with hundreds of us. It was three in the morning my time because it was an American online course (of course). I was asked what I would do my interview series on, and I just couldn’t get the words out. It wasn’t a trauma-informed kind of environment. So I picked plan B.
Instead of creating a series about trauma and recovery, I chose to interview women about abundance. It was a nice series, and I learned a lot. But still.
Given how much I have learned about trauma since then, perhaps that was a good thing I didn’t try and tackle the trauma series. Plus, I was very lucky in that some of you followed me then, and still follow me now.
I am revising my memoir for its ten year anniversary in 2024. I plan to include book project number two, a novella that riffs on the memoir. When I re-launch my memoir, this time I am ready for a podcast on trauma and recovery. Working title: “Post traumatic Growth Is A Thing.”
I hope you will keep joining me each Sunday! I’d love to hear what you think of this new format newsletter.
Welcome to my Substack! And audio of Sunday Blog 123 - Swanbourne Nostalgia