Hey there—
I know you’ve never been here before. That's okay, neither have I. But let’s do this anyway.
I’ll start by being honest and share that writing to you feels absolutely nerve wracking. The fretful animal inside me, which looks and sounds a lot like Anxiety in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 [“oh my gosh! i’m Anxiety. where can I put my stuff?”] is poking at me like, “uhm, why are we doing this again?”and desperately trying to push the abort mission button. There’s a little too much self-exposure involved for this animal’s comfort at this moment.
One the reasons you don’t know me is that I’ve been offline for basically my entire adult life.
To the extent I have an online presence, it’s been limited to a Facebook account I created when I was 13 and haven’t updated since, and a LinkedIn profile I spend an embarrassing amount updating. When, every now and then I feel compelled (only by a pure sense of duty) to stalk someone on Instagram, I’ll open the *web version* (I know) and pray that it’ll lead me to a public account before a window pops up asking me to have some decency and log myself in.
We all know there’s a lot of research out there about social media’s effects on teenage brains and mental health and I’ve used that as a convenient explanation for keeping social media at arm’s length. It’s the quick reason I give in social situations if I’m asked why I’ve been offline.
The more honest reason is that I don’t trust myself to maintain a healthy relationship with social media.
I struggled with an intense eating disorder in my late teens and early 20s and, when I finally started to see beyond it, standing in the transitory phase between illness and health, I protected myself like a parent caring for their preterm newborn, avoiding any virtual or physical environment that might shake my foundations. By the time I started college, I’d switched between in and out-patient care for three years, and it took me a few months to relearn how to casually complain about homework when the only small talk I remembered how to entertain revolved around some kind existential angst. Because of that, my first college parties made me sound a lot ✨ Barbie With Irrepressible Thoughts Of Death ✨ on the dance floor.
At the time, most of my friends and college peers had followed seemingly linear paths through the milestones of young adulthood. It made sense to me that they’d want to put these lives, however filtered, on public display; but social media felt like a glass palace reserved for the polished. I wasn’t polished; I was raw. I wasn’t quite sure how or where to talk about that in a way that felt worth a following.
So I told myself I’d wait until I “got there.” Once this transition was over, once I’m fully recovered, after I’ve figured it out, when I finally know where I’m going then maybe (*maybe*) I’ll poke my head out. The irony is not lost on me that, as I hid from social media to become my “fully-formed self,” being offline became part of my identity. Still today, when I tell people I’ve never had Instagram, a common reaction I get is some version of awe occasionally followed by a puzzling “damn–I wish I didn’t have Instagram….” There’s a funny retro allure to being off the grid.
I spent a lot of energy in the following years trying to step out of the in-between. For most of my early twenties, I was playing catchup with those who looked like they’d nailed down how to live the “best years of our lives” and I focused on erasing the cracks in my narrative.
In many ways, I succeeded. But much of my growth over the past decade has also focused on accepting the fact that I’ll never quite arrive (sigh)—and realizing that no one will, either.
Beyond our Instagram stories, job promotions, accolades and Substack posts, we’re all in a perpetual state of becoming. If I can move past the vertigo, I find it liberating to know that we’re all in transit together.
In moments of transition, when life’s tectonic plates are shifting and I struggle to feel grounded, I find a journal.
I’ve filled dozens of journals with thoughts and fears and hopes from random hospital beds. Journaling reminds me I have a voice in moments where I feel too overwhelmed to speak. It’s been such an essential element of my growth since I was a teenager that I kind of assumed everyone had a journal, too.
Last October, I faced a new transition.
I found myself at a professional crossroads and decided to hit pause to take time to figure out what to do next. And as I spoke with other 30-somethings, and 20-somethings, and 40, 50, 60, 70-somethings, I realized how many of us are experiencing a form of transition.
What I learned is this:
🌱 many of us are between jobs, either by choice or circumstance; most have no idea what’s coming next. On some days it’s exciting, on most it’s terrifying.
🌱 some of you got engaged! You’re planning a wedding and imagining what post-wedding life will look like. You catch yourselves remembering who your pre-marriage self was but you haven’t even left that “old self” yet…or have you?
🌱 some of you are pregnant and bracing yourselves for an outer-world shift while the body you’d maybe just recently gotten used has started feeling different every day.
🌱 some of you are processing a breakup and spending more time with yourselves than you had in months or years.
🌱 some of you are told it’s time to retire but you’re so not done feeling relevant (and why would you?)
🌱 some of you have a baby and, in those tiny increments of time you have, you look up to find that everything’s changed.
Same, but different. And although all of us will experience many transition phases in our lives, we tend to face these changes alone.
So I started thinking of ways to create a support net for my traveling friends. I wanted to introduce the importance of journaling and reflection in these moments of life-commute and encourage a conversation around change. We don't have to travel alone.
With that, I’m excited to launch Raw Material and its companion project, the Monarc Chronicles 🦋
The Monarc Chronicles will start with a series of prompts meant to guide you through a journaling practice focused on the specific transition you’re going through:
I’m single and I like it? or the Breakup Chronicles
Hire me but not so fast or the Career Switch Chronicles
Eeee we’re getting married! or the Engagement Chronicles
I guess I have a baby now? or the New Parent Chronicles
But I’m not done! or the Retirement Chronicles
Aahh! We’re pregnant or the Pregnancy Chronicles
Where they at? or the Grief Chronicles
I’ll be sending out an email in the next week to let you know how to subscribe to whichever Monarc Chronicle speaks to you right now. I’ll invite you to send me your writing (honest and unpolished) for journaling accountability 👀
Every week in Raw Material, I’ll also be sending out a more general journaling prompt on transition and change, along with any recent insights or experience I’ve had on the topic and how we can navigate life’s changes together and maybe (*maybe*) I can transform my relationship with social media in the process.
Like all of us, Raw Material and the Monarc Chronicles are works in progress—the prompts and Chronicles will adapt to you. Please feel free to send me feedback on what helped, what you liked or disliked, and what you’d like to see!
Consider these newsletters a gentle invitation to join me in the exploration of the in-betweens.
With love and thanks for reading,
Clara
Your candor is inspiring and soothing at the same time- I’m so ready for you to take me by the hand and lead me into my first journaling practice!
Finally- something raw and real! Definitely subscribing to the Engagement Chronicles