Dear Creative One,

When I was in high school, consumed with the Spice Girls and fawning over Victoria Beckham, I read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 on the cement steps of my school, a stone’s throw from Madonna’s apartment.

At the time, I preferred Madonna concerts to reading about machines taking care of the world. I don’t remember the paper I wrote about the book, but I remember finishing it, walking out of school, and lighting a cigarette.

Years later, I find myself thinking about Bradbury again—and a much bigger question:

As AI becomes more capable, what remains uniquely human?

My first answer was creativity. Then I looked at what ChatGPT and Claude can produce (sometimes better story premises than I come up with) and realized that argument was getting harder to defend.

Then I thought about judgment. Give a machine enough context and a good prompt, and it can make surprisingly good judgments too.

Relationships? Machines remember what matters to us, listen without interrupting, and increasingly know what to say because they have so much data about us.

Which leaves me with intuition.

A machine can recognize patterns and predict behavior, but it cannot experience that strange inner knowing that tells you to leave, stay, call someone, trust someone, or create something you can’t yet explain.

Bradbury’s warning wasn’t simply that technology would become powerful. It was that we might willingly surrender parts of ourselves to it because doing so was easier.

And that changed the question for me.

Maybe the danger isn’t that machines become too human. Or it’s that humans stop practicing being human.

I use AI almost every day—to research, challenge ideas, organize my thoughts, and edit my writing. But I’ve become more conscious of the difference between using a machine to sharpen my thinking and asking it to think for me.

So I’m keeping one card close to my chest: my intuition. I may not always understand where it comes from, but perhaps that’s precisely why I’m reluctant to outsource it.

Now I’m throwing the ball into your court:

As machines become capable of doing more of what we once considered uniquely human, what will you refuse to outsource?

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question: What have you already handed over without noticing?

This is a question I’m not done with yet.

On Wednesday, I’ll share my conversation with psychologist David Gruder, who believes humanity is moving toward one of three possible futures. I’ll give you a hint: our future may have as much to do with the human spirit as it does with machines.

Then on Friday, inside our Creative Circle, I’ll bring the question down to earth. While finishing On Being Naked, I’ve been experimenting with where AI genuinely makes my writing better—and where another human being still matters.

I’ll take you behind the scenes and show you how I’m editing my book without spending $3,000—and what I still won’t let AI touch.

Until then, pay attention to what you outsource.

And what remains yours.

Keep questioning.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Reader,

How much is your body worth when you need the money? It’s an uncomfortable question—until life puts you in a position where you actually have to answer it.

My upcomung short story colleciton, On Being Naked explores those moments—when desire, survival, and identity collide, and we discover what remains when our usual defenses fall away. The stories live somewhere between memory and imagination, confession and fiction. This one began with a real conversation with a friend who wanted to sell her boobs as a final act of desperation to make ends meet.

For paid readers, I’m sharing “Boobs for Sale,” an unpublished chapter from On Being Naked before the book comes out October 8.

Read more

Dear Thinker,

I was standing in front of the pyramids in Egypt, staring at something written on a wall. I wasn’t sightseeing—I was trying to decipher a code.

Except I wasn’t actually in Egypt. I was lying down with my eyes closed while Sunhee Choi guided me under hypnosis.

For years, I had carried a strange, nagging feeling that in another life I had been a spy or a double agent. I couldn’t tell you where that feeling came from, and I certainly couldn’t prove it.

Then, under hypnosis, Egypt appeared. There I was, standing before the pyramids, trying to understand a code carved into a wall.

I came out of the experience wondering what exactly I had seen. Was it memory, imagination, symbolism—or something consciousness carries that we don’t yet understand?

I still don’t know. But here’s the strange part: years later, I wrote a novel called Codebreaker, which I am now editing for publication in 2028.

Coincidence? Probably.

Or maybe not.

On Monday, I wrote about the many lives we can have within one lifetime—the countries we leave, careers we change, relationships that end, and versions of ourselves we shed without entirely losing them.

Today, I want to take that question somewhere stranger. What if the lives we remember aren’t the only lives we’ve had—and what if the things we’re inexplicably drawn to can tell us something about who we are now?

That’s what this letter is about. Not proving that I once stood in Egypt deciphering codes, but exploring why certain places, stories, people, and identities can feel familiar before we understand why.

Curious about what happened under hypnosis? Watch my conversation with Sunhee Choi on YouTube, where we explore hypnosis, consciousness, and what can surface when the ordinary mind becomes quiet.

The Detective in Prague

This month, that feeling of recognition returned.

I have spent much of August walking around Prague like a detective, following the story of Operation Anthropoid. In 1942, Czechoslovak resistance fighters Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš attacked Reinhard Heydrich, a leading Nazi official and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust.

My brother and I went to the place where the attack happened. We stood near the bend in the road where Gabčík’s gun failed and Kubiš threw the bomb that wounded Heydrich.

Then we walked to the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius and descended into the crypt where seven Czechoslovak resistance fighters made their final stand. The crypt is dark and cool, with names on the walls and scars from bullets still visible around the small window above us.

I had read about what happened there. But standing inside the crypt was different.

Something about it felt familiar.

My brother felt it too. The church happens to stand only a few blocks from where my stepfather grew up, yet the feeling went beyond recognizing a neighborhood.

We walked through the crypt quietly, looking at the walls and at each other. Neither of us seemed to know exactly what to say.

It felt less like we were learning something. It felt like we were remembering something.

I finally asked my brother why this history affected him so deeply. He told me he believed he had been a soldier in a past life.

I didn’t argue with him. By then, I understood the feeling.

When History Starts Following You

After I took my brother to the airport, I could have stopped investigating. Instead, I kept going.

I traveled to Panenské Břežany, where Heydrich lived with his family in a château outside Prague. One place led to another, one name to another, until my summer began to feel like a trail I hadn’t intended to follow.

Then something stranger happened. Threads from Operation Anthropoid and the Czech resistance began appearing across three different branches of my extended family.

History stopped feeling like something that had happened to strangers. It was suddenly brushing against my own family story.

And this is where the question became more complicated for me. Was I responding to something from another life, or was I responding to a history that had quietly traveled through my own family?

Maybe some of what we call recognition comes from the stories our families carry. We may absorb fragments through childhood conversations, silences, places, fears, and the things previous generations never quite explained.

Or maybe consciousness carries something else. I don’t know.

But I know the feeling of arriving somewhere and having my body react before my mind has found an explanation. Perhaps you do too.

Maybe you’ve walked into a city you’ve never visited and somehow known where to turn. Maybe you’ve met someone for the first time and felt as though you were continuing a conversation rather than beginning one.

Maybe there is a period of history you’ve been obsessed with since childhood. Maybe a country you’ve never lived in feels inexplicably like home.

We usually dismiss these moments because they don’t fit neatly into what we can explain. But what if curiosity itself is sometimes a clue?

Have experiences from your life that you can’t stop thinking about? Join one of my storytelling workshops on Meetup, where we explore memory and lived experience and turn the moments that stay with us into stories with meaning, structure, and emotional truth.

What Science Doesn’t Yet Know

I believe we have many past lives. Being some kind of codebreaker in Egypt may have been one of mine, although I can’t prove that what I experienced under hypnosis was a literal memory.

Science can’t currently prove reincarnation either. But there are researchers willing to investigate experiences that don’t fit easily inside our existing explanations.

At the University of Virginia School of Medicine, researchers have spent decades studying children who report memories of previous lives. Their Division of Perceptual Studies has documented thousands of such cases, including reports in which children’s statements appeared to correspond to deceased individuals they seemingly had no ordinary way of knowing.

That doesn’t establish reincarnation as fact. What fascinates me is that the question is being taken seriously enough to investigate.

I’ve explored a related mystery on my own podcast. In my conversation with neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, we discussed his near-death experience and why it changed his understanding of consciousness and its relationship to the brain.

I don’t need these stories to give me certainty. In fact, certainty might make the mystery less interesting.

I want permission to remain curious.

Want to go deeper into consciousness, creativity, and the stories that shape us? Upgrade to the Founders Circle and join me this December for my Winter Solstice Creative Workshop. We’ll use reflection and storytelling to uncover the patterns in the year you’ve lived—and turn those discoveries into creative work, so you enter the new year with a deeper understanding of what your life may be trying to tell you.

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Maybe Your Past Life Isn’t the Point

After Egypt, Codebreaker, Prague, the crypt, my brother, and the unexpected connections to my own family, I’ve realized something.

The most interesting question isn’t whether I can prove that I was a spy, a soldier, a codebreaker, or anyone else in another life. The more interesting question is why certain stories keep finding us in this one.

Why am I drawn to codes? Why have I spent a summer walking through Prague following the traces of resistance fighters?

Why did my brother and I stand inside a crypt built around events that happened decades before either of us was born and both feel something we struggled to explain? Why do some places seem to recognize us before we recognize them?

There may be perfectly ordinary explanations. Family history, childhood stories, imagination, coincidence, and the human mind’s extraordinary ability to find patterns could explain much of it.

But I leave room for mystery.

Because whether a past-life experience is a literal memory, an expression of the unconscious, inherited history, or something science hasn’t explained yet, it can still become a reference point. It can show us what we are drawn toward, what frightens us, what feels familiar, and what questions refuse to leave us alone.

And that brings the question back to you.

What have you always been strangely drawn to?

Think about the places that felt familiar before you knew them. Think about the historical periods you cannot stop reading about, the skills that seem strangely instinctive, or the people you felt you recognized before you really knew them.

You don’t have to decide that any of these things came from another life. Just notice what keeps returning.

Perhaps none of it proves who you once were. But it might tell you something about who you are now.

So maybe the question isn’t simply:

Who was I in a past life?

Maybe the more useful question is:

What is that life trying to tell me about this one?

Keep questioning.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee ("Chocolate Road")

P.S. On Friday, I'll bring the question back into the body with an early chapter from my forthcoming book, On Being Naked. Because perhaps our bodies carry their own memories too—of intimacy, desire, fear, love, and the experiences that make us who we become.

Dear Curious One,

This week, I was walking through a gallery at Prague Castle when I stopped in front of a photograph of Paulo Coelho. I stood there longer than I expected, looking at the face of a writer whose books have traveled much farther than he ever could.

It reminded me that even the people we imagine creating alone rarely do. Coelho has spoken about the importance of his wife in his life and work, while John Steinbeck had Carol Henning Steinbeck, who typed his manuscripts, gave editorial feedback, and famously suggested the title The Grapes of Wrath.

Great work often has other fingerprints on it. Sometimes we need another person to see the story we are standing too close to see ourselves.

I thought about this because I’ve been struggling to shape this newsletter into something cohesive, which is slightly embarrassing because storytellers are supposed to know how to tell a story. But even storytellers need help.

I don’t currently have a partner sitting beside me reading my pages, pointing at a sentence and saying, This is what you’re really trying to say. So I send drafts into the little communities I have built over the years—WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, writing circles, students, readers, and friends scattered across countries.

And now, there is this letter. There are 122 of you here, and this community has grown 20 percent this month, which makes me very happy.

Perhaps this newsletter has been difficult to define because my life has been difficult to define. And lately, I’ve been wondering whether that’s actually a problem.

Have a story you want to tell? Join one of my storytelling workshops on Meetup, where we turn lived experiences into compelling stories through structure, writing, and live feedback—so the stories sitting inside you finally have somewhere to go.

Where Are You Now?

People often ask me a question before they ask what I do: Where are you? It’s a reasonable question because my answer changes rather frequently.

There was the little girl who left the Czech Republic for New York at seven, carrying a life she barely understood she was leaving behind. Years later, there was the journalist traveling through the Middle East, notebook in hand, asking strangers questions about lives completely different from her own.

Then came entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley, where the language changed from stories to startups, investors, pitches, and growth. Later came Spain, teaching, coaching, YouTube, books, and another version of myself sitting at a desk wondering how all these lives belonged to the same woman.

I have left versions of myself in New York, the Middle East, Silicon Valley, Spain, and in relationships I once thought might become home. Every place and every person asked something different of me.

Maybe you’ve done this too. You moved somewhere and became someone your old friends barely recognize, left a career that once defined you, or watched a relationship end and take an entire imagined future with it.

That is the part of reinvention we don’t celebrate as much. Every new life asks us to grieve something from the old one.

When you move countries, you don’t only gain a new home; you lose the ease of belonging somewhere without explanation. There are new streets to memorize, new words to learn, and ordinary things—buying bread, making friends, understanding a joke—that suddenly require effort.

And when a relationship ends, you don’t only lose a person. You lose the small rituals, the messages on your phone, the plans that had already begun living in your imagination, and the version of yourself who existed beside that person.

Some versions of myself I left willingly. Others disappeared before I was ready to let them go.

Yet every time I thought I was starting over, I eventually discovered that I wasn’t beginning from zero. I was beginning from everything that had come before.

Want to read the stories behind some of these lives? My books explore love, relationships, identity, and the strange experiences that change us. You can find my books on Amazon—and perhaps recognize a little of your own life inside someone else’s story.

You Don’t Erase Your Former Selves

We talk so much about finding ourselves, as though somewhere inside us there is one finished person waiting to be discovered. But what if there isn’t only one self to find?

For a long time, I thought a successful life was supposed to make sense in retrospect. One career would lead neatly into another, one country would become home, one relationship would become the relationship, and eventually we would settle into who we were.

My life has not worked that way. Perhaps yours hasn’t either.

I can open an old notebook and meet a woman I almost don’t recognize. Her handwriting is mine, but her fears, ambitions, and ideas about what would make her happy belong to another life.

Old photographs can do the same thing. You look at your own face and remember what that person wanted, whom she loved, and all the things she didn’t yet know were going to happen.

For years, I interpreted some endings as failure. A relationship ended, a business changed, a country stopped feeling like home, and my instinct was to look backward and ask what had gone wrong.

Eventually, I began to understand these endings differently. We don’t erase our former selves; we carry them forward.

The journalist still lives inside the writer, asking questions and searching for the detail everyone else overlooked. The entrepreneur lives inside the teacher, always asking how an idea can become something useful.

The woman who loved someone doesn’t disappear when the relationship ends. She carries what she learned about love, loss, desire, boundaries, and herself into whoever she becomes next.

Even the versions of ourselves we are embarrassed by have something to give us. They knew things we have forgotten, survived things we now take for granted, and made decisions with the consciousness they had at the time.

Perhaps becoming isn’t about replacing ourselves. Perhaps it is about expanding the number of selves we are capable of holding.

The Muscle of Beginning Again

There is a peculiar muscle you develop when you begin again enough times. The first time, you stand among boxes or suitcases wondering whether you have made a terrible mistake.

Then you unpack. You learn the route to the grocery store, someone begins recognizing you at the café, and one day you realize the unfamiliar place has quietly become your ordinary life.

The same thing happens internally. What once felt like an identity crisis eventually becomes evidence that you are capable of surviving change.

My friend Lisa reminds me of this. At 58, she lives out of an RV camper, carrying her home with her rather than organizing her life around one permanent address.

I love what her life quietly rejects: the idea that experimentation belongs to the young. At some point, we are supposedly meant to choose one place, one identity, one way of living—and stay there.

But who decided that? Why shouldn’t a woman at 58 wake up somewhere new and decide that freedom matters more to her than permanence?

Why shouldn’t someone change careers at 40, move countries at 50, fall in love at 70, or write their first book at 80? Our circumstances may make reinvention harder at different stages of life, but harder is not the same as impossible.

Maybe beginning again gets easier because eventually you acquire evidence. You have lost identities before, and somehow you are still here.

Want to create something from the life you’ve lived? Upgrade to the Founders Circle and join me this December for an intimate Winter Solstice Creative Workshop. We’ll reflect on the year we’re leaving behind, uncover the stories and ideas hidden inside it, and turn them into creative work—so you enter the new year not simply with resolutions, but with a clearer understanding of what your life is trying to tell you.

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Different Rooms in the Same House

This brings me back to Prague Castle and the question that has been bothering me about this newsletter. What connects all these different pieces of a life?

This Substack that I am building is an ecosystem that explores storytelling, writing, communication, and consciousness. For a while, I worried these were separate subjects that I was trying to force together.

Now I think they are simply different rooms in the same house. Each is an attempt to understand what it means to become more human.

Storytelling is how we make meaning from what happened to us. Communication is how we cross the distance between ourselves and another person.

Consciousness asks who the person experiencing all of this actually is. Writing is how I hold everything still long enough to look at it.

Maybe I don’t need to force these parts of my life into one identity. Maybe the point is that they were connected all along.

And perhaps that’s true for you too. The things that look unrelated on a résumé can make perfect sense when you stop looking at your life as a list of accomplishments and start looking at it as a story.

How Many Lives Have You Had?

I spoke with a bookstore this week about my next book, On Being Naked. They told me they would host a launch and put my books on their shelves.

For a moment, I pictured the physical book sitting there. A stranger might walk past, pull it from the shelf, turn it over in her hands, and have no idea how many versions of me it took to put that book there.

The seven-year-old immigrant is in those pages. So is the journalist with her notebook, the entrepreneur pitching ideas, the teacher standing in front of a room, and the woman sitting alone after a relationship ended wondering what came next.

None of those lives disappeared. They became material for the next one.

So think about the person you were ten years ago. Think about where you lived, whom you loved, what you did for work, what frightened you, and what you were absolutely certain would never change.

Would that person recognize you today? Would she be surprised by where you live, whom you love, what you believe, or what you finally had the courage to leave?

And if you’ve already been five, ten, twenty different versions of yourself, why assume this one is the final one? Maybe the person you are today is simply carrying you toward someone you haven’t met yet.

Perhaps we spend too much of our lives asking, Who am I supposed to be? There may be a more interesting question.

Who am I allowed to become next?

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

P.S. On Wednesday, I’ll explore the stranger possibility of past lives in the Consciousness section. On Friday, I’ll share a chapter from On Being Naked before its October 8 publication.

Dear Storyteller,

Two people can sit across from each other at a dinner table, barely moving, and you can still make it impossible for your reader to look away. Nothing traditionally dramatic has to happen for a scene to be compelling.

I was reminded of this during this week’s Storytelling Masterclass, where we’re taking experiences from our lives and transforming them into short stories that can be published. We focus largely on autofiction—where lived experience becomes material for story.

On Wednesday, we explored How to Truly Listen—how to notice words, body language, pauses, and what isn’t being said. Today, we’re taking that skill from conversation to the page, because compelling dialogue isn’t really about writing clever things for people to say. It’s about noticing desire, tension, contradiction, silence, and subtext—and knowing how to turn those observations into a scene.

Below, I’ll show you:

• The four ingredients every compelling scene needs

• How to use dialogue to create tension without manufacturing drama

• How sensory details make readers feel physically present

• The question I ask to determine whether a scene actually has stakes

• A simple fly-on-the-wall exercise you can use to train yourself to write better dialogue

Read more

Dear Leader,

I’ve spoken to many of you this week—CEOs, VPs, engineers—and when I asked about your listening skills, most of you say some version of:

“I listen. It’s my job.”

But listening isn’t the same as active listening.

Today, I want to take that idea one step further: How well are we actually listening during those conversations?

In this letter, I break down 7 active listening techniques you can start using immediately to build trust, communicate more clearly, and become more credible in the room.

1. Be present

Years ago, while working in Miami as an executive and personal assistant to a billionaire in tech, he told me on my first day:

“You don’t know how to communicate. We’ll work on that first.”

I was shocked.

I had spent years working in tech and blockchain, helping engineers and founders tell their stories on camera at Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange. I thought I knew how to communicate.

What he was really talking about was presence.

Put away your phone. Stop preparing your response. Pay attention to the person in front of you.

2. Use your body language

Listening isn’t only something you do with your ears.

Face the speaker. Nod. Smile. Lean in. Notice what your own body is communicating while someone else speaks.

3. Pay attention to their eyes

Where someone’s eyes go can tell you where their attention goes.

Practice observing people outside work. Notice what happens to someone’s eyes when they’re excited, uncomfortable, thinking, or surprised.

4. Repeat and reflect

This is the heart of active listening.

Instead of immediately giving your opinion, reflect back what you heard.

I once worked with an engineer who constantly interrupted his advisers. Instead of competing with him, I began repeating his own words back to him.

Eventually, he told me:

“I like you. You know how to hear what I have to say.”

I won the business.

5. Withhold your response

Don’t interrupt.

Hold the space long enough for someone to finish their thought—even when you already know what you want to say.

When someone dominates a meeting, I sometimes ask:

“What is the goal of your communication?”

That question creates a pause. And inside that pause, you can regain control of the room.

6. Practice patience

We don’t only get distracted by our phones.

We get distracted by our judgments, assumptions, emotions, and the voice in our heads preparing the perfect response.

Patience means noticing those reactions without allowing them to pull you out of the conversation.

7. Ask open-ended questions

This is my favorite.

Try:

• Can you tell me more about that?

• I’m curious—what do you think?

• What do you think is the best path forward?

• What is most important to you right now?

Watch what happens when someone realizes you’re genuinely interested in their answer.

People open up.

And that’s where trust begins.

Your challenge

Choose one of these techniques and practice it during your next meeting.

Don’t try all seven.

Just one.

Then ask yourself: Did the conversation change because I listened differently?

Because sometimes becoming a better communicator doesn’t require saying more.

It requires hearing more.

On Friday, I’ll discuss how to build a compelling narrative through dialogue. When we write marketing material or books, we reveal human behavior—and one of the best ways to learn is to be a fly on the wall at restaurants or dinner tables, listening to conversations.

Lead with clarity.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Curious One,

As a little girl, I never understood kids talking. I preferred pulling at my granny’s skirt to ask for honey or milk—or demanding an answer to questions like: Why is milk white and not pink?

Questions forced answers. And perhaps that was my earliest understanding of conversation: a pile of answers connected by invisible strings.

Maybe your first conversations were like this too: less an exchange of ideas than a relentless need to understand the world. It took me much longer to understand that conversations do more than answer questions—they change the trajectory of our lives.

Talking to someone shift our minds

Conversations with strangers can be easier. There is less at stake, and we can reveal what we want and disappear afterward.

If the stranger at the gas station doesn’t like what we say, we’ll probably survive. Family is different.

As a child, the best hiding place might be your granny’s pantry. As adults, we hover over bathroom sinks, bawling our eyes out, smearing cream over red cheeks and wiping away black streaks of mascara before walking back into the room.

Because when someone knows us, there is something to lose. A conversation can change what we believe about another person—and sometimes what we believe about ourselves.

One of the conversations that changed me most was with a homeless man.

He told me a car had run over him. The accident shifted his heart, his wife left him, and somewhere along the way, the life he had known disappeared.

I had heard versions of that phrase before, but never from someone who had lost his home. Coming from him, it meant something different: home wasn’t necessarily a house, a country, or even another person.

Home was what you made of wherever life had left you.

I carried that conversation with me.

That’s the strange thing about the conversations that change us. We rarely know they are changing us while we’re having them.

Sometimes a stranger gives us a sentence, and twenty years later, we’re still living inside it.

People invite us into other worlds

There is something almost magical about conversation. For a few minutes—or a few decades—we are invited into someone else’s reality.

Their childhood, beliefs, fears—their ideas about love, God, and death.

And if we don’t know our own world very well, we can even begin adopting someone else’s simply by listening to them long enough. This is both the beauty and danger of conversation: another person’s ideas can expand our world, but if we don’t know what we believe, they can quietly become our world.

It’s fascinating to notice which worlds we enter—and which pieces we carry home. Sometimes a conversation gives us language for something we have felt our entire lives but never knew how to name.

I don’t have to agree with every worldview I encounter. A conversation allows me to visit it. And sometimes I return to my own world seeing it differently.

Talking to someone requires us to show up

This may be the hardest part. A meaningful conversation asks us to become a little naked in front of another person. Not physically naked. Emotionally naked.

Here is what I think. Here is what I want. Here is what hurt me. Here is what I don’t understand. Here is who I am.

And we don’t know whether the person across from us will accept any of it. That uncertainty is what requires courage. Again, this can be easier with strangers. Courage at a networking event or gas station costs relatively little.

Try doing it in a room full of directors. Or across the table at Thanksgiving dinner. Or with someone you love when the relationship itself is at stake.

For much of my life, I assumed courage was simply what people did. It wasn’t until people began asking me, How are you so brave? that I realized showing up and saying what we mean isn’t easy for everyone.

The conversations we choose to enter—and the ones we avoid—quietly shape the lives we build. Paying attention to them means paying attention to who we are becoming.

Think about your life now. Somewhere behind the person you love, the city you live in, the work you do, or the beliefs you carry is a conversation.

Someone spoke. Someone listened. And your life moved.

On Wednesday, I’ll explore the other half of every meaningful conversation: how to truly listen.

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Reader,

On Wednesday, I wrote about the stories we’re afraid to tell—and how storytelling asks us to reveal parts of ourselves we might otherwise keep hidden.

Today, I want to show you what that looks like in my own work.

My next book is called On Being Naked. And for the first time, I’m revealing the photography behind the cover—an uncensored from the shoot.

Below the paywall, I’m sharing the photograph that I have chosen for the book cover.

Read more

Dear Storyteller,

On Monday, I wrote about the things we inherit without knowing—and what happens when we stop hiding.

Storytelling is one way we practice that.

On Saturday, I taught a storytelling masterclass. I was reminded that the hardest part of writing your life isn’t usually the writing.

It’s deciding what you’re willing to reveal. And to what extent are you willing to recollect the series of events that defined your memory—and be willing to share them.

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How you take a lived experience and find the moment, tension, transformation, and meaning inside it involves a story inventory—a series of prompts that lead to memories with emotional charges attached to them. It’s a way to identify your story, and usually, it’s the one with the most charge.

The prompts we used:

• A moment I was embarrassed.

• A moment I wanted something badly.

• A person I can’t forget.

• A moment something important ended.

• A moment I became a slightly different person.

By the end, we were able to commit to a story that we will be developing.

Because stories is all we have in this world.

Speak your truth.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Adventurous Soul,

This week will be a series of shorter letters, as family visits—some of whom would rather see me contained than see my spirit fully expressed. And I don’t blame them. I give my parents grace. They come from communism, and this week in Prague, I can still feel the invisible blanket that sometimes clouds my cognition and keeps me contained.

The Things We Inherit Without Knowing

I feel it in the old buildings, remnants of communism. I see it in people’s expressions: grim, rarely smiling. I hear it in lowered voices. When I speak Czech, I even notice myself whispering—or at least, I think I do.

And then there is the it’s not possible. I ask a question, and sometimes I get five minutes of reasons why something cannot be done. I listen, and when they finish, I say, Thank you. But how can we make it possible?

There is usually a moment of confusion. So I guide the conversation toward an outcome.

It has made me wonder how much of the way we move through the world is actually ours—and how much we inherited without ever realizing it. But perhaps we inherit more than containment. Perhaps we also inherit the impulse to break it.

The Writer Nobody Told Me About

I have a great-uncle, Jan Šprincl, who was a writer and translator. His work is preserved in the Czech Literature Museum. He translated Czech poetry into Latin, including the work of Otokar Březina. He spoke an extraordinary number of languages. His translations even made their way to the Vatican.

No one really told me this story. I discovered it by digging.

And now, as a writer myself, I find myself following traces of another writer in my own family. There is something strange and beautiful about that.

I have spent years trying to understand this relentless need I have to write, ask questions, tell stories, and express what I see. Then I come back to Prague and discover that perhaps silence isn’t the only thing passed down through generations.

Maybe we inherit more than silence. Maybe we inherit the impulse to break it.

I don’t know whether creativity travels through genes, memory, consciousness, or something we don’t yet have language for. I don’t need to know.

The information about Jan keeps coming to me, so I let it come. Perhaps that is what it means to honor your lineage—not to become trapped by what you inherited, but to decide what you want to carry forward.

What Happens When You Stop Hiding

When I stop hiding, I feel peace. Something inside me becomes quieter. There is less friction between who I am and who I am allowing the world to see.

But revealing ourselves takes courage. It also takes accepting that the people closest to us may never fully support the person we are becoming. Sometimes they prefer the contained version of us.

The good news is that there are strangers, readers, friends—and souls—who recognize us when we finally allow ourselves to be seen.

Maybe being seen is simply refusing to make yourself smaller for others’ comfort.

Because perhaps the greatest way to honor what we inherited is to finally express what those before us could not.

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Thinker,

Storytelling is the new currency because our most difficult stories may be the ones that connect us most deeply.

There are stories we tell easily. And then there are the stories we learn to hide—the ones about mental illness, shame, trauma, or experiences we can’t explain.

I met Fiona at one of my storytelling events in Valencia. She told me she had schizophrenia, shared some of the spiritual experiences surrounding it, and eventually asked me: “Do you believe me?”

I said yes. Because I believed that this was her experience.

Storytelling Gives Us Access to Worlds We Don’t Understand

When Fiona joined us on the Emergence Podcast, she described what she experienced at 17: colors became brighter, she felt intensely connected to another person, and she believed she was having a spiritual awakening. What initially felt beautiful eventually became frightening, and she was hospitalized and later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Fiona told us, “The internet says a spiritual awakening is supposed to be something positive and psychosis is like the opposite... I think there’s a spectrum.” I don’t know where that spectrum begins or ends, but her story allowed me to see the world through someone else’s eyes without needing to decide what her experience meant.

🎧 Watch our full Emergence Podcast conversation with Fiona.

Storytelling Turns “Do You Believe Me?” Into “I Hear You”

We don’t have to agree with someone’s interpretation of an experience to listen to their story. Storytelling asks us to temporarily suspend our own worldview and become curious about someone else’s.

Facts can tell me what schizophrenia is. A story can help me understand what it might feel like to be 17, frightened, confused, intensely sensitive to the world around you, and wondering whether anyone believes you.

✍️ If you want to learn how to share your story, sign up to one of our online workshops on Meetup. Sign up LINK HERE.

The Most Valuable Currency May Be Belonging

The day before our interview, Fiona attended one of my storytelling workshops and shared her story with a room of women. When I asked how it made her feel, she said: “Empowered and relieved. And I felt like I belonged somewhere.”

That is why I believe storytelling is the new currency. You give me vulnerability, I give you attention; you give me your experience, I give you curiosity—and somewhere in that exchange, two strangers become slightly less strange to one another.

🖋️ If you have a story you’ve been carrying but don’t know how to tell, join me for my next storytelling workshop → TODAY at 1 pm ET.

Perhaps storytelling is the new currency because, in the end, what we are really exchanging is our humanity.

Keep questioning.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee ("Chocolate Road")

Dear Storyteller,

I need some help from you. I’m looking for honest feedback. How many of you have tried to write a story and failed?

I failed for 10 years trying to write a book—until I wrote Pretty Girl Complex.

After speaking with hundreds of writers, leaders, and entrepreneurs, I’ve come to learn that there are five main reasons we don’t write our books:

1. I’m not a good writer.

2. Who will read it?

3. I don’t have an interesting story to tell.

4. I don’t know how to find the time to write it.

5. I don’t know how to structure a story.

The underlying fear? That annoying imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling that you’re not as capable or qualified as others think you are—and sooner or later, they’ll find out.

For writers, it sounds like: Who am I to write this? Who cares what I have to say? Am I even a real writer?

Ever heard of writer’s block? I’m convinced sometimes it’s just that imposter showing up again.

I’ve put together a storytelling workshop this Saturday as part of a five-week series on how to write a story.

Sign up link here.

If you’re struggling with any of these five, I’d love to see you there.

Speak your truth.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Adventurous soul,

Before we knew how to explain our emotions, we had stories.

Your mother told you stories while you nestled against her chest, listening to her heartbeat. Your grandmother probably told you stories. Maybe your father or grandfather did too.

Before we understood fear, longing, jealousy, courage, or love, someone put those emotions inside a story and handed them to us.

For me, there was Cinderella. There was Popelka, the Czech version I grew up with. There were forests and witches, princes and abandoned children, love and death.

We didn’t know these stories were teaching us.

We just felt them.

Storytelling Is Connection

Then we grew up.

And somewhere along the way, many of us began separating ourselves from our stories.

We did it to protest our past, out of shame, or because we decided what happened to us wasn't important enough to tell.

But our stories never stopped shaping us.

Perhaps that’s why I keep returning to storytelling—as an author, a coach, and simply as a human being trying to understand other human beings.

Because something happens when one person tells the truth about an experience and another person recognizes themselves inside it.

Me too.

Those might be two of the most powerful words we have.

If you’ve been carrying a story you don’t quite know how to tell, I’m hosting two workshops next weekend. A Storytelling Masterclass. See details HERE. On Sunday, we have a Writing Workshop. See details HERE. We’ll work on turning lived experiences into stories that connect. I’d love to see you there.

Storytelling Is Currency

Over the years, I’ve started thinking about stories as a kind of currency.

Not because every story needs to make money.

Because stories carry value from one human being to another.

A client tells you they’re struggling with sales. You can give them five bullet points about what they’re doing wrong.

Or you can tell them about the time you couldn’t sell either.

What happened. What failed. What finally changed.

Now you’re not simply teaching them.

You’re relating to them.

And that changes the conversation.

The same exchange happens everywhere.

Someone writes about grief, and you remember your own. Someone writes about leaving a marriage, and a woman halfway across the world feels less alone. Someone admits to being jealous, ambitious, frightened, lonely, lost, or wildly in love—and a stranger recognizes something they haven’t been able to name.

You give someone a story, and they give you their recognition.

That is the exchange.

If you’d like to read my mine, you can find my short-story collections on Amazon (LINK HERE). I’m also finishing my next collection, coming this October. The big reveal is coming soon.

Storytellers Are Guides

The older I get, the less I believe storytelling comes entirely from the conscious mind.

There are moments when I’m writing and something arrives on the page that I didn’t plan.

I don’t always know where it came from.

Call it intuition. Call it the subconscious. Call it channeling. Call it ancestors, spirit, or the universe.

I follow it.

Storytelling allows us to enter places logic can’t always reach.

It helps us understand desire and pain. It lets us meet the versions of ourselves we’ve hidden. Sometimes it allows another person to carry something we’ve been carrying alone.

Perhaps that is why I think storytellers are more than writers.

Sometimes we are guides. Other times, witnesses willing to say: This happened to me. Let me show you what it felt like.

This week, Fiona does exactly that. Watch her video, where she shares her experience with schizophrenia. If her story moves you, please like, comment, or share it. You may help it reach someone who needs to hear it.

Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years.

Long before newsletters. Long before books. Long before any of us knew the word storytelling.

And I suspect we’ll keep telling them for as long as we’re here.

Because stories aren’t meant to stay inside us.

They’re meant to move.

From grandmother to mother.
From writer to reader.
From stranger to stranger.

Maybe that is their oldest purpose—

and their greatest value.

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Share Alice Hlídková

Dear Reader,

Most writers think getting a publishing offer is the finish line. It isn’t. The real work begins when you have to decide whether the contract is worth signing.

Over the last six weeks, I negotiated a publishing deal that ultimately fell apart. I didn’t lose the deal—I walked away. In the process, I learned more about negotiating contracts than I had in years of writing.

In this letter, I’ll share the negotiation framework I used, the clauses I refused to compromise on, the questions every author should ask before signing, and why the ability to walk away is often your greatest leverage.

Most negotiations are lost before they begin because people don’t know what they actually want.

Before I opened the contract, I wrote down three goals...

Read more

Dear Leader,

One of the best things that ever happened to me was getting rejected by IBM.

At the time, I didn’t think so.

Like many people, I walked away questioning myself. Was I not smart enough? Experienced enough? Good enough?

Years later, I see that rejection differently. Had I been hired, I may never have started my own company, coached founders in Silicon Valley, or built the career I have today.

Sometimes the opportunity you don’t get is the one that makes room for the life you’re meant to build.

Today, I approach interview rejection through two lenses: the material and the spiritual.

The material lens is governed by the ego.

Its first response is almost always the same: I’m not good enough. I’m not capable. They didn’t choose me.

The ego is an excellent storyteller, but not always a truthful one. Rejection becomes a circus of self-doubt if we allow it.

Instead, I collect information.

Whenever possible, I ask:

Thank you for taking the time to interview me. If you’re open to sharing, what were some of the reasons behind your decision? I’m collecting feedback so I can become a better communicator and interview more effectively.

Most hiring managers won’t respond.

Some will.

And those few insights are worth far more than another hour of overthinking.

The second lens is spiritual.

When a door closes, I try not to force it open.

I tell myself, Perhaps this wasn’t my path.

That isn’t always easy for me.

I’m ambitious. I grew up in New York. I like setting goals and making them happen. I don’t enjoy hearing “no.”

But over the years, I’ve learned that not every rejection is an obstacle. Some are redirects.

I’ve even developed a habit of tracking my rejections.

I once read about a CEO who asked his team every day, “How did you get rejected today, and what did you learn?”

I loved that question. It transforms rejection from something to avoid into something to collect.

Every rejection becomes data. It teaches you something about yourself. Eventually, rejection stops feeling personal.

It simply becomes part of the process.

Lead with clarity.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Storyteller,

I have counted 53 rejections and 312 publisher pitches over the last eight years. Looking back, I wouldn't erase a single one. Here's why.

My dream has always been to become a bestselling author and build a literary career. My mother still thinks writing is my hobby. I suppose you can have a hobby for twenty-five years.

Truthfully, I’m a full-time creator, author, and teacher who teaches part time. I believe in Chris Hadfield’s philosophy of becoming an astronaut: start living like one long before anyone gives you the title. That’s the decision I made at thirty-five. I stopped waiting for permission and started living as a writer.

I think rejection as a writer is no different from being an entrepreneur—or a little girl with buck teeth. You get rejected daily. It’s part of the job.

So you might as well do what you love, because you’ll be rejected doing things you hate, too.

One lesson rejection has taught me is this: always respond with gratitude.

When a publisher declines my work, I write something like this:

Thank you so much for taking the time to review my manuscript. It means a great deal to me. If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to know what led to your decision. Was it my writing style, the story itself, or simply that it wasn’t the right fit for your list? I’m collecting feedback on each submission so I can continue to grow as a writer.

Then I always leave the door open.

I hope we might have the opportunity to work together on a future project.

You never know which rejection becomes your next opportunity.

I'm curious to hear from my fellow writers: How have you handled rejection from publishers? Has it changed the way you write, submit, or think about your work?

Speak your truth.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Adventurous Soul,

I have struggled with rejection my whole life.

My earliest memory of it takes me back to middle school. I was thirteen and hopelessly in love with a boy named Robert Gervasi. We always sat next to each other in class. My last name began with H, his with G. Fate, apparently, had cursed me.

One day, another classmate, Ryan, convinced me Robert would kiss me if I kissed him first.

I had braces.

So, in a moment of spectacular courage (or spectacular stupidity) I leaned in. At the last second, Ryan moved his head, and instead of a kiss, my braces scraped across Robert’s cheek.

The class exploded with laughter. Robert turned bright red. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole.

That wasn’t my only rejection. I was rejected by boys, by the popular girls, by anyone who decided that the skinny, flat-chested girl with braces and holiday-colored rubber bands wasn’t worth noticing. I looked more like a little boy than the girls in the magazines.

Looking back, I think that was the day I made a quiet promise to myself.

If the world wasn’t going to protect me, I would become someone who could protect herself.

Rejection Builds a Warrior

I sometimes wonder who I would have become had I not been rejected.

Maybe I would have spent high school chasing boys like everyone else. Instead, I skipped boys and went straight to men. Rejection accelerated something in me.

It made me comfortable standing alone.

Growing up in New York only reinforced it. The city is full of warriors. It taught me how to throw punches, take punches, and survive almost any social environment. Sometimes that meant defending myself physically. Sometimes emotionally. Sometimes professionally.

People often say women shouldn’t fight.

I disagree.

If life places you in an environment where you have no choice but to defend yourself, you learn. You learn to set boundaries. You learn courage. You learn resilience. Those are the kinds of fights that matter.

Rejection Became a Habit

Years later, I found myself as a freelance journalist in the Middle East.

When no one wanted to go somewhere dangerous, I volunteered.

Damascus was filling with tanks. Syria was becoming a classroom unlike any university could offer. Most people saw danger.

I saw curiosity.

Looking back, I realize I had become so familiar with rejection that uncertainty no longer frightened me. Walking into the unknown had become normal.

The girl who survived middle school eventually found herself interviewing strangers in war zones.

The Hidden Blessing

Rejection forces a pivot.

At the time, it feels like loss. Years later, it often reveals itself as direction.

I’ve started to think of rejection as a quiet nudge from the universe—a course correction. Some people call it intuition. Others call it fate. Whatever you believe, rejection has a strange way of redirecting us toward the life we were meant to live.

The blessing isn’t the rejection itself. It’s who you become because of it.

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Leader,

I have never been a fan of interviews. In fact, when I managed a retail store, I never looked at a résumé before meeting a candidate. I only read it afterward.

I wanted every person to walk into the room with a clean slate. Before I knew what they had done, I wanted to know who they were.

So I divided every interview into two parts: storytelling and problem-solving.

The storytelling questions always come first.

“Tell me about a time you felt inspired.”

“What’s your earliest childhood memory?”

Those questions changed the room. People stopped trying to give the “right” answer and started telling real stories. I wasn’t evaluating the story itself. I was listening for what made them come alive, what they valued, and how they made sense of the world.

I'm hosting a storytelling workshop for authors and leaders, where we'll work on the story you tell about yourself, whether it's for your author bio, interviews, or speaking opportunities. We get all kinds of people from different backgrounds.

👉Register for the August 8th workshop.

Only then did we move to the second half of the interview. I’d present a problem and ask, “How would you approach this?” I wasn’t looking for the perfect solution. I wanted to understand how they thought, how they handled uncertainty, and how they made decisions under pressure.

That’s how I make my hiring decisions, and looking back, I honestly can’t remember hiring the wrong person using this approach.

The next time you interview someone, spend a little less time interviewing the résumé and a little more time getting to know the human being.

If you’d like my favorite storytelling interview questions, send me a DM.

Lead with clarity.

Yours,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)

Dear Writer,

Stuck on believable characters? You’re probably also stuck on believable dialogue—the two go together.

Characters aren’t invented as much as they are observed.

If you’re writing autofiction, you’re the character. The dialogue already exists. It’s the conversation you’ve had a hundred times in your own head, the words you wish you’d said, the things you actually said and still remember years later.

Not ready to put yourself on the page? Start with the people around you. Your partner. Your roommate. Your friend. Your sibling. Your neighbor. Every person you know is a study in human behavior.

The Method

• Create one page for each person. Title it with their name.

Read more

Dear Adventurous Soul,

I used to think stories were something we told. Then I started writing fiction.

When my mother finished Pretty Girl Complex, she didn’t cry. She told me, flatly, that she didn’t like it. “That story is about me,” she said. It wasn’t—not exactly. I hadn’t written our childhood the way it happened. But I had written the character based on her the way I understood her, and the way I felt about her, with a precision memory alone couldn’t have given me. That precision is what unsettled her. Not the facts. The feeling underneath them.

“But it’s fiction,” I replied. If it were true, it would have been a memoir. Yet fiction has a strange way of revealing truths—because writers write what they know, or at least strive to, according to the New York Times journalist Gay Talese, who gave me that advice years ago.

That was the moment I realized stories don’t just entertain us. They shape the way we see ourselves, and how we relate to others.

Stories preserve history. They also shape the way we experience it.

If Pretty Girl Complex stirred a memory or a feeling you hadn't named yet— that's the story doing its work. Help the next reader find it.

👉 LINK to Leave a review on Amazon

The Stories We Inherit

Long before we tell our own stories, we inherit someone else’s. My grandmother read books about the Second World War. So did my mother. I read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I still cry. Those stories became part of how I understood Germany long before I ever visited it.

When I eventually lived there, I couldn’t help writing a novel set in post-war Germany. I hadn’t planned to. But the history kept finding me. Once, I was at a spa hotel, admiring the view of a castle and the river beneath it, when I learned that just behind that castle stood a former euthanasia center. I never went inside. I didn’t need to. Knowing it was there, behind something so beautiful, was enough to send me looking for the rest.

Much of Germany is like this—beautiful, and quietly holding a dark past just beneath the surface. You can see it in the picture above. I felt it again in Heidelberg, where I visited and learned how many Nazi doctors had studied there.

So I kept digging. I read books, scoured Wikipedia, asked ChatGPT to fill in what I couldn’t find elsewhere. I walked through cemeteries taking photos of tombstones, uploading the images so the German could be translated into English. I asked my ex-boyfriend’s father, a German man whose own father had been stationed at the German-Czech border, and was later taken as a prisoner of war. Piece by piece, the past stopped being background and became material.

The story that surfaces on your walks, that shows up uninvited at dinner — it’s asking to be written. This August, join a workshop to turn that fragment into a short story or the first pages of a novel. Bring the story that keeps finding you.

👉LINK to Sign up on Meetup.

The Stories We Share

Stories don’t stay inside books. They move into dinner conversations. I remember sitting at my ex’s family’s table in Germany, in the middle of writing Codebreaker, only half-present—someone would ask how my day was, and they’d notice my eyes drift, unfocused, somewhere past them. “What are you thinking about?” they’d ask. A story, of course. A feeling, usually unsettled. On long walks, fragments resurfaced—the residue of a story I thought I’d set down. Before sleep, they’d return again. We tell them to make sense of first loves, broken hearts, difficult parents, the people we’ve lost.

Sometimes we tell them to others. Sometimes we write them down because we don’t yet understand them ourselves. Writing isn’t simply remembering. It’s another way of discovering and rediscovering memory. Sometimes, in that process, I cry.

The Stories We Become

The stories we return to slowly become part of us—the characters we admire, and sometimes, the characters we become. The line between reality and fiction blurs more often than I’d like to admit. It happened most vividly at that same table in Germany, while I was deep inside Codebreaker. I walked through the meadows, petting horses, and still inside the book—still, in some sense, the little girl at the center of it. I was at that horse’s head, using my own hands, but some part of me was in the body of this little girl.

Stories shape how we see the world, how we love, what we fear, what we hope for.

Perhaps that is why I write fiction instead of memoir. Not because facts matter less, but because fictional stories let us stretch the imagination, deepen the memory, and embellish the emotion. And that’s all right. Embellishment hurts no one—it only makes the truth easier to feel.

Now I understand what my mother felt the day she set down Pretty Girl Complex and told me she didn’t like it. She wasn’t just reading a story. She was inside one—recognizing herself in it the way I once sat at that table in Germany as the little girl from Codebreaker. The line between story and self had blurred for her too. I just hadn’t recognized it yet.

Upgrade for early access + behind-the-scenes

You just read how a dinner table in Germany became a scene in Codebreaker. That’s the part readers don’t usually see. For $5/month, get early chapters, real moments behind the fiction, and drafts before they become the story. Upgrade now.

We spend our lives telling stories. Somewhere along the way, they begin telling us who we are.

With gratitude and curiosity,

Alice Hlídková
Author
2026 Chrysalis BREW Poetry Award Nominee (”Chocolate Road”)