She is five, cross-legged in front of the television, closer to the screen than any pediatrician would allow, absolutely certain that if she watches closely enough she’ll figure out how the flying happens.

She is a hard worker. Even then. She finishes things. She makes her bed like it’s a job interview and colors inside the lines out of respect for the lines, not fear of them.

Grown-ups call her mature.

She thinks maturity is just another word for waiting well.

And she is waiting. For the day her wildest dreams stop rehearsing backstage and walk out under the lights.

I’ll tell you plainly what this is, so none of it stays confusing: a guide.

A real one, on how to become your own magic, because nobody is coming to hand you any. But first you have to meet the girl who needed exactly that and didn’t get it, because everything I know about building magic, I learned from going without it.

She goes to the movies to feel what her actual week won’t give her.

Two hours of somebody else’s rescue.

Somebody else’s kiss in the rain.

Somebody else’s rule that bends the second you want something enough.

She sits in the dark and, for a little while, she gets to live inside it.

Then the lights come up, and she has to leave the only world that made sense.

She has never understood why the real one settled for so little.

No wizards teaching children to duel with light in their hands. No unicorns, when we’ve cloned sheep. Clouds made of water instead of cotton candy. Nobody riding a stallion into battle to defend the people they love, the way it happens in every good story, the way it’s clearly supposed to happen.

None of it makes any sense to her.

So she goes looking for the doors out.

Harry Potter.

Alice’s rabbit hole.

Every wonderland that comes with an exit built in.

Maybe you had your own door. A boat crossing black water toward a castle lit gold, the first time the towers come into view. Two sisters and a book that breathes, stirring a potion around a cauldron neither of them can fully control.

Tell me yours doesn’t still live somewhere behind your ribs.

Here’s the problem with the door, though, and it’s the whole reason this isn’t just a story about a girl who loved movies: living inside the wonderland instead of your own life isn’t a life. It’s a beautiful waiting room.

She doesn’t want to wait in it forever.

She wants to build her own way in.

This is where that starts.

The Vow at the Window

Every October, she stands at the window on Halloween night and looks for a witch on a broom, crossing in front of the moon, the way the specials always show it.

She knows, even as she looks, that she probably won’t see it.

Not the old way.

Not with her own eyes.

And this is the part I need you to sit with, because it’s the whole essay, really, the rest is just decoration: she doesn’t decide the world is broken and give up.

She decides something quieter and much more useful.

Okay. I might not get to see it. So I’ll make my own magic at home, in my own way.

She doesn’t know yet that this sentence is a vow. She’s just a kid at a window, making a small private peace with disappointment. It will take her twenty more years to understand what she actually promised herself that night.

No dragons came for me. So I grew wings out of my fingertips instead.

I should stop letting you think this is a story about a girl. It’s about me. And if any of this has been sitting strangely close to your own chest while you read it, I suspect it’s about you too.

Knowing you’re allowed to make your own magic is one thing. Knowing how, on an ordinary mortal Tuesday, wizard-free, is another.

That’s what’s behind this door.

☾ What’s Behind the Door

Upgrading is basically the cheat code for the resurrection part of this newsletter.

For less than the price of a good candle, the kind that makes an entire room feel like a confession booth, here’s exactly what’s waiting for you on the other side:

• The real mechanics of the vow. How a promise made by a five-year-old at a window actually turned into a career, what ghostwriting has to do with witches, and the plain, un-mystical definition of what carrying magic means once you strip away the fairy dust.

• The reframe for feeling like an alien. The exact shift that turns “I don’t belong anywhere” from a wound into a blueprint, so the next time that feeling shows up, you know what to build instead of just surviving it.

• All three spells, written plainly, ready to cast tonight. Spell Two: The Senses, the small daily practice of noticing the magic that’s already here. Spell Three: The Softening, the medium effort of holding onto love and optimism on purpose. Spell Four: The Exchange, the large effort of turning what you’ve built inside yourself into something the world will actually pay for.

• A method built to outlast this letter. Not a one-time read. Something to come back to the next time the world feels too small for what you’re carrying, and it will still work.

The full spellbook is below, for paid subscribers only. Three spells, no wand required, and I promise the door is worth crossing.

Read more

The laptop is open.

So is a tab with Claude in it, and beside both, a legal pad with three lines crossed out and one circled twice. This is the whole operation.

It has been for ten years.

No office. No team. No book deal, actually.

Ten years in this trade and I’ve never ghostwritten one.

Turns out there are more rooms in this house than that: email sequences, newsletters, LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn articles, Substack essays, social captions, a slab of website copy that needs to sound like someone who has never once sat down to write.

I could do this from a kitchen table in February.

I could do it from a hammock in Fiji, salt drying on my arms, tea gone lukewarm in a mug I don’t remember pouring.

The trade doesn’t care where the desk is.

It only cares whether the words are alive when they land.

That’s the part nobody mentions when they picture “freelance writer, paid like an executive.” They picture the hammock. They skip the part where you earn the right to bring your laptop to it.

I’ve been doing this for ten years.

Five years ago, I went all in.

Below is the actual path: the first client, the training that mattered, the exact weekly schedule I wish someone had handed me instead of five years of trial and error, the six-step call I run on every job I take, what I charge for eight LinkedIn posts a month, the mistake that keeps most new ghosts broke, and the one number I’m allowed to tell you, even though it isn’t the one you want to know.

···

This is the part I don’t post.

Upgrading to paid doesn’t hand you a hack. It hands you the mechanics themselves, the ones I don’t put on LinkedIn, in a free post, or anywhere the algorithm can screenshot them.

For $20 a month, less than the candle burning next to you right now.

Here’s what’s waiting past the divider:

• The week-by-week schedule I wish someone had handed me instead of five years of trial and error, laid out day by day.

• The six-step call I run before I write a single word for anyone, in full: the exact questions, in the exact order, and why the order is the whole trick.

• The full rate breakdown: what I actually charge, how it scales with scope, and the difference between billing your time and billing your judgment.

• The mistake that keeps most new ghostwriters broke, named plainly, before you make it yourself.

• One number I don’t say out loud anywhere else on the internet.

This is the first letter in that archive.

Yours is the name I’ll remember opening it.

Everything below this line is for paid subscribers.

Read more

Hi, it’s Anastasiya.

If you’re new here, welcome.

If you’ve been getting these for a while, thank you for being one of the eighty-five.

(Eighty-five people is small enough that I could still name most of you. I won’t. That would be strange. But I could.)

That number, eighty-five, is small.

I know.

But I want to start this essay with it anyway, because it’s the whole point.

Last week, I posted something on LinkedIn.

It picked up 447 impressions, solid, nothing viral.

Then I added a comment underneath it, four words: “What are you most nervous about?”

That comment alone pulled 370 impressions.

Almost as many as the post that held it.

I’ve been sitting with that gap for two weeks now.

Not because the math is impressive.

People don’t engage with polish. They engage with being seen.

That’s the real subject of this newsletter.

Not LinkedIn. Not Substack. Not Pinterest.

Being seen, heard, and understood by the people you’re actually trying to reach, and what that looks like once you stop treating your platforms like billboards and start treating them like the three very different jobs they actually are.

The myth I believed for years

For a long time, I thought reach was a size problem.

Not enough followers, not enough subscribers, not enough views, and the fix was always “more”: post more, be everywhere, get in front of more eyes.

I said this to myself with real conviction, the way you believe something right before you find out it was expensive advice.

It’s not a size problem.

It’s a mechanism problem.

You can have a small following and still get outsized reach, if you understand which platform is doing which job for you. You can also have a huge following and still feel invisible, if every platform you’re on is doing the same job.

Most people never test that second sentence against their own numbers.

I did, so you don’t have to.

The foundation, before anything else

Here’s the thing nobody puts in the strategy deck: before any tactic works, you have to extend to your audience the exact thing you want from them.

See them. Understand them. Hear them. First.

Every platform below only works because of that, not instead of it.

Being seen was never about a spotlight.

It’s someone finally turning the light so what was already there stops getting missed. I did not invent this idea.

I just apparently can’t stop saying it in different ways.

Why three, and not just the one you’re comfortable with

Most people pick a platform based on where they feel least awkward, then wonder, a year in, why growth has stalled.

Here’s what I think they’re missing.

LinkedIn, Substack, and Pinterest aren’t competing for the same job.

They reach people through three completely different mechanisms, on three completely different timelines.

• LinkedIn reaches people right now, through a live, relevance-scored feed.

• Substack reaches people directly, through an inbox you own outright, this inbox, the one you’re reading this in.

• Pinterest reaches people later, through search, whenever someone happens to type in the question you already answered months ago.

Real-time. Owned. Evergreen.

Run only one, and the other two problems, algorithm risk, no long-term compounding, no immediate conversation, never go away.

Run all three, and they start covering for each other.

And if you’re doing this alone, without a team, here’s the detail that actually matters: none of it requires you to be on camera.

My own numbers, since I’d rather show you than tell you

I’m not writing this from a hypothetical.

Right now:

• 3,732 LinkedIn followers.

• 85 Substack subscribers, you.

• And 32.6K monthly Pinterest views.

Sit with those side by side for a second.

My smallest list by far is also the one I own outright, no algorithm decides whether you see this. And Pinterest, with the smallest following behind it of the three, is quietly outreaching my LinkedIn audience by close to nine times over, every single month, without me posting daily or filming a single video.

None of these numbers would impress anyone on their own.

Together, they’re the actual argument: reach doesn’t require a big following.

It requires the right mechanism for the job.

LinkedIn: relevance, right now

LinkedIn’s feed isn’t chronological or purely social, it’s relevance-scored in real time. Early engagement, comments especially, signals the algorithm to keep showing your post to more of the right people.

It behaves less like a broadcast and more like a live conversation the platform is deciding whether to keep amplifying.

The data backs this up in a way I didn’t expect.

Average organic engagement on LinkedIn sits around 5.2%, up 8% year over year.

But format matters more than most people think: native documents (carousels, PDFs, written breakdowns) lead at roughly 7% engagement, plain text posts sit around 4.5%, up 12% year over year, and video, the format everyone assumes they need, is actually losing ground, with views down roughly 36% year over year across follower tiers.

Which means the best-performing format on LinkedIn right now isn’t video.

It’s a document.

A carousel.

A well-written text post.

You can win here with a keyboard, which is exactly how that four-word comment did its work. I run every hook I publish through a process I call an Opener Autopsy before it goes anywhere, because the first line is the only thing standing between a post and the scroll.

That’s a whole conversation on its own, but the short version: the comment worked because the line before it did its job.

Substack: the inbox you own outright

This part is a little strange to write, because you’re inside the example.

Substack doesn’t route you through an algorithm.

It lands in an inbox.

No platform can throttle it, shadowban it, or change the rules overnight, which makes it the one channel where reach isn’t rented.

I’ll be honest: for the first few months, watching this list sit at double digits did something to my ego that a decade of writing for other people apparently never fully vaccinated me against.

It felt like proof I was doing something wrong.

It wasn’t.

It was the slowest platform on purpose, the one built for depth instead of speed, and the numbers below are exactly why that trade was worth making.

Average newsletter open rates run somewhere between 38 and 40%, with a well-niched list climbing to 50 to 70%. Substack itself has grown to roughly 5 million paid subscriptions, up 67% year over year.

But the number that actually matters for a business owner is this one: email converts new customers at roughly 40 times the rate of social media, with an average return of $36 for every dollar spent.

Eighty-five people who chose to be here will always outperform a following I’m borrowing from someone else’s platform.

That’s not a consolation prize for a small list.

That’s the entire point of having one.

Pinterest: the search engine that’s already looking for you

Pinterest isn’t a social feed, it’s a visual search engine, and the numbers make that distinction obvious. Ninety-seven percent of top Pinterest searches are unbranded, meaning people are looking for an answer, not a company.

You’re not interrupting a scroll.

You’re the answer waiting there when someone searches.

Pinterest reaches over 537 million monthly active users, and the intent behind them is the real story: 75 to 80% of weekly users are actively in “purchase mode,” compared to 41% on Instagram and 28% on Facebook.

Pins also keep working long after you’ve stopped thinking about them.

Where a tweet’s relevance window is measured in minutes and a Facebook post’s in hours, pins keep earning clicks for 30 days or longer, sometimes much longer, which is exactly why a fraction of my following there is out-reaching LinkedIn.

And, again: no camera.

Pinterest runs on design, not footage.

The best part

The more you create, the more your ideal audience finds a reason to reach out to you directly.

Not because you asked them to.

Because you kept showing up as the answer to something they were already looking for, in the room, in their inbox, in their search results.

I’ve watched this happen on my own accounts.

When I started writing about Substack, people reached out to me about Substack.

When I started writing about LinkedIn, people reached out about LinkedIn.

Same person, different topic, the leads followed whatever I was talking about.

That’s the real compounding effect of running all three.

You’re not building three audiences.

You’re building three separate paths for the right person to find their way back to you, unprompted.

Where it all has to land

None of this works without somewhere real for people to go once they’re curious: one offer, one call to action, ready whenever someone from LinkedIn, Pinterest, or this inbox decides to look.

The numbers, side by side

• LinkedIn: 3,732 followers, ~5.2% avg. engagement, real-time reach

• Substack: 85 subscribers, 38-40% avg. open rate, owned reach

• Pinterest: 32.6K monthly views, 30+ day content lifespan, evergreen reach

Three different jobs. Zero cameras required.

Before you go

You don’t need all three running perfectly today.

You don’t need a big following on any of them, I don’t.

You need one honest, well-written thing, published somewhere your audience can actually find it.

If this reframed anything for you, forward it to the business owner in your life who’s building alone right now. They probably need the myth busted more than they need another growth hack.

So: what are you most nervous about in your business right now?

Hit reply and tell me.

I read every one.

Talk soon, Anastasiya

ᯓ★ P.S. The line up there about my ego was the one I almost cut. Writing it anyway is basically this whole newsletter, condensed.

Nobody has ever asked to see my diploma.

And I’ve got a good one.

Not one client, in ten years.

Not the famous ones, not the founders, not the woman who paid me more for a single speech than my first job paid me in a month.

They asked to see one thing: whether I could sound like them.

That’s the entire interview.

And it’s why ghostwriting is the best answer I know to a question I get asked constantly: how do I actually make real money from my laptop?

Not passive income.

Not a course about courses.

A trade.

Let me walk you through it the way I wish someone had walked me.

···

What ghostwriting actually is

Forget books.

Books are the smallest room in this house.

Ghostwriting is every piece of writing published under a busy person’s name: their newsletter, their LinkedIn posts, their captions, their keynote, their investor updates, their wedding toast.

The world is full of people who have something to say and no time, no craft, or no nerve to say it.

You become their voice.

They get the words.

You get paid.

Every successful person you follow is a writing job that hasn’t been filled yet.

···

Why it pays so well

Three reasons, and none of them require talent you weren’t born with.

First, demand is absurd.

Every founder, coach, executive, and expert is now expected to publish constantly.

Most of them would rather do anything else.

Second, supply is thin.

Plenty of people can write.

Very few can listen to someone for an hour and then write as them.

That second skill is rare, and rare gets paid.

Third, the results are visible.

When a client’s post lands, when their newsletter grows, when the room laughs at the right beat of the speech, they can see exactly what they bought.

People happily pay for things they can see working.

···

What it actually pays

Honest ranges, because this genre is full of liars.

A beginner ghostwriting social posts for a local business owner might start around a few hundred dollars a month. A working ghost writing weekly LinkedIn content for a founder commonly bills $1,000 to $3,000 to $5,000 monthly and beyond.

Newsletters, speeches, and thought leadership for established names climb from there, and specialists with a track record charge multiples of all of this.

The number that matters is not the ceiling.

It’s the shape: this is monthly retainer work.

One client is a side income.

Three or four is a living.

It stacks.

···

What you need (and what you don’t)

You don’t need a degree.

You don’t need connections.

You don’t need to be a “real writer,” whatever that is.

You need three things.

1. The ability to listen. Most of this job is asking questions and hearing how a person actually talks: what they repeat, what they reach for when they’re excited, where they go quiet.
   

2. The ability to imitate. Not forever. Just on the page, in their rhythm, with their words. This is a craft, which means it’s learnable, which means the only requirement is practice.
   

3. Proof. Two or three samples that show you can do it. Nobody checks credentials. Everybody checks samples.

···

How I actually learned it

Since I’m being honest about everything else: I didn’t figure this out alone in a room.

I learned ghostwriting through PGA Ghostwriting Academy.

I learned copywriting through the Copy Posse, Alex Cattoni’s program.

Neither one asked about my education either.

I want to be careful about how I say this next part, because the internet is loud with people selling shortcuts.

A course is not a credential.

Nobody hired me because I finished one.

What the courses actually bought me was time: the structure I would have spent three years building badly on my own, and the confidence to charge like a professional before I fully felt like one.

If you can afford good training, it’s worth it.

If you can’t, everything in those programs exists in slower, scrappier form: study voices obsessively, write in them constantly, ask better questions than anyone expects.

The trade doesn’t care how you learned it.

It only checks whether you can do it.

···

How to start, step by step

One. Pick a lane.

Not “writing.”

A room: LinkedIn posts for founders, newsletters for coaches, speeches for executives. Small doors open faster than big ones.

·

Two. Make your proof before anyone asks.

Choose two public figures you admire.

Study ten pieces of their writing.

Then write two new pieces in each voice.

That’s your portfolio: not your writing, your range.

·

Three. Find the drowning.

Your first clients are not celebrities.

They’re the business owner whose last post was eight months ago, the consultant whose newsletter died in March.

They are everywhere, and they know they have a problem.

·

Four. Charge per month, not per word.

Per-word pricing is how writers stay broke.

Offer a simple monthly package: this many pieces, this process, this price.

Start modest, deliver well, raise it every few clients.

·

Five. Ask one hour of questions before you write one word.

The interview is the job.

The writing is the souvenir.

···

The honest part

I owe you this, because the laptop-money genre never says it.

This is labor.

Pleasant labor, portable labor, well-paid labor, but labor.

You will not make thousands next Tuesday.

The first client is the slowest; the fifth finds you.

And there’s a quieter cost.

When you write in other people’s voices for a living, you have to keep an appointment with your own. I have a whole ritual for it, and a whole letter about it, and if you stay around here you’ll learn it too.

But if you can listen, and you’re willing to practice sounding like someone else, you are already carrying the entire toolkit.

No school sells it.

No one can gatekeep it.

···

Ten years ago I was a writer with no name, no degree anyone asked about, two courses, and a laptop.

I still have no name.

That turned out to be the product.

The difference is that now the invisibility comes with invoices, and the invoices bought me a life where I write for people you’ve heard of and answer to no one.

The door I walked through is still open.

It doesn’t check credentials.

It just asks if you can sound like someone.

Sincerely, Anastasiya

About me

I’m Anastasiya.

For over ten years I’ve been a ghostwriter, which means I write the captions, keynotes, newsletters, and thought leadership of people you’ve heard of, and then I never sign any of it.

I run a writing studio doing this work.

I learned the trade through PGA Ghostwriting Academy and the Copy Posse, not a degree.

At The Sonder is the one place I write as myself.

One letter a week on three things: how the trade actually works, how voice is built, and how a person comes back to life after years of living inside someone else’s.

If you’ve ever disappeared into everyone else’s story, this letter is for you.

One letter a week on craft, secrets, and coming back from the dead.

It’s late.

The office is quiet the way offices only get after everyone stops pretending to be busy.

Feet on the desk.

Smoke curling toward the ceiling like a sentence I haven’t finished yet.

I’m thinking about my clients.

Not their content calendars.

Not their launch dates.

Their fears.

The ones they tell me without telling me.

Every founder walks into my life with the same four words.

“Make it sound like me.”

They say it light.

Tossed off.

Oat milk instead of regular.

But I’ve been in this business long enough to hear the weight under a casual sentence. That’s the job, really.

People hire me for the writing.

They keep me for the listening.

And when the calls run long and the guard comes down, “make it sound like me” unspools into what it always was.

A confession.

Some of them are afraid they don’t sound like anything at all.

Founders.

Builders.

People who conjured companies out of nothing but nerve and a deck — sitting across from me, quietly convinced their voice is beige. That you could strip their name off everything they’ve written and the world wouldn’t blink.

They’re wrong.

They’re almost always wrong.

But you can’t smell your own perfume after twenty years of wearing it.

They’ve gone nose-blind to themselves.

So they hire me.

A stranger with a good nose.

Some of them had a voice once.

They just can’t remember where they left it.

These are the ones who used to write.

Before the board decks.

Before legal got a red pen.

Before every sentence had to survive a room full of people paid to be nervous.

Somewhere between the seed round and the Series B, their voice got sanded down to a press release.

They don’t miss writing.

They never liked writing.

They miss sounding like themselves.

Those are different griefs.

Only one of them is my department.

Some of them wonder — never out loud — if the words are still theirs once I’ve touched them.

This one leaks out sideways.

A joke about cheating.

A pause that runs a beat too long.

A request to “just polish my draft” from someone who never sends a draft.

Funny thing.

Nobody asks if the founder drew her own logo.

Nobody checks if she laid the brick on her own storefront.

But words feel like self.

And handing your self across a desk to a stranger — that’s a risk no term sheet covers.

I understand the pause.

I’d pause too.

And some of them — the ones I think about at this hour — are afraid of what I’ll find.

That’s the deep one.

The one that never surfaces, not once, not on any call.

Because my first job is to listen.

Really listen.

Hours of it.

And some part of every founder is braced for the moment the professional listener leans back, exhales, and discovers there’s nothing there.

That the vision is thinner than the pitch.

That the thoughts were borrowed and the leadership was a costume.

I take a long drag on that one, every time.

Because I’ve listened to a lot of founders, for a lot of hours, in a lot of rooms.

I have never once found nothing.

Here’s my confession, since we’re being honest after dark.

The voice is always there.

It’s just never where they think it is.

It’s not in the drafted-and-redrafted post.

It’s in the voice memo they send at 11pm, apologizing for rambling.

It’s in how they explain the company to their mother.

It’s in the story they tell at dinner, third glass in, when they think nobody’s taking notes.

I’m always taking notes.

That’s the whole racket.

I don’t invent voices.

I recover them.

I dust the glass for fingerprints that were there all along — and then I have the nerve to print them at full size.

The clients who worry me aren’t the ones with no voice.

Those don’t exist.

I’ve checked.

The ones who worry me slide someone else’s newsletter across the desk and say, “like this.”

That’s not ghostwriting, sweetheart.

That’s a séance for the wrong ghost.

One more thing they never tell you about hiring a ghostwriter.

The real reason to do it.

The one that isn’t on my invoice.

It’s a dark night of the soul — the light-hearted kind.

Mystics used to go into the desert to face themselves.

Forty days, no water, plenty of demons.

My clients get a Zoom link and a good listener.

Same pilgrimage.

Better catering.

Because here’s what actually happens when someone sits with you, hour after hour, asking why — why this company, why this hill, why do you say it that way, where did that phrase come from.

You stop performing.

You can’t keep the pitch voice up that long.

Nobody can.

And in the space where the performance used to be, you meet someone you haven’t talked to in years.

Yourself.

Unedited.

Most people never book that meeting.

• Too busy.

• Too armored.

• Too afraid of the fourth fear.

But my clients have to show up for it — it’s on the calendar, and they’re paying for the hour. The ghostwriter is a forcing function for the reckoning they kept postponing.

And here’s the beautiful part.

The part that keeps me in this racket.

They always walk out of the desert lighter.

Every time.

Because facing yourself with a witness in the room isn’t an interrogation.

It’s a homecoming.

They came to me for content.

They leave with their own reflection — and finally, they like what they see.

The cigarette’s down to the filter.

Last thought before I call it a night:

If you’ve ever flinched at the idea of a ghostwriter — of anyone getting that close to your voice — ask yourself which fear was doing the flinching.

Because generic people never worry about being generic.

The worry is the proof.

Your voice didn’t die under the board decks.

It’s been living in the after-hours rooms — the memos, the dinners, the rambles — everywhere nobody was grading it.

And it was never about who typed the words.

I just hold the mirror steady.

You’re the one who finally looks.

Anastasiya

P.S. — Try this tonight: record a voice memo explaining your business the way you’d tell a friend, no polish allowed. Then read your last published post out loud. That gap between the two voices? That’s the case I get hired to solve.

Sweetness, love, and the taste that anything is possible.

I recently watched “Fly Me To The Moon“, the new movie starring our favorite woman, Scarlett Johansson, and the equally charming and lovely Chatting Tatum…

And it put me in a mood of sweetness, love, and the taste that anything is possible.

The movie itself was wonderful, a true delight, but what I loved most was how I felt watching the movie. Seeing Scarlett’s sweet smile and sparkly eyes throughout the scenes, coupled with the magic of the plot itself had me blushing and giggling throughout the 2 hours and 12 minutes.

It was just too cute…

But more importantly, the entire experience, from the moment I stepped into the theatre until the lights lifted once the credits began to role, the magic of the movies was circulating in the air.

And I was soaking it in.

So much so, that it put me in a mood of giggly love.

The kind that keeps you blushing for hours.

I even skipped into the auditorium!

All of this buzz and cuteness from the main characters chemistry got me in a mood to want to be taken out on a date.

You know, maybe sitting under the stars, admiring the cosmos with a flute of something sparkling and snacks galore on a midsummer night with Jhené Aiko humming in the background?

Nonetheless, it inspired me to play with my makeup collection and do a look that brought me joy, but also something I would create for a date night.

This one was inspired by the night, and amour.

Afterall, like Marilyn Monroe said, “Who said nights were for sleep?”

Let’s begin, shall we?

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The Music Mood

While We’re Young by Jhené Aiko

The Products

The Base

Primer – e.l.f. Power Grip Primer

Simple and inexpensive alternative to the MILK MAKEUP Hydro Grip Hydrating Makeup Primer with Hyaluronic Acid + Niacinamide. I personally prefer Milk Makeup’s grip primer to e.l.f’s, but it still does the job well.

Glow – L’Oréal Paris Lumi Glow Natural Glow Enhancer

Another lovely alternative to the Saie Glowy Super Gel Lightweight Dewy Multipurpose Illuminator, but my ultimate love is the Kosas Glow I.V. Vitamin-Infused Skin Illuminating Enhancer. I like to apply my base glow product after my primer.

Foundation – TIRTIR Mask Fit Red Cushion Foundation

Holy moly, this is the real deal and 100% worth the hype. It’s officially my new favorite foundation and yes, it is as beautiful and perfect as it appears online.

In one of my recent makeup tutorials, “How To: Daytime Makeup With Purple Shimmer“, I mentioned that the Beautiful Skin Medium Coverage Liquid Foundation with Hyaluronic Acid from Charlotte Tilbury is by-far one of my favorites – which is still very true.

But, after using this foundation from TIRTIR, I don’t want to use anything else. The application is flawless and I feel like I have no makeup on when I use it. Amazing.

I use shade 33 Hazel.

Adding Light Layers

Concealer – ROSE INC Softlight Clean Dewy Hydrating Concealer is one of my favorites to use in the summer because of it’s light and hydrating texture that melts into the skin. It’s lovely to apply and goes very well with the TIRTIR foundation.

I use the color LX 120 – Medium/deep skin tone, cool pink undertone.

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Bronzer – MAKEUP BY MARIO SoftSculpt Transforming Skin Enhancer isn’t technically a bronzer, rather it’s described as “A three-in-one tinted complexion balm that warms and nourishes with sheer coverage to even out the appearance of skin tone”. To me, this feels like a secret product that illuminates my skin and gives it life.

I use the color Light Medium – warms light to light medium skin tones.

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Blush – For my first layer of blush, I used the Patrick Ta Major Headlines Double-Take Crème & Powder Blush Duo, which I love to use all year round no matter the season – it’s beautiful and so much fun to use. Patrick’s recommends applying the powder before the crème, but I applied crème first for this one.

I used the color She’s Flushed – soft peachy pink.

Blush – On top of Patrick’s Blush-Duo, I applied a light pop of color from the NARS Talc-Free Powder Blush. I love this blush, especially in this shade.

I use the color Dolce Vita – 888 – matte dusty rose.

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Amour On The Eyes

Eyeshadow – For the base color on my eyes, I used the Patrick Ta Major Dimension II Rose Eyeshadow Palette. Oh my god, this palette is so beautiful, I love opening it up throughout the day just to admire it.

I used the shade Amour – Pink Beige Matte.

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Eyeliner – I took the shade Heartache – Deep Brown Matte from the same palette and used it to add a bit of dimension and allure.

Who doesn’t love added allure for date night?

Eyeshadow Topper – I, personally, cannot complete a look (for day or night) without glitter, sparkles, or shimmer on top – it’s like an impulse I can’t resist, and I am not ashamed, it’s my favorite part and makes the eyes a bit more mesmerizing.

So, for the sparkle topper, I used one of my favorite products of all time, the Fenty Beauty Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter.

Simply divine, you need this in your collection, it’s an essential, always.

I used the color Wattabrat – 3D baby pink shimmer.

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Mascara – My all time favorite mascara is the L’Oréal Paris Voluminous Superstar Mascara. It’s exceptional with making my eyelashes long and, yes, voluminious. It really does what it says it’ll do.

I prefer using the color Blackest Black.

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The Lips

Lip Liner – I used the Patrick Ta Monochrome Moment Precision Lip Crayon to line my lips and let me just say, it’s an underatted product from Patrick Ta, for sure. The product and packaging is beautiful and luxurious and I enjoy using it every single time.

I used the color She’s Strong – neutral almond.

Lipstick – I don’t always gravitate towards lipstick in the summer, I usually favor a lip oil, but the Charlotte Tilbury Mini Pillow Talk Lipstick & Liner Set (couldn’t find the standalone lipstick), is easy to wear and lasts throughout the night.

I use the color Pillow Talk Medium.

Lip Gloss – Ahh, is a look complete without lip gloss? No, no it isn’t. Lip gloss is the unsung hero that is a simple add on to a look, but to me, completes the look. I used the MAKEUP BY MARIO Pro Volume Lip Gloss for this look and I loved it. I think it was the perfect choice.

I used the color Rose Nude.

Finishing Touches

Setting Powder – The Fenty Beauty Invisimatte Instant Setting + Blotting Powder is a new top-favorite product of mine and is fantastic. I have oily skin, specifically in my t-zone, so this is great to apply after my makeup is done and to carry in my purse throughout the day.

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Highlighter – I save the best for the last and that is alwayys highlighter. I used the same highlighter on my eyes for my cheeks, the Fenty Beauty Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter in Wattabrat – 3D baby pink shimmer to keep my look cohesive.

Et voila, that’s the look.

Ready to go out and enjoy the night.

With amour.

Anastasiya

Share

The party is lovely, and then someone asks what I do.

It happens over dessert.

I say I’m a ghostwriter, and I watch the table decide who I am.

The woman across from me gives me a kind, slightly sorry look.

Someone asks if I’m working on anything of my own.

And the man who asked leans in, lowers his voice, and says a famous name with a question mark at the end.

So, like. Whose book?

I smile.

Partly because of the NDA.

Mostly because I love this question, the way you love watching someone open the wrong gift first.

Nobody at this table has read a book I wrote.

But three of them have read me this week.

One of them read me this morning, on the train, and thought: God, she always knows exactly what to say.

Everyone has a story about ghostwriting.

Almost none of it is true.

And I’ve spent ten years quietly wishing someone would correct the record.

So, gently, one lie at a time.

Let me.

···

Lie 1: Ghostwriting means books.

I haven’t touched a book in years.

The real trade lives much closer to you.

• The caption you read this morning.

• The keynote that made a room cry.

• The newsletter that sounds so much like her.

• The apology you called brave.

The vulnerable post.

Especially the vulnerable post.

You’ve never read her book.

You’ve read her every morning.

Lie 2: Ghostwriters are failed writers.

Think of a wedding singer.

You don’t hire someone who couldn’t make it.

You hire the best voice you can find, because she can take a song she didn’t write and make four hundred people cry.

Sounding like yourself is the easy part.

Any good writer can do it.

Sounding like someone else, on command, better than they do?

That’s not what failure looks like.

That’s a second craft, built on top of the first.

Lie 3: It’s just typing up what they say.

If my clients could say the thing, they wouldn’t need me.

What they can say is the press kit.

My real work happens on one phone call.

I ask questions, patiently, until the rehearsed answers run out and the remembering starts.

You can hear the difference.

Rehearsed is smooth.

Remembering is slower, softer, and true.

That’s the material I build with, and no one can hand it to you.

It has to be found, carefully, the way you’d help someone look for something they lost a long time ago.

That kind of care is the job. It’s also what the invoice is for.

Lie 4: You can’t make real money doing it.

Here’s the part I wish someone had told me earlier, so I’ll tell you.

Writers are raised to chase the byline.

The name on the piece, the follower count, the credit.

And somewhere along the way, we’re taught to accept all that in place of money.

Exposure is what they pay writers instead of money. Ghosts don’t accept it as currency.

When I hand over a piece, the client gets the applause, and I get paid.

Well.

A single post can bill what some writers make in a month.

$5,000.

A monthly retainer, where someone rents your voice, is how a quiet writer builds real wealth.

None of that took luck.

It took a decision: I stopped auditioning for credit and started charging for craft.

That decision is available to you too.

The full breakdown deserves its own letter, and it’s coming.

For now, just hold this: the least valuable part of a sentence is the name under it.

Lie 5: It must be soul-crushing to be invisible.

Here’s where I owe you honesty.

This one is half true.

The half they get wrong: I have never missed the byline.

Credit is a spotlight, and I’ve spent years watching what spotlights do to lovely people.

Part of my job is repairing it.

The half they get right is quieter.

The danger was never being unseen by the world.

It was going unseen by myself.

Every time I work, my own voice goes into a drawer so someone else’s can fill the room.

That’s the job, and I love the job.

But drawers only stay safe if you remember to come back for what you put in them.

The dangerous part was never that they didn’t know my name. It was the year I almost forgot it too.

I’ve watched it happen to brilliant, generous writers.

They lent themselves out, one voice at a time, and never came back.

Which is the real reason I’m writing this.

Share

Because here’s the last lie, the one underneath all the others: that this is a story about ghostwriters.

Look at the shape of it.

A person with a voice of her own, pouring it into someone else’s story, someone else’s success, someone else’s morning, until the pouring becomes invisible.

• Maybe you did it for a company.

• Maybe for a family you love, which makes it harder to notice.

• Maybe for one person who never thought to ask where you went.

You’ve been ghostwriting for years. You just never got paid for it.

The difference between us is small: my disappearing came with a contract.

Yours just became a habit.

So here’s the ritual that kept me alive.

It’s embarrassingly small, and it’s yours now.

Before I disappear into someone else’s voice, I read one page of my own writing out loud.

Alone.

Not to warm up.

To say goodbye, so I remember to come back.

And after, I come back.

Same page, out loud.

It sounds strange at first, like a language I spoke as a child.

Then, a few sentences in, it fits.

There I am.

You don’t need my job to need this.

Find one page of yourself.

• An old email where you were funny.

• A journal entry.

• A caption from years ago, back when you still typed like a person.

Read it out loud.

Then keep the appointment.

···

The party ends. Coats, doorway, and the man from dessert finds me one last time, still holding his famous name like a ticket.

Come on. Off the record. Whose voice do you write?

And this time I answer him honestly, and with real affection.

Tonight?

Mine.

Anastasiya

The call is at ten, which means the séance begins at eight.

I have read everything.

The interviews where she was charming, the interviews where she was tired and the charm wore thin in a way I found more interesting.

The caption from 2016, before the followers came, when she still typed like a person.

I keep that one open in its own tab.

It's the last recording of her voice before it knew it was being listened to.

This is the strange arithmetic of my trade: to hear a voice clearly, I have to quiet mine first.

So the ritual is mostly subtraction.

• Phone in the other room.

• One candle, because a small fire makes me honest.

• The notebook opens to a fresh page and I write her name at the top of it, then nothing else, because the worst thing I could bring to this call is a theory.

At nine, I dress.

This matters more than it should. ⁀➴

She will see me for exactly one hour, and in that hour I need to be visible enough to trust and invisible enough to confess to. A priest, a bartender, a tailor.

I wear something with a collar.

A single pass of highlighter at the inner corners, just enough to make the dark chocolate brown of my eyes look awake, attentive, lit from somewhere.

If I’m going to spend an hour illuminating someone else’s brilliance, the least I can do is glow a little myself.

In the kitchen, I make something hot for my throat — honey, steam, mercy.

People assume a ghostwriter’s instrument is her hands.

⬩➤ It’s her voice.

I’ll talk more in this hour than she expects; I always do.

Gemini moon. I cannot help myself, and I’ve stopped apologizing for it, because the chatter is a trick: people only relax into their real voice when yours sounds like it has nowhere better to be.

At nine fifty, I do the last thing, the only part I’d call a superstition.

I read one page of my own writing, out loud, alone.

Not to warm up.

To say goodbye.

For the next hour my voice goes in a drawer, and I have learned the hard way that you should look at a thing before you put it away, so you remember to come back for it.

Then the screen blooms, and there she is, performing herself beautifully.

And I begin to listen for the person underneath.

Here is what nobody understands about my job: I am not trying to expose her.

The audience will get their reveal eventually, but they are not who this hour is for.

Spend enough years performing yourself and the performance starts answering to your name. She has been introduced as her highlight reel so many times that she's begun to believe the introduction.

My job is to remind her there was someone before the applause.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ So we start shallow, on purpose.

• Tell me about your job.

• Your title.

• The company, the team.

These questions are beneath her, and that’s the point.

She answers on autopilot, in the press-kit voice, and I let her.

Every performer needs a few minutes on stage before she forgets the audience is there.

Then we wade in. ⁀➴

• How did you start?

• Why did you start?

• Where did the idea come from?

The voice changes here, almost always.

The sentences get shorter.

The dates get fuzzy.

Somewhere in the telling of the origin story, she stops reciting and starts remembering, and remembering has a different sound.

Slower. Less certain. True.

And then, when the water is deep enough that turning back is as far as swimming forward, I ask the questions I was actually hired to ask.

• What ignited the mission?

• What was missing?

• What did you need, back then, that you didn’t get?

• How did that feel?

• Where was that feeling coming from?

This is the moment she either runs or sinks deeper.

I’ve seen both.

The runners get charming again, reach for a rehearsed anecdote like a towel.

I don’t chase; I just wait, and ask the question again, smaller.

But the ones who sink — there is a silence they go into, a held breath of a pause, and when they come back up they say something no publicist has ever heard.

That sentence is never polished.

⬩➤ It is always the most valuable thing said all hour.

Share

We stop at sixty minutes, and not because of my calendar.

Excavating yourself is physical labor.

You can watch it: the posture goes, the eyes get heavy, the answers thin out.

There is only so much truth a person can tell in one sitting, and a good tailor knows when to stop pinning.

The call ends.

I schedule the next one before I do anything else, because what we opened today needs somewhere to go. And then I begin the second half of my job, the half no one sees.

I crawl back into my cave. ⁀➴

It is a beautiful cave, strung with fairy lights, and I shut the world out of it, because what I’m holding now is delicate.

An hour of a stranger’s truth, in fragments.

I spread the pieces out like an archaeologist who has found evidence of a species no one has catalogued, because that is precisely what has happened.

There has never been one of her before.

My job is to map the creature: what she reaches for under emotion, what she repeats, what she circles and won’t land on, where the silences live.

I will not lie to you: this part is frustrating.

I don’t have all the pieces yet.

I never do, this early.

I am mapping a country from one flight over it, and the perfectionist in me wants to wait for the whole atlas. But the plan has to start now, incomplete, because this information was never meant for my eyes alone.

The world is about to be re-introduced to this woman.

Not the mask, the woman.

People who think they know her are going to hear her actual voice for the first time and feel, without being able to say why, that something has come into focus.

That is the weight I carry out of every first call, and I have never once carried it lightly.

It’s late when I surface.

The fairy lights are still on, the tea has gone cold and honest, and the map of her is pinned across my screen like a constellation somebody just named.

I look at it the way you look at a good day’s work: tired, proprietary, a little in love.

And then I do the last ritual, the one that closes the séance.

I open the drawer.

Remember the page I read aloud this morning — my own writing, my own voice, put away so hers could fill the room? This is where I come back for it.

I read it again, out loud, alone, and it always sounds strange at first, like a language I spoke as a child. Then, a few sentences in, it fits again.

There I am.

She kept her appointment with herself today, thanks to me; this is mine.

People imagine ghostwriting is an act of disappearance, and the first hour is.

But nobody warns you about the second act, the one where you have to reappear on purpose, over and over, or the drawer becomes a coffin.

I have watched it happen to others in this trade: brilliant writers who lent themselves out one voice at a time and never scheduled the retrieval.

The clients got resurrected.

The ghosts stayed dead.

So this is the real secret of the fitting, the one I’ll keep telling you as long as you keep reading: the same excavation I bill for, I perform on myself, for free, every night.

• What was I reaching for today?

• What did I repeat?

• Where did the feeling come from?

I ask the ghost the uncomfortable questions, and I wait out her charming answers, and eventually she tells me the truth in a sentence no publicist has ever heard.

Tomorrow, she goes back in the drawer for an hour.

Tonight, she writes this.

Sincerely, Anastasiya

I’m writing this with a mug of something warm on my desk and that familiar tightness in my chest—the one that shows up every time I admit to myself that helping other people has been my favorite way to avoid my own life.

If you’re reading this with tea or coffee in your hands, I hope you’ll let yourself breathe and be very, very honest with me for a few minutes.

There is a very specific kind of high that only empaths know.

It’s that feeling when someone says, “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” and you feel your entire body exhale.

It’s the warmth in your chest when you watch someone else’s life get better because you stayed up late with them, talked them through it, showed up when no one else did.

Helping other people is not just something you do.

It’s where you feel most alive.

It’s where you feel needed, chosen, loved, safe.

So when the world tells you, “You have to work on yourself first,” of course it feels impossible.

Work on myself… instead of being there for the people I love?

Focus on my own dreams and needs while everyone else is hurting?

Put my energy into me when helping them feels like oxygen?

It doesn’t just feel wrong; it can feel actually terrifying.

But here’s what I want to say to you gently and directly, from inside that same wiring:

Helping others gives us a high—but it does not save us.

No matter how many people we rescue, if we never learn to turn that same devotion toward ourselves, we will be the ones left behind.

And that’s finally what I’m saying:

I am still a helper. I will always help.

But I will not do it by sacrificing all of me until I’m bled dry anymore.

The impossible advice

“Work on yourself first.”

You’ve probably seen that sentence a hundred times—therapy, books, social media, well‑meaning friends.

For many empaths, it lands like this:

• “You’re asking me to ignore everyone who’s in pain so I can think about my own needs? That feels wrong.”

• “Helping others is how I survive. Without that, who even am I?”

• “If I stop showing up for people, everything will fall apart—and honestly, I don’t trust anyone else to care the way I do.”

So we nod politely, maybe highlight the quote, but we don’t actually live it.

Instead, we keep doing what we’ve always done: scan the room for who needs us, rush toward them, and put our own exhaustion on mute.

We’re not broken because we do this.

We’re wired this way.

But wiring has consequences.

Take a moment and be honest with yourself:

• What happens in your body when someone suggests you “focus on yourself”?

• Do you feel guilt? Panic? Anger? Emptiness?

You’re allowed to notice that without judging it.

The high, the cost, and the secret fear

I want to be honest about why this pattern is so hard to change.

When I help someone, I feel:

• Wanted

• Useful

• Special

• Loved

• Safe

It’s like my nervous system gets this bright, fast hit of “you matter.”

It’s not fake.

It’s not shallow.

It’s real.

But here’s what I had to admit to myself: that high doesn’t last.

The messages get answered.

The crisis passes.

The person I was there for goes back to their life.

And I’m still here, in my life, with the same old patterns, the same quiet ache, the same dreams sitting on the shelf.

In the long term, constantly pouring myself out for others without ever pouring into myself does not serve me.

It actually keeps me small.

It keeps me stuck.

It keeps me busy enough to avoid the terrifying questions:

• What do I actually want?

• What would it mean to go after my own dreams?

• What if no one claps for me the way they do when I’m the helper?

And underneath all of that, there was a much softer, more painful truth:

Maybe I never felt worth it enough to help myself first.

Maybe I believed, without fully realizing it, that my value came from being indispensable to everyone else.

Maybe I have been chasing love by over‑delivering for other people, hoping that one day it would finally feel like enough and I’d feel chosen in return.

That’s my version.

Yours might be different.

Maybe you’re terrified of being seen.

Maybe you’re afraid that if you stop over‑giving, people will leave.

Maybe you don’t even know what you want anymore because it’s been so long since anyone asked you—and you certainly haven’t asked yourself.

If your chest is tight reading this, I want you to know I wrote it with that tightness in mine too.

The empath pattern (and why no one is coming)

If you’re an empath, this might sound familiar:

• You can feel other people’s moods in your body.

• You notice tiny shifts in tone, energy, and expression before they even speak.

• You know how to say the thing that helps them breathe again.

• You get a real, physical rush when someone says, “I feel better now” or “Thank you for being here.”

That rush is the helper’s high.

Helping gives you meaning, identity, and relief.

Of course you chase it.

The blind spot is this: we’ve trained our nervous systems to move toward other people’s needs and away from our own pain.

We step into their stories and quietly step out of our own.

We become the backstage worker in everyone else’s transformation story—holding the light, fixing the props, calming the actors—while our own life stands still.

And here’s the hardest part to say:

People rarely see the depth of an empath’s exhaustion because we look “strong” and “kind” on the outside.

We show up.

We smile.

We listen.

We say, “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Most people are busy with their own lives, trauma, and limited emotional capacity. They don’t know how to give back what we give them. Some of them simply can’t.

This doesn’t make them villains. But it does expose a painful reality:

If we wait for “someone like us” to appear and rescue us, we may wait our entire lives.

At some point, self‑growth for an empath requires a brutal, loving sentence:

I have to help me.

Not because no one loves us.

Not because we’re alone forever.

But because it is dangerous to make our healing conditional on someone else finally treating us the way we treat them.

If we don’t become the person who helps us, our life will keep lagging behind everyone else’s.

Pause here and ask yourself, gently:

• Where are you waiting for someone to show up for you the way you show up for them?

• What has that wait already cost you?

Why your dreams are not selfish (they’re required)

Here’s the part we’re rarely told as empaths:

The more we pursue our own dreams, goals, desires, and life affinities, the more equipped we become to help others in a real, grounded way.

When you start depositing your energy into yourself—into your art, your healing, your body, your relationships, your spiritual connection—several things happen:

• You stop helping from a place of empty, frantic survival and start helping from a place of overflow.

• Your “yes” means more because it’s no longer coming from fear or obligation, but from choice.

• You become an example, not just a caretaker. Other people can look at your life and think, “If she can honor her dreams and still be kind, maybe I can too.”

• You’re less resentful. You’re less burnt out. You’re less likely to disappear into someone else’s crisis and abandon yourself for weeks or months at a time.

Most importantly, as you slowly shift your energy toward yourself, your mind opens to a new possibility:

Maybe you are not here just to be the supporting character in everyone else’s story.

Maybe your life, your desires, your weird little affinities and obsessions, actually matter.

Maybe it’s not that you “love helping others too much.”

Maybe it’s that you never had a safe way to believe you were worth helping, too—so you chased love where you knew you could get it: in being useful, in being needed, in being the one who always shows up.

I’m still in this process.

I’m not writing this from the finish line.

I’m writing this from the middle—the place where I am slowly, shakily, learning to pour some of that tenderness into my own life.

I’m learning that the world is not served by me staying small, exhausted, and secretly resentful.

The world is served by me becoming who I was meant to be.

And the same is true for you.

This is for the ones who save everyone but themselves.

How to “help yourself like an empath”

Let’s make this practical—without losing the softness.

These aren’t productivity hacks. They’re ways to work on yourself that still feel like empathy, not self‑obsession.

1. Mirror the questions you ask others

Think about how you show up for a friend:

• “How are you really?”

• “What do you need today?”

• “What’s hurting right now?”

Now turn those questions toward yourself—daily.

Try this:

• Open a journal or a notes app.

• Write your name at the top of the page.

• Ask: “How are you, really?” and answer as if you’re talking to someone you love.

• Ask: “What do you need?” and let yourself write something honest (rest, a cry, a walk, a boundary, a meal, a haircut, a conversation).

You already know how to be gentle and curious with someone else’s heart.

This is you learning to do it with your own.

2. Schedule empathy appointments with yourself

You show up for other people on time. You push through exhaustion to be there.

Now:

• Pick one or two small blocks of time per week that are for you.

• Put them in your calendar like real appointments.

• Use that time to check in, feel, cry, breathe, write, move, rest, or plan—anything that says, “I am paying attention to me.”

If you’re tempted to cancel, imagine you’re ditching a friend at the last minute.

Notice how that feels.

You deserve that same reliability.

3. Redirect one act of kindness toward yourself

Every day, you probably:

• Send a thoughtful message.

• Hold space for someone’s story.

• Offer a favor.

• Share a resource.

Choose one of those behaviors and redirect it inward:

• Instead of only texting encouragement, write yourself a loving note and save it.

• Instead of staying up late fixing someone’s problem every time, spend that hour fixing something in your own life.

• Instead of buying a little gift for someone else every time, buy or create something that delights you.

You are not stopping kindness.

You are expanding its direction.

You are also someone worth the effort.

4. Set one boundary that rescues you, not them

Boundary work is hard for empaths because we’re terrified of hurting people.

Start small and specific:

• Identify one situation where you consistently abandon yourself to manage someone else’s emotions (answering every late‑night text, saying yes to every favor, letting someone vent for hours when you’re exhausted).

• Practice a simple line:

  • “I love you, and I can’t do this tonight.”

  • “I want to support you, but I’m at my limit today.”

  • “Can we talk about this tomorrow? I need to rest.”

You’re not withdrawing love.

You’re withdrawing self‑betrayal.

That is rescue.

You are not saying, “I will never help again.”

You’re saying, “I refuse to help at the cost of my entire self.”

5. Audit your energy like you audit other people’s moods

You already notice when someone’s “off.”

You track their micro‑expressions and shifts in tone.

Do the same with yourself:

• Once a day, rate your energy from 1–10.

• Notice your emotional temperature: anxious, flat, hopeful, heavy, peaceful.

• Ask: “What helped today? What drained me?”

Use this information the way you would for someone you’re helping: adjust your commitments, pull back where you’re bleeding out, add more of what actually nourishes you.

6. Create a self‑rescue plan for low points

You’ve guided other people through breakdowns.

You know the terrain.

Write down a simple plan for when you’re in your own emotional grave:

• Who will I reach out to? (one or two safe people)

• What will I do physically? (walk, shower, breathe, call, eat)

• What will I say to myself? (a sentence you can believe, like “You’re allowed to be tired and still worthy of care.”)

• What will I not do? (spiral alone, numb out with things that make it worse, make big decisions)

This is you becoming your own emergency contact.

Lifestyle integration: making it real

Self‑growth doesn’t have to look like a stack of self‑help books and a color‑coded checklist.

For empaths, it can be woven into lifestyle:

• A morning ritual that’s for you, not just prepping you to hold everyone else.

• Beauty and hair routines that feel like acts of love, not pressure to be “presentable” for everyone else.

• Journaling that’s not just processing other people’s stories, but claiming your own.

• Walks, baths, cooking, cleaning, creative work done with the intention: “This is me taking care of my life.”

You have always made other people’s lives more beautiful, more peaceful, more supported.

You are allowed to do that for your own life, too.

A tiny ritual before you go

Before you close this tab, I want to invite you into one small ritual.

Look at whatever you’re drinking. Feel the warmth in your hands. Take one slow sip and, just for a moment, imagine that this is you giving something gentle to yourself on purpose—not to be more productive, not to earn anyone’s love, just because you exist and you’re allowed to be cared for.

Then, when you’re ready, write down one way you’ll help you this week. Nothing dramatic. Just one small, real act of self‑rescue. Put it somewhere you’ll see it.

Let this be the beginning of you learning to help yourself with the same devotion you’ve always given everyone else.

You do not have to stop being an empath.

You do not have to stop loving people fiercely.

You simply have to stop loving them at the cost of abandoning yourself.

I am still a helper.

You probably are, too.

But we are no longer available to be emptied to the point of disappearance.

The secret is not choosing between helping others and helping yourself.

It’s realizing that the more we rescue ourselves, the more honest, powerful, and sustainable our help for the world becomes.

Sincerely, Anastasiya

I should tell you first what the moon is to me, so you understand what it cost when she stopped speaking.

I am a ghostwriter.

For ten years I have made my living the way the moon makes light: by reflection.

A visionary hands me their brilliance, raw and blinding and impossible for an audience to look at directly, and I turn it until it can be seen.

I articulate.

I translate.

I shine with other people’s light, and I am very good at it, and I have always loved that the moon does this nightly without anyone calling her a fraud.

Borrowed light is still light. Someone has to make the sun legible after dark.

So the moon was never scenery to me.

She was my friend.

Which is why I can tell you the exact moment my life cracked, quietly, the way porcelain cracks. I was standing on my balcony looking up at her, waiting for the thing that always happens when I do.

The refill. The hope.

That small lift under the ribs that says: still here, still yours, keep going.

Nothing came.

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I stood on my balcony, under my colleague, and felt absolutely nothing.

And the most frightening part was how unfrightening it was.

Numbness does not announce itself.

It does not arrive like grief, wailing, demanding to be dealt with.

It simply stops handing you your own life, and lets you keep the receipts.

I want to be careful here, because I know who reads these pages.

You are, many of you, people the world would call fortunate, and you would agree, and that is precisely the trap.

You built the thing.

You have the name, or you are building the name, and the life looks correct from every angle except the inside, where some essential volume has been turned down so gradually you cannot say when.

• You eat without tasting.

• You walk through October without smelling it.

• You scroll, and the scroll feels like rest but works like anesthesia.

If your heart were a room, you could describe the door in detail.

You just can’t remember the last time it opened.

I used to be the opposite of this.

As a girl I felt everything at full volume, every sense lit at once, and spent years learning how often the world prefers that dimmed.

So when the moon went quiet on me, I understood what had happened.

The girl who felt everything had finally, efficiently, been managed.

➸ Here is what I believe broke me, and I suspect it is what is breaking you, because I have watched it break nearly everyone I love: we were told life was a fairytale, and then life behaved like life, and we decided the whole thing was a lie.

We felt swindled.

The prince was ordinary, the tower was a mortgage, the magic never showed up on schedule. And so, reasonably, we went numb, the way you stop watching a show that betrayed its premise.

But we misread the genre.

Go back to the actual fairy tales.

Not the theme-park versions, the real ones.

They are full of wolves.

Poisoned apples, locked towers, mothers who die on the first page, sleeps that last a hundred years.

Darkness is not a violation of the fairytale; darkness is structural.

What makes the story a fairytale was never the absence of the forest.

It is that the princess walks into it and comes out the other side still capable of wonder.

Still moving. Still magical, on purpose, against the evidence.

Most people never get past the forest.

They decide the magic was a lie and set up camp in the trees, and they call the camp realism, and they live there.

Stuck is not a circumstance. Stuck is a genre error.

I refused the camp.

For four months after the balcony, I ran what I can only describe as my own school of whimsy, a deliberate campaign to get my feeling back.

• I climbed trees and read at the top of them.

• I said hello to flowers and chose to believe they heard me.

• I let myself imagine the shop toys waking at night, the way I did as a child, because the imagining itself is a muscle and mine had atrophied.

• I stopped consuming meals and started attending them: not a meal, my meal.

• I dressed up one afternoon, properly, and went hunting through my favorite shops for the perfect mug, because tea deserved a throne, and so, it turns out, did I.

None of this was decoration.

Each small ritual was the same single act repeated: choosing to treat the world as a place that nurtures me rather than punishes me, and then gathering the evidence that choice produces.

Magic, I learned, is not something that appears in your life like a delivery.

It is something you manufacture. Euphoria from our own supply.

The feeling came back.

Not all at once, and not because the world improved. I improved at receiving it.

And then I looked at this publication and laughed, because it had known all along.

I named it At The Sonder years ago, for the word that means the sudden awareness that every passing stranger has a life as vivid and complete as your own.

I named it for full-depth perception before I could have told you that perception was the entire project. The film writing was never criticism; it was me teaching myself to watch, truly watch, which is the same skill as truly living, performed sitting down.

Even the ghostwriting was this.

Ten years of listening to people until I could hear the voice underneath the voice, the one they had stopped being able to access, and handing it back to them.

I have spent my whole working life returning people to themselves.

It simply took me this long, and one silent moon, to realize I was allowed to be one of the people.

So here is the new direction, which is the old direction, finally said aloud.

At The Sonder is now about two things, in a fixed order.

First we feel. Then we build.

First we feel, because the senses are the supply line and almost everyone’s has been cut.

The essays will live here, and so will the School of Whimsy, the practice that brought me back: the rituals, the assignments, the deliberate re-enchantment of an ordinary life.

This is not softness for its own sake. It is infrastructure.

Then we build, because feeling alone is not the destination.

A fully felt life wants to make something worthy of itself.

This is where my decade comes in: voice, articulation, the craft of being known, everything I have learned helping visionaries become legible to the people who need them.

I will be opening that vault here, piece by piece, because being seen is not vanity.

For people with something real to give, being seen is logistics.

Some of this will remain free, always.

➸ Some of it, soon, will be for members of the school.

The moon letters will come when the moon is full, because some schedules should be kept by the sky.

If you have been here a while: thank you for staying through the years it took me to find the thesis I was already living.

Nothing you loved is leaving. It is all simply, finally, pointed.

And if you are new, and any of this found you on a balcony of your own, I will tell you what I wish someone had told me that night: the magic was never a lie.

You misread the genre.

The forest is part of the story, the princess keeps walking, and the feeling comes back. I kept every note on how.

Enter.

🌙

Love, Anastasiya

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I want to tell you something that nobody tells you when your world is falling apart.

You’re sitting somewhere right now — maybe in bed, maybe on the bathroom floor, maybe just staring at your ceiling at 2 am — and you have this feeling. This hollow, aching, what is the point of any of this feeling? Maybe it was a loss. A breakup. A career implosion. A life that quietly stopped looking like yours somewhere along the way.

Maybe you can’t even name the exact moment it started. It just did.

And you’re wondering what to do with it all.

I know this feeling. I lived inside it for nearly three years in my 20s.

Every day looked the same:

• Wake up

• Sit at my computer

• Learn

• Write

• Go to sleep

• Repeat

No light at the end of the tunnel. No sign that anything was working. Mentally exhausted, emotionally depleted, and deeply, quietly lonely in a way I didn’t know how to explain to anyone. I had big dreams and zero evidence they were ever going to happen. I kept going anyway — not because I was fearless, but because something stubborn inside me refused to stop.

The thing that kept me going had a name. Resilience. Not the Instagram version of resilience that looks like a motivational quote on a beige background. The real kind. The kind that kicks in when your gas tank is completely empty, and you’re still not done.

But resilience alone doesn’t fill you back up. It just keeps you standing.

What filled me back up was deciding to do something with all of it.

But first — I need to tell you what this is not.

Before We Go Any Further

This is not a guide on how to monetize your trauma. It’s not about packaging your sad story into content that performs well because pain gets clicks. Please don’t do that. The world doesn’t need more of it, and neither do you.

This is about something different. Something quieter and, I think, far more powerful.

“Your emotional state right now isn’t a liability. It’s a palette cleanser.”

It’s clearing out everything that wasn’t yours to begin with:

• The expectations you inherited from other people

• The path you thought you were supposed to be on

• The version of yourself you were performing for everyone else

All of it, gone. And as devastating as that feels, it’s also an opening.

Tears help you see clearer. That’s not a metaphor — it’s just true. When we’re completely torn down, stripped of the noise and the pretending and the performing, something real has a chance to surface. Sometimes, the life that was always meant for you can only find you once the wrong one has fully fallen away.

I believe that. I’ve lived it.

I didn’t start a newsletter because I had a brilliant idea, a business plan, or a monetization strategy. I started one because I had absolutely no one to talk to. I was in my 20s, deep in one of the loneliest periods of my life, and I was outrageously desperate to voice what I was feeling. It was scary. It was sad. And it was the truest thing I had ever done.

I wrote into the void. Zero readers on the other end. Zero likes, zero comments, zero validation. Just me, a blank page, and a feeling that needed somewhere to go.

That one act — writing into the silence because I couldn’t bear to hold it in any longer — snowballed into:

• The Sonder, my weekly newsletter

• My ghostwriting agency

• My acting career

• A whole world I could not have designed on purpose if I had tried

“What was always meant to be has a funny way of arriving. Not through the front door. Through the crack.”

The Promise I Made Myself

In my darkest and loneliest moments, I made a promise. I told myself that I would never — to the best of my ability — let someone else feel the way I felt. That hollow, untethered, am I the only one going through this feeling? I couldn’t let it be for nothing.

My first idea was small. Embarrassingly small, actually.

A newsletter.

Not a business plan. Not a brand strategy. Not a content calendar or a monetization funnel. Just one email, every Thursday, from me to whoever needed it. I called it The Sonder — named after the word that means the realization that every stranger you walk past has a life as vivid and complex and painful as your own. A “Droplet of Love,” I called it. An email filled with love, directly from me to you.

That’s it. That was the whole plan.

And it saved me.

What a Newsletter Does for You When You’re Broken

Here’s what no one talks about when they tell you to “start creating content” or “build your personal brand” or any of the other phrases that make grief feel like a marketing problem.

“Pain needs a destination.”

When something devastating happens — or when life just quietly drains the color out of everything — the worst thing you can do is try to contain it. Push it down. Stay professional. Keep going like nothing is happening. That works for a while. And then it doesn’t.

A newsletter gives your pain somewhere to go. It gives it shape. Structure. An audience, even if that audience is three people at first. It transforms something that feels completely useless — the weight of your own sadness — into something that could genuinely matter to someone else.

Because here’s what I know about pain: it’s the most universal thing there is. Every person reading this has felt some version of what you’re feeling right now. And when you write about it honestly — not polished, not packaged, just honestly — people feel less alone. And so do you.

Writing is the closest thing I know to turning lead into gold. You take the heaviest thing you’re carrying, put it into words, and somehow by the time it reaches another person, it becomes something they needed to hear.

There’s also something practical that happens when you sit down to write a newsletter regularly. You start to:

• Develop a voice that’s unmistakably yours

• Build a point of view you didn’t know you had

• Understand what you actually believe, because you have to articulate it

• Show up with consistency — and consistency builds trust

Week by week, something shifts. The sadness is still there, but it’s no longer running the show. You are.

How the Newsletter Became Something I Never Expected

I didn’t start The Sonder to build a business.

I started it because I needed to keep my promise. One email, every Thursday. That was the whole deal.

But then something happened. Slowly, quietly, the newsletter started becoming a world. I created a Friday Film Club called Freaks & Films — because millions of us watch movies alone on Friday nights, and I thought, why not watch together, from our own corners of the world? Two emails a week. A community forming around something as simple as a movie and a snack.

And alongside The Sonder, my ghostwriting studio — anachenko — was growing.

Not because I set out to build it, but because writing the newsletter every week was keeping me sharp, keeping me honest, keeping me in practice. The newsletter was the creative heartbeat that everything else grew around.

Work and play went hand in hand. One couldn’t thrive without the other.

The sorrow that sent me to my computer every morning didn’t disappear. But it became fuel. It became the reason I understood my clients. The reason I could write with empathy. The reason people trusted me with their words. My darkest years built my strongest skill set.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

“The newsletter was the seed. Everything else — the studio, the community, the career — was what grew when I stopped pulling it up by the roots to check if it was working.”

Okay — Here’s Exactly How to Start Yours

You don’t need a big idea. You don’t need a niche figured out. You don’t need a logo, a brand kit, or a content strategy. You need one thing: something you want to say.

Here’s how to start — and how to keep going.

Step 1: Name the feeling, not the topic.

Most people get stuck trying to pick a “niche.” Don’t. Not yet. Pick a feeling. What is the thing you’re going through right now that you wish someone else understood? Start there. The topic will emerge on its own. The feeling is the compass.

Ask yourself:

• What am I carrying right now that I can’t say out loud to anyone?

• What do I wish existed when I was at my lowest?

• What truth do I keep thinking about that nobody else seems to be saying?

That’s your newsletter. Not your expertise. Not your credentials. Your lived experience is the credential.

Step 2: Write your founding story first.

Before you think about issues, cadence, or content strategy — write the post that explains why you’re here.

Why you’re starting this. What happened. What you felt. What you decided.

This is the most important piece of content you’ll ever write for your newsletter, because it’s the one that makes people decide to stay. When readers find you, they’ll go back to the beginning. Make the beginning worth finding.

It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be polished. It has to be real. Two paragraphs of truth will always outperform ten paragraphs of performance.

Step 3: Give it a name that means something to you.

Your newsletter deserves a name that moves you. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else yet. I named mine The Sonder because the word moved me — it means the realization that every stranger you walk past has a life as vivid and complex and painful as your own. That was the whole point. That was the whole feeling.

Pick a name that feels like yours and only yours.

A few naming approaches that work well:

• A word or concept that captures your core feeling — The Sonder, The Quiet, The Becoming

• A direct description of who it’s for — Letters for the Lost, Notes for the Tender-Hearted

• Your name as the anchor — letters from [your name], [your name]’s world

• A sensory image — The Soft Landing, The 2 AM Letter, The Long Table

Don’t overthink it. The name can evolve. Start somewhere meaningful.

Step 4: Choose Substack and set it up in one sitting.

Substack is the easiest place to start. It’s free, it manages your email list, it has built-in discoverability, and it lets you earn directly from your readers when you’re ready. You don’t need a website. You don’t need a separate email service. Substack does all of it.

Set up your account in one sitting. Here’s what actually matters at the start:

• Your profile photo. Use one that feels human. Not a logo. You.

• Your bio. One or two sentences. Who is this for, and what will they feel when they read it? Keep it honest, not salesy.

• Your publication description. This is what shows up when someone discovers you. Write it like you’re describing your newsletter to a friend at dinner who’s having a hard time.

• Your welcome email. Substack lets you send an automatic welcome email to every new subscriber. Write one. Make it warm. Tell them why you started, what they can expect, and how glad you are they’re here.

That’s it. Don’t touch the settings after that. Go write.

Step 5: Decide on your format before you write your first issue.

One of the most common mistakes new newsletter writers make is writing a different kind of thing every week. Readers come back for something consistent. That doesn’t mean boring — it means reliable.

Some format options to consider:

• Personal essay — a first-person story with a reflection or takeaway. Intimate, powerful, highly shareable. This is what The Sonder is built on.

• The letter — written directly to “you,” the reader. Warm, conversational, like a note from a friend who knows what you’re going through.

• The list — resources, lessons, observations, things you’re loving. Easier to write, easy to scan. Works well as a companion to a more emotional newsletter.

• The roundup — what you’ve been reading, watching, thinking about. Good for building trust through curation.

• The behind-the-scenes — what you’re working on, what’s hard right now, what you’re figuring out in real time. Builds deep loyalty because readers feel like insiders.

You can mix formats. But pick one to lead with. Let that be your anchor.

Step 6: Decide on a cadence and treat it like a commitment.

Weekly. Biweekly. Monthly. Pick one and protect it. Consistency is what builds trust — with your readers and with yourself. The Sonder goes out every Thursday. Not because Thursday is magic. Because I said it would, and I kept my word.

A few honest thoughts on cadence:

• Weekly is powerful but demanding. Only commit to it if you can genuinely sustain it. Missing sends hurts more than a slower cadence kept consistently.

• Biweekly is often the sweet spot for writers who are also living their lives. Enough to build momentum, spacious enough to write something worth reading.

• Monthly works if your issues are substantial and your readers know to expect it. Think of it like a magazine drop.

Whatever you choose, put it in your bio. “Published every Thursday” tells readers what to expect and holds you accountable.

Step 7: Write your first three issues before you publish any of them.

This is the advice nobody gives you, but it changes everything. Writing three issues back-to-back before you hit publish on any of them does two things. First, it proves to you that you have more than one thing to say. The fear of running out of ideas is real — writing three issues dissolves it immediately. Second, it gives you a buffer. Life happens. Having two issues in reserve means you never miss a send because Tuesday got complicated.

Your first three issues don’t need a theme. They need honesty. Write three things that have been living in you. That’s enough.

Step 8: Write like nobody’s watching — because at first, they aren’t.

Your first issue probably won’t be read by thousands. It might be read by twelve. Write it like it’s the most important thing you’ve ever sent, and write it like you’re talking to one specific person — the version of you from six months ago, or the friend you wish you had when everything fell apart.

That’s the whole formula. One person. One honest thing. Send it.

“Your reader doesn’t need you to be an expert. They need you to be someone who’s been where they are and kept going.”

Step 9: Grow your list with intention, not desperation.

You don’t need to obsess over subscriber count in the beginning. What you need is the right readers. A small, deeply engaged list of people who open every issue and feel something is worth more than ten thousand passive subscribers who never read a word.

Ways to grow that actually work:

• Share your founding story on social media. Not a promotional post. The actual story — what happened, why you started, what you’re hoping to build. People subscribe to people, not publications.

• Tell one person a week. Text a friend. Email someone you admire. Share it in a community you’re already part of. Personal invitations convert better than any ad.

• Cross-promote with other newsletter writers. Find writers in adjacent spaces — not competitors, but companions. Mention each other. Recommend each other. Substack’s own platform makes this easy through Notes and recommendations.

• Create a reason to subscribe beyond “get my newsletter.” What does someone get when they join your world? Give it a name. The Sonder calls its emails “Droplets of Love.” Even that small act of naming makes subscribing feel like belonging somewhere.

• Put your newsletter link everywhere, always. Your Instagram bio. Your email signature. Your LinkedIn. Everywhere. You’d be surprised how many people will subscribe if you just make it easy to find.

Step 10: Use your newsletter as a mirror, not a megaphone.

The newsletters that build real, lasting audiences aren’t the ones that broadcast.

They’re the ones that reflect. When your readers see themselves in your words — when they think “I’ve never seen anyone say that before, but it’s exactly what I’ve been feeling” — they don’t just subscribe. They stay forever. They forward your issues to people they love. They become the community you never expected to build.

This is the whole strategy: write so honestly that your reader feels less alone.

Everything else grows from that.

When Your Newsletter Is Ready to Become Something More

This is the part most people don’t talk about — not because it’s a secret, but because it only makes sense after you’ve done the emotional work first. You can’t skip to this part. But when you’ve been writing for a few months, you’ve found your voice, and your readers are showing up consistently — here’s how the business starts to take shape.

Watch what your readers respond to most.

Your most-replied-to issues, your most-forwarded ones, your most-commented — those are your business map. What are people consistently asking you about? What topics make readers say, “I needed this today”? That’s your expertise, revealed not through a resume but through resonance. The things that get the most emotional response from your audience are the things they’d pay to go deeper on.

Start with one offer. Just one.

When you’re ready, don’t launch five things at once. Pick one. It could be:

• A paid subscription tier on Substack, where subscribers get bonus issues, behind-the-scenes writing, or community access

• A one-hour consultation or coaching call based on the transformation your newsletter represents

• A digital guide, workbook, or mini-course that expands on your most resonant issue

• A community space — a private group, a Discord, a weekly call — for people who want more than just the letter

Start where you have the most energy, not where you think you should start. The best first offer is the one you’ll actually show up for.

Price it like it’s worth something — because it is.

One of the most common mistakes creative people make when monetizing is underpricing out of fear. Your experience, your voice, your perspective, the hours you’ve spent developing it — those have value. Charge accordingly. You don’t have to start expensive. But don’t start so cheap that you resent it.

A good rule: price your first offer at whatever number makes you feel slightly uncomfortable but not terrified. That’s usually the right number.

Let the newsletter do the selling.

You don’t need a sales funnel, a webinar, or a launch sequence right away. Write posts around the problems your experience has taught you to understand. Then, at the end of those posts, mention simply and honestly that you offer a way to go deeper. Let your writing do the warming up. Let the relationship do the selling.

The readers who’ve been with you from the beginning — the ones who’ve read every issue, who’ve replied to tell you that your words changed something for them — those are your first buyers. Not because you sold them. Because you showed up for them, consistently, for months. That’s the whole strategy.

“Your newsletter isn’t just content. It’s a portfolio of proof that you understand people — and that’s the most valuable business asset there is.”

Think in layers, not in one big launch.

The most sustainable creative businesses aren’t built from one dramatic moment. They’re built in layers, slowly, from the inside out:

• Layer 1: The newsletter (your foundation and your voice)

• Layer 2: A free offering that grows your list (a guide, a resource, a mini-series)

• Layer 3: A paid entry point (a low-cost digital product or paid subscription)

• Layer 4: A premium offer (coaching, consulting, a course, a community)

• Layer 5: Everything else that becomes possible once you have an audience that trusts you

You don’t build all five layers at once. You build Layer 1 first, completely, until it’s something you’re proud of. Then you add the next one. The patience required to do this — to not rush to Layer 4 before Layer 1 is solid — is the thing that separates the people who build something lasting from the ones who burn out trying to do everything at once.

You have time. The newsletter will wait for you to be ready. Keep writing.

The Part I Didn’t Expect

The newsletter was never really for them.

It was for me. It was my way of keeping the promise. My way of making the darkness useful. My way of getting out of bed on the mornings when I had no other reason to.

And because it was deeply, genuinely for me, it became deeply, genuinely for them too.

That’s the thing about creating from a real place. People can tell. They feel the difference between content that was manufactured and a letter that was lived. And they come back for the letter every time.

So if you’re falling apart right now — if life has shifted underneath you and you don’t know what you’re supposed to be building next — here is my suggestion.

Start a newsletter.

Not because it will fix everything. Not because it will make you money tomorrow. But because your pain deserves a destination. Because your story is worth telling. Because somewhere out there is a person sitting in the dark who needs to hear exactly what you’ve lived through — and you are the only one who can tell them.

Build the outlet first. The business follows.

It always does.

Next time at The Sonder, we’ll be breaking down exactly what to write in your very first newsletter issue — the format, the opening line, the feeling you’re going for, and why the first one is simultaneously the hardest and the most important thing you’ll ever hit publish on.

Don’t miss it. Subscribe below so it lands right in your inbox. 💌

Most people wait for optimism to arrive, like they’re waiting for dawn.

They wait for a win. A break. For someone to believe in them first. And then, once the stars align and life softens, then they’ll have a reason to feel hopeful.

But I learned something during the three years I spent alone in my room, waking up every single day at 7 AM to sit at my computer and learn copywriting with zero guarantees, no income, and no proof it would work: waiting for the light is a luxury you can’t always afford.

When there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you stop waiting for it to appear.

You become it yourself.

This is a guide for those quiet, heavy moments when pessimism has settled into your bones, and you’re tired of waiting for life to get easier. These are real actions that shift how you think, speak, and move through the world—not by force, but by gentle repetition.

I’ve walked this path. It works.

—

Step 1: Wipe Your Mind Clean of Borrowed Pessimism

Before anything else, you have to figure out whose voice is living in your head.

Most of the time, your pessimism doesn’t even belong to you. You’re carrying other people’s fears like stones in your pockets.

A parent who told you at age 12 to “be realistic” when you shared your dream.

A partner who said “you’re too much” every time you got excited about something.

A boss who refused to promote you three times in a row, convincing you that you weren’t ready.

Their fear bled into you, and now you’re second-guessing yourself because of their self-doubt, not your own.

I had to work hard to wipe my mind clean of other people’s ideas, thoughts, insecurities, and doubts just to hear my own voice again. When the people around you refuse to follow their gut or try things out, that hesitation seeps into your self-confidence.

You start believing their fear is wisdom when really, it’s just their fear.

Here’s the exact process:

Step 1a: Keep a small notebook or use your phone’s notes app. For three days, every time you catch yourself thinking something negative or self-defeating, write it down word-for-word.

Examples:

• “I’ll never be good at this.”

• “Why would anyone want to work with me?”

• “I always mess things up.”

Step 1b: At the end of three days, read through your list. Next to each negative thought, write down whose voice it sounds like. Be specific. Not just “my mom”—but “my mom when I told her I wanted to start my own business and she said ‘that’s too risky for someone like you.’”

Step 1c: For each identified voice, say out loud (actually speak the words):

“That’s [name]’s fear from [specific moment], not mine. I’m setting it down.”

Example: “That’s my ex-partner’s fear from when they told me I was ‘too ambitious’ during our breakup, not mine. I’m setting it down.”

Step 1d: Replace it with your own voice. Ask yourself: “What do I actually think about this?” Write down your own answer. Even if it’s uncertain. Even if it’s “I don’t know yet, but I want to find out.”

Repeat this process every time that borrowed voice shows up. Within two weeks, you’ll notice it getting quieter.

—

Step 2: Stop Speaking Negativity Into Existence

There’s a difference between expressing your emotions (which is necessary) and repeatedly speaking negative predictions into the world (which makes you sink).

When you say things like “This is impossible” or “Nothing ever works out for me,” you’re not just venting frustration—you’re training your brain to believe it’s true.

Our brains recognize patterns. When you repeat something often enough, your mind starts treating it as fact. Saying negative things out loud makes you more irritable, more frustrated, more stuck.

Here’s the exact intervention:

Step 2a: Identify your three most-repeated negative phrases. The ones you say at least once a day. Common ones:

• “This always happens to me.”

• “I can’t do this.”

• “Nothing is working.”

• “I’m so bad at [thing].”

• “Of course this didn’t work out.”

Write them down on a sticky note and put it where you’ll see it daily (bathroom mirror, computer monitor, phone lock screen).

Step 2b: For each negative phrase, write its reframed version. Not fake positivity—just a version that leaves the door open.

Examples:

• “This always happens to me” → “This happened before, and I figured it out then too”

• “I can’t do this” → “I don’t know how to do this yet, but I can learn”

• “Nothing is working” → “This approach isn’t working, so I’ll try a different angle”

• “I’m so bad at [thing]” → “I’m still learning [thing]”

• “Of course this didn’t work out” → “This didn’t work out this time, so what can I try differently?”

Step 2c: Catch yourself mid-sentence. The moment you hear yourself starting to say the negative phrase, physically stop. Take one breath. Then say the reframed version instead.

Yes, even if you’re mid-sentence in front of someone. Stop and correct yourself: “Actually, let me rephrase that…”

Do this consistently for 21 days. Your brain will start reaching for the reframed version automatically.

This is how I define optimism: a mindset that anything is possible or can be figured out. Not that everything will be easy. Just that there’s a way through if you keep looking.

—

Step 3: Take a Breath Before You React

Pessimism lives in reactivity.

When something frustrating happens, and you respond immediately—with anger, with defeat, with “of course this happened”—you let your pessimistic patterns run the show.

But if you can create even the smallest gap between what happens and how you respond, you give yourself a chance to choose differently.

Here’s the precise technique:

The 4-7-8 Breath (but just once):

When something triggers frustration:

1. Inhale through your nose for 4 counts

2. Hold your breath for 7 counts

3. Exhale through your mouth for 8 counts

That’s it. One round. Takes 19 seconds total.

When to use it:

• Your partner says something that normally triggers an argument

• You check your email and see a rejection

• You make a mistake at work

• Someone cuts you off in traffic

• You receive critical feedback

• Your card declines at checkout

• A client cancels

• You spill coffee on yourself right before an important meeting

What happens in those 19 seconds:

Your amygdala (the fear/anger response center) starts to calm down. Your prefrontal cortex (the decision-making part) gets a chance to come back online. You create space between stimulus and response.

In that space, you can ask yourself: “How do I actually want to handle this?”

Most of the time, we don’t realize we have a choice. We think we are our reactions.

But you’re not. You’re the person who gets to decide what comes next.

Practice this breath in non-stressful moments first. Do it once every morning for a week so your body knows the pattern.

Then, when stress hits, your body will remember.

—

Step 4: Practice Opposite Action

This step changed everything for me.

When you feel a strong negative emotion—anger, frustration, hopelessness—your brain wants you to act in alignment with that feeling. You’re angry, so you want to yell. You’re hopeless, so you want to isolate. You’re scared, so you want to stay small.

But your feelings don’t always give you good advice.

Opposite action is the practice of doing the exact opposite of what your negative emotion tells you to do.

Here’s the specific protocol:

Step 4a: Create your Opposite Action Chart. Take 10 minutes and map out your most common negative emotions and their typical actions vs. opposite actions.

Emotion

What I Want To Do

Opposite Action

Anger at my partner

Yell, bring up past mistakes

Walk over and hug them for 20 seconds without speaking

Hopelessness about work

Lay in bed scrolling my phone

Get dressed, go to a coffee shop, work on one small task

Fear of judgment

Cancel plans, stay home

Show up early, start a conversation first

Frustration with a friend

Send a passive-aggressive text

Call them and say something I appreciate about them

Disappointment in myself

Eat junk food, watch TV for hours

Go for a 15-minute walk outside

Anxiety about money

Avoid checking my bank account

Open my banking app, look at the numbers, make a plan for one bill

Step 4b: Start with the easiest opposite action on your list. Not the one you need most—the one you can actually do. Build momentum.

Step 4c: When the negative emotion shows up, set a timer for 5 minutes. Tell yourself: “I just need to do the opposite action for 5 minutes. After that, I can go back to what I wanted to do.”

Usually, after 5 minutes of opposite action, you won’t want to go back.

The science: This is called behavioral activation in psychology. Your brain learns from what you do, not just from what you think. When you repeatedly act in ways that contradict your negative emotions, your brain starts building new neural pathways. The pathway from “anger” to “hug” becomes stronger than the pathway from “anger” to “yell.”

After 30-40 repetitions, the optimistic response becomes the natural one.

—

Step 5: Try Without Self-Judgment

Pessimism often disguises itself as realism. You tell yourself you’re being “practical” or “protecting yourself from disappointment.”

But most of the time, you’re just scared of failing.

And the fear of failure keeps you from trying. Or it makes you try once, stumble, and immediately decide: you were right all along. You’re not good enough.

Here’s what I had to learn: you can’t shift into optimism if you judge yourself every time something doesn’t work out.

Here’s the exact reframe:

Step 5a: Change your failure language. Create three replacement phrases and commit them to memory:

Instead of “I failed,” say:

1. “I tried, and that’s worth something.”

2. “That didn’t work, so now I have data.”

3. “I showed up, and that counts.”

Step 5b: Keep a “Tried List” instead of a to-do list for one week. At the end of each day, don’t write down what you accomplished. Write down what you attempted, regardless of outcome.

Examples:

• Monday: Tried a new morning routine (lasted 2 days, then fell off)

• Tuesday: Attempted to have a difficult conversation with my boss (chickened out but showed up to their office)

• Wednesday: Started writing the thing I’ve been avoiding (wrote 3 sentences, deleted 2)

• Thursday: Tried to wake up at 6 AM (snoozed until 7, but that’s earlier than 8)

Step 5c: At the end of the week, read your Tried List out loud to yourself. Say: “Look at all these things I was willing to try.”

Notice how different this feels from reading a list of things you “failed” at.

Step 5d: Share one thing you tried (that didn’t work) with someone you trust. Practice saying it neutrally: “I tried [thing], it didn’t work out, but I learned [something].”

Example: “I tried pitching three new clients this week. None of them said yes, but I learned my pitch needs more specifics about ROI.”

When you practice speaking about attempts without shame, your brain stops associating trying with danger.

Optimism is a mindset that anything can be figured out. Curiosity is the instinct to want to learn more. Courage is the willingness to try even when you’re scared.

All three require you to let go of self-judgment. Because if you’re too busy beating yourself up, you’ll never have the energy to keep moving.

—

Step 6: Become Your Own Light

There were nearly three years of my life when I woke up every day at 7 AM, made coffee, sat at my computer by 7:30 AM, and worked on learning copywriting with zero external validation. No income from it. No clients yet. No one telling me “you’re on the right track.”

Just me, alone in my room, trying to figure it out.

What kept me going wasn’t just resilience, though I needed that too. It was the quiet realization that I couldn’t keep waiting for someone to believe in me. I couldn’t keep waiting for proof. I couldn’t keep waiting for the light to appear.

I had to become the light.

Optimism isn’t passive. It doesn’t arrive when things get better. It’s something you generate—your own hope, your own belief, your own momentum—even when there’s nothing around you to justify it.

Here’s the precise daily practice:

The Morning Light Protocol:

6:30 AM - Before you check your phone:
Write down (by hand, not typed) three things:

1. One thing you can control today (no matter how small)

2. One thing you’re choosing to believe is possible today (even if you have no proof yet)

3. One action you’ll take today that your future self will thank you for

Examples:

1. I can control: Making my bed, drinking water before coffee, sending one email

2. I’m choosing to believe: Someone needs what I’m creating

3. Future-self action: Working on my project for 30 minutes before checking email

Throughout the day:
Every time you feel yourself dimming—losing hope, sinking into doubt—return to your three things. Ask: “Did I do the thing I could control yet? Am I still choosing to believe? Have I taken that one action?”

Before bed:
Write one sentence about what you did. Not what you didn’t do. Not what went wrong. Just: “Today I [action you took].”

Examples:

• “Today I sent the email even though I was scared.”

• “Today I worked on my project for 15 minutes (I said 30, but 15 is more than 0).”

• “Today I chose to believe this matters even though I got zero likes on my post.”

The accumulation:

You won’t feel different after day one. Probably not after day seven.

But by day 30, you’ll have 30 pieces of evidence that you showed up. That you controlled something. That you chose belief. That you took action.

By day 90, you’ll have 90 pieces.

That’s not a metaphor for hope. That’s actual, tangible proof that you became your own light.

You generate your own momentum. You build your own proof. And eventually, you look back and realize: you didn’t need the tunnel to give you light.

You were the light all along.

Shifting from pessimism to optimism isn’t a single decision.

It’s a daily practice. A series of small, intentional actions that accumulate quietly over time.

Wipe your mind clean of other people’s fears (3-day notebook exercise).
Stop speaking negativity into existence (21-day reframe practice).
Breathe before you react (4-7-8 breath, just once).
Practice opposite action (5-minute timer method, 30-40 repetitions).
Try without judgment (keep a Tried List for one week).
Become your own light (Morning Light Protocol, 90 days).

These steps won’t make your life suddenly easy. They won’t erase every hard moment.

But they’ll change how you move through those moments.

And that changes everything.

About Anastasiya

By day, I’m a ghostwriter helping business owners connect with their audience. By night, I’m building The Sonder.

I live for late-night conversations, Disney movies that make you believe in magic again, and Friday nights watching films in my corner of the world. I believe deeply feeling people aren’t broken — they’re just operating in a world that wasn’t built for their depth.

I made a promise to myself in my darkest moments that I would never let someone else feel as alone as I once did. The Sonder is that promise kept.

Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Love,
Anastasiya

When did you stop?

When did daydreaming become something you “don’t have time for” instead of something you just do? When did boredom become a problem to solve? When did you start treating every blank moment like a threat and reach for your phone the second there’s silence?

You used to stare at clouds. You used to get lost in your own thoughts on long car rides. You used to lie on your back in the grass and let your mind wander wherever it wanted to go.

Now you can’t sit still for two minutes without feeling like you’re wasting time.

You’ve turned yourself into a robot. Here’s how to be human again.

What You Lost When You Stopped Daydreaming

Daydreaming isn’t a luxury or a break from productivity. It’s where your brain does the work you can’t do while you’re busy being “productive.”

It’s where ideas are born. Where connections are made. Where your brain processes everything your body absorbed throughout the day. It’s where wonder lives.

The majority of life-changing ideas start with a sense of wonder. But you can’t feel wonder when you’re filling every second of your life with noise.

I remember a moment when I was 15, and I stepped outside on my balcony to look at the moon and night sky, and I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing, completely numb.

I was terrified.

I was thinking, I’m so young, how could it be that I don’t feel any magic in me, any hope, or any spark? It was scary because I had no idea where it went or how to get it back.

Here’s what happened: As we go through life, hardship, trauma, expectations, loss, and failure fill us up little by little with sadness, disappointment, or exhaustion, and take over the space where optimism, hope, and joy used to live.

And without daydreaming, you can’t clear that space. You can’t process it. You just keep piling more on top until you’re doing the same thing over and over, day after day, without looking up or looking around.

Some of us live years of our lives like robots. We’re surrounded by people but feel lonely. We see others through screens rather than acknowledging the person next to us. We crave connection but fear taking risks. We choose the comfort of discomfort rather than stepping outside our comfort zones.

Without daydreaming, you’re just executing. You’re not creating. You’re not feeling.

How to Re-Learn

Here’s the truth: you didn’t forget how to daydream.

You just stopped giving yourself permission to do it.

Here’s how to start again.

1. Reclaim Boredom

Stop filling every second.

Leave your phone in another room. Sit. Stare. Let the discomfort happen. Your brain is going to panic at first because it’s been trained to think that boredom is bad, that blank space is a problem.

But boredom is where daydreams live.

You can’t daydream if you never give your mind space to wander. So create that space. Sit on your couch and do nothing. Stand at the window and look outside. Take a walk without headphones. Let yourself be bored.

The magic comes after the discomfort.

Action steps:

• Put your phone in a drawer for 20 minutes. Sit on your couch or stand at the window. Do nothing.

• Take one walk this week without headphones, music, or podcasts. Just walk.

• When you’re waiting in line or sitting in traffic, resist the urge to pull out your phone. Stare instead.

• Schedule “blank space” on your calendar like it’s a meeting. Protect it.

2. Feed Your Imagination

You can’t daydream about nothing. Your imagination needs fuel.

Go live outside your head. Go to concerts. Take road trips. Have conversations with strangers. Take long walks under a starry night. Watch movies. Visit museums. Go to the mountains. Do the things that take you out of your head and into your body and the present moment.

The more you absorb, the more your imagination has to work with.

Daydreaming isn’t about escaping reality. It’s about processing reality in a way that lets you see it differently.

Action steps:

• Pick one experience this month that makes you feel alive. A concert. A museum. A road trip. A new restaurant. Go.

• Strike up a conversation with a stranger. At a coffee shop, in line, on a walk. Ask them something you’re genuinely curious about.

• Watch a movie that makes you feel something. Not a background-noise movie. A movie that pulls you in.

• Go outside at night and look at the stars. Stand there for at least five minutes.

3. Romanticize the Mundane

You think you need a vacation or a big life change to feel something again. You don’t.

Magic is everywhere. You’re just not looking.

Notice the sweet, robust combination of a mushroom with smokey cheese and rosemary. Fall in love with the view from your window. Watch how light moves across the room in the afternoon. Pay attention to the way your coffee smells in the morning.

Life is all around you. You just need to pay attention.

When you start seeing the magic in small things, your brain remembers how to daydream again. Because daydreaming isn’t about grand, sweeping fantasies. It’s about noticing the beauty in what’s right in front of you and letting your mind play with it.

Action steps:

• Eat one meal this week slowly. No phone, no TV, no distractions. Taste every bite.

• Stand at your window for two minutes and really look at what’s outside. The trees, the light, the people walking by.

• Notice three beautiful things on your commute or daily walk. The way light hits a building. A stranger’s laugh. The smell of rain.

• Make your coffee or tea in the morning and actually smell it before you drink it.

4. Stop Apologizing for Drifting

Your mind wandering isn’t a weakness. It’s not “spacing out.” It’s not a failure to focus.

It’s your brain doing what it was designed to do.

When you’re in a meeting and your mind starts to wander, that’s not a problem. When you’re reading and you realize you’ve been thinking about something else for the past five minutes, that’s not a failure. When you’re doing the dishes and suddenly you’re somewhere else entirely, that’s not distraction.

That’s daydreaming. And it’s essential.

Stop treating it like something you need to fix. Stop apologizing for it. Let it happen.

Action steps:

• The next time your mind wanders, notice it without judgment. Don’t snap yourself back. Follow the thought for 30 seconds and see where it goes.

• Stop saying “sorry, I zoned out.” Your mind went somewhere. That’s not something to apologize for.

• Give yourself permission to drift during mundane tasks. Washing dishes, folding laundry, waiting for the train. Let your mind go.

• Write down one daydream or random thought that came to you this week. Keep a running list.

5. Believe It’s Possible

Here’s the thing about magic: whatever we think is true tends to become true. If we believe magic exists, it finds us. If we think it doesn’t, it never will.

The same goes for daydreaming.

If you believe you’ve lost the ability to daydream, you have. If you believe you’re too busy, too stressed, too old, too practical, then you are.

But if you believe you can get it back, you will. You have to be bold enough to believe that daydreaming matters. Because it does.

After years of working hard to never lose a childlike amount of wonder, here’s what I know for sure: The magic of life is everywhere, but it requires a mindset of appreciation. Whatever we think is true: if we believe magic exists, it’ll find us. If we think it doesn’t, then it’ll never find us.

People will try to tell you that magic is only for kids and that you’re being childish. This is only because they’re scared to believe in something good, and have been too disappointed by people and life to feel hope again.

Don’t forget, the people who are bold enough to believe that magic exists usually end up finding it.

Action steps:

• Say this out loud: “I’m allowed to daydream. It’s not a waste of time.” Say it until you believe it.

• When someone tells you to “be realistic,” decide whether that’s wisdom or fear talking.

• Catch yourself when you say, “I don’t have time for that.” You have time. You’re choosing not to make it.

• Commit to one week of protecting your daydreaming practice. Tell someone you’re doing it so you’re accountable.

You Don’t Need Permission, But Here It Is Anyway

You don’t need to earn this. You don’t need to wait until you’re “less busy.” You don’t need to finish your to-do list first.

You’re allowed to drift. You’re allowed to stare at nothing and call it essential.

Because it is.

Daydreaming isn’t something you do when you have time left over. It’s something you do so you can remember what it feels like to be alive.

So stop treating it like a waste. Stop feeling guilty about it. Stop waiting for permission.

You already have it.

If you liked this, you’ll love The Sonder.

Every Thursday, I send a Droplet of Love to people around the world who need a reminder to keep moving forward. It’s a weekly letter designed to help you feel a little less lonely and a little more alive.

Because dreaming big can feel pretty lonely sometimes. And this is a way to maintain your momentum.

Come on in. I’m so excited to see your name pop up.

Anastasiya

There is a grief no one teaches you to carry — the grief of your own unlived days.

THE PULL

It comes for you in the strangest moments. Not at midnight when you expect it, but on an ordinary afternoon — while you are washing a dish, or watching light move across a wall, or scrolling past someone’s photograph from a life that looks nothing like yours.

And then you realize: it is March again. Or it is autumn. Or somehow, impossibly, another year has passed — and you do not quite remember living it. You remember surviving it. You remember certain hours that felt like wading through concrete. You remember the particular quality of ceiling light at 2 p.m. on days when getting up felt like an act of war.

But living? The accumulated fullness of being present in your own life, the way you imagine other people are? That part is blurred. That part feels like something that happened behind glass.

You stand in the kitchen with a wet dish in your hand, and you feel it: not sadness, exactly. Something older and quieter.

The particular ache of time you cannot account for.

THE DEPTH

Here is what they do not tell you about the years you spend just trying to survive: they count. They are counted against you — not by the world, not really, but by the voice inside you that has memorized every milestone you have missed, every year that passed while you were still trying to learn how to breathe without it hurting.

That voice knows exactly how old you are. It knows what people your age have built, have traveled to, have loved and lost, and loved again. It has been keeping a ledger. And on the days when the fog lifts, even slightly, you open that ledger and the numbers make you want to lie back down.

I know what it is to look at the span of years and feel something close to shame. Not the dramatic, story-worthy kind of shame — the quiet, suffocating kind. The kind that whispers: you should be further along. As if life is a race you entered late and have been losing ever since. As if the years spent horizontal, years spent merely enduring, were years stolen from you that you somehow also owe back.

What no one says, because perhaps they do not know how, is that there is a particular violence in measuring a life lived in darkness by the standards of a life lived in full light. It is like demanding that someone who spent years underwater explain why they are not yet fluent in a language that can only be spoken in air.

The question makes a kind of logical sense and is, at the same time, a cruelty.

I spent years believing that the time I lost to the weight — whatever you want to call it, whatever it was for you — was time I would always be paying for.

That I had a debt to the future, compounded by interest. That I had to earn my way back not just to wholeness but to legitimacy. That I had to prove, through relentless doing, that the years of undoing had not made me less. I ran myself into the ground trying to close a distance that kept moving.

And underneath all of it, beneath every frantic act of catching up, was this one quiet devastation: I do not know how to mourn the years I lost without blaming myself for losing them.

That is the thing no one puts into words. That grief and guilt have become so tangled inside you that you cannot reach the first without drowning in the second. That you want to be allowed to simply be sad — sad that it was so hard, sad that so much time passed in the dark — but instead you find yourself on trial.

The prosecution and the defendant both wearing your face.

THE TURN

I want to say something true to you, and I need you to let it land before you argue with it. The years you spent surviving were not empty years. They were not wasted years.

They were not years you owe anyone an account of. They were years in which you carried something enormous — carried it mostly alone, carried it without a roadmap, carried it while the world continued to ask things of you that you did not have the reserves to give.

And you are still here. That is not nothing.

That is, in fact, the whole story. Not the prelude to the story. Not the shameful chapter before the real life begins. The years you cannot fully remember living are still, irrevocably, part of the shape of you.

The person you are becoming has roots that go down through all of it — through the dark and the weight and the ceilings you memorized. You did not fall behind. You were somewhere else.

And now you are here.

THE INVITATION

What if — and I ask this gently, without pressure — the years you mourn as lost were not a departure from your life, but a passage through it?

What if the question is not how do I make up for the time I lost, but rather: what did I learn to carry, in the dark, that I could not have learned any other way? You do not have to answer that now. You do not have to find meaning in any of it before you are ready.

But I wonder if somewhere, beneath the grief and the accounting, there is a quieter truth: that you have always been living your life. Even the parts that did not look like living from the outside. Especially those.

SIGN-OFF

You have not missed your life, love. It has been happening — all of it, even the parts that hurt. I am so glad you are still in it.

With everything, Anastasiya

At The Sonder — Droplet of Love lands in your inbox every Thursday. Written for the one who is still learning to stay.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to actually live—not just exist, but really pay attention.

Most days blur together. We’re busy, distracted, scrolling, rushing from one thing to the next. But every once in a while, something stops you. A sound. A feeling.

A moment so small it would be easy to miss, but so beautiful you wish you could bottle it up and keep it forever.

This is my list of those things. 100 moments, sounds, and sights that make me remember what it feels like to be alive.

1. A baby’s laugh

2. Long smiles

3. Eyes connecting

4. The breeze from the ocean

5. The sound of rain in the mountains

6. Reflecting rainbows

7. The first sip of morning coffee

8. Iced oat milk matcha lattes on sunny Sunday mornings

9. Award-winning carrot cupcakes

10. The way light pours through cafe windows

11. Plants hanging from ceilings in unexpected places

12. Peach-toned sunsets

13. Gold shimmer catching the light

14. Highlighter on cheekbones

15. Watermelon on hot summer days

16. The first bite of a perfectly ripe peach

17. Strangers who hold doors open

18. Long walks under starry nights

19. Cappuccinos shared with friends

20. The smell of fresh rain

21. Mountains in the distance

22. Conversations that make you lose track of time

23. Cozy corners in cafes that feel like your own

24. Vibrant colors that make your heart skip

25. The music in Coco

26. Disney movies that remind you magic exists

27. When someone remembers your coffee order

28. Greenery that makes a room feel alive

29. The weight lifted after a good cry

30. Lazy weekends with nowhere to be

31. Road trips with no destination

32. When a stranger’s playlist matches your mood

33. The sound of laughter echoing

34. Handwritten notes

35. Books with dog-eared pages

36. Tomato soup with grilled cheese

37. Brownie crumbs on your fingers

38. The moment you realize you’re exactly where you need to be

39. Sunlight on your skin after a long winter

40. The smell of someone you love

41. Cupcakes with perfect frosting swirls

42. When a song gives you chills

43. Autumn leaves crunching underfoot

44. The first snowfall of the year

45. Warm blankets fresh from the dryer

46. Finding the perfect lipstick shade

47. When makeup feels like art

48. Charlotte Tilbury palettes that look too pretty to use

49. Pat McGrath highlighter catching the light just right

50. Bare feet on grass

51. The ocean at sunrise

52. Silhouettes against golden hour

53. When someone says, “I’ve been thinking about you”

54. Fresh flowers on kitchen tables

55. The smell of bread baking

56. Ice cream melting down your hand

57. Dancing in your living room

58. The relief of taking off your bra at the end of the day

59. Clean sheets

60. Windows cracked open on spring mornings

61. The sound of wind chimes

62. Old songs that transport you back in time

63. Long drives with good playlists

64. When someone truly listens

65. The first warm day of spring

66. Cold drinks on hot afternoons

67. Iced hibiscus-mint tea with lemonade

68. Shakshuka on lazy mornings

69. Finding a new favorite cafe

70. University students grinding away in coffee shops

71. Neighborhood locals enjoying their morning ritual

72. Strangers smiling at you for no reason

73. When you catch someone staring and they don’t look away

74. Holding hands without thinking about it

75. The pause before a kiss

76. Laughter that makes your stomach hurt

77. Inside jokes

78. Memories you didn’t know you were making

79. When fear turns into courage

80. Moments of pure, unexpected joy

81. Realizing you’ve grown

82. Forgiving yourself

83. The relief of letting go

84. Standing up for what you believe in

85. Watching someone do what they love

86. Being witnessed in your truest form

87. The courage it takes to start over

88. Finding beauty in the breakdown

89. Small acts of kindness from strangers

90. When you feel alive in your body

91. The present moment

92. Choosing yourself

93. Permission to rest

94. Inspiration that strikes out of nowhere

95. Ideas brewing in the quiet

96. Writing that flows

97. Creating something from nothing

98. Imagination unleashed

99. The person you’re becoming

100. Knowing there’s still so much more to discover

Some of these are sensory.

Some are emotional.

Some are so small they feel almost silly to write down.

But that’s the thing—life isn’t always made up of the big, shiny moments we think we’re supposed to chase. Sometimes it’s the sound of rain, the taste of a ripe peach, or the way someone looks at you when they think you’re not paying attention.

These are the things I never want to forget. The things that remind me to slow down, look up, and actually see what’s in front of me.

What’s on your list?

Anastasiya

I was 15 when I stepped outside on my balcony to look at the moon and felt absolutely nothing.

The moon, stars, and galaxy had always enchanted me. They were my source of inspiration, the only evidence of real magic in our world, and a reliable friend I’d talk to when I had no one else.

But that night, standing under the night sky, I felt completely numb. I was terrified. I remember thinking, I’m so young—how could it be that I don’t feel any magic in me, any hope, or any spark? It was scary because I had no idea where it went or how to get it back.

That was the moment I realized I had to figure out why and how to maintain the feeling of magic inside me, especially as I got older.

Now, at 29, I understand what happened.

When Hardship Fills the Space Where Hope Used to Live

As we go through life, hardship, trauma, cruelty, war, expectations, loss, and failure fill us up little by little over time with sadness, disappointment, or exhaustion. They take over the space where optimism, hope, and joy used to live.

The sensation of magic gets lost. Most adults reject any idea of anything magical and call it “childish.”

But I’m sure you’re either someone who still believes in magic or someone who’s lost it but craves it.

I’ve spent years working hard to never lose a childlike amount of wonder. And what I’ve learned is this: the people who are bold enough to believe that magic exists usually end up finding it.

The question is, how do you choose to believe when you’re breaking down?

The 3 Years With No Light at the End of the Tunnel

There was a long period of time when I was learning copywriting.

This isn’t a skill you just pick up one day and build a business around. It takes time, trial and error, lots of learning, and then figuring out how to sell yourself to dream clients. I had no other job filling my time, just small freelance writing gigs here and there. I was used to being part of large, energetic teams with a common vision. But then I was alone every day in my room, trying to learn how to be an entrepreneur after years of being a team player.

This feeling—the everyday rotation of waking up, sitting at my computer, learning, and writing—went on for nearly 3 years.

The thing that kept me going? Resilience.

My unwillingness to give up. A will from deep inside me pushing me to keep going and keep trying. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. All I had was this intense desire to figure it out for myself, no matter what my situation looked like.

I was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.

But I discovered something during those years.

Finding Ground Zero

I learned to find my ground zero.

Ground zero is the ability to go outside and simply be grateful to be alive. When I’d look at the trees sway in the wind, I could still be grateful to be alive even when I was breaking down.

Not grateful for my circumstances. Not grateful that everything was falling apart. Just grateful for the fact that I was still breathing, still here, still able to watch the trees move.

That became my anchor.

After finding that gratitude, I’d hold onto it. I’d return back to it when the darkness crept in. And I learned that as long as I could find the gratitude to be alive, I could find the joy that follows soon after.

Gratitude = Joy.

That’s the equation.

What Ground Zero Looks Like in Practice

My ground zero has taken different forms depending on what I need:

Sometimes it’s going outside and watching the stars. The moon and galaxy are still my evidence of real magic in this world.

Sometimes it’s turning on a Disney movie and letting myself feel the magic come through the screen. Coco, Ratatouille, Peter Pan, Soul—movies that remind me how to see the world through childlike eyes. If I need an injection of magic, hope, and adventure in my bloodstream, I grab some snacks, make a drink, turn down the lights, get cozy, and just let myself feel.

Sometimes it’s walking to a cafe. Sitting in a cozy space with people around me, sipping an iced oat milk matcha latte, watching life happen. Those moments remind me that life is still beautiful even when mine feels heavy.

Sometimes it’s Cirque du Soleil. Watching their shows fills me up with so much love and light that I feel like I’m on Cloud 9. It’s magical.

The practice changes, but the principle stays the same: find the simplest thing you can still be grateful for when everything else is falling apart.

How to Find Your Own Ground Zero

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Okay, but how do I actually do this?”—here’s where to start.

The 5-Minute Ground Zero Practice

Stop what you’re doing. Seriously, pause. Close the fifteen tabs you have open, put your phone face down, and step away from whatever’s overwhelming you.

Go somewhere you can see nature. A window. Your balcony. Outside. If you can’t physically go outside, pull up a video of trees swaying, the ocean, or a campfire.

Something alive, something moving.

Find one living thing. A tree branch bending in the wind. A cloud drifting by. A bird hopping on the sidewalk. Your own breath moving in and out.

Watch it for 60 seconds. No judgment, no agenda. Just watch.

Then say out loud (or think to yourself): “I’m alive to see this.”

That’s it. That’s ground zero.

Questions to Help You Find Your Anchor

Everyone’s ground zero is different. To figure out yours, ask yourself:

What made you feel wonder as a child? Was it fireflies? The sound of rain? Building forts? Whatever it was, it still holds magic.

What’s the simplest thing that still feels beautiful to you? Not impressive. Not Instagram-worthy. Just quietly, genuinely beautiful.

When you’re overwhelmed, what’s the one place or thing that makes you feel less alone? Maybe it’s your favorite coffee shop. Maybe it’s your dog. Maybe it’s a specific song. Trust that instinct.

Your Ground Zero Toolkit

Keep these options in your back pocket:

When you need immediate relief: Go outside. Look at trees, the sky, clouds. Let your eyes rest on something that isn’t a screen.

When you’re too exhausted to move: Turn on a Disney movie. Pull up photos of stars or the ocean on your phone. Let beauty come to you.

When you feel isolated: Go to a cafe, a bookstore, a park. Any place with gentle human presence where you don’t have to perform or explain yourself.

When you need to feel alive: Music that gives you chills. Art that moves you. Cirque du Soleil. Whatever fills you with awe.

What It Feels Like When You Find It

Here’s the thing: it won’t feel like fireworks.

It feels like a small exhale. Like you can take a full breath for the first time in hours. Like “okay, I can do one more day.”

There’s a tiny opening in your chest where the tightness was. Not gone, but softer.

You might not feel joy immediately. But you’ll feel gratitude. And gratitude always leads to joy if you hold onto it long enough.

How to Make It a Practice

Return to it daily, even when you’re not breaking down. Especially when you’re not breaking down. That way, when things get hard, your body already knows where to go.

It gets stronger the more you use it. The first time might feel forced. The tenth time will feel like coming home.

Keep a list of your ground zeros on your phone. When one stops working, try another. My ground zero changes depending on what I need—and yours will too.

What I Know for Sure About Magic

After years of working to maintain wonder, here are five things I know:

The magic of life is everywhere, but it requires a mindset of appreciation. You have to look for it. You have to choose to see it.

Other than natural wonders like Mother Nature, animals, space, and the earth, magic is created by people. We make magic for each other. A person who makes you feel like you’re flying. A friend who reminds you of your dreams. A stranger who smiles at you on a hard day.

Our perspective dictates how we perceive the life around us. If we put out negativity, negativity rebounds to us. If we put out positivity, positivity is reflected around us.

Whatever we think is true. If we believe magic exists, it’ll find us. If we think it doesn’t, then it’ll never find us.

People will try to tell you that magic is only for kids and you’re being childish. This is only because they’re scared to believe in something good, and have been too disappointed by people and life to feel hope again.

This Isn’t Toxic Positivity

I want to be clear about something.

Finding ground zero doesn’t mean pretending you’re not breaking down. It doesn’t mean forcing yourself to be happy about hard things. It doesn’t mean denying reality.

It means finding the one true thing that’s still good: you’re alive.

And from that single point of gratitude, joy follows.

When I was standing outside watching the trees sway, I wasn’t pretending the previous three years didn’t hurt. I wasn’t ignoring the exhaustion or the loneliness or the fear. I was acknowledging all of it and still choosing to find something to be grateful for.

That’s the difference.

Resilience is the rocket fuel that kicks in when your gas tank is empty. Your gas tank is your energy, cognitive capacity, emotional bandwidth, and ambition. But resilience is what happens when you’re mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted and you keep going anyway.

Resilience allowed me to push through the darkness of the unknown to become the light that lit my way forward.

The Magic That Finds Believers

Don’t forget: the people who are bold enough to believe that magic exists usually end up finding it.

Never let people cloud your mind with the idea that life is meant to be lived only one way — “realistically.”

To be willing to try, you have to maintain optimism (a mindset that anything is possible), curiosity (an instinct to want to learn more), and courage (a willingness to try even when you’re scared).

The best way to not only survive this difficult life but to feel it deeply is by seeing it through childlike eyes.

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale. And after all, the majority of life-changing ideas start with a sense of wonder.

So when you’re breaking down, go outside. Watch the trees sway in the wind. Be grateful you’re alive. Hold onto that gratitude. Return to it when you need to.

The trees still sway, even when you’re breaking down.

And if you can find gratitude in that, joy will follow.

Love,

Anastasiya

P.S. The Sonder is a community of people who not only dream big, but go after their dreams. It’s a source of inspiration, motivation, and the place where we gather to encourage each other’s wildest dreams.

Dreaming big can feel lonely sometimes, so this is a way to maintain your momentum. Come on in, I’m excited to see your name pop up.

I was lying in bed, and it was like I had forgotten how to get up and live a life.

Every step felt like I was learning how to live again, and it was horrific. As silly as it is, there’s no Google article telling you how to get up from bed step by step—especially when your heart is breaking, and your chest feels like it weighs a million pounds.

Lying down helped the emotions stay at bay. But as soon as I started walking, it was like my nervous system knew I was making progress by getting up and did everything it could to keep me safe. So every step, I was exhausted. Taking a shower was hard. Eating made me cry. Nostalgic scents brought me to tears every single time.

It was like training for a marathon, but the marathon was just life.

This might be you right now, searching for simple steps on how to just get up from bed and keep moving forward. That is the exact purpose of At The Sonder, and where the idea of creating some sort of reference point that someone like you and me can use to teach us how to actually do the hard things that no one can articulate.

These are the five steps I learned—not from a book or a therapist, but from doing it over and over again until it got easier.

This is from me to you.

Step 1: Just Stop

Every wellness article tells you to “acknowledge your pain” or “write it down”.

Yeah. When we feel like dying, the last thing we have energy for is to write anything down or to journal our feelings. There’s a time and place for that. But in this specific circumstance? We’re fighting to stay alive, so we need tactics on how to do so.

Step #1 is to stop. Stop trying to fix yourself, stop overthinking, take a deep breath, and lie there. Your body may feel like a 1,000 pounds, but your brain, swarming like a beehive, isn’t going to make everything feel much scarier and harder to deal with.

So, just stop. Everything is going to be okay.

Step 2: Make the First Movement (Even If It’s Just Opening Your Eyes)

The hardest part is always the first step.

Start absurdly small. Open your eyes. Wiggle your toes. Sit up. Move one hand. Take one breath that feels intentional. Seriously, if a big stretch is all you have energy for, then do that.

Movement creates momentum, you know that, so when you’re getting up, give yourself a reason to do so: to take a shower, to open the fridge, to move to the couch, to get yourself some water, to breathe in fresh air.

Give yourself a simple reason to get up. It becomes 100x harder to get up after an extended period of time lying down, so you must get up as often as you can, for whatever reason.

Pro Tip: Put your hand lotion, chapstick, water, whatever you constantly need across the room so that you’re forced to get up to get it. This is an easy win.

Step 3: Decide That You’re Going to Try

The most important thing you can do is literally have a conversation with yourself and ask yourself: Will I try or will I give up?

You must decide to try. That decision—that’s the start of everything else.

The choice is meant to be an internal promise to oneself that no matter how hard the coming days, weeks, months, and years that follow, you will always try again and again and again. You will not give up the effort. You will not give up hope.

Trying is enough. Trying is the whole thing. Because once you decide to try, you’ve already taken the most important step.

Step 4: Anchor Yourself to You (Not a Reason)

You’ll often read, or be told, that you should find someone or something to attach yourself to as an anchor of accountability, or a reason to get up in the morning.

This may work in some circumstances, but overall, I think this is dangerous.

The true mark of courage is getting up for yourself. Not for anyone else. Because when we anchor ourselves to someone or something, if that person, for example, leaves us, then our “reason” for getting up and motivating ourselves to keep moving forward also leaves us.

That’s a dangerous game to play.

Instead, anchor yourself to you, which, mind you, is the hardest thing to do because it’s so much easier (and so comforting) to be inspired, or helped, or encouraged by someone else. It’s natural.

Stop searching for external reasons—they can disappear. People leave. Jobs end. Projects finish. But you? You are the most reliable thing you have.

Get up for yourself. Stay for yourself. Try for yourself.

**By the way, this doesn’t mean that we can’t have people in our lives that we want to get out of bed for. This just means that our anchor should be to ourselves.

Having people to get up for is beautiful.

Step 5: Try Again Tomorrow

You know what, if you washed your hair today, well done. If you went on a walk away today, excellent job. And if you had a conversation with someone and genuinely smiled, then a big congratulations to you.

And if none of that happened and all you did was lie in bed and stare at your phone, then that’s okay. Try again tomorrow.

Being so sad, experiencing tremendous grief, feeling an eternal lack of hope, etc., is a terrifying position to be in, and it’s not a quick turnaround. In fact, you’ll make progress, then you’ll take a few steps back, and you take a few microscopic steps forward, and that’s the dance.

But the one thing is that when the sun rises again tomorrow, you can try again, and you should for your own sake. As I mentioned above, you mustn’t stay down for too long because the longer you’re down, the harder it is to get up.

The mental momentum it takes to rev ourselves up again after a long rest is tough, and the best, best thing you can do is simply try again. Never think it’s hopeless.

Final Thoughts

I’ve wanted to write this post for a long time, and I don’t think I did it justice. I think there’s so much more that can be said, but when it comes to breaking down a basic thing like getting out of bed, what once was a simple, obvious task now becomes a chess game where a thousand-pound elephant is lying on our chest and our brains are malfunctioning completely.

But this will be the first of many to come because it’s important - it’s so important - that people who are lying in bed right now in this moment know that there is someone out there who was in the same position as they are, and they made it out of bed.

I made it out of bed, and my entire life transformed in ways I never would’ve imagined. All for the better.

This is exactly what I needed when I was searching online for someone to relate to who could guide me through it. I never found that person, so I became her.

Love,
Anastasiya

Most people run from pain. The relentless run toward it.

There’s a breed of person who chooses the cold plunge over the warm bed.
Who picks the difficult conversation over the easy silence.
Who rebuilds after failure instead of settling into comfort.

They’re not masochists.

They’ve just figured something out that most people spend their whole lives avoiding: the person you want to become lives on the other side of what’s hard.

This is relentlessness. And it separates those who endure from those who truly thrive.

What Relentlessness Actually Means

Relentlessness isn’t self-punishment. It’s the deliberate choice to do hard things when easier options exist.

It’s launching your business despite the fear.
Having the conversation that makes your stomach drop.
Pushing past the mental wall that screams “stop” when your body can go further.
It’s the entrepreneur who rebuilds after catastrophic failure.
The artist who keeps creating despite rejection after rejection.
The problem-solver who addresses the issue everyone else pretends doesn’t exist.

Growth lives on the other side of discomfort.
Relentless people know this in their bones.

The Biology Behind Choosing Pain

Your brain is wired to avoid discomfort. It’s a survival mechanism—pain signals danger, so we’re programmed to run from it.

But here’s the catch: adaptation only happens under stress.

Your muscles don’t grow in the gym. They grow when you’re resting after you’ve torn them down. Your immune system strengthens after fighting off threats. Your mind sharpens after wrestling with problems that make it ache. Chronic stress destroys you, but acute challenges build you.

Your body gets stronger by breaking down first. That’s the deal.

Unlearning Comfort-Seeking

We’re culturally conditioned to avoid discomfort at all costs. Everything is marketed as easier, faster, smoother. Convenience is the prize.

Breaking this programming is the first act of relentlessness. You have to recognize when you’re choosing ease over growth. When you’re picking the path of least resistance because it feels safe, not because it’s right.

The real question: are you optimizing for comfort or capability?

Why Most People Avoid What Relentless People Seek

Comfort is seductive. The immediate pain always feels bigger than the future reward. You can see the struggle right in front of you, but the transformation is abstract, distant, and uncertain.

Add social pressure on top of that. Everyone’s taking shortcuts. Everyone’s looking for the hack, the cheat code, the easy way. When you choose the hard path, people think you’re crazy.

And then there’s the fear. The fear of failure when you actually try. Most people refuse to acknowledge problems because they’re terrified they won’t know how to solve them. So they pretend the problem doesn’t exist and judge the people brave enough to face it.

The Role of Purpose: Suffering vs. Meaningful Discomfort

Here’s the difference: suffering without meaning is just pain. Suffering with purpose becomes fuel.

Relentless people anchor their discomfort to a vision. They know why they’re doing the hard thing. The why transforms the what. When you’re clear on why you’re enduring, the discomfort shifts from unbearable to necessary.

Purpose turns suffering into sacrifice. And sacrifice builds something real.

Try and Fail Without Self-Judgment

Relentless people reframe failure. It’s data, not defeat.

Get excited that you’re evolving and trying. Maintain optimism (anything is possible or can be figured out), curiosity (an instinct to want to learn more), and courage (a willingness to try even when you’re scared).

Trying is the tool you work on every single day. You don’t have to succeed every time. You just have to keep trying without beating yourself up when it doesn’t work.

The Transformation That Only Comes From Voluntary Suffering

When you choose discomfort repeatedly, something shifts.

Confidence gets built from proving to yourself that you can endure. Mental toughness isn’t a personality trait—it’s a trained skill. Every small act of relentlessness compounds. Your relationship with fear changes. What used to terrify you becomes manageable.

Resilience is the discipline to keep trying one more time, one more time, one more time.

The Compound Effect Over Years

What happens to someone who chooses discomfort for 3, 5, 10 years?

Transformation. Not incremental improvement—transformation.

You become the person who pushed through darkness without seeing the light. You become someone who doesn’t need external validation to keep going. You become unshakable.

Keep going. You’re almost there.

The Social Cost of Choosing the Hard Path

Relentlessness can feel isolating. When everyone else takes shortcuts, choosing the hard path makes you an outsider.

You’ll stand tall while addressing problems others pretend don’t exist. You’ll be early to solve issues others aren’t ready to face. That can feel insane. It can feel lonely.

But that isolation is part of the process. And it’s okay. Being early to see the problem and solve it is a superpower.

When Relentlessness Goes Wrong

There’s a difference between productive suffering and toxic hustle.

Relentless doesn’t mean reckless. You have to know when you’re building and when you’re breaking. Martyrdom isn’t relentlessness—it’s self-destruction dressed up as virtue.

How do you know? If your suffering has lost its purpose, if you’re grinding just to grind, if there’s no vision anchoring the pain—you’ve crossed the line.

How to Practice Relentlessness (Without Destroying Yourself)

Start small. Micro-commitments to discomfort. Cold showers. Difficult emails. One more rep. One hard conversation.

The everyday rotation matters. Wake up. Do the hard thing. Learn. Do it again. This went on for nearly 3 years for me. No light at the end of the tunnel. Just the rotation. That’s how you build relentlessness—through daily repetition of choosing discomfort when comfort is right there.

Pick your suffering intentionally. Not all pain is productive. Choose discomfort that builds you toward something, not discomfort for discomfort’s sake.

Ask yourself: Does this move me closer to who I want to become? If yes, lean in. If no, it’s just noise.

Build systems that make the hard choice the default choice. Remove the friction from doing hard things. Add friction to taking the easy way out.

Want to write every morning? Put your laptop on your pillow before bed. Want to stop scrolling? Delete the apps. Design your environment so that the relentless choice is the easy one.

Create a non-negotiable anchor. Pick one hard thing you do every single day, no matter what. One push-up. One page written. One minute of discomfort. Make it so small you can’t talk yourself out of it.

That anchor becomes proof. Proof that you can do hard things. Proof that compounds.

Track without obsessing. Keep a simple log. Did you do the thing today? Yes or no. Watch the streak build. But don’t worship the streak—if you break it, start again tomorrow.

Rest is part of the practice. Relentlessness isn’t grinding yourself into dust. It’s choosing strategic discomfort, then recovering so you can do it again. Sleep. Recover. Then go again.

Trust your gut and try it out without second-guessing yourself. You’ll know what needs to be done. Stop waiting for permission.

The Choice You Make Every Day

Relentlessness isn’t about suffering for suffering’s sake. It’s about understanding that the person you want to become lives on the other side of what’s hard.

Every time you choose discomfort over ease, you’re voting for a stronger version of yourself. Every cold plunge. Every difficult conversation. Every time you rebuild instead of quit.

Come out the other side, and it will all be worth it for the stronger person you become.

Anastasiya

Right now, somewhere in this beautiful world, there’s someone with a brilliant idea—maybe even a life-changing one—and the only thing standing in their way is themselves. Specifically, their sadness.

This is my story of drowning in that sadness, barely surviving, and how I built something to help others who are stuck in that same terrifying place. I created At The Sonder to teach people how to bring themselves back to life—literally from ashes—so they can rejoin the world and live the life of their dreams.

Because although we can, would, and are capable of doing all the work ourselves, that doesn’t mean we should have to.

The Prison of Sadness

There’s a silent epidemic happening right now.

Millions of people have brilliant ideas trapped inside themselves. Ideas that could change industries, heal communities, inspire movements. But sadness doesn’t care about your potential. It doesn’t discriminate. It holds back dreamers, creators, and visionaries just the same.

Depression creates this unbearable gap between who you know you could be and who you’re able to show up as. You can feel the weight of everything you have to give the world, but you can’t access it. It’s right there, locked behind a door you don’t have the energy to open.

And that’s the cruelest part—knowing you have something valuable inside you while simultaneously feeling completely powerless to share it.

This Might Be You If...

You have a business idea you’ve been sitting on for three years.

You’re a creative who hasn’t created anything in months—maybe longer.

You’re an entrepreneur who can barely answer emails, let alone build your empire.

You know you’re capable of more, but you can’t access that version of yourself right now. The gap between who you are and who you could be feels insurmountable. You watch other people crushing their goals while you’re just trying to remember to eat lunch.

If any of this sounds familiar, I need you to know something: you’re not broken. You’re not lazy. You’re not failing.

You’re drowning. And that’s not the same thing.

What It’s Like to Drown

I was one of those people.

I was so low, drowning within myself, that I could barely get up in the morning, let alone conquer the world. My body felt heavy—like someone had poured concrete into my bones. The alarm would go off, and I’d stare at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that getting out of bed was worth it.

There was no one sitting beside me helping me get up. No one calling to make sure I showered. No one asking about my day.

And you know what? That’s a scary place to be.

The isolation of fighting alone is terrifying in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve been there. Every morning felt like climbing a mountain just to get out of bed. Every basic task—showering, eating, responding to a text—felt impossible. The world kept spinning, and I was standing still, watching everyone else live while I could barely survive.

I remember one specific moment that made everything crystal clear. I was sitting alone in my room, mid-afternoon on a weekday, staring at my laptop screen. I had been trying to learn copywriting—a skill that required creativity, energy, focus. But I couldn’t string two coherent sentences together. I had gone from being part of energetic teams with a common mission to being completely alone every day, trying to wear an entrepreneur’s hat when I could barely wear my own clothes.

That day, I realized something terrifying: if I didn’t do something, nothing would change. No one was coming to save me. I would be in this same spot in six months, a year, five years—watching my life pass by while my ideas died inside me.

That’s the day I made the promise that eventually became The Sonder.

The Shame That Comes With It

Here’s what no one talks about: the shame.

The guilt that sits on your chest when you’re an ambitious person who can’t get out of bed. When you know you’re smart, capable, talented—but you can’t do anything with it.

The shame of not being productive. Of not living up to your potential. Of wasting time, wasting your gifts, wasting your one precious life.

That shame? It makes the sadness worse. It’s a spiral that feeds itself.

You feel bad, so you can’t do things. Then you feel worse because you’re not doing things. And the cycle continues until you don’t recognize yourself anymore.

If you’re carrying that shame right now, I need you to hear this: You are not wasting your life. You are surviving. And survival counts.

Permission Slips You Didn’t Know You Needed

Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was in the thick of it:

You have permission to not be okay right now. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine when you’re falling apart.

You have permission to rest without guilt. Resting isn’t laziness. It’s how you rebuild.

You have permission to need help even though you’re strong. Strength isn’t doing everything alone—it’s knowing when to reach out.

You have permission to take as long as you need. There’s no timeline for coming back to life.

And here’s the most important one: You don’t need to earn the right to feel better. You don’t need to hit rock bottom “enough” or suffer “enough” to deserve support. You deserve it simply because you’re human and you’re struggling.

If you’ve been waiting for someone to give you permission to prioritize yourself, to ask for help, to stop pushing through—consider this it.

The Difference Between Love and Help

Here’s something important I learned: being loved doesn’t mean having help.

And there’s a crucial difference.

That doesn’t mean no one loved me. It doesn’t mean no one cared. But there was no one who was there to help me in the way I needed. People can care about you deeply and still not know how to be there when you’re drowning.

The scary place of being alone in your struggle isn’t about whether people love you—it’s about whether you have the specific support you need to survive. And when you’re trying to just make it through the day, that distinction matters more than anything.

Why I Created At The Sonder

In my darkest and loneliest moments, I made a promise to myself: I would never, to the best of my ability, let someone else feel the way that I did.

So I created At The Sonder.

It’s a place where people can learn how to bring themselves back to life from the ashes. A community where dreamers and creatives come together to encourage each other’s wildest dreams. A space designed to help people rejoin the world, be a person again, and live the life they’ve been dreaming about.

Every Thursday, I send out what I call a “Droplet of Love”—a weekly newsletter written directly from me to people around the world who need a reminder to keep moving forward.

Imagine opening your inbox on Thursday morning to find a message that feels like it was written just for you. Not a generic motivational quote. Not someone telling you to “just try harder.” But real, honest encouragement from someone who’s been exactly where you are and made it out the other side.

That’s what a Droplet of Love is.

Some weeks, it’s a story from my own life that mirrors what you might be going through. Other weeks, it’s a reminder that you’re not alone, even when it feels like you are. And sometimes, it’s just permission to rest without guilt.

Because all I wanted when I was struggling to survive was a place I could go to be encouraged. Not someone to do the work for me. Just somewhere to feel less alone while I did it.

You Shouldn’t Have to Do It Alone

Here’s the truth: you can do the work yourself.

You would do it if you had to.

You are capable of pulling yourself out.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should have to.

There’s power in having somewhere to go for encouragement while you’re doing the hard work. Community and support matter, even when you’re strong enough to survive solo. Dreaming big can feel pretty lonely sometimes—which is exactly why having people around you who understand makes all the difference.

The Sonder is a community of people who not only dream big, but they go after their dreams. And we maintain our momentum together.

Your Brilliant Ideas Are Still There

Let me remind you of something important: your brilliant business idea isn’t gone. It’s just buried under exhaustion.

That book you want to write? The course you want to launch? The company you want to build? They’re all still there, waiting.

Your ideas didn’t disappear just because you can’t access them right now. They’re not dead—they’re dormant. And the difference between dormant and dead is that dormant things can come back to life.

Think about it: seeds buried underground look dead. But give them the right conditions—water, sunlight, time—and they break through the soil.

You’re the same way. Your ideas need the right conditions to grow. And sometimes, that starts with learning how to water yourself first.

Tip 1: The “One Small Thing” Exercise

When you’re drowning, the idea of “conquering the world” feels laughable. Impossible. Like a cruel joke.

So start with one small, tangible thing you can do today.

Here’s the exercise: Write down three tiny actions that prove you’re still here. Not things you should do or things you wish you did. Things you actually did.

• “I showered today.”

• “I made my bed.”

• “I sent one text to a friend.”

Why this works: It trains your brain to see evidence that you’re moving, not just surviving. You’re not trying to fix everything or become a different person overnight. You’re simply acknowledging that you’re taking steps.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s momentum.

Do this daily for one week and watch what happens. The small things start to stack. And stacking small things is how you eventually conquer mountains.

Bonus Tip: Laugh

This sounds overly simple, but it’s wildly powerful.

When you’re drowning in sadness, laughter feels impossible—but it’s medicine. Watch something funny. A standup special, silly TikToks, a comedy you’ve seen a hundred times and still love.

Let yourself laugh even if it feels forced at first.

Laughter interrupts the spiral, even if just for a moment. It reminds your body what joy feels like. And here’s the beautiful paradox: you don’t have to feel better to laugh. Sometimes laughing is what helps you feel better.

These tips? They’re exactly the kind of encouragement you’ll find in The Sonder every single Thursday. Practical, real, and written for people who are still fighting.

What Happens After

I won’t lie to you and say you’ll wake up one day, suddenly healed.

That’s not how this works.

But you might notice something small: you laughed without forcing it. You had an idea and actually wrote it down instead of letting it disappear. You answered three emails instead of staring at your inbox in overwhelm.

Those small wins? They stack into momentum.

Coming back to life doesn’t look like a dramatic transformation scene in a movie. It looks like tiny, almost invisible shifts that add up over time. It looks like having more good days than bad days. It looks like feeling like yourself again, even if just for an afternoon.

And eventually, those afternoons turn into full days. Those days turn into weeks. And before you know it, you’re not just surviving anymore—you’re building something.

You’re conquering.

Your Brilliant Ideas Deserve to See the Light

You deserve to stop drowning and start conquering.

The world needs what you have inside you—and you don’t have to dig it out alone. Come join The Sonder. It’s a world I created where creatives and cuties like you come together to enjoy the magic of life. We gather to encourage each other’s wildest dreams, and we keep moving forward together.

Every Thursday, a Droplet of Love lands in your inbox. A reminder that you’re not alone. A gentle push to keep going. A celebration of how far you’ve already come.

So come on in. I’m so excited to see your name pop up.

About Me

Hi, I’m Anastasiya.

By day, I’m a Premium Ghostwriter. I build worlds with words—working with visionary business owners, creative entrepreneurs, and future builders to translate their brilliant ideas into stories that connect with their dream audiences.

By night, I write The Sonder, my weekly newsletter born from a promise I made to myself in my darkest moments: that I would never, to the best of my ability, let someone else feel the way I did.

My one true dream as a little girl was to be a writer. Not just writing poems in secret, but writing words that make an impact. For the longest time, I thought that dream was a fantasy with no room in reality. But I discovered that combining my two greatest passions—writing and people—could become my life’s work.

I spent over 10 years working in nonprofits, starting at age 14. I was always part of energetic teams with a common mission. But when I transitioned into building my own business, I found myself completely alone for the first time—and I nearly drowned in that isolation.

That experience taught me something crucial: there’s a massive difference between being loved and having help. And it showed me that even the strongest, most capable people shouldn’t have to do everything alone.

So I created At The Sonder as a place for dreamers who are fighting their way back to life. A space where you can find encouragement while you do the hard work of watering yourself, rebuilding your momentum, and bringing your brilliant ideas into the world.

Because although we can, would, and are capable of doing all the work ourselves, that doesn’t mean we should have to.

Hello there, you movie freak.

Welcome to this week’s Freaks and Films. I’m so glad you’re here. Every Friday, I send out our weekly movie pick with a themed snack and drink on the menu. That way, we can watch together, but in our own corners of the world.

This week, we’re watching Bugonia on Peacock.

What We’re Watching

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons reunite in this unhinged Yorgos Lanthimos thriller that asks: What if the conspiracy theorists were right all along?

Teddy is a beekeeper in rural Georgia. He’s also convinced that Michelle Fuller, the billionaire CEO of a massive pharmaceutical company, is an alien from the Andromeda species sent to destroy Earth. So naturally, he and his cousin Donny kidnap her, lock her in a basement, and demand proof.

What follows is 118 minutes of psychological chaos, dark humor, and existential dread. The movie plays with your brain the entire time. You’re never sure if these two guys are delusional lunatics or if they’ve stumbled onto the truth.

And then, in true Lanthimos fashion, the rug gets pulled out from under you.

If you love movies that mess with your head, make you laugh uncomfortably, and leave you questioning reality, this is your movie. It’s bizarre, tense, and beautifully shot. Plus, Emma Stone shaved her head for this role, and the commitment alone is worth the watch.

What’s on the Menu

Since Bugonia revolves around a beekeeper in Georgia, we’re going full Southern honey tonight.

The Snack: Hot Honey Fried Chicken Bites

Crispy, spicy, sticky, sweet. Hot honey fried chicken is a Southern staple, and it fits this movie perfectly.

You can make them from scratch if you’re feeling ambitious. Or grab some tenders from your favorite spot and drizzle them with hot honey. Either way, the combination of heat and sweetness is unbeatable.

Think of it as your reward for the psychological rollercoaster you’re about to experience.

The Drink: Bee’s Knees Cocktail

A classic Prohibition-era cocktail made with gin, fresh lemon juice, and honey syrup.

It’s smooth, slightly floral, and dangerously easy to drink. The honey ties into the beekeeping theme, and the name is just too perfect to pass up.

No gin? Swap it for vodka or bourbon. The honey’s the real star here.

Why This Movie Matters

Bugonia does something rare: it takes conspiracy culture seriously without mocking it.

Teddy isn’t portrayed as a joke. He’s a working-class guy who feels powerless, ignored, and exploited by systems he can’t control. So he builds his own narrative to make sense of the chaos. And when the world keeps proving him wrong, he digs in harder.

Sound familiar?

This movie is a mirror. It’s about belief, desperation, and the terrifying possibility that the people we dismiss might actually be onto something.

And without spoiling anything, the ending flips everything on its head. You’ll walk away questioning what you just watched, what you believe, and whether any of us actually know what’s real anymore.

So grab your hot honey chicken, mix that Bee’s Knees, and settle in for one of the weirdest, most unforgettable films of the year.

We’re watching Bugonia tonight on Peacock.

I’ll see you in your corner of the world.

Anastasiya