I’d open Instagram for five minutes and somehow convince myself I needed a new pair of sneakers, a different coffee mug, another skincare product, a better planner or whatever item the algorithm had decided would improve my life that day.

It wasn’t until I started intentionally buying less that I realized something important.

The problem wasn’t that I wanted too much.

The problem was that I was constantly being told to want more.

We live in a world where someone is always trying to sell us something. Influencers, brands, targeted ads, email marketing, TikTok Shop, Amazon storefronts. Every swipe presents another opportunity to feel like you’re missing something.

I call it consumption noise.

It’s that constant background chatter convincing you that happiness, organization, confidence or productivity is just one more purchase away.

About two years ago, I decided I wanted to buy less and buy better. Not because I think spending money is bad, but because I was tired of feeling like I was always chasing the next thing.

These are the habits that have made the biggest difference.

1. I unfollow without guilt.

If an influencer’s content starts feeling like one long commercial, I unfollow.

If every video ends with a link, a code or “you need this,” it’s probably not helping me consume intentionally.

The same goes for marketing emails.

The second a brand starts filling my inbox with daily sales and “last chance” reminders, I unsubscribe. Sometimes I even block them altogether.

I don’t need constant reminders about everything I don’t own.

Out of sight really is out of mind.

2. I declutter constantly.

I don’t wait until my house feels overwhelming.

I edit my spaces all year long.

For my closet, I follow a simple one in, one out rule. If something new comes in, something else leaves. I also have a fixed number of hangers and that’s the limit. If there isn’t room, then something has to go.

The same applies throughout my home.

If I’m not using it, loving it or it no longer serves a purpose, I donate it, give it to a friend or let it go.

The less excess I have around me, the less I feel the urge to add even more.

3. I replaced scrolling with hobbies.

This one surprised me.

I realized I wasn’t shopping because I needed things.

I was shopping because I was bored.

Scrolling and shopping became entertainment.

Now I try to fill that time with things that keep my hands and my brain occupied.

Coloring.

Pilates.

Reading.

Ironically, hobbies aren’t always cheap either. But they’re creating something, building a skill or improving my life instead of leaving me with another package at my front door.

If you spend hours scrolling every day, sometimes the answer isn’t more discipline.

Sometimes you just need something better to do.

4. I keep a running wish list.

This might be the habit that’s saved me the most money.

Every time I think, “I want that,” I don’t buy it.

I write it down.

If I’m getting dressed and realize I wish I had a certain basic, it goes on the list.

If I see something online that catches my eye, it goes on the list.

Then I wait.

A surprising number of things lose their appeal after a few weeks.

And when I do decide to shop, I’m buying from a thoughtfully curated list instead of impulse purchasing whatever happened to cross my screen that morning.

It has completely changed the way I spend.

At the end of the day…

We spend a lot of time blaming the algorithm.

But the truth is, we’re responsible for what we allow into our lives.

We choose who we follow.

We choose which emails stay in our inbox.

We choose how much time we spend scrolling.

And we choose whether we create space for hobbies, relationships and real life or fill every spare moment consuming someone else’s.

Consumption noise doesn’t disappear overnight.

But every small decision to quiet it makes it easier to hear your own voice again.

And once that happens, you realize you needed a lot less than you thought.

i did things i regretted. things that haunted me for days, months, years. i was angry all the time. irritable. pretty much the worst version of myself. i barely had a relationship with my family. and i held all of it… the shame, the self-betrayal, the proof that i apparently couldn’t be trusted, for a long time.

until one day i just decided to let it go.

not because i had fully healed or figured it out. just because i decided. the first thing i did was find a therapist, not someone who wanted to dig through my childhood, but someone who would help me work through what i was experiencing right now. present tense. that distinction mattered more than i expected.

that decision changed the shape of everything that came after it.

i genuinely believe it only takes 3 to 9 months to completely rearrange your entire life. not your whole personality. not everything you’ve built. just the shape of your days. the way you feel when you wake up. who you’re quietly becoming. that part can shift faster than most people let themselves believe.

we walk around like our patterns are permanent. like the version of us stuck on repeat is just who we are now. she’s not who you are. she’s just who you’ve been recently and recently can change.

self respect isn’t a feeling you wake up with one day. it’s what accumulates when you start making different choices, over and over, until they become the new pattern. and that process starts with a few really specific things.

stop living back there.

you cannot make better decisions with information you didn’t have yet. the version of you that made the choices you’re still punishing yourself for, she was working with what she had. if she could have done better she would have. that’s not a soft thing to say, it’s just true. the self-criticism isn’t protecting you from repeating it. it’s just weight you’re carrying for no reason. thank her for surviving. let her stay back there. you’re here now.

do what you say you’re going to do.

this one is honest, but it wrecks people. every time you make a commitment to yourself and don’t follow through, you teach yourself that you can’t be trusted. and once you believe that about yourself it bleeds into everything. start embarrassingly small if you have to. five minutes. one thing. the size doesn’t matter as much as the follow through does. you’re rebuilding a relationship with yourself. you have to treat it like one.

stop talking badly about yourself.

not in a toxic positivity way. not pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. i mean the constant low grade commentary most of us run on ourselves all day without even noticing. the way you talk about yourself shapes the way you carry yourself. the way you carry yourself shapes how the world receives you. it’s not that deep and it’s also extremely that deep. just decide it stops. redirect it every single time. it’s less about affirmations and more about just refusing to participate in your own erosion anymore.

choose the harder option.

most decisions come down to this: something easier now that costs your future self or something harder now that gives to her. that’s the whole framework. you already know which is which, you usually feel it before your brain catches up. the goal is just getting better at choosing her. the future version. over whatever comfort is available right now.

stop numbing yourself.

this is the one nobody wants to sit with. coming home and turning on the tv, opening tiktok, pouring the wine, scrolling until your brain goes quiet, that’s not rest. that’s avoidance. and the problem isn’t any of those things specifically, it’s that you’re not leaving any space for what’s underneath to come up and it needs to come up. it needs air. because if it doesn’t come up consciously it just runs you from the background and you won’t even know it’s happening. lay on the floor, legs raised up on the wall. go for a walk without a podcast. just exist for a little while without filling the silence. that’s where the actual rearranging starts.

3 to 9 months.

it goes either way. the question is just what you want to be looking back at when it’s over.

with love, Christina

i watched it and felt something i can only describe as tired.

i spent so many years logging everything. wake time, sleep time, water intake, workout minutes, steps, macros. i made little spreadsheets. i tallied my year-end numbers like i was filing taxes on my own body and i remember feeling genuinely proud when the numbers were good, like i had passed some invisible test i’d given myself.

but proud of what, exactly. that i slept 8 hours instead of 7? that i hit 10,000 steps on a tuesday in february when my kids were at school and i had nowhere to be?

here’s what the optimization industrial complex doesn’t tell you: it was designed for people whose primary output is themselves.

podcasters. executives. biohackers. people whose job it is to be sharp and high-performing and ready to talk on camera. people who, when they say “i want to be better,” mean better at their career.

but moms? we didn’t sign up for that game. we signed up for something messier and less measurable and honestly more important. and somewhere along the way, we got handed the same scorecard.

now we’re supposed to wake up before our kids for a “miracle morning,” take our magnesium, journal three things we’re grateful for, hit our protein goals, stay off our phones, keep our cortisol low and be fully present at school pickup. all while running a household and probably also a career and also ourselves as a brand.

and if we have three glasses of wine with our friends on a friday night, we are supposed to feel bad about it. we’re supposed to log it. account for it. recover from it strategically.

i want to ask: recover from what, exactly. from laughing until your stomach hurt. from a conversation that went nowhere useful and felt like church anyway. from remembering, for a few hours, that you are a full person and not just a system to be optimized.

the dirty secret of optimization culture is that it promises relief but delivers more vigilance. more things to track, more ways to fail, more mornings where you wake up and the first thing you do is check a score that tells you how well you slept instead of just… knowing.

motherhood is already the most unquantifiable thing i’ve ever done. you can’t measure whether you’re doing it right. there’s no dashboard for connection or presence or the way your kid still wants to climb into your lap even though they’re almost too big for it. there is no sleep score for the night you stayed up late just talking to your teenager about nothing in particular, which turned out to be everything.

what i’ve learned, slowly and reluctantly as someone who genuinely loved her spreadsheets, is that the life worth living isn’t the one with the best metrics. it’s the one with the most contrast. the tired and the rested. the wine and the early morning. the chaos and the quiet. the days that don’t count for anything and the days that somehow count for everything.

optimization tells you to eliminate the bad days. but the bad days are load-bearing. the mess is structural. the 2am slice of pizza you ate while your best friend was venting is not a data point. it’s a memory you’re going to keep.

we have been so busy trying to be better that we forgot what we were trying to be better for.

i’m not anti-wellness. i’m not pro-suffering. i’m just saying: the goal was never a perfect sleep score. the goal was a life that felt like something.

yours does. even on the days the numbers say otherwise.

with love, Christina

“the body expresses what the mind suppresses”.

it got me thinking how i used to think i was “fine”.

not thriving, not falling apart… just fine. functioning. keeping up. doing the thing where you move fast enough that nothing can really catch you.

then my body started talking.

first it was the tension i carried in my shoulders for so long i genuinely forgot what relaxed felt like. then it was the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. then it was the way i’d randomly cry in the shower and tell myself it was hormones, stress, whatever. anything except the actual truth, which was that i had been swallowing things for years and my body had simply run out of room.

here’s what nobody teaches us: your mind is a really talented editor. it cuts what’s too painful, too inconvenient, too much. it files things under “i’ll deal with that later” and “i don’t have time for this right now.” it protects you, genuinely, until the protection starts costing more than the thing you were protecting yourself from.

but your body? your body doesn’t edit. it just holds.

every conversation you smiled through when you wanted to scream. every need you talked yourself out of. every boundary you crossed against yourself because it was easier than the conflict. your body took all of it and stored it somewhere… your jaw, your gut, your chest, your back. it kept a receipt when your mind threw the evidence away.

this is not a metaphor. this is physiology. stress hormones, nervous system dysregulation, chronic inflammation. these are the physical signatures of suppressed emotional experience. the research on this is overwhelming and the lived experience of it is even more so.

the problem is we’ve been taught to treat symptoms without asking what they’re saying. take the ibuprofen. push through the fatigue. get the massage and go right back to the life that tensed you up in the first place.

but what if the symptom is a sentence? what if your body is not malfunctioning, what if it’s communicating?

what follows is five things that helped me stop ignoring what my body was trying to say. it’s for paid subscribers and honestly, it’s the whole point of this essay.

Read more

you can feel it in the way you over explain your choices. the way you add “but i also have a business” before you’re allowed to say you just want a slower life. the way you’ve learned to preface the real thing with a disclaimer, so nobody accuses you of settling.

you’re not imagining it. something was sold to us. a lot of us bought it without reading the fine print.

somewhere in the last decade, a message got really loud. it wasn’t whispered, it was screamed at us from every panel, every podcast, every instagram caption with a candle and a laptop. the message was: do more. be more. want more. the message was: your value lives in your output. the message was: a woman with a business is interesting. a woman who just wants a home? that’s a little sad, isn’t it?

sadly, we absorbed it. of course we did. it was everywhere.

girl boss. female founder. rise and grind. build in silence. normalize women winning. do it scared. do it tired. do it in heels if you have to.

somewhere along the way, without anyone saying it directly, the implication became clear: to be valuable, to be enough, you had to be hyper independent. you had to out achieve, out hustle, out prove. you had to want the big thing loudly and want the soft thing quietly, if at all.

here’s what nobody put in the girl boss starter kit:

ambition was never supposed to be your whole personality.

we did this overcorrection thing that i don’t think we’ve fully reckoned with yet.

we were so determined to prove that women could do everything men could do, that we are smart and capable and worthy of being taken seriously, that we accidentally started treating our softer instincts like they were the enemy. like they were a sign of weakness. like they were something to overcome.

wanting a beautiful home became “playing house.” wanting children became “giving up.” wanting to cook a meal instead of ordering out became something you had to justify to your own inner monologue. i know, i know… but i also have three revenue streams, so.

the instinct to create warmth, to build a nest, to move at a pace that actually feels human, those things got quietly put on the list of things you weren’t supposed to want too loudly. because wanting them loudly meant you weren’t serious. it meant you’d been convinced to settle. it meant you hadn’t gotten the message yet.

but what if the message was the problem?

let’s talk about biology for a second, not in a reductive way, not in a “women belong in the kitchen” way, because that’s not what this is, but in an honest way that a lot of us have been too scared to say out loud.

some of what you were told to override? it wasn’t internalized oppression. it was instinct.

the desire to create a home isn’t a symptom of conditioning. for a lot of us, it’s a deep, genuine pull toward something that feels nourishing and we’ve been trained to pathologize it. to wonder what’s wrong with us for feeling it. to perform our way out of it so nobody accuses us of wasting our potential.

the result is a generation of women who are genuinely high achieving and genuinely miserable, because they built the life they thought they were supposed to want and didn’t leave any room in it for the life they actually wanted.

sound familiar?

here’s the thing about building your identity around achievement: it becomes who you are before you’re old enough to know the difference between who you are and what you do.

maybe you lead with it too. feel it first, like a shield or a credential, i have goals, i’m not just a mom, i matter in the way the world told me to matter. you built things. you had ideas. you were never just sitting still.

none of that was fake, but at some point you might have started treating the most alive parts of yourself like supporting characters. the way you feel when your home is warm and something is actually cooking on the stove. the way a slow saturday with nowhere to be feels like oxygen. the way being present with the people you love, not productive, not multitasking, just there… is the thing you’ll remember when you’re eighty.

none of that shows up on a linkedin profile. none of that gets you a feature in a newsletter about female founders to watch. but it’s the thing, you know? it’s actually the thing.

i think a lot of us are quietly in the middle of this unlearning and we don’t have great language for it yet.

the pendulum has been stuck so long on one side: hustle, achieve, prove yourself, earn your softness, that moving toward the middle still feels radical. it still feels like giving something up. like you have to preemptively defend it.

i still have a business, but…

i’m not saying women shouldn’t work, i just…

i know this might be controversial…

we do this softening thing before we say the real thing, because we’ve been trained to expect the eye roll. the subtle suggestion that we’ve been duped by domesticity. the implication that wanting a slower, more rooted life means somebody got to us.

but what if nobody got to us? what if we just finally got honest?

you are allowed to want a beautiful, slow, rooted life. you are allowed to find more meaning in your home than in your hustle. you are allowed to let the softer parts of yourself be the most important parts of yourself, not the footnote, not the disclaimer, not the thing you earn after you’ve proven enough.

you’re not behind. you haven’t been brainwashed. you haven’t failed at feminism.

you’re just a woman who knows what she actually wants now. and that’s not a small thing. that’s actually a really hard thing to get to.

the world will always have opinions about how you spend your ambition. it will always have a new version of the girl boss pitch. it will always find a way to make you feel like you need to justify the life you’re building.

but you don’t owe anyone a defense of a life that feels good to live.

come home to yourself. take your time getting there. and when you do, light a candle, cook something and just be in it.

that’s enough. it’s always been enough.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

with love, Christina

and if you made a vision board in january, one of two things is probably true right now.

either you forgot it exists. or you’ve been staring at it wondering why nothing looks like what you imagined.

both are more common than you think. and both are fixable.

if you haven’t read the original essay on how i build mine, i’ll link it here because this check-in assumes you have a board that was built with intention, not just aesthetics. the method matters. so does the moment you’re in right now.

because june isn’t january.

in january, you were in vision mode. open. hopeful. you hadn’t been tired by the year yet. you were writing from your highest self and it felt easy to believe her.

june is different. june is the middle. and the middle is where most people quietly give up without even realizing it.

so let’s do the actual check-in.

1. what already came true

this is the first thing i do and it’s not optional.

before you assess what hasn’t happened, you need to sit with what has.

even one thing. even something small.

that promotion you stopped thinking about? you got it. that friendship that quietly fell away? you let it go and your life got lighter. that morning routine you imagined? you’ve done it more than you haven’t.

write it down. your brain is wired to skip past the wins and fixate on the gap. don’t let it.

acknowledgment is not the same as settling. it’s alignment confirmation. it’s your proof that the process works.

2. what shifted and why that’s okay

some things on your board won’t feel right anymore.

not because you failed. because you grew.

that thing you put on your board in january might have been something you thought you wanted, or something you thought you were supposed to want. six months of living has a way of clarifying the difference.

if something no longer resonates, release it without guilt.

your vision board is a living document, not a contract.

the version of you who made it in january was working with the information she had. the version of you reading this has more.

3. what still hasn’t moved and the honest question to ask

here’s where it gets real.

if something on your board still hasn’t shifted, there are only two possibilities.

one: it’s in process and you can’t see it yet. the quiet season is real. i wrote about this in the original essay. there will be stretches where nothing appears to be happening and then suddenly everything does. trust that.

two: you want the outcome but you haven’t become the version of you who has it yet.

that second one isn’t a judgment. it’s information.

ask yourself: what would she be doing differently right now? and then do that one thing. not everything. one thing.

4. the mid-year reset

you don’t need to redo your entire board.

but you do need to revisit the visualization you wrote in step two of the original method. the present tense version of your highest self.

read it out loud.

does it still feel true? does it feel too small now? do certain lines make you wince because you’ve drifted from her?

update it. add to it. let it evolve.

and then do what i told you to do the first time: put it away. check back in december.

your only job between now and then is to keep becoming her in the quiet, ordinary moments. the morning before anyone else wakes up. the decision you make when no one is watching. the boundary you hold because she would.

gentle reminder

the board was never the point.

the board was just a mirror.

what you’re really doing, what you’ve always been doing, is remembering who you were before the world talked you out of her.

she’s not ahead of you.

she’s been waiting for you to catch up.

and you’re closer than you think.

with love, Christina

that changes everything.

i think one of the strangest things about becoming a creator is how difficult it becomes to remember what it feels like to just… scroll.

not scroll with intention.
not scroll for research.
not scroll to study hooks or pacing or lighting.
just scroll like a normal person.

because once you start creating content your brain changes a little.

you stop fully consuming and start analyzing.

every video becomes a strategy.
every creator becomes a business model.
every viral post becomes a mystery you are trying to solve.

you notice the cuts.
the retention tactics.
the hook placement.
the caption structure.
the comments.
the subtle ways someone is trying to keep you watching for three more seconds.

you stop watching the internet like an audience member and start watching it like a producer standing behind the curtain.

the problem is most people are not consuming content that way at all.

most people are not sitting there thinking about engagement strategy while watching your morning vlog.

they are folding laundry.
breastfeeding a baby.
eating lunch alone at work.
waiting in a school pickup line.
trying to distract themselves from anxiety.
trying to feel inspired again.
trying to escape for fifteen minutes before real life starts back up.

they are not studying content.

they are searching for a feeling.

and i think creators forget this constantly because we become surrounded by other creators. suddenly your entire feed is people discussing algorithms and monetization and posting schedules and audience retention. after a while you accidentally start believing everyone consumes content the way creators do.

they don’t.

most people are not thinking:
that was a strong hook.

they are thinking:
this made me feel calm.

most people are not thinking:
her editing is smart.

they are thinking:
i like her energy.

most people are not thinking:
this content is optimized for engagement.

they are thinking:
this makes me feel less alone.

that difference matters more than creators realize.

because the internet is emotional before it is strategic.

people follow creators for wildly different reasons. some people want comfort. they follow women who romanticize ordinary life because it softens the sharp edges of their own day. coffee being poured into a mug. sunlight through kitchen windows. grocery hauls. flowers on countertops. simple moments that make life feel gentler.

others follow for humor because life feels unbearably heavy and they need relief.

others follow for inspiration. recipes. outfits. parenting ideas. beauty recommendations. systems that make life feel more manageable.

some people follow political creators because they are searching for language that explains the anger or fear they already feel inside.

others follow niche creators because it gives them identity and belonging. readers. runners. mothers. women healing after heartbreak. people rebuilding themselves quietly after hard years.

people curate their feeds emotionally.

that is why creators who only focus on performance eventually lose something important.

because humans can feel when content stops feeling human.

they can feel when every post starts sounding optimized instead of honest.

the irony is that the creators who tend to build the deepest loyalty are usually the ones who still remember what it feels like to be a normal person on the internet.

someone looking for comfort.
for distraction.
for beauty.
for laughter.
for connection.
for proof that life can still feel meaningful.

the internet keeps telling creators to study the algorithm.

but i honestly think the harder thing is remembering the psychology of the person holding the phone.

remembering what it feels like to simply need something from the internet emotionally instead of professionally.

because most people are not opening apps wondering who has the best strategy.

they are opening apps wondering who makes them feel good when they land there.

i think the creators who last are the ones who never fully lose touch with the person they used to be before they started creating.

the version of themselves who opened an app looking for comfort after a hard day.
looking for inspiration.
looking for distraction.
looking for proof that someone else felt the same way they did.

because behind every view is a real person carrying a real life.

and maybe that is the point creators should hold onto most.

not just how to capture attention but how to make someone feel understood once you have it.

i would genuinely love to know what you look for when you open social media.

what keeps you scrolling?
what makes you stay?
what kind of content feels like home to you lately?

with love, Christina

she says she likes “cozy things” but i don’t actually think this is about aesthetics.

i think this is survival.

i think a lot of women are trying to build nervous system safe havens inside homes that also happen to be workplaces, daycares, kitchens, classrooms, laundry facilities and emotional support centers for everyone else living there.

because modern life feels psychologically brutal in ways we barely acknowledge.

everything is loud. phones going off constantly. people consume bad news before brushing their teeth. children need things every seven seconds. women are expected to be emotionally available at all times while also being productive, attractive, organized, grateful, social, informed, healthy and financially aware.

then people wonder why women suddenly become obsessed with neutral kitchens, antique lamps, homemade sourdough and “slow mornings.”

respectfully i do not think this is about sourdough.

i think women are desperate for environments that don’t make them feel like they are under attack.

there’s also something strangely emotional about the modern home now. women are no longer just decorating houses. they are trying to create feelings. peace. softness. predictability. warmth. identity.

that’s why someone can spend three hours researching the perfect lamp and genuinely feel better once they find it.

people mock women for caring so much about aesthetics but i actually think aesthetics are deeply psychological.

your environment affects your nervous system. clutter affects your mood. lighting affects your energy. noise affects your body. color affects emotion. there’s a reason women become fixated on creating cozy corners after becoming mothers. motherhood is sensory overload. you spend years being touched climbed on interrupted questioned needed and perceived.

of course women crave softness after that.

of course they want warm lighting.

of course they want a giant robe and a clean kitchen and ten uninterrupted minutes to drink coffee while it’s still hot.

i also think this explains why “whimsy” is having such a moment online.

women are exhausted by optimization culture. exhausted by hustle culture. exhausted by being told every second of their lives should produce something. whimsy is rebellion. whimsy says maybe life is not a productivity competition. maybe buying flowers for no reason matters. maybe using the pretty dishes on a random tuesday matters. maybe turning on jazz while folding laundry matters.

maybe humans need beauty more than we think they do.

especially women.

especially mothers.

there’s another layer to this too that i don’t think people talk about enough. a lot of women are grieving lives they never got to fully experience.

they imagined adulthood feeling softer than this.

they imagined having more time. more community. more slowness. more certainty. they imagined motherhood with villages instead of group chats. they imagined homes filled with people randomly stopping by instead of everyone being too burned out to answer texts.

so now women are trying to recreate feelings they miss even if they never fully had them.

that’s why nostalgia hits women so hard.

it’s not just memory. it’s emotional refuge.

i think that’s also why women become attached to rituals. sunday pancakes. movie nights. seasonal decorations. birthday traditions. matching pajamas at christmas. little family routines repeated over and over again.

they are trying to create emotional anchors in a world that feels increasingly detached and unstable.

and honestly?

i think it’s beautiful.

i think women are keeping humanity alive in a lot of ways. through beauty. through tenderness. through memory. through atmosphere. through care. through making ordinary life feel meaningful when the rest of the world keeps trying to strip meaning out of everything.

the suburban female psyche is not actually about beige kitchens and fancy candles.

it’s about women trying to make life feel livable again.

and maybe that deserves a little more respect than people give it.

with love, Christina

not because i didn’t have anything to say. i have a marketing degree, sixteen years in the field and an opinion about almost everything. the problem was smaller and more embarrassing than that. i was afraid of who might see it. people from my past keeping tabs on me, my kid’s teachers, the high school frenemies.

so i did what every new creator does. i blocked people. carefully, methodically, like i was curating a guest list. i told myself it was strategy. it was not strategy. it was fear wearing a productivity costume.

a year later i have a following, a weekly income through shopmy, gifted products from brands i actually use, a substack and a lot of opinions about what the “how to grow on tiktok” industry is actually selling you. which is itself a product by the way.

here’s what i learned. the real version. not the one optimized for engagement.

what’s waiting on the other side:

• why blocking people you know is a bandaid and the mindset shift that actually fixes it

• the specific accounts you should be muting immediately and why their advice is designed to keep you dependent

• the only equipment you actually need and what i wasted money on before i figured it out

• how i got denied from shopmy, waited 90 days, reapplied and now make weekly income from it

• what brands are actually looking at when they find you. it’s not your view count

• the truth about lives, niching down, consistency and comparison. the version that doesn’t make a good reel

• what i’d do completely differently in year one if i were starting today

if you’ve been posting into the void, second guessing every video or spending more time consuming creator tips content than actually creating.

this one’s for you.

everything you’ve been told about growing on tiktok is marketing.

here’s what’s actually true.

why i almost quit in month three

Read more

it starts innocently enough. you share a book you love and people ask for links. you post your kitchen and people ask where everything is from. you make a video for fun and suddenly strangers are waiting for the next one. then one day you realize your brain no longer experiences life without also wondering if it’s content. that part scares me sometimes.

not because creating is bad. i actually think creating is beautiful and i’ve found it to be my creative outlet. humans are meant to make things and share things and connect through stories. i love that part of the internet. but i think a lot of women are exhausted because they are no longer just living their lives. they are managing the perception of their lives while living them. there is a difference.

your coffee gets cold because you filmed it first. your vacation exists through camera angles. your motherhood becomes documentation. your thoughts start editing themselves before they even fully form. sometimes i wonder what this is doing to our nervous systems. especially women. especially mothers.

women already carry invisible labor. emotional labor. social labor. domestic labor. now we are carrying digital labor too. curating. documenting. responding. optimizing. performing accessibility. staying relatable. staying aspirational. staying interesting enough to hold attention in a world where attention disappears in seconds. it’s not normal. i don’t even think humans were built for this level of self awareness.

there’s also this unspoken pressure now that every beautiful thing in your life should somehow produce something. if you are funny you should start a podcast. if you dress well you should monetize links. if you cook you should make recipe videos. if you survived something painful you should teach others how to heal from it. women can’t even have softness anymore without someone turning it into a niche.

sometimes i miss when things belonged only to us. when a good outfit was just a good outfit. when a birthday dinner was not content. when people disappeared for a few days without announcing a mental health reset. when joy was experienced before it was packaged.

i also think this is why so many women feel strangely disconnected from themselves lately. because when you spend enough time performing yourself you eventually lose access to the version of you that exists without an audience. even if the audience is kind. even if the audience loves you. there is still something psychologically strange about being perceived all the time. especially during ordinary moments. especially during motherhood. especially while still trying to figure yourself out.

i think this is why privacy is starting to feel luxurious again. not secrecy. not isolation. just having parts of your life that are untouched by public consumption. a relationship that exists fully off camera. a dream you haven’t announced yet. a hobby nobody knows about. a memory that belongs only to your family instead of your followers. there is something deeply human about keeping certain things sacred.

i don’t think the answer is to disappear from the internet. i think the answer is remembering that you are a person before you are a personal brand. you are allowed to create without monetizing. you are allowed to enjoy things without documenting them. you are allowed to have depth that never becomes content. you are allowed to keep parts of yourself unmarketable.

because somewhere along the way we started believing our lives only mattered if other people consumed them. and i don’t think that’s freedom at all.

have you ever caught yourself experiencing a moment through the lens of content before fully experiencing it as a human being?

with love, Christina

i used to do that too.

i used to smile through things that bothered me. i used to worry about sounding “too much.” too opinionated. too emotional. too confident. i learned early on that women are rewarded for being agreeable and punished for having edges.

the first time someone called me “difficult” it stayed with me for years.

not because it hurt my feelings, but because i understood what they really meant. difficult women ask questions. difficult women don’t laugh on cue. difficult women say no. difficult women make people uncomfortable because they refuse to abandon themselves just to keep the peace.

so for a long time i tried to become the opposite of that.

easygoing. flexible. understanding. low maintenance. the kind of woman who could bend without breaking.

the problem is eventually you realize you’ve bent so much you barely recognize yourself anymore.

i really believed being likable would protect me somehow. i thought if i stayed kind enough, patient enough, accommodating enough, people would treat me better. they wouldn’t leave. they wouldn’t betray me. they wouldn’t disrespect me.

that’s not how life works.

some people will drain a woman dry and still call her selfish the second she finally says no.

there’s a cost to constantly being agreeable. you start betraying yourself in tiny ways every day. you laugh when you’re hurt. you stay silent when something feels wrong. you overextend yourself. you make excuses for people who would never make excuses for you.

after a while it becomes exhausting performing softness all the time.

i don’t want to live like that anymore.

i don’t want to explain every boundary i set. i don’t want to water myself down so other people can feel comfortable around me. i don’t want to keep acting grateful for crumbs just because i’m afraid of disappointing people.

there is real power in becoming a woman who can tolerate being misunderstood.

honestly i think a lot of women are taught to confuse self abandonment with kindness.

being selfish doesn’t mean being cruel. it means understanding your time energy peace and body are not community property. it means resting without guilt. saying no without writing a five paragraph apology afterward. expecting reciprocity. walking away from things that hurt you instead of staying out of obligation.

women are taught that sacrifice is what makes us valuable. that the more we endure, the better we are.

i don’t believe that anymore.

i think some women disappear trying so hard to be good for everyone else.

i don’t want to disappear.

i want to become the kind of woman who trusts herself enough to leave when something feels wrong. the kind of woman who stops over explaining. the kind of woman who no longer thinks being liked is the ultimate goal.

because the truth is women who stop performing for approval, make people uncomfortable.

the second a woman becomes direct she gets labeled. difficult. cold. intimidating. selfish. too much. angry. bitter.

meanwhile men walk through the world with half the self awareness and twice the entitlement.

i’m no longer interested in making myself smaller just to be easier to digest.

i used to think strength looked like enduring everything. now i think strength looks like discernment. boundaries. leaving. disappointing people when necessary. choosing yourself without guilt.

there are texts i don’t answer immediately anymore.

there are conversations i leave when the disrespect becomes obvious.

there are things i no longer laugh at just to keep things light.

that doesn’t make me mean.

it makes me honest.

i still believe in kindness deeply. i just don’t believe kindness should require self erasure.

i think women deserve to take up space without apologizing for it every five seconds. i think we deserve to stop carrying relationships entirely on our backs. i think we deserve to stop treating burnout like proof that we’re loving enough.

we were never meant to spend our whole lives shape shifting into whatever makes other people comfortable.

i’m finally learning that disappointing others is sometimes the price of being true to yourself.

and honestly?

that feels a lot more peaceful than constantly abandoning myself ever did.

with love, Christina

before you picked up the phone on the second ring because you felt guilty. before you stayed in the group chat you should have left two years ago. before you said *yes* when your whole body was saying *no*, and then spent the next three days in a low grade, unnamed irritation you couldn’t quite place.

that version of you had peace. not the kind they sell in guided meditations and hot yoga. real peace. the kind where your nervous system isn’t constantly bracing for impact.

you had it once. you can have it again. but here’s the part nobody tells you:

you have to want it badly enough to disappoint people to get it.

what peace actually is (and what it isn’t)

peace is not the absence of hard things.

i want to say that again because i think a lot of us are chasing a feeling that doesn’t exist — a life where nothing is difficult, no one is draining and every conversation ends cleanly. that’s not peace. that’s isolation with a spa playlist.

real peace is internal steadiness in the presence of external chaos. it’s being in a hard season and still feeling like yourself. it’s having a difficult conversation and walking away intact. it’s knowing your own mind well enough that other people’s opinions of you are genuinely, not performatively, not the thing you’re organizing your day around.

peace is a condition. and like most conditions, it requires maintenance.

what it isn’t: avoidance. numbing. pretending things are fine when they’re not. quiet suffering rebranded as “being non chalant.” those things look like peace from the outside. they feel like slow erosion from the inside.

why protecting it is actually the hard part

here’s the thing about peace: it’s easy to have when life is cooperating.

the real work is protecting it when it isn’t.

when the person you love most is in a bad season and pulling you into it. when your family has opinions about your choices. when social media is doing that thing it does where everyone seems to be thriving and you feel like you’re one bad week away from completely losing the plot. when someone in your life, someone you genuinely care about, is a consistent source of low-level chaos and you’ve been quietly managing the fallout for so long you don’t even notice the toll anymore.

protecting your peace in those moments isn’t passive. it’s active. it requires constant, unsexy decisions. it requires you to be honest about what’s actually costing you something versus what just temporarily feels hard.

most of us were never taught this distinction. we were taught to push through, to be there for people, to not be difficult. we were taught that our discomfort was negotiable and other people’s comfort was not.

so we learned to outsource our peace to circumstances. to relationships. to whether or not the day went the way we planned.

then we wonder why we feel so tired.

how to actually do it

the part you actually came for is right below this line. the how, the why it works and why it changes when you finally stop letting everything have access to you.

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then we wonder why we feel behind.

here’s something that genuinely changed the way i move through the world: i started following women in their 40s and 50s. not influencers performing a version of youth. not women who’ve been surgically preserved to look like they stopped aging at 32. women who are actually, visibly, unapologetically living in their next chapter and doing it beautifully.

the effect was immediate and it surprised me.

there was no comparison spiral. there was no “should my body look like that” or “is my life supposed to be further along.” there was just this deep, steady exhale of oh. this is what’s coming. not a warning. not a deadline. a preview.

our culture has a genuinely strange relationship with women aging. we’re told to fight it, slow it, hide it as early as our 20s, which is its own kind of absurdity. the anti-aging industry isn’t just selling products; it’s selling the premise that a woman’s most valuable years are behind her before she’s even fully arrived in them. and that premise, if you absorb it long enough, does something insidious to how you see your own future.

following older women dismantles that quietly and completely.

because what i actually see when i look at these women, their lives, their confidence, the way they inhabit themselves, is that women don’t peak. we compound. whatever you are in your 20s, you’re more of it at 45. sharper. softer in the right places. more certain about what deserves your energy and unbothered about the rest. the women i follow who are in their 40s and 50s aren’t reminiscing about who they used to be. they’re in the middle of something. they’re building, traveling, writing, laughing, choosing.

it gives me something that a highlight reel of my peers never could: a long view.

not “am i where i’m supposed to be right now” but “where do i want to be in 20 years, and am i living in a way that gets me there.” it converts ambient anxiety into something that actually functions: direction.

if you’re a young woman who spends time on social media (which, if you’re reading this, you probably do), i want to offer you a genuinely low-effort thing that might change the texture of how you feel on a daily basis: go follow some older women. not to romanticize aging. not because life is linear and they’ve figured it all out. but because seeing a woman 20 years ahead of you thriving, like, actually thriving, is one of the most radical things you can put in your feed.

it tells your nervous system something it really needs to hear: you’re going to be okay. and actually, you’re going to be more than that.

with love, Christina

before you know it, that feeling starts bleeding into your relationships. you meet someone and at first it feels exciting. there’s attention, curiosity, that spark of something new, a fire you can’t describe.

a few weeks in, things slow down. it gets calmer, more predictable, more real. instead of seeing that as stability, you start calling it boredom. you begin questioning everything. do i even like them? is this it? shouldn’t this feel more exciting? God, please give me a sign. just like that, you start associating consistency with disinterest, even when nothing is actually wrong.

this is where a lot of people sabotage something good without even realizing it. no one really explains that boredom in relationships doesn’t always mean the person is wrong. sometimes it means your brain is overstimulated. sometimes it means you’ve confused intensity with compatibility. sometimes it means you’ve only ever felt “in love” when there was uncertainty, anxiety or something to chase. so when something is steady, your mind starts searching for problems just to recreate that feeling, because chaos feels familiar and calm does not.

the truth is, you’re not always bored. a lot of the time, you’re uncomfortable. uncomfortable with slowness, uncomfortable with predictability, uncomfortable with not having to earn someone’s attention and in your 20s, that doesn’t just show up in dating. it shows up everywhere. you get bored with routines, bored with jobs, bored with friendships, even bored with things you once wanted so badly. not because everything is wrong, but because you’ve been conditioned to constantly look for what’s next.

we don’t talk enough about how hard it is to feel satisfied in a world that trains you to crave novelty. the next outfit, the next trip, the next relationship, the next version of yourself. your brain gets used to that rhythm, so the second something becomes familiar, it registers as finished. even if it’s actually just beginning and that’s where things start to fall apart, because you start leaving situations that were meant to deepen, not end.

this is where you have to get honest with yourself. are you actually bored or are you avoiding depth? because depth is slower. it doesn’t give you the instant reward that something new does. it asks you to stay, to pay attention, to learn someone, to let yourself be seen and that can feel a lot more uncomfortable than starting over with someone new who doesn’t know you yet. starting over is easy. being known is not.

so you leave, or you emotionally check out, or you start looking for something better while still holding onto something good. then the cycle repeats. new person, new excitement, same ending. boredom is rarely just boredom.

sometimes it means you’ve outgrown your environment. sometimes it means your life is full but not fulfilling. sometimes it means you’re consuming more than you’re creating and sometimes, especially in relationships, it means you’re mistaking peace for lack.

real connection is not built on constant excitement. it’s built on consistency, on shared time, on quiet moments, on showing up even when nothing “interesting” is happening and if your baseline is constant stimulation, that kind of love will feel underwhelming at first. that doesn’t mean it is. it just means it’s unfamiliar.

so, what do you actually do when everything starts to feel boring?

you stop chasing intensity and start building presence. you ask better questions.

what would make today feel even slightly more alive?

what have i been avoiding because it requires effort?

what did i love before i cared how it looked?

do i actually dislike this person, or am i just not being stimulated the way i’m used to?

you start participating in your life again. not watching it, not comparing it, not waiting for it to feel like a movie. you go for the walk without needing to turn it into content. you learn to cook something real. you take care of your space. you try things and stay with them long enough to let them become meaningful. in relationships, you lean in instead of pulling away at the first sign of calm. you get curious, you ask deeper questions, you create new experiences together, you give something the chance to build instead of constantly resetting.

the solution to boredom is not always more. sometimes it’s depth. sometimes it’s effort. sometimes it’s staying long enough to experience something real. and yes, sometimes boredom is your intuition telling you this isn’t it. you have to learn the difference, because if you don’t, you’ll keep leaving good things in search of something that only exists in short moments, not in real life.

your 20s are not meant to feel like a constant high. they’re meant to teach you how to sit in the in-between, how to build a life that feels good on a random tuesday, how to recognize that not everything meaningful feels exciting all the time. because sometimes boredom is a warning, sometimes it’s a habit, and sometimes it’s just your life asking you to go deeper instead of starting over.

and if you can learn to answer that instead of running from it, everything changes.

with love, Christina

i yearn to be less considerate.

i sat with it for a second, waiting to feel guilty. i didn’t.

the dictionary will tell you that considerate means to be careful not to cause inconvenience or hurt to others. thoughtful. attentive. kind.

and it is all of those things. on the surface.

here’s what the definition leaves out: consideration, in its fullest expression, is the constant practice of making yourself aware of other people’s experience and then doing something about it. it means you don’t just notice that someone might be uncomfortable. you act on it. you adjust. you smooth it over. you absorb it so they don’t have to.

done occasionally, from a full place, it’s one of the most generous things a person can be.

done compulsively, from a place of fear or habit or a deep seated belief that your comfort matters less than everyone else’s, it will hollow you out.

that’s the version i know best.

i have been considerate my entire life. not in the way people mean when they say it as a compliment, oh, she’s so thoughtful, but in the kind that costs something. the kind that runs on a background process, always. always calculating.

is this a bad time for them? can they afford this? did i thank them enough? did i ask too much? will this inconvenience them? am i being too much?

i accommodate before i’m even asked to. i preemptively shrink so that no one else has to adjust. i go the extra mile not because i want to, but because the alternative, someone feeling uncomfortable on my behalf, feels unbearable to me.

and i’m tired.

not the kind of tired that sleep fixes.

here’s the thing no one tells you about being deeply considerate: it’s not always virtue. sometimes it’s just fear with better manners.

and sometimes, if you’re me in your twenties, it’s just being a complete and total fool.

what follows is the part i don’t share everywhere. real names aren’t used but the situations are real, the people are real and honestly, so is the embarrassment. if you’ve ever considered yourself into a corner you didn’t deserve to be in, this one’s for you. it’s behind the paywall because some stories deserve a smaller, more intentional room.

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what’s more unsettling is how normal that has started to feel. it didn’t happen all at once. there wasn’t a moment where everything shifted and we all noticed. it was gradual, almost invisible while it was happening. somewhere along the way, we stopped discovering ourselves and started assembling versions of ourselves instead. versions that are easy to explain, easy to recognize and very easy to consume. let’s unpack!

we started turning identity into something that could be summarized quickly. a look, a vibe, a category and once you begin seeing yourself that way, it becomes hard not to shape everything around it. you don’t just like things anymore, you start choosing things that match who you think you are supposed to be. you don’t just get dressed, you build an image. you don’t just exist, you consider how it reads and slowly, without even noticing, you begin adjusting yourself in real time.

there used to be something freeing about not making sense all the time. about liking things that didn’t match, about being inconsistent in a way that felt human. you could love a random song for no reason other than how it made you feel in a specific moment. you could wear something that didn’t fit into anything recognizable. you could have thoughts that weren’t polished or positioned or ready to be seen. there was no need to make it make sense.

now everything feels like it has to pass some kind of invisible test before it’s allowed to exist. does this fit me? does this align? does this say the right thing about me?

scroll long enough and you’ll start to notice it. the same pajamas, the same sweat sets, the same lip combos, the same coffee machines, the same bedding, the same editing, the same yellow font, the same homes just rearranged. it’s like we’ve all been handed the same checklist and told this is what a good life looks like and without realizing it, we start adjusting our own lives to match it. not because we need those things, but because they photograph well. because they fit. because they make us feel like we’re doing it right. and suddenly it feels like you have to curate not just yourself, but your entire environment just to exist online.

even the smallest moments aren’t untouched. you sit down to eat and part of your mind starts evaluating it. you hear a song and wonder if it belongs in your life. you pick up a book and think about how it looks before you think about what it might give you.

it’s not that people are being fake. it’s that we’ve become hyper aware. aware of how we come across, aware of how things might be interpreted, aware of how quickly we can be understood or misunderstood. and that kind of awareness changes the way you move through your own life. it pulls you slightly out of it and turns you into someone who is constantly watching themselves live it.

that separation is subtle, but it’s exhausting. it also explains why so many things feel a little empty, even when they look good on the outside. something can be beautiful and still feel disconnected. something can be curated and still feel hollow. aesthetic isn’t the problem, it just isn’t enough. it can make something look complete without actually making it meaningful. and when that becomes the focus, the deeper part of you gets pushed aside.

real identity is not neat. it doesn’t follow a theme. it doesn’t always make sense. it shifts, it contradicts itself, it changes without asking for permission. it holds onto things that aren’t impressive and lets go of things that once were. most of it happens quietly, when no one is watching, which is exactly why so many people struggle to find it now.

because we’ve gotten so used to showing everything that we don’t spend enough time actually sitting with anything.

i notice it more now when i speak to people. not in a critical way, just in a human one. everything about them makes sense on the surface. their interests line up, their lifestyle is clear, their choices are consistent. but if you sit with it long enough, something feels missing. not depth or intelligence, just something that feels distinctly theirs.

it’s not because they don’t have it. it’s because they’ve never slowed down enough to figure out what it is. it’s easier to borrow than to build, easier to follow than to question, easier to fit than to risk not fitting at all. and for a while, that works.

until you end up with a life that looks right but doesn’t quite feel like yours.

that feeling is easy to ignore, so most people do. they keep refining, tweaking, improving the version they’ve created, hoping that eventually it clicks. but identity doesn’t work like that.

you don’t create it by stacking the right pieces together. you find it by paying attention. to what you go back to when you’re not trying, to what holds your attention when there’s nothing to gain from it, to what you enjoy when no one else is around to see it.

those things are not always impressive. sometimes they’re random, sometimes they’re a little embarrassing, sometimes they don’t fit into anything you can explain. that’s usually a good sign, because it means it’s yours.

there’s a kind of relief in realizing that not everything has to be shared to be real. that not everything you love needs a reason. that not every part of you needs to make sense to anyone else. we’ve spent so much time trying to be understood quickly that we’ve forgotten how to be known slowly.

the people who stay interesting, the ones you actually remember, are rarely the ones who fit perfectly into something. they’re the ones who don’t. the ones who change, who contradict themselves, who like things that don’t match and don’t feel the need to make them match. the ones who don’t ask for permission to be who they are.

that kind of identity can’t be copied. it can’t be packaged or replicated, and that’s exactly why it matters. because right now, almost everything else can be.

so maybe the goal isn’t to reject aesthetics completely. maybe it’s just to stop letting them lead. let them reflect you, not define you. let them come after, not before.

maybe it starts with something simple. not turning everything into something to share. letting parts of your life stay yours. paying attention to what you actually enjoy without immediately analyzing it.

there is a version of you underneath all of this. not the one you’ve built, the one you’ve been editing.

you don’t need to create that version. you just need to stop interrupting it.

with love, Christina

you watch her friends chase her down. when are you free? are you coming? i hope you come and when she does show up, everyone crowds around her like she’s the main event. but here’s the thing, she’s not performing. she’s not strategizing. she’s just genuinely, deeply okay without you.

that’s the secret sauce. and most people completely miss it.

magnetism isn’t a personality trait you’re born with. it’s a byproduct of being so fulfilled by your own life that other people become an addition, not a requirement. she doesn’t wait for the phone to ring. she doesn’t hover over plans hoping to be included. she sits with an invitation and actually asks herself, do i want to give up my evening for this? sometimes the answer is no and she’s completely at peace with that.

when you are the resource that is always available, always first to respond, always saying yes, always showing up before anyone even had time to wonder if you would… you don’t give people the room to miss you and people only value what they have to think about.

detachment gets a bad reputation because people confuse it with coldness. it’s not. you can be warm, playful, genuinely interested in people and still be completely rooted in yourself. the difference is that your mood, your plans, your sense of self, none of it lives or dies based on whether someone shows up for you.

the most magnetic women i know aren’t chasing anything. they’re just busy loving their own lives. and that energy? you cannot manufacture it, fake it or shortcut it. you either have a life you’re genuinely obsessed with or you don’t.

so the question isn’t how do i seem less available. the question is, what are you so excited to get back to that saying no becomes easy?

build that life. the magnetism follows.

with love, Christina

fresh out of high school, i started a small tutoring business for elementary school students. i had no real credentials beyond patience, a willingness to help and the need to make money. i went into homes a couple afternoons a week and sat at kitchen tables with kids who were trying or pretending to try, or completely checked out. i didn’t know anything about learning disabilities at the time and truthfully, most parents didn’t either. things were different then. less awareness, fewer resources, more pressure to just figure it out.

there was one student i still think about. he was an only child with parents who worked nonstop to give him a good life. on paper, he had everything. in practice, something wasn’t clicking. every week we had a new list of spelling words and every week, without fail, he failed the test. i tried everything i knew how to do. we went over the words again and again, turned them into games, broke them down, repeated them until his eyes glazed over. nothing stuck. it started to feel like we were both failing. i remember thinking maybe i wasn’t equipped for this, that he needed someone more experienced, someone who actually knew what they were doing.

i eventually told his parents i didn’t think i was the right fit. then one week i got sick and they had no backup. no tutor, no plan b, just them. so they did what most of us try to avoid at the end of a long day. they sat down with him and did the homework themselves. that week, he got a 100% on his spelling test. the next week i came back and it was the same child, the same process, the same struggle. right back to failing. nothing about his ability had changed. only who was sitting next to him.

i never formally tested my theory, but that moment stayed with me. it planted a question that has followed me into motherhood. what if he didn’t need better instruction? what if he needed more connection?

now i am on the other side of it. now i am the parent staring at the homework after a full day, wondering why we are doing this at all. wondering why children who have already spent hours in a classroom are expected to come home and do more. wondering why it so quickly turns into tension, frustration and sometimes, if i am being honest, a version of myself i don’t like very much. i remember what homework felt like when i was a child. the pressure, the impatience, the raised voices. i catch myself slipping into that same tone sometimes, almost like muscle memory. it takes effort to pause, to reset, to not pass that experience down.

because every time i sit there, i think about that little boy. i think about how nothing changed except the presence of his parents and it forces me to reconsider what this time actually is. maybe homework is not an extension of school. maybe it is an invitation. an invitation to sit next to your child without distraction, to ask about their day in a moment where they can’t run off, to notice how they think, where they hesitate, what frustrates them, what lights them up. to be close enough that they feel it.

we spend so much time trying to optimize our children’s outcomes. better schools, better programs, better strategies. more resources, more structure, more support. yet sometimes the variable we overlook is the simplest one. us.

this is not about sitting perfectly or being endlessly patient or turning every homework session into a bonding moment. some days it will still feel rushed. some days it will still end in frustration. this is about remembering that what looks like a task might actually be a window and that the lesson your child remembers years from now might have nothing to do with the spelling words. it might be that you were there.

with love, Christina

We were supposed to watch something else.

It was Sunday night. We agreed on Marshall, a perfectly reasonable plan. But something happened in the moment my finger hovered over the remote. Some quiet pull I couldn’t name. I clicked on The Madison instead.

We didn’t go to sleep until 1am and I cried/laughed for most of it.

If you’ve followed Taylor Sheridan through Yellowstone and 1883 and 1923, if you’ve given years to that world the way many of us have, you probably already know this show was originally meant to be part of it. A spin-off. Another chapter in the Montana mythology, but it became something entirely its own and now I understand why it had to.

Because The Madison isn’t really about Montana. It’s about the thing most of us are too afraid to look at directly. It’s about losing the person your whole life is built around. And it hit me so hard, so personally, so precisely, that by the time the credits rolled I wasn’t sure where Stacy Clyburn ended and I began.

When the screen becomes a mirror

Let me tell you why this show broke me open the way it did. Not just because it was beautifully made, though it is. Not just because Michelle Pfeiffer gives a performance that deserves every award that exists, though she does. But because when I looked at the Clyburn family on that screen, I was looking at something uncomfortably close to my own life.

Stacy and Preston Clyburn are a couple living in New York City. They have two daughters. He is a man who loves nature, the outdoors, the land, the water. Those passions are his sanctuary from a full and demanding life. She loves him, so she guards those spaces for him. She lets him have them. She doesn’t always step into them with him, because she knows they are his.

My husband and I live in Miami. We have two girls, three children total. He loves to fish. He loves to hunt. These are not just hobbies; they are the places he goes to breathe, to decompress from a busy and stressful work life. And because I understand that, because I love him and I see what those escapes do for him, I’ve always protected that space. I let him have it. I step back so he can step into it fully.

I recognized that dynamic on screen with the force of something I’ve never quite put into words before.

There is a particular kind of love that looks like letting go, letting your person disappear into the ocean, the woods, the wilderness, knowing they’ll come back softer, lighter, more themselves. It is an act of devotion that mostly goes unnamed.

Then there is the detail in the show that undid me completely. Going through her husband’s journals after his death, Stacy discovers the full depth of his love for nature, pages and pages of it, a whole interior world she had glimpsed but never fully entered. She had given him those spaces, yes. In doing so, she had also held herself at a gentle distance from a part of him she could have known more deeply.

I sat with that for a long time.

The fear underneath everything

I have always been afraid of death. Not in the way you’re afraid of spiders or heights, something you can avoid, something that keeps its distance. I mean the low, ever present fear that lives beneath the surface of a good life. The one that sits quietly beside you on ordinary evenings when you’re watching your family and thinking, this is everything, and one day this ends.

What I fear most is losing my partner. That specific loss. That particular unraveling. We are raising three small children together, navigating a full and demanding life together and somewhere in the texture of all of it, the school pickups, the work stress, the weekends when he goes fishing or hunting and I hold down the fort, is the knowledge I try not to look at too long: that none of this is guaranteed.

The Madison looked at it for me.

Preston Clyburn dies doing what he loves. That detail is not incidental, it is the whole heartbeat of the show. He was living fully, completely in his element, in the place that made him most himself. And then he was gone. And Stacy was left standing in a NYC life that was built around a person who was no longer in it.

I sobbed at that. I sobbed at the specific, terrible shape of that particular loss. Not because I believe something is coming, but because love, real love, the kind that holds a family together, makes you enormously vulnerable in a way that is both beautiful and terrifying. To love someone that much is to have everything to lose.

Why this story found us on a Sunday night

Here is what I keep returning to: I did not choose this show. Not really. We had a plan and something redirected us. And then my husband, the man who fishes and hunts and carries within him so many of the same values and rhythms as Preston Clyburn, sat beside me and watched the whole thing. He didn’t fall asleep. He didn’t reach for his phone. He stayed.

A spiritual card reader once told me that our spirit guides send us signs through movies and television, through the stories that find us at exactly the right moment. I’ve believed this for a long time, quietly. Last night made me believe it more fully than I ever have.

Because what else do you call it when a story lands in your lap that maps, almost point for point, onto your deepest fear? Two daughters. A big city life. A man who loves the water and the wild. A woman who loves him enough to let him disappear into it. What are the chances, unless something is trying to get your attention?

I don’t think the message was a warning. I don’t think it was darkness arriving at my door. I think it was an invitation. An invitation to look at the fear. To sit beside it instead of around it. To ask myself: what would it mean to step a little more fully into the parts of him I’ve been lovingly keeping at arm’s length?

And maybe: what would it mean to tell him that?

What stories are actually doing

We don’t choose the stories that shatter us. They choose us and they choose us because something in us is ready, even if the rest of us hasn’t gotten the memo yet.

Stories have always been the primary technology of the human soul. Long before therapy, before self help books, before any of the frameworks we use to understand ourselves, there was the fire and the storyteller and the circle of people leaning in. The story was how we processed the unprocessable. How we rehearsed our own grief before it arrived. How we practiced feeling the things too large to hold in ordinary life.

That hasn’t changed. The fire is just a screen now.

Sometimes the screen becomes a mirror so precise, so startlingly accurate, that you have to put down your phone and just sit with what it’s showing you. The tears that come from a story are real tears about real things. The fear that rises watching Stacy stand at the edge of that Montana river is your fear, wearing a borrowed costume so you could finally let yourself look at it straight.

The show didn’t create the feeling. It just created the conditions for you to finally feel it.

What I’m taking with me

I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do with all of this. I don’t think it works that way, signs rarely come with instructions. I know I want to go fishing and hunting with my husband sometime. Not because I’m afraid he’ll die and I’ll regret not going, but because there is a part of him that lives out there on the water and I’ve been loving that part of him from a respectful distance for years and maybe it’s time to wade in a little.

I know I want to hold this fear a little more honestly. Not to feed it, but to stop pretending it isn’t there. Because pretending it isn’t there doesn’t make you brave, it just makes you tired.

I know that sometimes the most important thing that happens on a Sunday night isn’t the plan you made, it’s the quiet pull you followed instead.

Pay attention to the stories that crack you open. They are not accidents. They are dispatches and they are almost always about the thing you most need to finally, gently, look at.

If The Madison found you this week or if you've ever been cracked open by a story you weren't expecting, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Tell me what you think it was trying to tell you.

With love, Christina

we celebrated Easter yesterday and had family visit in the morning, then drove to a party where we laughed, danced, swam, hugged and talked for hours. by the time we got home, i wasn’t tired… i was emptied out. the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t respond to sleep, it responds to stillness.

luckily, my kids are on spring break.

this morning i woke up and made no plans. we ate breakfast slowly. lunch happened eventually. we orbited the couch like it was the sun. i did some laundry, put it all away. my kids watched tv longer than i’d normally allow. we all took naps — actual naps, in the middle of the day, with zero guilt.

then, in the late afternoon, i offered the park. i genuinely thought they’d want to go. fresh air, movement, kids running… the whole thing.

they said no.

i didn’t push it because i understood it completely. they were doing what i was doing. they were recovering.

we talk a lot about social batteries when it comes to adults, especially introverts, especially moms — but we almost never extend that same grace to our kids. we assume children are bottomless reservoirs of energy, that they want to be stimulated constantly, that boredom is something to be solved.

holidays are a lot. new faces, noise, expectations to perform cuteness on command, sugar, overstimulation, disrupted nap schedules, late bedtimes and then we wonder why our kids are melting down on the monday after.

it’s not bad behavior. it’s a depleted battery.

there is something nobody tells you about motherhood: you will spend enormous energy trying to fill your children’s time. the park, the playdate, the activity, the enrichment. and sometimes that’s beautiful, but sometimes the most loving thing you can do is absolutely nothing.

let them be bored. let them stare at the ceiling. let them follow you around while you fold towels. let the day have no shape.

boredom is not a problem to fix. it is a state that teaches children how to be with themselves — how to slow down, imagine, decompress. it’s where creativity actually lives, underneath all the scheduled noise.

rest is not laziness. for kids and for us, it’s maintenance. it’s the work that makes all the other work possible.

i looked at my kids on the couch this morning still in pajamas, unbrushed hair, cartoons on, not asking me for anything and instead of feeling like i was failing them, i felt something closer to relief.

we made it through a big day. now we’re putting ourselves back together.

that’s not a parenting failure. that’s attunement. that’s reading the room. that’s knowing your people well enough to know when they need the park and when they need the couch.

if you had a big Easter, a loud weekend, a holiday that left you wrung out… i hope you gave yourself a slow day too. i hope you didn’t immediately fill monday with catch up and productivity and all the things you “should” be doing.

you are allowed to recover. so are your kids.

the park will be there tomorrow.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

with love, Christina