Monthly Refresh: January 2024
Planned Parenthood, updates, & what you may have missed
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
- Joseph Chilton Pearce
January felt like a good wiggle in your seat to help you get comfortable. It also felt very visceral. Not only with the abrupt death of my uncle, but this year feels like the real settling into a new normal after losing mom.
Last year was a whole year of resting, healing, finding our footing, traveling to spend time with family… Definitely a new life to get used to.
This year feels like an efficient test: take all your rest, recovery, and growing pains and implement it in your new reality as you move forward and ahead in a way you never had a chance to fully embrace before.
No more mentally drunken months swallowed by depression and (as much) despair; this year is the very first year of my life I get to start with energetic and selfish gusto, going toward what I desire for my life.
With that in mind, I’m going to test not strictly publishing every week in February. I told myself a silly story that I HAD to post every week at least, but I don’t want to. It feels forced.
As of right now, I’m planning on posting:
A monthly essay
These monthly refreshes
And a monthly deep dive post on Human Design.
Those will all go directly into your inbox (and I’ll create a section for Human Design so you can pick and choose if you want the extra content sent to your inbox).
I may write more, create audio diaries, or have more to share throughout the weeks and more than likely I won’t send them to your inbox. Instead, I’ll link to everything posted throughout the month in the monthly refreshes.
But… I’d like to know if you’d mind any extra free pieces sent to you directly in your inbox, or just in a wrap-up of links once per month? I’ll keep it in mind for March.
There’s some other projects I’m excitedly working on as well, so I’m curious to see how this schedule idea works out all of February!
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but thank you all SO much for coming into my world and becoming subscribers (whether free or paid)! I’ve seen a big growth spurt last month and am close to 200 of you in this community! Yay!
On to the rest of this newsletter:
… So I pulled out my gouache paint set. I watched some videos on how to use gouache… but I didn’t paint. Haha!
I’ve written of course, and fell off the Day One journaling I mentioned in a recent Curated Diary. But there’s a digital project I’m so excited to use once I’m done designing it!! It’s taken me some time, but I think (and hope!) it’s used daily by me!
What creative work have you done in January?
Welcome to your monthly oracle pull! I pull two cards for you, and you quickly and intuitively choose the card you’re immediately drawn to. If a card is upside down, I like believing that it’s a really big message to focus on!
I love this as a practice for self-trust, and to help you target something(s) in your life your oracle card choice may help you focus on more clearly.
And your card is…
A - ANNA, GRANDMOTHER OF JESUS: Seeding the light. Laying foundations. Divine plan.
Everyone is made to leave a lasting mark in the world, even if we won’t live to see the fruits from the seeds we planted. How can you be of service this month? Who are you showing up for? Your children? Your community online? In person? For yourself so you can show up in the world being an expander for others wanting to show up unapologetically themselves?
You can leave a bigger impression on people than you’ll ever realize. Be intentional about the ways you can be purposeful in the lives around you, including your own.
B - TRUST YOUR PATH: If you knew you would be supported, what would you do?
A little nudge this month to brush away the doubt and to keep taking small steps toward what you want (or are curious about exploring) every day! If doubt and fear were eliminated and you had faith in what you wanted to try or do, what would you dabble in?
Which card did you pick? Let me know how much it resonated!
Alexa’s Authentically You Workbook: Alexa writes
here on Substack, and is an amazing life coach! She held space for her community (and anyone we wanted to invite!) to talk about what authenticity means as we bring in a new year every week in January. I’ll miss those Zoom calls! So she also created a wonderful workbook for only $13 going through deep dives and many prompts on getting to know your authentic self!Myles’ Cookout: Marc Typo is also another Substacker who writes
, letters to his newborn son. He created Myles’ Cookout for Black History Month and beyond to help highlight black writers he enjoys here on Substack. Brilliant!Planned Parenthood!: I had a pretty common infection I had to deal with last month but wanted to know if there was a way I could easily and affordably deal with it and the prescription process. And there is! Planned Parenthood has a discreet app where you can schedule a telehealth appointment! I did that and used GoodRX to have the whole experience cost under $40. It was an amazing system and Planned Parenthood was amazing, as well as the app itself!
So I finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (bookshop.org affiliate link for those willing to incrementally pay me—at no extra cost to you—for my pain and suffering)… and hated it. It actually made me want to do a rant about my upsetting reads of 2023. I may still do it… I have one on the list I never posted to Goodreads to mention as well. Hmm….
What you may have missed
Until you do the poll so I know what you’d prefer, I don’t want to flood your inbox with all my newest posts. So whatever you may have missed? You’ll find linked here!
[PAID] The narrated version of Untangling the History of My Hair
And of course, the essay of the month: Untangling the History of My Hair
Untangling the History of My Hair
Welcome to Living Lately! A newsletter about a late bloomer processing a death and building a life. I wanted to add this quick introduction because there’s a lot of new readers here thanks to the encouragement I left writers in a post on Notes! Thank you!
I wanna hear YOUR deets!
Let me know what creative celebrations YOU had last month!
Also, let me know how much your oracle pull for the month resonated with you.
Any plans for this new month? Share what you’re excited about below!
And if you’d like to catch next month’s refresh and everything in-between, be sure to become a free subscriber!
I chose B. It was just the nudge I needed!
Thank you so much for the shoutout Cierra! Appreciate the love for Authentic by Alexa :)