In the future, all Monday posts will be for paid subscribers. Consider joining to get weekly essays and poetry sent straight to your mailbox every week.
I want to be brave.
Every day, when my daughter is in near tears (or in tears) at being dropped off for school—because tests are no fun and reading is hard—I tell her to be brave. I remind her that she is brave, that she can do hard things.
She only believes me about half the time.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if I’ve been brave, and if I was going to be brave, what would that even look like? So often, I hold myself back and put myself into a self-imposed box because I think it will make it easier for people to like me to get along with me. There won’t be any tension, but am I truly living the life I should be living when I live like that? Dancing around everyone else and trying not to step on anyone’s toes?
In the past month, though, I’ve seen little acts of bravery. Some seem huge, others are much smaller, but I wanted to share.
I got two new tattoos. Maybe that’s not huge for some people, but growing up in a religion where I was constantly told how tattoos were bad to have, it felt like a little act of rebellion. I wanted to get the word ‘stay.’ since I’ve been struggling a lot with suicidal ideation this year and needed a permanent reminder. I also got the constellation of stars from the cover of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue because that book means so much to me as a creative.
I applied to go back to college (and got in!) Lately, it seems like very few things just feel right or like I need to do them right now. I’d been telling my husband that I’d been thinking about going to school to finish my bachelor’s degree—in something—then get a master's in library science. But as I was getting ready for bed one night, a different major, one that I had never thought of (and I don’t know why), came into my mind, and I just knew that that was what I needed to do. The next day, I applied to my local college. I guess it’s a blessing we live in a college town, right? I’ll share more later, as I’m still keeping this close to my chest. But I’ll start in January, and I’m both thrilled and terrified to get this degree and enter this career.
I asked my editor if I could have more time on my next novel. I wrote this one back in 2020 and didn’t realize how many things I would need to add this time around. It’ll still be ready by February 2025, but I needed more time before we do a copy edit. Asking felt so scary, but she was so nice about it.
Writing on this Substack again. I’ve been grappling with what I want to write lately. And I’m sure I’ll write an essay about that soon. But I wanted to return to Substack, write long-form essays, and have a place to share my poetry. While some of these will be free to the public, I’ll also have weekly posts behind a paywall. This is scary because it’s asking people to pay you so they can read your words, but I also know that what I plan to write and share will be worth it. So, I hope you’ll join me.
Being brave the past few weeks has also meant taking my crying daughter to school even though my heart breaks with each of her tears. (She likes school, but Mondays have been hard after being home all weekend.)
It also looked like trying new recipes to see if what I’m eating will help at all with my endometriosis and PMDD symptoms. I am not a fan of change, so I’m changing what I eat slowly, by adding new and nutrient-dense foods to my diet.
I want to be brave. For my daughter and for me. I want to show her that we can do things scared. We can go to school or publish books or essays or try new foods. And it will all work out. We’ll definitely fall on our faces a few times, but we have to keep going. So here’s to a new era, of being brave.
Love, Taylor
I can’t wait to hear more about what you’re going to school for! And I get it. Being a writer is so vulnerable and asking for things is vulnerable and I have felt a lot of that lately too.
I'm excited to see what Brave Taylor will share with the world. <3