Letter 172: Dare to Write

My inner Brené Brown (silently) screamed, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”

As part of our Learning Curve Letters glow up, Molly and I recently met with a Substack Coach.

We spend a lot of time on Substack looking for inspiration and reading the work of some amazing writers. Many are well known: Anne Lamott (writing + humor), Kelly Corrigan (wonder + creativity), Suleika Jaouad (journaling + life), and Jenny Rosenstrach (cooking + entertaining), to name a few. And many, many more are not as well known and very worthy of attention: Mary Braun Bates, MD (small town medicine), Fit to Teach (P.E. teacher in Harlem, NY) and Lori Adams (writing + awe). We look at their layouts, their themes, and of course, we devour their writing. We are constantly searching for ways to improve upon what we are doing.

As David Sedaris recently said on Fresh Air,” [We] want to be better.”

The big question for us has been how to help our own community grow. We currently have over 530 subscribers (woop! woop!) from all over the country. And we think there are many, many more people who would love to read our amazing writers' work.

Which brings me to our coach.

There are coaches for everything now: gluten-free living coaches, menopause coaches, fitness coaches, writing coaches, dating coaches, and divorce coaches. According to a 2025 industry report, the U.S. professional coaching industry generates approximately $16 billion annually and includes more than 230,000 coaches. This doesn’t include fitness coaches, which are said to generate an additional $12.9 billion!! So we are certainly not alone in our desire to gain some additional insight to help us grow.

We found our coach, Olivia Wickstrom, right on Substack. She is a young woman living in the south of France, where she supports herself by publishing her own Substack called Petal + Hearth. It’s about her life as an expat and about teaching others how to grow their own Substack channels. She is very savvy in the ways of algorithms and storytelling.

And she had a lot to share with us.

Olivia living her best coach life in France

For starters, she loves what we have built and agrees with us that we have plenty of room to grow. She made some suggestions about using Substack Notes (think the Instagram of Substack) and encouraged us to engage more actively with other writers on the platform to increase exposure for our publication. All very helpful, enjoyable and comfortable suggestions.

And then things got personal. Literally.

Olivia had the audacity to suggest that Molly and I were hiding behind our Learning Curve Letters logo and that if we wanted to truly expand and bring more writers and readers to our publication, we had to “let readers see [us]:” our opinions, our lives, our stories, our pictures. Ugh!

My inner Brené Brown (silently) screamed, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”

Olivia explained that the discovery engine (algorithm) on Substack rewards publications with a face, a voice, a profile and a perspective that readers can attach to. And while contributing writers should remain central to what we deliver, we need to step forward more clearly as the editorial voices.

In other words, if we want to grow, Molly and I have to become more visible and more vulnerable so that readers can relate to us. Double ugh!

Me and my love

So dear readers, here we are.

If you read Molly’s last letter celebrating TLC’s five-year anniversary, you know that we have taken Olivia’s advice and you will indeed be hearing more from Molly and me. It’s scary.

You will also notice that I have hardly shared anything personal or vulnerable here. I’m working on it. I hope to write as clearly and as bravely as our contributing writers do.

There are so many things I want to share with you: why I won’t skip my Tuesday Bible study even though I am unchurched; my dear friend Todd almost dying and his incredibly brave wife, Leigh; my ecumenical faith; the joys and tribulations of my perfectly imperfect family. I struggle to articulate how profound some experiences are for me, and I worry that some stories aren’t mine to tell. I’ll make mistakes, but I love this community, and I want us to keep growing.

Thanks for the push, Olivia! And thanks to all of you for following along!

With gratitude,

Anita Arbelaez

P.S. Happy Pride Y’all!!!