Maybe the problem isn't Substack
When something changes there are two questions available. How do we preserve what was? Or — what new possibilities does this create? They lead to very different lives.
This morning my Notes feed filled up with restacks of an article complaining about what Substack has become.
The author’s argument was simple: too many Notes, too much video, too many social features, too much noise. He came here for essays. He wants essays. Why can’t Substack just be essays?
What fascinated me wasn’t the complaint. It was how many people agreed.
Because while they were lamenting everything Substack has added, I was sitting here grateful for most of it. The Notes feature introduced me to writers I never would have discovered. Video helped me find my voice in a new way. Lives allowed me to have real conversations with readers instead of talking at them. The social side of the platform connected me with thousands of women who otherwise would never have crossed my path.
Many of the very things being criticized are the same things that helped my work grow.
So who’s right? Probably both. Some people found Substack because it felt slower than the rest of the internet — a quiet place to read thoughtful writing over morning coffee. That’s a reasonable thing to want. I understand the grief of watching a thing you loved change into something different.
But I think something larger is happening beneath this particular discussion.
When something changes, there are essentially two questions available to us.
The first: how do we preserve what was?
The second: what new possibilities does this create?
Neither is wrong. But they lead to very different experiences of the same moment. One person sees a threat. Another sees an invitation. One sees loss. Another sees expansion. And both are standing in exactly the same place, looking at exactly the same thing.
At seventy, I’ve become increasingly interested in the second question. Not because every change is good or every new feature deserves applause. But because curiosity has served me far better than resistance ever did.
This is how I ended up writing online. How I found video. How I found many of the women who now gather around this publication. None of that existed in my life five years ago. None of it was on any map I had drawn for myself. And yet here we are.
Which brings me to retirement. Because I think this is the same conversation wearing different clothes.
Many people spend decades following a roadmap — career, marriage, children, obligations, schedules, goals. The map gives them structure and identity and a clear sense of where they’re headed. And then one day the map runs out. The career ends. The children leave. The schedule dissolves.
The people who struggle most in that moment aren’t necessarily the ones who lost the map.
They’re the ones who never learned to travel without one.
Because nobody taught them to ask the second question. Nobody prepared them for the moment when the world changes and the only available response is curiosity about what comes next.
Maybe that’s why this Substack debate caught my attention. Underneath the conversation about Notes and videos and essays, I hear a much older and more personal question:
When the world changes, do we close the door?
Or do we walk through it?
These days, I’m choosing the door.
One more thing before you go.
I know times are feeling uncertain right now. A lot of us are watching our budgets more carefully than we’d like to. So for the next few days I’m offering 20% off an annual subscription — not as a sales tactic, but because I genuinely want the women who need this room to be able to get into it.
Consider it permission to do something good for yourself.
The Breakthrough Circle. The Tuesday conversations. The writing that shows up in your inbox three times a week asking the questions most people are too polite to ask out loud.
All of it. 20% off. For a few more days
.
And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.
This is a thoughtful article about the possible positivity of change.
If we walk through the door vs banging on it we are likely to find some blue skies.
That’s been my experience many times in my life. One of the first experiences was when we moved from Pittsburgh across the state 5 hours away due to my late husband’s job change. I was building my career, had a phenomenal set of contacts, an opportunity to teach at Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh and meaningful friends. At the news of the upcoming change I saw a black hole.
I wanted to avoid being sucked into that hole. I took the door which was the long way around and so worth every step of that way. I rebuilt my career and found resources I couldn’t have imagined. The black hole reflecting the dark cloud above slowly disappeared.
Some big changes in my life have happened in the last 2 weeks. At first I saw that hole and dark cloud above. I was determined to avoid that again. I remembered there can be positives if I give the grace space for such. Already I’m seeing new light.
Thank you, Monica Rose, for initiating this subject. ♥️