24 November 2023
Hello, friends! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Just a quick note today to point you toward my 2023 gift posts, if they might be helpful with Black Friday shopping. They are: Gifts for Em (gift ideas for yourself or the ladies in your life)Gifts for Everyone You Love (gift ideas for parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters)Stocking Stuffers for Kids and Grown-Ups (including what we’re giving this year)What We’re Actually Giving Our Kids This Christmas (gift ideas for your favorite kids, inspired by mine) I also wanted to invite you over to something brand-new: The Connected Family on Substack! (Note: If you previously subscribed to Em for Marvelous on Substack – thank you so much!! – this is completely different.) The Connected Family is a project more than a year in the making, and if you love Em for Marvelous, I think you’ll love TCF, too. To be completely honest, I have never been more excited or more terrified of a project than this one. (Imposter syndrome is eating my lunch right now, yes indeed.) There’s much, much more to say, and so we’ll consider this a soft launch, not a proper introduction – but as my most beloved readers, there’s no one I’d rather share something new with than you! And of course, I don’t want you to miss the giveaway :) I plan to partially paywall The Connected Family in the new year, but I’d be honored if you’d choose to sign up for a free subscription (or even pledge support for the future!), if you’d like. And don’t worry – Em for Marvelous isn’t going anywhere! Some blog posts on certain topics that might have appeared on EFM will now post on TCF, but the people, places, and things I love will stay right where they’ve been
2 May 2023
Happy May, friends! I’m hoping you might be willing to help me with something as we open up a new month: I have reserved a space on Substack and would love your thoughts on how I might best put it to use. In case you’re not familiar with it, Substack is a “subscription network” for creators – mainly writers – to share their work. “While social networks are associated with advertising and attention,” the founders write, “subscription networks are about direct payments and trust. While social networks facilitate shallow connections, subscription networks foster deep relationships.” Here’s a bit more: Heady stuff, and right up my alley :) As a writer, Substack seems like a natural place for me to have a presence, especially as it becomes less appealing to spend time on social media and writing is my preferred mode of sharing, anyway. Many writers whose work and perspectives I appreciate, like Emily Oster, Bari Weiss, Claire Swinarski, Elizabeth Holmes, Anne Helen Peterson, and The Dispatch have already found a home here. Colliding with these thoughts is the fact that my current newsletter platform is now charging a fee to send my “new post” newsletter. As I’ve written before, I don’t need to earn my living on Em for Marvelous, but I’d prefer to not pay for the privilege, either. I’m not about to abandon this space, though (14 years and counting!), and Substack is not particularly well-suited to image-rich posts (as some of mine are). So: most posts will stay here, and a new newsletter will live on Substack. This will allow me to: 1) easily share new posts with you, 2) provide additional content to those who choose to support what I do here, and 3) allow us all to play with what a promising spot on the