A year ago today, I started this Substack.

I was in The Creator Retreat, surrounded by other writers figuring out what they wanted to say and how to say it. At the time I didn't even know the term "creator" meant something in Substack-land. I needed a name for what I was doing.

I called it "Essential Mel."

For years I'd been trying to get back to "Original Mel"—the person I was before society, culture, religion, and family told me what I SHOULD do, how I SHOULD behave, what I SHOULD believe. I was tired of getting SHOULDed on!

My partner Lachlan rightly noticed I wasn't actually trying to get BACK to anything. I was moving forward, uncovering my essential-ness. Hence: Essential Mel.

Then, through the Creator Retreat, I discovered I'm actually a Witch in a Lab Coat—that’s essential me. I run experiments on my own life and report back on what I find. Sometimes it's beautiful. Sometimes it's a disaster. Usually it's both at once. The messy bits aren't what I edit out—they're the whole point.

This year, you grew this thing from 1 subscriber (hi, Sam Messersmith!) to 155. Six of you pay me actual money to keep doing this work, which still kind of blows my mind. You show up for my Saturday deep dives and Wednesday Analog Letters. You let me be messy and vulnerable and still-figuring-it-out at 61.

The Grandmother Tree post got more than 1,700 likes. Over 1,700 people connected with a story about an oak tree I had to cut down, about loss and protection and letting go of what we thought would keep us safe. That's when I understood—this isn't just my mess. It's our mess. Connection heals everything, and apparently sharing our messy experiments in public creates space for other people to breathe—and mess is FUN!

So thank you. For being here. For being my Mess Mates. For letting me evolve from Essential Mel into whoever I'm becoming next.

Here's to year two.