[Re-upload of a newsletter from Oct 21, 2025, for the archive]
After I wrote "How to Start", I just... didn't know how to continue. Couldn't figure out how to continue. A couple months went by, but I couldn't create anything I wanted to finish. Eventually, for some reason, an unrelated idea compelled me to dive into my old hard drive, filled with all the files I've ever made, all the way back from elementary school through high school.
I haven't looked at anything I made before college for over ten years, until now, because... I think I was scared of it. For the past ten years, I wanted to forget (and successfully forgot) my life before college.
Looking at these files... I genuinely didn't know most of it existed, and it felt like I was uncovering all this history about someone else, except that "someone" was technically me. It turns out that she wrote. A lot. A lot a lot. And she kept most of it secret. I read through a lot of it, and ... well, I learned (or remembered? but like in a third-person sort of way?) a lot about her.
Anyway, she inspired me to try writing again. So I wrote the first poem I've written in... I don't know, a decade, at least. As you saw in "How to Start", writing (in first person) about my childhood was too daunting, too ... direct, and far too scary. So I went a different route, and wrote about everything from the perspective of my beloved lifelong blanket. Just a little bit removed, so that it'd feel easier.
So... yeah! That's how this came to be. Here it is:
"The Bears Go Up"
💌
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
I have two more chapters after this in my back pocket, and I'll keep releasing them every Tuesday for the next couple weeks, to give each one some space to breathe.
Thank you for following along! <3
All the best,
Jessica