Into the Mystic

25% off subscriptions and changes for Monday Monday

Photo by Cody Sells

Dearest readers,

I wanted to share a shift for my weekly newsletter as you’ve known it for the last seven years, which is that it will no longer be free every Monday.

This is a shift I never thought I would do, as I’ve always valued the free resource of the weekly newsletter format and used it as a channel for email marketing in addition to a space to share my writing, resources, and more. I want to experiment with my newsletter being free once a month, and all other emails on Mondays being for paid subscribers only for the first quarter of next year January 1- April 1. During that time I’ll stay willing to being wrong about this experiment, hating it, loving it, seeing at as not working, or seeing it as working great.

Here I go into the mystic, into hermit mode, into more privacy and dreaming and visioning behind the veil. At the end of January I will be starting grad school to get my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College in Vermont. I have never taken three months off of teaching, facilitating, or 1:1 client work since I started working in this way seven years ago.

It feels like a gift beyond measure to give this time to myself to focus solely on writing essays, my next book, and on being a student again through the Winter months.

To mark this change : Subscriptions are 25% off for your first year from today through January 5. I’ve also taken the paywall off two of my favorite and most popular essays to show you the risk taking I take in the writing I do for paid subscribers. I find that in the safety of that space I share more vulnerably, take bigger leaps, and find more flow and effortlessness in my writing.

I understand that there are so many amazing newsletters to subscribe to, many that I recommend and share in Monday Monday and have encouraged you to subscribe to. Your monthly and annual subscriptions mean so much to me and I’ve loved writing a free newsletter for the last eleven years. My hope is that the value of what you have received thus far inspires you to make the investment in this newsletter for the next year and longer. I look forward to continuing to write personal essays as well as essays about my writing rituals and habits, what comes up in my practice at school, and continuing to explore my life through the lens of being a queer non binary weirdo in the rural north.

Here are some of my favorite newsletters about writing :

Waking up at 5:30am to write

Hiding my best writing

THE ARCHITECTURE OF BOOK WRITING

This newsletter, both the amount of subscribers and the income it brings in, has allowed me to leave all social media and I want it to continue to teach and be an example for others who hope to move away from digital platforms that no longer work for them. I have found more ways to be in alignment with my values, my politics, and my hopes since leaving social media and bringing so much of my focus here to Monday Monday.

May the option of freezing rapidly dissolve

Wishing everyone else would step up to the plate

Yesterday in Writing the Personal

Fariha Róisín

opened the space up by reading a poem from Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian professor, poet and writer, who was murdered in an airstrike in northern Gaza, on December 7. It reminded me of how when we teach, when we write, when we share, we shape the spaces we make by folding in the truth of what is happening in our world and around us. Below is his poem, If I Must Die. And linked here is the link to his dear friend, scholar, and policy analyst Jehad Abusalim reading it.

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.

I promise to keep this space full of my own truth telling, to shape it through the sight of radial ethics and transformative hope. I promise that once a month Monday Monday will be filled with free resources and my words and my thoughts and to touch base with you readers who have been here for years. Monday Monday will continue to redistribute a percentage of paid subscriptions every month to a mutual aid fund or organization dedicated to building a more just world.

Thank you for being on this journey with me. Thank you for starting your own newsletters, writing your own books, making your own work, and being such radiant beings. Your attention here is a priceless gift. I look forward to seeing all the ways my writing will get brighter and braver, my advice column will get weirder, and this newsletter will continue to evolve.

MONDAY MONDAY PAYING ATTENTION ROUND UP!

MY VERY FAVORITE : Newsletters, podcasts, books, beaches, albums, songs, feelings, movies, and more! Including the most IMPORTANT THINGS I consumed and paid attention to this year and what is to come

⌇⋰ Website

⌇⋰ Email : info@marleegrace.space

⌇⋰ PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621

A portion of December’s paid subscriptions goes toward Adalah Justice Project

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