A Few Things that Terrified Me

... but I did them anyway

Hello from the other side, consumers! I’m not writing this from the afterlife, but rather just a few days into living in London. This international move inspired today’s newsletter — moving abroad was (and still is, in honesty) something that scares me deeply, but I did it anyway. The nature of social media means we get to see everyone’s highlights reels but not the fear, anxiety, and dread that preceded and followed those moments. In the spirit of transparency and solidarity with all my overthinkers and consumers, here are a few of the lowlights that I managed to brace through:

• Leaving New York after 15 years. Look, I don’t want to be all Yoko (see below) about this — but it’s been about five days so this is of course top of mind. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw a lot of the excitement for this move but very few of the nerves! It’s really hard to leave what you know, who you love, and your home, and trade that up for a whole lot of uncertainty. Throw in anxiety into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for… more anxiety. I’m taking each day at a time and keeping one foot in front of the other, understanding that it takes time to find home, find your people, and that this momentary discomfort means I’m being challenged.

  

• Next, I’ll get a little meta on here and say adding a paid tier to my Substack absolutely terrifies me! I added it quietly about two weeks ago and there are currently a tiny handful of you amazing consumers contributing to my Substack — I am SO grateful for your support. I’ve written this newsletter for the past four years and a lovely combination of friends and loyal readers have asked all this time why I don’t offer a paid tier: the truth is, I’m just scared and cultural narratives around money make me feel ashamed in asking for anything let alone this. I know that the only way for me to get past that is to try it out and do it. I’ve put my paid tier at the bare minimum allowed by Substack, $5 a month or $50 a year — I’m hopeful that the joy and weirdness contained here could be worth the price of a coffee a month! I think two of the Friday Fives each month will go behind the paywall but we’ll give this a feel and figure it out together.

• Quitting my job and leaving the corporate world for freelance! 2025 has been a whirlwind, and we’re still in the first quarter. I gave notice a few days into the new year and left my job at Glossier after 6.5 years last month! I’m doing freelance projects across communications, marketing, copywriting, and impact strategy with four brilliant clients. It is nerve-wracking to bet on yourself, pitch yourself, and hold yourself to an even higher level of accountability but it’s also rewarding and freeing. I wish I found this courage earlier!

• Writing. Writing this newsletter, writing my first book, conceptualizing my next books - it’s all scary! I have words and newsletters and ideas pouring out of my mind 24/7, followed by a voice that second guesses those thoughts, diminishes them, or finds a reason around it. If I get one thing right this year, I hope it’s silencing that voice or gaining the self-assuredness to dismiss it much more easily. This week, I pitched a story, submitted an article, and have two newsletters in the pipeline — I’m just going to keep trying and keep putting myself out there and I know the rest will follow.

  

  what this newsletter looked like until somewhat recently

• I saved the most intense bit for last, which is taking stock of who I am, what I want, and where I want to be. This is life’s work! But like any other pile of work, there’s all sorts of ways we avoid it, tiptoeing and tapdancing around it, doing anything but looking at ourselves and trying to sort it out. For the past ten months I’ve been in therapy and it was a transformative experience. It feels like I scrubbed off a layer of dead skin with one of those Salux cloths but that skin was my deeply-held beliefs and mental patterns. It took me about seven years to find a practitioner who I really clicked with and months for things to start clicking in my mind, but my goodness, when it works, it really works. Being vulnerable isn’t scary, it’s empowering (ugh I sound like one of those affirmations you’ll see on sale at a T.J. Maxx - T.K. Maxx in my new homeland lol - next to a ‘BUT FIRST, COFFEE’ sign).

I said I’d write a ‘things I miss’ essay and there will be a bit on therapy in there! I also did a class with Suzy Welch on self-discovery and purpose - shout out

Aminatou Sow

for inviting me along, which involved a litany of aptitude tests and personality tests, but might’ve been the first time I’ve had to think about what I love, what I’m good at, and where I want my future to go.

What is scaring you? What scared you recently but you did it anyway? How did you feel afterwards? None of us have this life thing figured out, no matter how good it might look on Instagram. The discomfort is where the growth happens, our little cracks are where the light shines through, and sometimes when we fall to pieces there’s always some superglue (or molten gold if you’re into kintsugi) to bring us back together.

I love y’all, see you Friday.

Roya