Note: Everything feels extremely heavy to me right now, and maybe it does to you too. I don’t have any words about what happened in Uvalde and it feels a little odd to share this update with you today, but I am, because this newsletter is important to me, even though it seems insignificant at times when heavy things are happening all around us. But thank you, as always, for reading.
It’s been just over a year since I started writing this newsletter, and it simultaneously feels like wow I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a year but also it feels like I have been writing this newsletter forever. I am very much a “start anyway” kind of person, so those of you who subscribed to the first iteration of this newsletter have watched me figuring a bunch of stuff out in real time, like what I want to be writing about and how I want to do it.
A year in, I have landed on a mix of interviews (written and audio) and essays, and I’ve just started adding discussion threads into the mix to give us all a chance to chat a bit more. I’m really excited about this balance right now — I absolutely love doing interviews and I’m thrilled to have some really great Q&As scheduled for this summer! — but I also love having the flexibility to shift or rearrange things as I continue to figure this out.
For now, you can click through to the different sections (Author Q&A, Think of the Children Podcast, Essays, Discussion Threads) from the newsletter’s home page, and you can also choose which ones you want to see in your in-box by going to your subscription settings in Substack. If a bunch of you end being like Nah we don’t want to listen to these audio episodes or you’re like Wow we love the essays so much!, I may shift the balance, who knows? But that leads me to my second bit of housekeeping:
A tip jar, not a paywall
This feels super vulnerable but here goes: I have added a paid subscription option to this newsletter. This is not a pay wall: all posts will continue to be available to all subscribers. But if you value this newsletter, I hope you’ll consider paying for it.
Call it a tip jar, an honor system, a pay-what-you-can or sliding scale model — whatever you call it, it feels like the right step for me right now. I love writing this newsletter, but it also takes up brain space and writing time that might otherwise go to paid work, and my bank account has definitely felt the pinch. I want to keep writing Think of the Children, and I also believe my writing has value. If you agree, I’d love for you to consider a paid subscription. But if that’s not right for you for any number of reasons, I totally get it!
If you do choose the paid model, please know that you are supporting me as a writer and as someone who cares passionately about parenting and education and the current injustice of doing both things in a country that has made it abundantly clear that it values neither.
Thanks for sticking around and for encouraging me to keep going! It means a lot. Next week’s newsletter will be the podcast version of my interview with Nate Hilger, which was a terrific conversation that I enjoyed so much, and I can’t wait to share the audio with you.
Thank you for thoughtful writing, as always.