Hello!
It was my intention to send this out this morning but I’m currently naked on my couch after having *just* arrived back home in New York after a weird but fun four days in Miami. I’m nervous to hit publish on the below first issue of my once forthcoming and now present (!!) newsletter. I’ve been thinking about it all weekend and being physically removed from New York definitely helped flush out the nervousness. So here it goes.
Hey, hi, hello and welcome to Gut Feelings, my newsletter about gut health. Gut health as an all-encompassing facet of life. It is delivered to your inbox every other Monday (but who knows, maybe I’ll have more to say on an off-week and will sneak in a bonus issue), which happens to be my favorite day of the week. But of course, my newsletter will exist on this domain to be revisited every time you need a little guidance at any given point in time. I am so excited you are all here.
A little backstory…
From my humble internet beginnings as a moody teen on Tumblr to moments of self-discovery as a college student at NYU, writing, to me, has always been extremely restorative, rewarding and cathartic. I loved being in a school where we wrote essays instead of final exams and read personal narratives instead of textbooks. Being a student at NYU Gallatin drove home my love for long, wandering, superfluous essays, often guided by prompts and always deeply personal.
When I became a full-time “influencer” (I put this word in quotation marks because I still, to this day, hate this word) three years ago, my writing came to a complete halt. Sure, I continued to write the occasional journal entries just for myself but in the span of those three years, I completely stopped writing with an audience in mind, even if my previous audience was just my peers or my professor. Throughout my career as an influencer/tastemaker/content creator/internet person (choose your fighter), the only writing I partook in were branded content pieces that prioritized selling a product over any sort of thought-provoking, self-affirming or even relatable narrative I’d try to inject. The result: something like this. And while I was always excited at the opportunity to write again, I was truly craving something more and wanting something more for my community, for them to be able to connect with me in a much more intimate level.
I wanted something that came from my gut.
Reworking my definition of an “influencer”…
Moody instagram captions that attempted to describe how I felt just didn’t cut it. How could I possibly encapsulate a feeling in a word count restricted domain full of people mainly here for outfit inspo? I longed for substance across my social platforms and felt that any attempt to do so was contrived. We’re all just trying to make meaningful content but can that coexist with countless other vapid content as well and be consumed in a wholly different manner from said vapid content? I’m not so sure.
That running ads on Instagram was my perennial mode of making of a living further solidified my longing for something more. I always struggled with the fact that a large—and some would argue, main— part of my job was to sell my followers’ attention to brands. Especially so considering my lofty ambitions to break out of the traditional influencer model. “Maybe one day I could call myself a writer,” I always dreamed. But I figured if I was still creating good content outside of the ads sprinkled throughout my feed, not one would be wholly bothered. We’re all trying to get our coin and if there is anything that is so deeply embedded in my neoliberal psyche, it’s that everything—and I mean literally EVERYTHING—should be viewed as an opportunity and investment in my self and my future. The more ads I took on, the more money I would make. And the more money I would make, the more I can pursue what I actually want to do. Like writing! But it was this sick cycle of never knowing when was enough or which brands I should turn down and why I even feel like I’m in a haughty position to turn down what some would say is the “easiest money you will ever make”. Why can’t we get our bag and also stay true to ourselves? Selling out shouldn’t be and isn’t synonymous with not creating quality content.
What is Gut Feelings?!
My one goal of being a digital creator in this highly saturated space has always been, and will always be, to inspire people to live their best lives. Whether that’s inspiring someone to wear a more daring outfit, or plan the most epic, culturally rich trip of their lives, I want my community to seek out a life that is as beautiful as it is freeing, as aspirational as it is accessible and as rich as it is pleasurable.
So my idea for this space, this newsletter, came from that!
Gut feelings is an extension of my online presence through longer-form, highly personal content. You’ll expect things I normally don’t ever share on my social media. Gut Feelings will feature long-form essays, interviews, outfit ideas, city guides (which I actually am quite possessive over) and so much more. And it’s going to straddle everything I love about this life of mine, of ours, with depth that’s been lacking in my online presence up until now.
I’ve always believed that everything comes from your gut. Gut feelings are guardian angels. They act like a North Star guiding every move, every decision, every choice. And quite literally, the gut affects every other organ in our body, especially our brain. The gut-brain axis is really fascinating. The trillions of microbiomes that live in our gut produce the neurotransmitters that literally control our feelings and emotions! So when I say this newsletter is about gut health, I really mean making the everyday choices that are guided by your gut, grounded by your innate feelings that are manifestations of our intention. They are grounding, they are comforting, they are guiding. Exactly how I hope this newsletter will be for you all.
What we’re going to talk about!
I’ve broken down my newsletter into five topics that are recurring themes in my life that I regularly share online. These are topics that you guys engage with the most on and hopefully want to see more of! I don’t think I’ll have a scheduled rotation of these topics but rather focus each newsletter issue on one of these modules as they fit in with what’s going in my life at that time. Or what you guys want that week! We can talk!
So! Here are the modules:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c2bc9fe-0d03-437f-9242-22bcda9acebf_3263x2646.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa760beb8-9d41-4aa0-a031-800080bf9229_4621x4975.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F34487ce0-d30d-4c3d-8de5-9bd608ce3c3e_5142x6696.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff95ad198-a2ce-4d4b-bae7-5f3f46c88463_6950x6442.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa424f701-40e6-4037-be7c-71608654c6cc_4600x5092.png)
This is me, this is Gut Feelings. I really am so touched and humbled at the amount of subscribers I got right off the bat without even posting anything. A lot of what I talked about earlier in this newsletter about my personal gripes of being an influencer have led me to this very moment, signing off on what is my most exciting, inclusive and community-driven venture.
I’d love to hear from you. You can reply to this email or join me in the comments. What do you want to see? Why are you here? Who are you?
Huge shout out to my incredibly talented, beautiful and special friend Bianca Kann for creating the logo and module artwork for my newsletter. They perfectly encapsulate what Gut Feelings is all about.