LucyBellwood
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Introducing: What She Knows
🕑 Added 2023-07-31 17:48:36 +0000 UTCSome of you have likely already caught this news on Instagram, but I'm finally releasing my secretive, deeply personal card deck project from 2020!
Before I get too far into the backstory:
I made a new $18 Patreon tier for those of you who want to join me in making your own decks and meeting your own Wise Selves. The tier will remain open until August 14th, at which point a I'll start running an experimental, three-month class for the 35 people who sign up. It'll involve Zoom calls once a month, prompts to guide you, and a private, nurturing space to share ideas and get to know each other.
Cards will be shared publicly on Instagram for at least the next couple weeks, so the deck itself will be visible to all. Physical decks are also a thing. I've printed them. They're coming. I'll post more about that production process for $2 Patrons in the months to come.
Okay, so what is this thing anyway?
What She Knows is a collection of reminders and permission, drawn at a rate of one-per-day over 100 days toward the start of the Pandemic. It ended up becoming one of the most profound gifts I've ever given myself, not only because of the content, but because I made it in secret. After years of building a career around telling the Internet everything, it was incredible to make something untouched by my expectation of what I thought anyone else might want or need to hear. It was private and healing and lovely, but I also knew that (eventually) I wanted you all to see it.
The only catch was that I didn't want to use social media to do it.
I called so many friends in my brain trust and asked for their advice. I thought about running a crowdfunding campaign with zero information about the deck—a digital trust fall that would involve exchanging letters as an entry requirement for receiving the finished object. I spent months dreaming up strange wooden boxes that would dispense the cards at an appropriately slow rate. I danced briefly and passionately with a now-defunct startup that would've helped me send them out via text message. I conscripted friends to code websites. I priced out the idea of mailing the cards, one by one, to every person who signed up.
Everything I tried aimed to preserve the things I found most valuable in making it: slowness, chronology, and intimacy.
But there's another story under this one.
Unlike Demon Dialogues, this project doesn't lean on cynicism or humor or relatability. It's painfully earnest. It feels terrifying to share. The only way it felt safe to give this part of me a voice in 100 Demon Dialogues was by positioning her next to a screeching, anxious part of my insides, as if to say “Don’t worry! I have a healthy sense of internal self-loathing to temper the hubris of my confidence! You don’t have to criticize me! I’m already on it!”
(Anyone who contradicts my Critic, you see, is basically paying me a compliment, whereas anyone who contradicts my Wise Self—a part of me I want to impress and am still getting to know—has the capacity to wound me deeply.)
Fixating on "How to Share the Deck" gave me an evergreen excuse to keep tinkering and building and refining. I was writing about it in January of 2022. I've mentioned it in Rambles and blog posts and conversations with friends. Every time I've had an experience that makes me feel like now is the time, I've been sideswiped by caregiving exhaustion or other creative projects. And then I'd judge myself, and set my standards higher, and go on not sharing.
So what changed?
A bunch of things. Christina Tran wrote an invaluable footnote about choosing to publish her latest project on Substack, because sometimes the power of the work outweighs the moral purity of the platform. Ezra Spier has been heartbreakingly generous in sharing his experiences with Long Covid, which has reminded me that my limited capacity isn't a moral failing. Christopher Noxon is helping me move into a space of my own in Ojai, so I can regain a sense of autonomy while staying close enough to care for my dad. My uncle Jonty sat with me last week and helped me figure out why it feels so existentially terrifying to telegraph security, abundance, and confidence at a time in my life when I often feel scared, small, and needy in the face of mortality and loss.
And then there's the deck itself.
There are so many cards in it that point me back towards trusting this process; trusting all of you.
I'm leaping into this now because I celebrated my birthday last week and got naked in a creek. Because I got tired of being scared. Because there are big changes afoot, and I miss being in community with you all, and I want to see what's coming next for me.
I'm sharing because this life and this creative practice are tidal in nature; they ebb and flow, wax and wane, cycling between privacy and intimacy. This is natural and right and good.
So let's see where this fluctuation takes us.
If you made it this far, I'll reiterate: cards are going up daily on Instagram for the next couple weeks at least. I'm giving myself permission to switch venues after that if I find being on social media more life-draining than life-giving. (In the immortal words of @dasharez0ne, JUST WALK OUT you can leave!!!)
The thing I'm most excited about is the $18 guided class tier here on Patreon, which will remain open until August 14th. You can adjust your pledge temporarily or, if you're currently a follower or non-Patreon, sign up from scratch.
To current Patrons: thank you, so much, for supporting me all these years as I've ruminated on this and allowed it to grow into what it needs to be. It is a gift beyond measure.
<3
Lucy
Comments
Lucy Bellwood
Ohh it is SO hard (and valuable!) to discern the difference between these voices. I know the struggle well after three years of dithering over releasing this. Two things that might help: the class is going to have a lot of flexibility built into it. If doing your own 100 Day Project sounds like too much, THAT'S REASONABLE! 100 days is a lot. There will be frameworks for making smaller decks, or even making no deck at all. My belief is that making space for these parts of ourselves at any scale is transformative, even if it's just showing up for one Zoom call and spending an hour on it and then never coming back. The second thing is that you're welcome to do just that: only attend one session! Downgrade that pledge! If a month (or less!) is enough, you'll know 💛
Ben Hatke
100% overjoyed to see this one being revealed to the world.
I love a physical deck of cards & I am so excited for this one to eventually reach me, in it's own slow way. I want to sign up for the 18$ tier, but I'm trying to figure out if the "oh, no, don't" voice in my head is a genuine warning that it is more than I can take on right now, or if it's just a fear of signing up for vulnerability instead of remaining in my shell
