👏🏻Shame is regret slathered in spicy chili oil with guilt Krazy glued
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Hi, Friend. Jen Glantz here.
It is very odd of me to skip a Monday newsletter. But last week, I did. I’ve been writing this thing for a decade and I’ve practically never missed a week. Even when I was dealing with some heavy personal things, I found a way to show up. I once wrote a dozen of these Monday emails ahead of giving birth so that when Gemma came, I could take a few months off and be with her.
But during my time of writing this newsletter, I’ve moved further away from the person I hoped to come across (see: whole and perfect) and finally settled into my own messy realness (& that feels good).
If I can’t be honest with you, then I don’t want to enter your inbox.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been dealing with a health thing and haven’t been feeling my best. Rather than prioritize everything and everyone else, for the first-time in my life, I stuck my hand out for the pause button and pressed it. I canceled everything. I did the bare minimum. I spent my energy trying to get better and navigate my way through how I’m feeling. I’ll share more with you soon — but the biggest lesson I took from hibernating and feeling quite crummy is that:
I take very bad care of myself.
And I need to change that.
I am an emphatic people pleaser who is really good at giving 110% to everyone else. But when it comes to taking care of myself…….silence.
I need to change that.
Which is soooooooooooo easy to say.
But sooooooo hard to do.
Next week, I’ll dive into this more. But I’m curious about you.
Do you think you take good care of yourself? Like realllly good care?
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🛒: Things I loved so far this month:
Here is the link to my book!! Finally the Bride. Thank you for considering reading the book and for your support. There are so many ways to help an author — so here are some if you have a few mins to spare:
-Leave an Amazon review for the book! I want to try to get to 100. Can you help me? You can leave a review this in under 15-seconds here.
-Share the book with anyone in your world who might be in the mood for a rom-com with a lot of twists, laughs, and oddball moments.
-If you’re on Goodreads, a rating/review also helps a lot too!
This ginger tea has been my confidant these past two weeks. I love it. It’s so calming and has a hint of spice.
⏰: Let us not be scared of the work because it’s hard. Let us move the mountain because the mountain must move. -Danez Smith
Shame is regret slathered in spicy chili oil with guilt Krazy glued
A few weeks ago, I shared that my third book came out but I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about it. I could not even open up the box that is sitting next to my window with the book inside of it.
I realized why.
Shame.
There are honestly a million reasons why Finally the Bride should have never made it out of a word document on my computer.
Let me tell you and then show you a few:
The book started in 2019 as an experiment where I let millions of strangers vote on my wedding. They picked my dress, venue, color scheme, and etc. I started writing about that adventure along with stories from my life as a hired bridesmaid for strangers.
The wedding was planned for October 2020. The book proposal was sent out to every major publisher in the world in February 2020.
And then…you know what happened!! A global pandemic.
We canceled the wedding. I stopped the experiment.
Every major publisher rejected the book (here are some of their rejections👇)
It would have been an obvious choice to just cancel the book. But I felt called to keep writing. I decided to release the book on my own, chapter by chapter, until an actual wedding happened.
All our wedding plans shifted. We deleted this planned-by-strangers wedding, and instead, I started writing about the process of getting married and all the weird stories I'd seen on the job—about second-guessing getting a prenup and being told I would never find love by a psychic at a dinky Valentine's Day party.
I had most of the book written when we got married in 2021. COVID was still very much around us, so we decided to elope outside the coffee shop we had our first date. None of our loved ones, just a few friends, were there. It was a heavy decision to make and I carried so much guilt about that.
It took me a while to get over that guilt, so I paused writing. I really didn't know where to continue with it. Then 2022 happened and I was pregnant, saying "I have to finish this before I have a baby." Then 2023 happened and the baby came, and I thought "I have to finish this before she turns one." Then 2024 happened and she turned one, and the book made me feel sick to my stomach to look at again. I had no idea how I was even going to finish it.
But then in October, I thought if I don't do it by the end of this year, I have to toss it away. I couldn't be "finally the bride" almost a half decade since getting married. It was my final chance. So I dedicated five hours a week to getting it done, and I accomplished a lot—the book cover, hiring an editor, a formatter—etc. But the one part that took me forever to do was write. I thought I had just one more chapter left—the wedding—but I couldn't figure out what to say. I spent 5-hours just letting my fingers tap-dance on the keyboard. Nothing readable came out.
Then Gemma had this sleep thing where she was up 3-4 times a night, for hours at a time. During each of those times with her, I'd rock her in the chair and the words would just come to me. One chapter turned into a final three.
Anyway, there are so many reasons why this book should not have been finished.
But the biggest reason is: SHAME.
I felt so much shame around not finishing this book sooner. I felt guilty letting so much time pass and regretted how my own self-doubt and procrastination, and sadness that the original idea got sliced up by a pandemic and rejection letters from publishers. It was enough to make me completely quit writing books for a very long time.
Shame is powerful because it makes you do wacky things, like spend weeks staring at an unopened brown box with your own book inside of it or avoiding eye contact with every single person in your life when they ask about your book.
Shame is regret slathered in chili oil, the spice will make you stutter excuses and cough up smelly sighs. Shame is guilt Krazy glued onto your fingertips, pulling you inward, stopping you from ever starting again.
But through this I have learned what shame does not like.
Sunlight. Being exposed. Looking right into it’s beady little eyes and saying:
Not anymore. Nope.
I am over the ways you have come over me.
So goodbye.
I didn’t end up opening the box of books.
Gemma did.
And this is what happened:
Ilysm (thank you for reading all of this),
Jen Glantz, author of Finally the Bride (ahh!!!!!)
If you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack!
I love your heart and your honesty so much, Jen. Really proud of you for finishing the book and putting it into the world, and I can't wait to read it :)
I loved this 🤍what a feat to hold it in your hands. I have been experiencing so much resistance creatively, and this is the only time I’ve felt someone summed it up and put a name to it! Shame.