This week’s guest post comes from Sarah Sadie. Sarah arrived on the Substack scene earlier this year, and brought her whole self (plus parts unknown) to her writing. Her essay ponders the all-too-common tension of nurturing the smallness of a seedling versus growing bigger, as seedlings are apt to do. Sarah poses the question many writers find themselves tussling with; how can one embrace the small whilst dancing with the ever-present urgency of growth? How can we push beyond our own boundaries in the name of connection and expansion on our terms?
Reading Sarah’s essay is reminiscent of meandering through a wild garden with a watering can, tending to seeds in dark soil, pulling a weed here, pruning a flower there, watching bees dance from bloom to bloom. It’s a meditation on starting over, while also having the courage to step out. So come, let us meander through the wild garden together.
SmallStack is pleased to welcome
!Beyond Questions Big and Small
By Sarah Sadie — An Inviting Space
Hello beautiful human.
That’s how I start each of my daily letters to the world, my “small made things,” and by now it’s habit and comfort, both. As I begin this essay, partly to get past the block of a blank screen and into the roll and flow of language, I imagine us, you and me, sitting across a table from each other in some café or coffee shop, sharing our stories and notes. Because we’re all seekers, readers, hunters and gatherers, sharing experiences and signs along the way. What works? What helps? What should we look out for?
Although it’s strange to me to admit this, since in my heart I’m still a beginner with each new page, I’ve been writing a loooong time. Decades. It’s true I’m new here (I created An Inviting Space February 1 of this year). I knew about Substack for a while, even subscribed to a few publications, but I didn’t think about creating my own until recently. I started very small, promising myself I’d try it for a month (which happened to be the shortest month of the year). Now it’s the start of a new school year, and here I still am, astonished to be here. Delighted. Intrigued. Grateful.
But let me back up and introduce myself. (This is one of the things I love about this platform, the space and invitation to digress, back up, reverse, noodle around, riff and experiment with theme and variation. We live in what feels like a rather flat and declarative time, but around here we can play and expand what’s possible. Opening ourselves back up into language and complexity. I’ve learned by now the path through life for any of us is not linear. Maybe the writing and expression shouldn’t be either?)
Hello. My name is Sarah.
I’m a poet and writer who stopped writing altogether for a few years in order to explore other roles: community builder, creativity coach, dance teacher, workshop and circle facilitator, entrepreneur. I wrote a lot in those roles but didn’t count much of it as “writing,” as I wasn’t wearing the same hat and didn’t feel the same freedom to lose myself into language.
There are many ways to talk about why I stopped writing. Maybe the easiest choice for this morning: I had said all I had to say in that phase of life. I’d exhausted my subject matter thoroughly and needed to wait until I was in a new place with new windows and views. Well, between life and me, we made that happen. Now, in a new house, new community, with graduated kids and a divorce under the bridge, I have time and reason to ask once again:
Where am I? How did I get here? What’s the news from the backyard this morning?
Those feel like simple questions. But transitions and transformations can be difficult passages with plenty of grief and confusion. My journal felt heavy. Sometime in mid-January of this year, I began to wonder what it would feel like to recover delight and enjoyment. To find fun again. Here’s a few lines captured from the pages of my January 15–16 entry:
I’m at Pause, as I consider how to become creative again with welcome, shelter, invitation and wild wonder. Today what comes up is a Substack around waging peace and hope. Each day a brief prompt or invitation. Listen to someone’s story. Say thank you to your feet. Etc.
I kept writing into the possibility:
How does that feel in my body? I notice an uplift in my core. Solar plexus. A slight buzz in my head. Possibilities, ease. My feet start to stretch. My body likes this idea. There’s room for humor, hope, fierce resilience. There’s room for balm and calm…How to start small? How to start so small it feels sustainable?
I noticed how I started with a desire for smallness, and also, a wish to connect with others through prompts and encouragement. It wasn’t so much about the writing as it was about reaching out to find other like-minded, like-hearted people. Looking back, I can see how I’d lost connection to my interior places, partly because of dramatic life events, partly because I’d been exploring many other roles that took me away from the private deep forests of mind that every writer must tend and attend. Last winter, I started with my feet and, day by day, returned to my body, my situation, understanding where I was in the world quite literally.
I began to work out where my boundaries existed. What did I want to say? How did I want to say it? What did I want to hold private?
I noticed how I started with a desire for smallness and, also, a wish to connect with others through prompts and encouragement.
One word at a time, I slowly began to put myself back together again. I explored Substack, read the work of others and eagerly subscribed. I noticed that I was enjoying reading again. I kept writing, sending my “small made things” out into the world. My focus shifted from expanding beyond simple prompts and suggestions for my readership and myself, to noticing the world and reporting back on both exterior and interior wanderings. At the same time my sentences grew longer, more complex. My themes expanded and morphed. I discovered ways to write about all the things I had not been able to say for so long.
An Inviting Space invited me back to language, to remember passion and curiosity, and to rediscover myself as a writer. Over the days and months, without realizing it, or knowing what I was doing at the time, I fell in love with the world of writing all over again.
As of yet, there is no ending to this story. I’m still in the middle of the muddle. I’m still emerging. I’m still growing. I’m still figuring all of this out.
Maybe you are too?
What I notice now as a dedicated and (still) very small stacker: there’s an inherent tension I feel pulling at me. And I suspect this is a tension that all creatives can relate to, no matter our chosen medium or craft.
On the one hand, I want to stay small as I started out. It’s the place “where everybody knows your name,” as the old Cheers song put it. There’s a sense of shelter, protection, and safety in being small. It’s a private playground with very low stakes. I can mess up. I can send out my rough drafts and not worry too much. It’s also a completely supportive and friendly space. These readers are here, reading my words because they know me already. They care about me. I’m writing to friends. Which means I feel safe to be more intimate in what I share, if I choose. I can be vulnerable with less risk.
For me, staying small means staying real. Keeping myself honest, reminding myself to remain vulnerable.
Yet, on the other hand…I want to grow. I, too, feel the pull and attraction of all those “How I Increased My Readership” and “How I Went from 20 to 2,000 Subscribers in a Month” articles. I click into most of them. I’ve considered signing up for programs and mentors who specifically target audience growth. Maybe I still will.
Why would I do this?
Here across the imaginary table from you, let me explore my answers, be honest and vulnerable for a moment.
There are practical reasons to want to grow bigger, such as wanting more money for my writing (no shame in that). The math is pretty simple: to get more paid subscribers I need more subscribers, period. Also, paid or not, I do want more readers. Doesn’t every writer on some level want more people reading her work? Maybe it’s the Leo in me, but I want to be part of the party and part of the conversation. I want more scope and influence in my chosen platform. I want my voice to matter in some way. And in order to matter, it has to be heard.
Dear Reader, I want to be heard. Don’t you?
Playwrights want to fill the theater. Musicians want to maximize their downloads. Chefs want waiting lists for tables. We all want buzz. Surely this isn’t unusual or unexpected, even if it is uncomfortable at times.
If you’re like me, those two opposing urges, staying small versus growing bigger, are at loggerheads.It’s an internal tug-of-war and can be exhausting. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. The emotional back-and-forth leaves me unfocused and unable to make real goals for myself. It clouds my intentions and saps my energy.
Whew.
My solution at the moment: move beyond the focus on numbers and understand my true motivations. To redefine both ideas for myself. What do these things mean for me? How can I align with both of them?
Asking these questions means I have to dig beneath the easy answers. That’s when things start to get interesting.
What do I value about small?
For me, staying small means staying real. Keeping myself honest, reminding myself to remain vulnerable.
That means remembering how much I don’t know. Avoiding posing as the expert in the room, even as I learn all over again how to acknowledge and embrace my own authentic experiences. I can’t tell you what we’re supposed to be doing here, but I do know I’ve been through some stuff. I bet you have as well.
Through my words, I want to make a space for us to not know together. And to slowly, post by post, person by person, encourage all of us to get more comfortable with not knowing more than we know. It’s a humble goal, creating and holding that space, but it feels like something I truly want to do and can keep doing for a long time. Sustainability is important.
Yet, what do I value about growing bigger?
While I feel the draw of numbers, I know there’s more to it than stats. Perhaps growing can be reframed to mean experimenting. Writing longer posts. Stretching in new directions thematically. Adding in new links, audio, or other fun things. Trying stuff. Testing headlines. Exploring how prose might be shaped like a poem, and what variations on that question are possible? When do we throw grammatical rules to the side?
Growing can mean reaching for connections that move me beyond my own stack. Like writing this for SmallStack, for instance. Maybe growing bigger means growing in capacity from what I know, what I can do, what I’ve learned.
Understanding these deeper motivations, the tension between staying small and growing larger, resolves into intention (with the lovely play on words): to continue stretching myself in new directions, as they arise and feel right, and through this exploration and curiosity to stay vulnerable, connected, and in a place of “not knowing” and brave experiment.
In this, big and small work together become complementary ideas that keep me right on the edge, exploring the liminal estuary spaces, where the most interesting things almost always happen.
Over at An Inviting Space, I believe reading is an interactive sport, and paid members receive a direct invitation to help them deepen into the material with every “small made thing” post. So, I leave you with an invitation to think about what these words and ideas mean for you, once we get past the headlines and the emotions and all the noise:
What is staying small and what is growing bigger for you, in your life today, where you are, as you are? What do these ideas mean for you? Where do they point? Maybe we’re talking about writing. Maybe we’re talking about creating. Maybe we’re simply talking about getting from Wednesday to Thursday at our jobs, with our families, in our moments of solitude. How can those two opposing ideas be brought into connection and relationship? And once you’ve found that connection, what comes next?
What comes next? No matter how small or how big, that is always the question.
I can’t wait to find out.
Sarah is a writer and poet who has published some books and taught some classes, led some workshops and facilitated some circles. She used to do more of that stuff and maybe someday she will again. Right now she’s getting the news from trees and letting the grass grow in her backyard. She lives in a small town in Wisconsin on the continental divide and grows tomatoes in five-gallon buckets.
A deep bow of gratitude to Sarah Sadie from the entire SmallStack Team for reminding us to pause and breathe in the newness of fresh starts all while embracing gentle growth. We’re here for it.
From our wild garden to yours,
The SmallStack Team
Sarah you are like my missing twin just kidding staying small I have been working on for seven years the luxury of retirement on a budget. I have learned so much about nature in the last few years I began to see stars at night this has happened because I was big I started several businesses I have one patent and one book I wrote three children who are now in their forties I have friends tell me all the time that they have such regrets at retirement that they wish they did this or that I tell them what about today take one small step ahh the world of small things is a wonderful world
Your writing style is so resonant with what you are saying… I definitely feel you in my spirit.