Introducing Hello Bobbie

formerly “bobbie,” and a welcome to new subscribers!

ABOUKIR, Captain’s Quarters (2018) by Julio Larraz

Hello friends!

I’ve changed the name of my Substack so as to no longer be confused with the amazing baby formula brand, Bobbie. I didn’t want to let go of bobbie, a name that has grown on me so much (my son's nickname), so I added a hello to the front. So here it is, Hello Bobbie! I’m so excited to continue sharing my work with you all under my new name.

The format of my newsletter will remain the same: personal essays that display an obscene amount of vulnerability, while attempting to capture my ongoing fears, curiosities and wonders, and as you may have noticed lately, some grade school level poetry. 

I’ll use this re-introduction as a way to express gratitude over this newsletter. My newsletter has allowed me to do many things, but first and foremost, it has allowed me to call myself a “writer,” something I never would have been able to do without it. My newsletter is a place where I can practice different formats, try new things, and push my curiosity to a place beyond measure. I echo Ocean Vuong when he says, “When I write, I feel larger than the limits of my body.”

On my best days, writing is an act of self-care. In the same way that I crave a massage or a long walk amidst the yellow leaves, I’ll crave writing time. I fantasize about what my perfect writing practice looks like: being peacefully awoken to the lulling of newborn hatchlings, whose nest rests right outside my window. I’ll get out of my bed, at my leisure, after a full 9 hours of REM sleep, to head to the kitchen for coffee. I’ll sit at my desk, still not a noise to be heard throughout the house, to read and eventually write. My cup of coffee will magically refill itself, and maybe a bacon-egg-and-cheese will suddenly appear next to my laptop. After 7 hours of writing in silence I will have produced the most self-aware, thought provoking essay, that every reputable Lit Mag will eventually begin to beg me relentlessly to have me write for their publication.

This obviously is just a fantasy, and it has NEVER been a way I’ve gotten any writing done, and what I produce hardly ever pleases me. I dont believe writing can happen like this! Generally, my writing practice can be very bad, and it rarely ever feels like self-care. To be infinitely curious about the world sometimes you have to be closed off to other things and you have to carve out semblances of time in the “in-betweens” of these things. My surges of creativity is nurtured in the in-betweens, and unfortunately, the people closest to me will be on the receiving end of this. Sometimes, clarity strikes at the most inopportune times. Sometimes I have to yell at my toddlers, while they are enjoying Ms. Rachel, to say “HEY WRITE THIS DOWN QUICK!” Only to suddenly come to terms with the fact that they are only 4 and 2 years old, and do not know how to write. Sometimes I have to completely ignore my husband, while pretending to pay attention, only for him to call me out and say “Where did you go? You’re certainly not with me.”

That’s the thing about writing, I’ve built a place all my own. Other people can't join in on this process nor can they contribute to it until I figure out what in the world I’m trying to say. So until then, while I’m undergoing the grueling task of making my thoughts tangible, my mind could be anywhere at any time. And for better or for worse, my mind drifts a lot. Curiosity cannot be tamed, it can’t fit into finite blocks of time. So, technically, I am always writing, always thinking, always trying to put language to my thoughts in the best way I know how.

The month of October has given me 122 new subscribers, and it’s been so exciting to welcome people into my little world! Thank you for seeing me and valuing my words enough to ingest them on a weekly basis! I really hope you like it here. This is my place to be anything but normal.

Normalcy is a blasphemous cloak, and it’s a cloak I wear on most days during the week: during pick up and drop off, during playdates, during birthday parties, or during trips to the grocery store. But when I sit in front of my beloved laptop, and let my fingers move throughout the keyboard to make words that ultimately build out into sentences, I am at my most free. I have built this newsletter as a place to mark my growth: writing and sharing pieces that I need to abandon so I can move on to my next ambiguous thought. Maybe, if I write enough I can literally expand beyond the limits of myself, maybe this is something I’m trying to subconsciously do. I’m making a space for myself to grow as big as I want, and hopefully for you too. Hopefully when I write something you can see yourself in it too. That’s my bucket list item, that’s my intention. 

I wanted to use this influx of new subscribers as an opportunity to point to some posts I’ve written in the past that I think are pretty awesome:

Hello Bobbie, did you know this summer I turned into a mermaid and came back to dry land so that I can tell the tale?

Hello Bobbie, did you know I feel suffocated by the expectations of beauty and social media, so I wrote about my anxieties which

Jessica DeFino

shared on her epic newsletter The Unpublishable?

Hello Bobbie, did you know the last time I had a girls night someone called my ass “juicy” and I’m still reeling over it ‘til this day?

The other thing that’s happened since starting my newsletter is that it’s helped me rid myself of shame. Shame, a construct that society forces you to feel, usually following comparison, is made-up. Shame is a scam that forces beautiful art to hide inside laptops, dresser drawers, or maybe even underground! Imagine all the beautiful letters that are floating somewhere in the middle of the sea, or a journal that could be buried under a tree somewhere. The thing about shame is that it’s convinced us we are not all talented and deserving artists, worthy of expression. Shame is the outlier that should be banned from every artists subconscious. I hate shame because of all the art we will never see. 

To be an artist, one must be absolutely shameless. One must market the sh*t out of this unique, special thing you made (which I’m trying to do more of.) The last time my husband read something I put out into the world, he mentioned it had a lot of curse words. The thing about being completely shameless is that I, for better or worse, didn’t even notice the amount of curse words it had. For a quick second I was even like, Who? Me? No way! I’m too refined. I’m too polished and pure! But he was right, this piece does have an insane amount of curse words, and I was feeling particularly charged that day. 

Speaking of my husband, he doesn't read this newsletter as much as I’d like him to. Sometimes that brings me solace, the fact that I can expand beyond my limits on a page, without having to wonder how he feels about it. But at the same time, I am learning that a big part of being a person who writes is that you have to force it down other peoples throats…gently. It’s a delicate dance, to gently coerce people to consider your art. It’s something I’m still trying to figure out. In general I believe we should be open to as many different art forms as possible. It’s not only for the creators benefit but also for the perceiver. 

I say this because of my all-time favorite thing: feelings. Feelings need to constantly move through us, it’s the only way we know we’re fully alive, so I constantly remind my husband HEY LET'S FEEL TOGETHER! READ THIS OK? PLEASE? MY WET DREAM IS FOR US TO SULK TOGETHER OVER THIS THING I WROTE.

Our dialogue, on any given day, goes something like this:

“Hey babe, I know you’re busy providing for the household and making sure the car has gas and fixing the water pressure but did you read my latest newsletter?” 

*husband thinks*

“It’s about chickens”

*husband continues to think, perhaps trying to find a distraction”

“Or the one about the moon?”

*husband continues to think, I begin to visually see his wheels turn, by the way he’s furrowing his eyebrows*

“It’s about how no one really knows themselves until they've been stricken with grief.”

*husband continues to think, likely pretends to be deaf*

“Oh you didn't get to it? No worries if not! I’ll just resend it.”

This brings me to another important point. People will refuse your art on purpose. People shield themselves from art, because art is a mirror. Art will show you things about yourself that may scare the sh*t out of you. The purpose of art is to reveal to us all of our toxic programming. So when art moves you, it could be a really scary but transformative thing. Not everyone is looking to transform, some people have their walls up to let beautiful and painful things bounce off of them, and that's something I’m okay with. This falls under the process of finding the right community, part of finding really honest people. The people who are transforming piece by piece, word by word, essay by essay, are the kind of people I hope to attract. If it’s one thing I want to shout from the mountain tops, it’s that we cannot continue to live without “sad” feelings or “dark” feelings or “cringe” feelings. Sometimes people are afraid of it, and I get it, I used to be that way, too. But now I drink the cringiest, saddest koolaid in town, and it’s cool to be on the other side of it.

And that’s the whole point! Isn’t it? Don’t we have to force ourselves to sit with the muck and the sh*t and the dark clouds that hover over us, until we churn something out of it? To call myself a “good” writer would mean I am properly evoking whatever emotion I am feeling. If I am crying oceans of tears, I want my reader to cry along with me. If I am leaping for joy and screaming “huzzaa!!!” from the shower, I want my reader to do it too. I want to do my best at feeling everything to its fullest, while encouraging you to make yourselves comfy and cozy within the depths of my mind. It’s my way of reminding you that humanity exists, and that we are all yearning and craving and fantasizing for more life. 

Not to keep hooting and tooting this noisy horn of mine, but this newsletter is the realest. This newsletter is the REALEST DEAL. This newsletter is a celebration of creating amidst living a life that is sometimes dull and unnoticeable. Because thanks to this newsletter I’ve thrown myself a big party. Not the typical party you may think of, but instead a party full of self-reflection, authenticity, storytelling, a party that QUESTIONS EVERYTHING, while trying to grow to my fullest potential throughout it all!

Anyways, if you don’t know, I'm a mother to two toddlers. I say that sarcastically because of course you know! I beat the Motherhood topic down with a stick, turn it over, and beat it some more. As a person in her early years of parenting, it feels like I am living through something significant; like this internal reckoning that the kids put me through on a daily basis is leading towards something big. Like, 10 years from now I look forward to who I’ll be, and I’m looking forward to getting to know future me at her my deepest level. Mothers take all of the sh*t, hold accountability for all family members, then what? Sometimes I ask myself what this is all for, since my kids don't owe me anything, but I owe them everything. It’s a mind game and I’m actively churning all these things out.  

In general, motherhood requires a selflessness that I do not agree with. I do believe that it takes a village to raise kids but I also think society discourages the village in every way possible. The inception of this newsletter began with this: the intense loneliness I felt postpartum, the fact that I had no village, no matter how badly I craved one. At the same time, in retrospect, during postpartum I was undergoing an enormous surge of creativity and curiosity, with nowhere to put it all. So, fast forward to now, here we are. Hello!

You know what’s cool? Talking about these things.

You know what’s not cool? My toddlers wake up at 4:30 in the morning, 6 days a week. It’s unfortunate that I have to be on the receiving end of their corrupt internal clock. But I have to trust these minor conundrums will steer me to something remarkable because I am building something so that it does happen. Consider this newsletter a manifestation of a lonely mother laying down the foundation for… something.

I feel fortunate that my writing has brought about really honest people (the honest people I mentioned earlier.) It assures me that honest people exist, that they're out there, waiting to be found. The hard part lies in finding them. Honest people come around after putting in honest work: you have to take a leap of some kind, you have to fall face first into the universe and pray the universe catches you, holds you, embraces you. I think I’ve fallen a hundred times into a lonely abyss where no one has caught me, even less held me. But I took my biggest leap (this newsletter), and then slowly but surely, a wave of honest people have revealed themselves. We all pretend to a certain extent, I know I sure do, but my honest writer friends don’t. My honest writer friends do not practice normalcy or complacency whatsoever, and I act like a giddy little school girl around them. Because who the f*ck wants to be around normal people all the time? Being around normal people is the antithesis to art! 

What I’ve noticed about sharing my writing is that I have no idea how it’s going to be perceived, even less how it will perform. Actually, the essays I spend the least amount of time on get the most engagement. It's not to say that I can whip up the next Big Magic with the snap of a finger, but it is a reminder to not take myself so f*cking seriously. It’s just words on a page, it’s just a way for me to feel seen, it’s just a way for me to work though the unexplainable, it’s just a way for me to feel larger than my body, it’s just a way for me to let you all inside.

So finally, I’m Stephanie, first-generation Cuban-American, mom of two, former fashion editor, trying to lean into my writing as much as possible. I’m trying to sit at the same table as Brene Brown, I’m trying to knock Big Magic off its massive ranking, I’m trying to Eat Pray Love the sh*t out of this newsletter. This place reveals who I really am, slowly but surely, by the words that show up on this page, and I’m so grateful to have other eyes on here too.