Yesterday, Beautiful Things Grow Here reached 3,000 subscribers.
I sat with that number for a while.
Three thousand people who chose to invite my words into their inbox. Three thousand lives that, at one point or another, crossed paths with mine.
That still feels impossible to write.
Every time I think about it, my mind goes back to the day I pressed publish for the very first time and wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake.
I remember staring at the screen, convinced I was talking into an empty room.
I wasn’t dreaming about reaching thousands of readers.
I just hoped that somewhere, there might be other people who understood the grief that comes from estrangement and losing people who are still alive. Or who knew the exhaustion of living in a body that never stopped hurting. Someone who understood the lasting effects of childhood abuse, and the courage it takes to build a life beyond survival.
I didn’t know if those words would ever find anyone.
Somehow, they did.
What I didn’t expect was how personal this would become.
Not the writing.
The people.
Sometimes I’ll receive an email from someone on the other side of the world who says they recognized themselves in a poem. Other times, a reader tells me they printed an essay and folded it into a notebook because they wanted to keep it close. I’ve had messages arrive from hospital rooms, from parked cars, from kitchen tables after everyone else had gone to bed.
I often think about those moments.
They remind me there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.
I picture someone opening an email because today feels especially heavy, hoping that maybe these words will meet them where they are.
Over the last 18 months, you’ve trusted me with stories that have stayed with me long after I’ve closed my laptop.
You’ve told me about relationships that fell apart. You’ve written about mothers you’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand. You’ve shared the harsh reality of chronic illness, and the complicated relief of finally feeling seen by someone who has lived through something similar.
Some of your messages have become part of me.
There are names I recognize the moment they appear in my inbox. There are comments I’ve read more than once because they arrived on exactly the day I needed them.
People sometimes thank me for my writing, and I never know what to say. But the truth is, you've carried me too.
There are mornings when writing feels impossible. My body hurts, my confidence disappears, and I wonder if I should leave the draft where it is and walk away.
Then one of you replies to one of my personal essays.
Or recommends Beautiful Things Grow Here to a friend.
Or tells me that something I wrote made you feel understood.
Every single time, it brings me back to why I began.
So today doesn’t feel like a celebration of a number.
It feels like a chance to stop for a moment and look around.
Somewhere along the way, this stopped feeling like a newsletter.
It became a community.
A place where people tell the truth about the parts of their lives they’ve hidden everywhere else.
I’ve watched complete strangers remind each other they’re not alone.
I’ve watched people find words they’d been searching for their whole lives.
There aren’t many places on the internet that feel like that anymore.
I certainly never expected to build one.
And I don’t take a single one of you for granted.
Thank you,
Debra 💕
Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or you subscribed last week, you’ve become part of the story of Beautiful Things Grow Here.
And I’m so grateful that our paths have crossed.
Before I go, I’d love to ask you how did you find Beautiful Things Grow Here?
I’d genuinely love to know.
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