The Missing Jewel: What Glennon Doyle and Luke Bateman Got Wrong About Community

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a neighborhood built of starter homes and middle-income houses. The people who lived there were working folks, who had saved, sacrificed and taken risks to open themselves up and build a house there. They had chatty streets where the best feeling in the world was a neighbor stopping by for tea.

One day, a wealthy woman pulled in with a moving van, took up a corner lot, set up a mansion that had been built elsewhere, and started throwing parties so large and loud the neighbors couldn’t hear themselves think. The woman felt her arrival at the neighborhood was going to make it special. But she took up a lot of the parking spaces and walked up and down the street with a bullhorn disturbing the peace.

When the neighbors who had lived there for years complained about the noise, the woman pulled up her house, told her friends the neighborhood felt bad to her, and she was the victim of the situation. She left as quickly as she arrived, leaving the residents with the wreckage while she crafted the narrative for her friends.

Across the mighty ocean, in another neighborhood, there was a land built of beautiful stone houses centered around a rock quarry. To build their house the people in that land had to go to the quarry, and dig up the stones one by one, day by day. They had to learn how to build a home, craft and send hundreds of permit applications, wait incredibly long periods of time, and sometimes their house would be blown up, and they would have to start again.

One day, a handsome prince, who admired the stone houses, appeared. He was given land, and a beautiful two-story mansion without ever lifting a finger. When the others began to complain about the disparity between their struggle and his, the prince found himself on the defensive and less welcome in the land than he expected. The residents grew disheartened and wondered if it was even worth it to go dig up the stones at all.

If only these two people knew there was a magic jewel that could have made both situations better, and been the source of goodness and creativity in place of blaming and disappointment. Does such a jewel exist? Of course it does. In Buddhism we call that jewel Sangha - one of the three jewels we take refuge in (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha). In other places, we call it simply “community.”

Glennon Doyle’s Substack Fiasco

Full disclosure - I’m not a big fan of Glennon Doyle’s work (I know, I know, unpopular opinion). I’ve been told I should be, which is probably a part of why I am not. I have no issue with who she is as a person or her life path and choices (other than I wish she didn’t treat lesbians like we were a small group of women hiding in the back room of a fish store until she discovered us.).

I think she wants to bring more good than harm to the world and her writing skills are incredible. I used to read Momastery back in the day when blogs were “the thing.” As each book has followed, however, I see less originality and introspection and more “self” and cliche. She has long struggled with intersectionality, incorporating white feminism and colonialist practices (when someone corrected her pronunciation of savasana, a Sanskrit word in the yoga community, she laughed it off saying, “whatever, it’s just a big word” missing the fact that savasana, a sacred term, carries deep cultural weight and deserves respect.). She has tried to correct and address those concerns, only to fall into them again. As Suzanne Vega would say, “It’s a one time thing, it just happens a lot.”

The centering on her experiences makes her read as someone who lacks empathy. I find her more “relatable” than wise. It’s not bad to be relatable - in this day and age, it’s pretty wonderful, but it should not be confused with steady, studied, practiced wisdom. The parasocial relationship she has with fans and the way she calls them “my church” is also a bit creepy.

In short, she’s like the person in a friend group who goes through a life change, uses established sources to get through the change, and spends every dinner party telling people what she learned as if no one has ever said it before. Then she goes through another change…

A month after leaving social media because of its toxicity, on March 17, 2025 Glennon Doyle started a publication on Substack, a community made largely of emerging writers and artists. She imported over 200,000 subscribers, put up an immediate paywall, and began a full media blitz on the system. When an open letter circulated gently suggesting her entrance into Substack was, at the very least, tone deaf and inelegant, it built momentum quickly. On April 30, 2025 Glennon closed her Substack claiming it “felt bad” and that she was “bullied” off the platform. She claimed she left to “protect her community.”

The open letter was thoughtful, and written softly by a writer who was also a fan of hers. There was no “call for her to leave” or bullying in it in any way. It did generate a lot of likes (1.8K) and reposts as well as discussion about the effects of large-scale writers in the community (there are plenty of bestsellers who integrated respectfully and well into Substack). Glennon Doyle wasn’t “bullied out” of Substack, she was “called in” to be responsible and empathetic to a community that didn’t belong to her solely.

How The Jewel of Sangha Would Have Helped

In Buddhism, a sangha is a collection of students that learn from the same teacher or who are part of the same school. It is a community of practitioners. Sanghas function on mutual respect, listening, and understanding that everyone in the group is connected to one another. Sangha doesn’t mean “followers” - it means “companions” - people who walk together. That is the very essence of community and what the Substack community strives for. It doesn’t matter if you have 8 subscribers or 8,000 - what matters is we are in a shared space.

Glennon arrived like a headliner. She had a paid team. A launch strategy. A platform-to-platform funnel. What she didn’t have was humility, openness, or curiosity. She saw Substack as a platform for her community to support her message, without ever considering the larger body of writers who had a functioning community before she got there.

When people said, “Hey, you’re making a lot of noise in a space where we’re trying to hear each other,” she didn’t pause. She didn’t say, “Thank you. I see that. I want to understand more. I want to be part of your world.” Instead, she left, called the critics “mean,” and told her fans she was the victim. It is a surprising response for someone who has "resilience" and “grit” as the centerpiece of her message.

That’s where she needs community most. I think Glennon Doyle has good intentions, but she’s gotten so isolated by a fan base who doesn’t challenge her that she no longer has the ability to hear anything that isn’t cheering her on. She felt bullied by a swell of sentiment that she might not be the best thing ever to happen on Substack. She retreated to her own kingdom, shutting out a chance to learn.

Luke Bateman’s Good Fortune

Full Disclosure: I had no idea who Luke Bateman was until this controversy arose. I am not Australian, not a rugby fan, don’t do BookTok (no matter how often my publisher slides that piece of the pie toward me), and well, let’s face it - pretty hunks on The Bachelor aren’t really where my interests lie.

Bateman, the handsome former rugby player, reality TV star, and farmer had built TikTok gold when he got involved with BookTok, gaining 173K fans on the platform sharing his love for books, particularly the fantasy genre. Looks, tractors, books - what could go wrong?

One month after his BookTok appeared on the scene, Bateman happily announced he had been given a Two Book Deal from Atria publishing (a division of Simon & Shuster) based upon an “idea” that he had for a series. No manuscript. No prior publications. No query. Just a pitch.

Every well written volcano on earth erupted. 🌋

In a world where it can take years to write a manuscript considered appropriate for traditional publishing, hundreds of queries to agents, gallons of time between queries, and the need to build up a substantial social media presence in a crowded field - he walked in the door with an idea and got a deal. Do they even know if he can write? Does that matter?

Writers across the globe registered outrage and disappointment. His good fortune laid bare a reality most of us don’t like to remember:

Writing isn’t a meritocracy. Books don’t get published because they deserve to, or because they are the best. They get published with a bias toward the connected, the attractive, and expected returns. Publishing isn’t personal, it’s business. But to the people who work for years to be one of the 1 - 2% of writers who get traditional publishing deals, watching a guy wander in with a pitch and sign the contract is scalding.

Bateman tried to help the situation only to make it worse when he disclosed, “I’ve truly wanted to write a book my whole life. It’s something I really wanted to do.”

So, why didn’t he? The community of writers is made up of people who not only have wanted to write their whole lives - they actually have done it. Some write two or three novels before they get an agent, let alone a deal. By making it clear he didn’t even start writing until he had a contract, the division between him and the community grew even larger.

How The Jewel of Sangha Would Have Helped

To his credit, Bateman hasn’t run away from the massive criticism of both him and the publisher or cried about the sound and loud rejection of this news. He later expressed regret that what he thought was “the best news” turned out to be divisive. He acknowledged the privilege that he had in the publishing world, and desire to bring more attention to marginalized voices. He reminded critics “a rising tide lifts all the ships.”

Sangha in community is about shared growth. If he had not only wanted to be a writer, but had actually been a part of the community of writers - doing the work (first), sharing the experiences of getting stuck in the middle of a story, editing out paragraphs you really love, sweating through the pacing - it would have gone a long way toward getting an embrace instead of firestorm.

Writers uplift writers. We love to help each other, encourage each other and succeed. Hopefully as he actually starts writing the book, he can become a member of the community of creativity and not just a poster boy for a very broken industry.

Despite media spin, I don’t think the criticism in these two cases is about jealousy, sexism, or lack of power that culminates in bullying. I think these are both examples of extremely large voices who imposed themselves into a community without taking the time to learn, respect, and understand the experiences and challenges of others.

People may write or create individually in artistic spaces, but there is always a “we” that holds it together. True community challenges us, changes us, and sometimes saves us. May all voices, big and small, find their place in it.