Introducing Aspyn Wilde

Sharing this adventure for the past two years has been amazing.

Aside from opening up our bank accounts and our lives to you as the reader, it has provided the most beautiful archive of stories and baby steps that have been amazing to reread.

But privacy concerns are real, especially with our two little girls and the extent of financial information we choose to share online.

(I shared about this in my recent article, This is Project Incognito.)

So it came down to two options:

One, I could write under my real name and keep my face public, but I’d have to stop sharing numbers, edit my content, and dilute what I wanted to talk about.

Two, I could write under a pen name. This would give me the privacy I wanted, and I could freely write on detailed concepts with numbers that actually made an impact and helped other people.

So here’s what I’m doing about it.

From now on, I’m writing The Freedom Diaries as Aspyn Wilde.

Nothing else is changing. Not the honesty, not the numbers, not the willingness to show you the version of this life that isn’t curated for a highlight reel.

Just the name on the byline.

I want to tell you a little about why I chose it, because it wasn’t random.

Aspyn comes from the aspen tree. What looks like a grove of separate trees is often one connected root system underneath.

Deep, shared, quietly holding everything up. That felt right. Our family is the root system under everything I write here.

Whatever name sits on the byline, the roots underneath it don’t change.

Wilde is the other half. The freedom-chasing part.

The part that walked away from a conventional plan in our thirties and said, “Not like this”, then spent years since building something looser and more ours.

Wilde is the documenting-it-anyway part. The part that keeps writing and giving words to the story of our life as it unfolds.

Put together, that’s the whole point of this blog, really. Deep roots. Wide open freedom. Both at once.

So I want to be really clear about what this isn’t. It isn’t me stepping back. It isn’t a signal that something went wrong.

It’s the opposite, actually. It’s me making sure I can keep going.

Keep sharing the real cash flow breakdowns, the honest wins and flops, the actual texture of raising kids while building a life that doesn’t look like everyone else’s, without that honesty putting my family’s privacy on the line.

Same voice. Same numbers. Same willingness to show you the parts that aren’t polished.

So going forward, you'll see Aspyn Wilde on new posts.

Some of the older ones will get updated too, as I work through them.

Thanks for being here for it.

Aspyn Wilde