Honest to Love

Hey strangers.

It’s been eight months since I’ve written here. I stopped at a time when I was overthinking everything, feeling like I’d showed too many of my crazy cards as I tried to figure out decisions in real time and ended up feeling soooooo spun. It’s what I do before I launch a book, and it became too much for even me.

Not only that, but I also came to think I didn’t know what I was doing here. A friend told me they were unclear on my concept here, that it seemed to just be a platform to talk about my cat. 

First off, and no offense to that friend, but I fucking love my cat. My cat has become part of my personality. And my cat is so cool, I embrace that. 

(Just me and my cat personality doing Yoga with Adrienne in the morning)

But second off, this place actually isn’t a platform for my cat (even if she plays a starring role at times). The purpose of my Substack was to be a place of honesty, where I can drop down into real feelings and dilemmas and work things out in real time that may or may not stick in the future but are a very real part of my present. All within the safety of our community.

Basically, I have longed for the blogs of the past where we could go deep into honest things without being vilified by trolls, or risk being canceled, or fear turning people away when we veer from a specific personal brand (the kind of looks like everyone else). 

Eight months from when I last posted here, and my need for this hasn’t changed.

So let’s dive right in and begin with the huge things that have happened to me in the past eight months. 

I published two books

About the time I stopped posting here, I was getting ready to publish my book Masquerade Mistake. At the time, I was grappling with whether to write under a pen name or not because of something I read in a writing forum. Ultimately I decided to stick with my real name, because I love having all my books under the name I call myself. the pen name thing may still be a possibility for future books, but for now, I’m happy writing under Crissi Langwell. 

Masquerade Mistake was met by a warm audience, and it helped lead the way to my second book, Naked Coffee Guy, which is in the same Sunset Bay romance series. These books exist on a timeline when read in order, but the stories are independent of each other. You can learn about these books at crissilangwell.com/sunset-bay. 

What I learned is how books in a series can help the other’s success. People who clicked on Naked Coffee Guy also bought Masquerade Mistake, and vice versa. While I can still be considered a small-time author with a day job, these books have boosted my author career, and breathed new life into my backlist of books, as well. 

What I also learned is that I am still grappling with what comes next. Currently I’m working on the third book in the series (Savior Complex), which will be published this summer, and then Sunset Bay is done. But what’s next? I’m not sure. And I’m coming to peace with that answer — that I can focus on this current project without figuring out the next step.

Consider this a continuous conversation in this Substack space of honesty.

I healed my relationship with food

Six months ago, I finally realized I am powerless over food and I joined a 12-step program to address this. It was the best decision I could have made. After years of dieting, weight loss programs, food obsession, constant weight gain, and a diagnosis of pre-diabetes, I realized I could not keep going this way and something needed to change. All this time, I’d been working by my own power, and let me tell you, I am an expert at lying to myself. I believed I was eating healthy, and that the “occasional” snack shouldn’t have this kind of effect on me. I believed I couldn’t lose weight because I was premenopausal. I believed I was doing all the right things and was just destined to feel uncomfortable in my clothes, my joints, my mood, and my whole body. I believed it was normal to constantly have food noise, to not know how to stop a meal when I was satisfied, and to overthink a food item until it was out of the house (which meant I had to eat all of it for it to be gone). 

For an example, in March I wrote an ode to the breakroom jelly-filled donut that is still sitting in my drafts (because I was too scared to post it). Here’s an excerpt:

I tried to resist you. I tried to tell myself I didn’t need you. Honest truth is, I don’t even like you. But as long as you were in existence, I could not get you out of my mind. So I did the only thing that would rid me of your presence—I ate you. 

My program has helped me to quiet the food noise. It has helped me to be honest about my addictions and obsessions. It has helped give me sanity when faced with food, and boundaries that make me feel safe. It has helped me to enjoy social environments for the people, not for what they are serving. With the help of a sponsor, I have been working the steps, healing my relationship with food, and also healing my spiritual life and my relationship with God. 

And yes, I’ve lost weight. Enough that people notice. This feels good, but let me tell you, it’s nothing compared to the liberation I feel in my healing journey with food. 

Letters to Love

And the reason I’m back. I’ve heard lots more murmurings of people moving to Substack, wishing for a place that offers the same things I’m wishing for — a place of honesty. Social media has its benefits, but honesty is hardly one of them. You still have to live a filtered life. The more popular you get, the more trolls you have. There’s a need to ensure everything you put out there is palatable so that people will like you, which means hiding all the most honest parts of you. 

This place may have some of that, too. But for the most part, it still feels like it’s in its infant stage, where everything is new and unblemished and full of life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a place where people market themselves, trying to gain subscribers and turning them into paid subscribers. But, for the most part, this place seems to be one of honesty, creativity, inspiration, and celebration of the things that brings us individual joy. 

I was inspired today when I listened to Liz Gilbert on the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast, talking about her Letters to Love, and how she started a Substack in honor of these letters. Basically, her daily practice is to write a morning letter to Love, asking what Love wants her to know. And the answers that come back to her are so beautiful and inspiring, and have completely re-shaped her life. 

I plan to adopt this beautiful practice and make it my own.

On Liz’s Substack, she has invited other voices to share their own Letters to Love, thus sharing beautiful positivity and words of affirmation that only LOVE can do. And I am so inspired by Liz and these letters that her Substack became my very first paid subscription, just so I don’t miss a thing. 

Find it below:

And it also brought me back to here. 

Because this is a public place of honesty, one where I come here with no agenda but to tell my truth and invite you along for the ride. A place where maybe you’ll see things in my life that might unearth something in yours, or where I can gleam inspiration from you as a part of my community. 

So thank you for joining me in the beginning, and thank you for sticking around. Let’s do this. 

What I’m Listening To

For old time’s sake, let’s dig into the music archives and pull out one of Crissi’s current Spotify favorites. This Brain Food playlist is a massage to the brain, and served as one of my favorite writing playlists while I was writing Savior Complex. Seriously, I’d turn this on and the tones would vibrate through my head and allow me to focus like nothing else. Magic.

I don’t just write rambling blog posts, I also write novels. Find them all here.