All talk - no selling

No links. Just thoughts.

I have a habit of sitting down to write things and never finishing them. Today, I am sending them out unfinished. Because things don’t always have to be wrapped up nicely to be enjoyed.

No Excuses

From May 2024

I can’t (yes, I can) believe I completely skipped a newsletter in April. Thisis why you will never catch me charging for Substacks. My new boss (me) is always like “well, if you need me time - take it! You can send out a newsletter next week.” But I never do.

Whenever I sit down to write anything, I usually put my whole self into it. Which means, I always end up crying. Even my newsletter (if I am including an essay, not when I am talking about sales). Not a surprise because I am also the person who cannot complain or stand up for myself or loved ones without that ball in my throat forming. I have not felt like sitting down with my feelings, so I just avoided anything that would get me close to them.

But as we near closer to Mother’s Day, I knew I needed to sit with them. It is like working out. I know I will feel better once I do it. The time I take to reflect on my grief and memories of my mom help me feel like she is here. So I did that. Twice this week. An in-feed post on “Taking the Damn Picture,” the importance of taking the picture and keeping it.

And today I cried big ugly tears writing this essay on how grief never stays buried. Since growing in followers, I have had a harder time feeling “safe” on Instagram - people can be so mean. But taking two hours to write it all out left me feeling lighter.

What do you wear to a funeral?

From November 2023

I can never remember the day that my mom died. I cannot even remember when her funeral was. I just remember laying my head on the table during the meeting with the funeral director and thinking it was all a dream.

One of my mom’s favorite things to do was to go shopping for Rebecca. She would bring home a big bag of clothes and waltz in with her “hotel walk” - the happy strut she would have after going into a hotel late at night on a family roadtrip and finding out they had vacancy - man those were the days. She would hold up each outfit and we would look at them and ooh and ahh. I barely had to buy Rebecca clothes the first four years of her life.

It was after Thanksgiving in 2018 that she passed and I remember being so frustrated we had to plan so much and STILL figure out what to wear for Rebecca, my dad and myself. Do you know how hard it is to find a funeral outfit for a 4-year-old?! Because it was around Christmas time, I did end up finding a cute little blazer and shift dress for her. It was adorable. I knew just the person I had to call and tell.

I picked up my phone to call my mom and remembered why I was buying the dress in the first place. It was as if I inhaled a blizzards breeze into my lungs. I froze. I could not breathe. I called Missy to tell her and she said “I just had a breakdown in a Kohl’s.”

May 20, 2024 Update:

I put up a question box a few weeks ago asking what people were shopping for. I do not know why I put these up. I always get overwhelmed that I cannot help everyone. But as a marketer, I love to know what people need help with and how I could potentially help. I was surprised to see how many people needed outfits for a funeral. I guess it should not have surprised me that much, as I wrote the above essay in November as I was pondering what to wear to a funeral.

I always thought mid-life crises were an easy joke to insert into a movie or sit-com that would guarantee a laugh. A cliche about a buying a new car or leaving your wife to become a full-time DJ. And while those things do happen, the mid-life crisis is not as funny as I thought it would be. It sneaks up on you. You gradually stop going to as many weddings. You notice more lines under your eyes - and have your jowls always been this saggy? Then you pull out your go-to black dress for a funeral and think about how you have worn it a lot this year. Weddings replaced by funerals and celebrations of life. Divorce parties. Climbing down the corporate ladder. Wow. Life is short. Should I buy a turntable and mixer?

Family First, Always

April 2024

I started My Sister Made Me Buy It in November 2019 - I wanted to do something I always wanted to do, but was scared to try. My mom had been gone for a year and I made it through my first year of caregiving my dad as he was in and out of the hospital and rehab facilities 16 times that year - almost died at least three of those times. I was learning in real time how short life was, and why not risk being cringe to do something that brought me joy. That and I had A LOT of free time while spending time at the hospital or his house on nights and weekends

I get so sad when I think about how my mom never knew it existed. But I love knowing that my dad knew about it. And would get so excited about it. Before his decline, he would always talk to me about it. I told him I needed help building a website, so he bought “Wordpress for Dummies.” That is how he was. Always helping out others and his family. Anyone who ever knew him would always talk about how generous he was - whether it was with his time or money.

He never understood how I made money, but he did know that I was saving up my affiliate earnings to pay for a nurse to help us through the nights. At that time, it was going to cost us $28/hour for 10 hours a night. But he was not sleeping through the night - waking every hour or two. We were at our wits end and dreaded our nights with him. It took two years, but I was making enough to pay for a nurse three nights a week - a full night of sleep for each of us when it was our night. He passed away before we could get one set up. I used the money we had been saving to rent a house for all of us in Florida for two weeks the following February.

One of the things I am most grateful for is my brother and sister. I cry anytime I think about it because they are two people who mean the world to me and it is always so hard to put into words how much I love them. Of course we fight and disagree. But they are my world just as much as James and Rebecca. Because of that, they are also a part of My Sister Made Me Buy It. They each get paid a salary and have a percentage of the business. It has never been about the work they put into it, though. It is about carrying on my parents legacy. Giving a little bit of a safety net to the people they loved the most. I know they would be so proud of it. Family first. Always.

xx Sarah