A look back at Lover Girl Fall

Fall Reflections + NYC Film Club on Tuesday

Dec 08, 2024

Hello all of you,

My dedicated, wonderful, kind, generous readers and subscribers. Not a day goes by that I don’t step back, grateful for your support, investment, and interest as I gab and philosophize on the internet.

I was having a birthday meal with editor Sarah Sturm, a few days ago, and I was telling her that Hot Literati functions in seasons because that it quite literally how my mind works. Maybe it’s a byproduct of fashion cycles, going to the department store with my mother at the turn of each to get new jeans and sweaters, or maybe it’s (hopefully) a connection to the earth, feeling a chill and understanding that the wind has meaning and welcomes us in to a new way of existing in a city and a world.

Lover Girl Fall was born out of, yes the stereotypical notions of cuffing season and sweater weather and something brisk in the air. But it was also born from me, my own experiences, and where I’m at at this phase in life. I’ve started writing my second novel, even though I haven’t published my first. Because I’m a writer, not an editor, or a publisher, or an agent. I write because I write and it’s the thing that makes me feel less insane when I'm feeling super wound up.

My first novel, G00D G1RL, is about growing up with Instagram and beauty pageants. My second is (so far) about being Miss Teen USA and dating men.

I started Lover Girl Fall because I think I finally understood that I deserved to be loved. To really be loved. I’ve had my heart broken a few times. Mostly by myself. By my own expectations, by the refusal to demand more for myself out of a lack of self love.

That’s why I wanted to do Lover Girl Fall. I woke up one day and didn’t hate myself anymore. It was strange. It didn’t happen overnight. It took work and time and heartbreaks. But I think I can finally say that I like myself.

I try to have fun with my own life. And when I’m not, I understand that it’s time to step back, to re-orient, to date myself, and most of the time to F♡CKING WRITE.

Lover Girl Fall was a journey in loving yourself, your community, your family, the world around you.

You deserve all of the love in the world. But you have to convince yourself of that first. And if I can do anything with digital media -- with this blog and sprawling social media footprint and newsletter of which the most dedicated of you are paid subscribers (thank you) -- perhaps I can use it to make you understand you that you get to love yourself.

That it’s time to wake up and realize “I DON’T HATE WHO I AM” and that even that, as simple as it is, is a really liberating statement when said, out loud, to yourself.

You deserve love.

You deserve a good life.

You deserve you.

Happy Lover Girl Fall.

I hope you learned something.

I think I did.