SOAP AS FASHION, issue #11
An Intellectual Style Newsletter, with tips for living your best (real) life.



TL; DR

I’m grateful for you!



Dear Reader,

As the end of 2024 rolls around, I’m feeling especially grateful and hopeful again.

I remember feeling similarly at the beginning of this year–after going through Covid, and the “transitional” years that followed, 2024 was supposed to be the year, amirite?! The year to make up for the prior years we’d collectively gone through.

For me, 2024 was supposed to be the year that my new creative vision would enter the world. My daughter started preschool at the beginning of this year, which meant I was going to have more time to execute the new vision I have for my brand and where I want to go. After many months of personal and professional uncertainty after becoming a mom*, I finally had clarity on what I wanted to do. And I was so excited to get to do it! I was going to take FORK & MELON in an exciting new direction, and I was going to continue with my resurrected love of creative writing via this newsletter.

Now that we’re about to close out the year, I can see that that partly turned out to be true. At the very least, I made a good start.

But unfortunately or fortunately (if you take the long view), things did not go the way I had envisioned. For one thing, my mom was diagnosed with a rare, serious illness earlier this year that brought deep, prolonged uncertainty and ended up requiring multiple intense surgeries and hospital stays. It was a tough and consuming experience that engulfed a big chunk of this year.

And of course, in addition to my role as daughter during this intense time, being there for my recently-turned-3-year-old is my top priority and consuming role. Along with wife, and sister, friend, and business owner. Also hidden in there is my role of “healthy and fully functioning person” (which takes more and more effort as I get older…blurg**).

What this means is that my creative vision–my role as an artist and a creative-as-a-noun–has often taken a back seat. The responsibilities to my family, the operational management of my business, and the health of my mind and body (aka sleep, eating healthy, not letting stress consume me, etc) took precedence over my time to create. There is so much creative magic inside me still waiting to come out!

And now we are (thank the Lord!! and God-willing!!) on the other side of my mom’s illness. She made it through an incredibly difficult period and is getting stronger every day. And in addition to the healing of her body, healing to certain relationships and dynamics in our family has begun as well.

A new year is almost here, and after the harrowing experiences of 2024, I am once again filled with hope, gratitude, and excitement about what the new year will bring.

I hope you are feeling the same.

What creative endeavors are you going to pursue next year? What lights you up?

Whatever it is, let’s try to make some more space for it. Along with some cute outfits and expressions of personal style.

Thank you for being here with me, I’m grateful for you.

With love xoxo,
Cher

*I was asked by HeyMama to write an article about a pivotal moment that shaped my entrepreneurial journey as a mom. I wrote about the loss of identity and rediscovery process I went through after having my daughter. I’ll send it out when they publish in January…

**If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you’ll know this is the word I use in place of one of my favorite emojis that I use on a regular basis: the sideways-leaning-cross-eyed-face-with-tongue-hanging-out. Xo

***The title for this article is a quote from Ram Dass.


^Image is my daughter and me; an impromptu photo taken by my husband on Thanksgiving this year. I’m using it for now as my profile picture for my newly created Substack. I plan to move my newsletter there in the new year (I’ll let you know more about it then but feel free to sign up for it now if you haven’t already)🖤

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