Hey friend,

It’s been a minute.

When I wrapped up the visibility challenge in January, I didn’t intend to propel myself into a newsletter hiatus. I never set out to take a break. This is counter to how I want to embody my own visibility: this newsletter has always been the foundation of my marketing, so you can imagine how that’s been going.

It wasn’t for a lack of anything to share. I’d charged straight into 2026 with an intense season of Being Seen implementation - planning collaborations, designing events, delivering workshops. It was that somehow this platform, Substack, no longer felt like somewhere I wanted to be. It no longer felt like home for this work.

Quiet choices & changes that whisper

So, friend, this will be my final newsletter on Substack. I’m heading home to an actual email marketing platform. I know - it’s poetry.

It’s a decision I’ve been sitting with for some time. Yes, there are articles that bring an “oh shit, of course“ reality check to the inner workings of the Substack algorithm. The tech bros have us everywhere. But there’s also your own knowing - that niggling realisation that this is all very nice, but is it helping your business?

I came here for community, connection and growth. There was a freedom to the expression this platform offered —-- for my writing, my poetry practice, my marketing content. I wanted my writing to live longer. Substack allowed me to write in a more expansive way, and there’s work here I’m very proud of.

I invested heavily in this platform - signing up to memberships and one-to-ones with Substack experts, working with brilliant strategists whose work I admire. I’ve also been an excellent Substack citizen, supporting many other writers along the way. I’ll continue to support the writers I love here.

Starting with a flawed strategy

I’m all for self-accountability. Every week I set out the intention to commit to Notes more, spend time on audience-growing activities, repurpose content in shorter form. And then I didn’t.

I happen to love Instagram, so duplicating what I already wasn’t doing felt deeply off-centre. I should also acknowledge the FOMO that coloured my decision to join Substack in the first place —- that moment in 2023 when “having a Substack” was the accessory of choice, when you were invited to the same party as Liz Gilbert and Margaret Atwood. Turns out, they’re in the next room with the cool kids. And I didn’t like the snacks.

In the spirit of transparency: my strategy was fundamentally flawed. I’m a huge fan of Substack’s mission to help writers and creatives monetise their work- I have friends who’ve grown their businesses through it, some who’ve made it their entire business. But I never intended to monetise this newsletter. It’s always been about connection, thought leadership, and the creative practice of writing and marketing. The platform, by design, contained the place I could build my brand - and that was the problem.

Being where your people are

I don’t love the term “owned audience.” It features in email marketing and means subscribers you can contact directly, without intermediaries - so that if a platform disappears (you know, when Instagram goes down for 11 minutes and the world collapses), you still have access to your community.

Before Substack, my inbox would overflow with responses whenever I sent The Conversation - every other Thursday morning. Thoughtful conversations that led to partnerships, collaborations, friendships. I’ve kept many of them.

A stumbling block was Substack’s comment mechanism: not all my readers are platform adopters, so the immediacy and connection broke down. The comments were public. Your inbox is private. The difference is palpable. I’d also become aware that being on Substack was acting as a blocker - for long-term readers who aren’t on the platform, and for the new, more corporate connections I’d been building through my Being Seen work.

Because here’s the thing: when I launched Being Seen in October, the lack of a mailing list floored me. The word I had in my head was “hamstrung.” I didn’t feel I had the channel to share this core piece of work. As a marketer, it felt like I’d outsourced my own community-— that direct flow and connection that email gives you. I couldn’t reach who I wanted to reach, strategically, intentionally, purposefully.

At the time I thought about re-igniting my old newsletter but knew I don’t have the capacity to have both – huge respect to those brilliant creatives and business owners who do. Maybe it’s something for the future.

The data confirmed it. 95% of my readership comes via email rather than the Substack app.

It’s time to go.

Your place of power

One of my favourite pieces of guidance from Being Seen is this: find your place of power.

Caroline Goyder, vocal and authority coach, author, keynote and TED Talk speaker (whose Substack I highly recommend), advises showing up where you feel most confident. “Learn where the leverage is — where the power is. For me, speaking to a real-life audience is how I can help. Be choosy - don’t chase butterflies, plant a garden. Find the few things you can nurture and plant those.”

Career and life design coach Selina Barker adds, “Find ways of communicating your knowledge, expertise, artwork, services, product that nourish you, and mirror how you like to communicate, whether it’s talks, podcasting, writing - you choose. Otherwise it just won’t be sustainable, and you will end up burning out.”

Selina has made Substack a huge part of her own work: “When I was on Instagram, it felt forced and took so much energy from me. Now the ways I’m visible for my business is Substack - I love it.”

I train in visibility and impact. This isn’t an over-explanation or self-justification. It’s a business case. A choice to return to my place of power.

What does this mean for you?

Just a different email in your inbox every other Thursday (I’m going with Kit — thank you Emma Griffin).

The content stays the same: more Being Seen, more visibility, more thought leadership and creative business. Your email will automatically transfer over, so you don’t need to do anything. But if you want to hit reply and hang out in each other’s inboxes, please do.

I’ll keep all my existing work here on Substack - because never say never. Of course, I’ll continue to hang out with the brilliant people I’ve connected with on this platform.

Thank you as always, for being part of this. We move on - come with me. ❤️

With love,

Antonia

Hey friend,

Welcome to the last week of #BeingSeen2026.

Five weeks of building a visibility practice with intention, with purpose, to engage more fully as we head into the year.

I’ve taken so many lessons from these weeks - in terms of engaging with my own visibility and how this relates to others’. Even within the framework of the challenge, I’ve noticed the patterns of my visibility, the rhythms that shift across days, the ebb and flow that comes with being seen.

It’s been a ride.

Capacity for a new level of visibility

I knew that when I launched Being Seen, a new level of visibility would be required of me. A deeper embodiment of this work. How could I ask someone to step into their visibility if I wasn’t doing the same?

And I also knew this wasn’t about a content plan. Or willpower.

It was about expanding my capacity for visibility. About tuning into my nervous system and understanding the patterns of being seen vs. running back to the cave. To find my own place of safety.

I do have an essay on the season of my nervous system waiting to be finished. It will follow this challenge.

Because as I’ve said before, the “I’ll just do the LinkedIn post tomorrow,” the “I’ll focus on Reels when I finish this project“- it isn’t about laziness or a lack of ambition.

It’s pure biology. It’s our nervous system pulling us back to where we feel protected.

Posting a win. Pitching a client. Going live on your social media platform of choice. Main-gridding your wisdom. It all puts us out there.

Outside the safety of the pack. Beyond the unspoken codes of behaviour and expectations. Exposed. Vulnerable. Seen.

As Claire Williams, CPO at Ciphr and founder of The F Suite, told us in Being Seen: “If you don’t feel safe, you will never be able to be more seen.”

Which is why so much of the work we need to do around visibility is creating those systems of safety, expanding our tolerance, sitting with the discomfort of 3 likes on a Substack post and realising you can endure it, and come back to it again.

To build visibility into our days, our habits, our bodies of work.

Expanding our capacity one step at a time.

I should also add it’s my word for 2026.

#BeingSeen Week Five

To understand more about capacity, I’ve tapped into the wisdom of the incredible Isabel Taylor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who specialises in nervous system-led capacity work for founders and creatives. Having followed her work for a while now, I’m so excited to be joining her A State to Create programme later this month.

As Isabel explains: “Capacity is something that contracts and expands. And with the right guidance, its expansion can become an almost effortless side effect of a lifestyle designed with your nervous system in mind. Capacity is your ability to stay present, grounded, and connected to yourself when things get intense.”

Which makes sense, given the first thing I cut when things get sticky is my visibility practice, which impacts creativity, presence, leadership.

Throughout this challenge, we’ve looked at shaping our visibility practices through clarity, conversation, connection and contribution. So how do we expand our capacity to hold all this?

“Your capacity is mouldable,” Isabel tells us. “It’s built through small, tolerable doses of stress, followed by recovery. The gentle rhythm of moving from safety to stress and back to safety in small, measurable amounts. Expanded capacity isn’t about doing more. It’s about teaching your body that more can feel safe.”

Week Five Actions:

Taking Isabel’s guidance, I really believe that by bringing expanded presence, intention and self-connection into our visibility practices, we can build those systems of safety within us - to take into the world.

Here are nervous system-supporting tips I’ve learned from Isabel that have helped me step into this next level of visibility:

1. Come back to you. Breathe into it. When you sit down to write the post or share the Reel, connect with you and the intention of what you’re offering. Breathe into that.

2. Be with discomfort. As Isabel explains: “Just like muscles grow from progressive load, capacity grows when you meet mild activation and recover.” What’s one step you can take to shift you into an edge of discomfort, be okay with it, and repeat?

3. Prioritise safe relationships. As we explored in Week 3, community and visibility are deeply interconnected. Making sure you have those deep connections and relationships that root you back to safety becomes essential scaffolding for your visibility.

4. Recovery. Time off supports recovery and refuels creativity. Take the screen-free weekend. Take the LinkedIn break. We all need this time to regroup, recalibrate, reconnect with ourselves.

5. Try to go 5% slower. In the rush of “I HAVE TO POST TODAY,” it feels anathema to suggest going slower. But try. The world can wait.

One of my favourite suggestions here comes from my friend Claire Venus, who suggests writing posts out by hand - an act of pure analogue rebellion in our deeply digital world. Taking a pen to paper, connecting with your words and thoughts, the line between your heart and your head, grounds you back to your creativity, your presence, your process.

Try it.

And please tag me @antoniataylor with #BeingSeen2026 with anything that comes up for you.

Being Seen Gathering – Tomorrow!

Whether you’ve followed along every week or are just joining now, join me tomorrow, Friday 30th January at 10am (GMT) for our #BeingSeen2026 Visibility Gathering.

My brilliant friend, Katy Murray, author, speaker and all-round change maker, will be joining the session.

We’ll chat through the key elements we’ve explored over the last five weeks and commit to practices to take forward as we embed this new way of being seen.❤️

Thank you as always, for being here.

With love,

Antonia

We’re heading towards January’s end. This month has been equal parts fast and furious, right?

We’re Week Four of the #BeingSeen 2026 Visibility Challenge.

How’s the momentum feeling? I’ve loved seeing your stories and wins:

🗸One amazing reader messaged she’d sent a new business proposal.

🗸And one of my best school friends shared a beautiful piece of art she created and tagged #beingseen – I hadn’t realised she’d been following the challenge.

🗸I received a DM from a lovely reader who’d unexpectedly taken time out due to anxiety and was working through the challenge to gently get back to her business.

Checking in on last week’s theme of connection and my wonderful friend Tia’s advice on nurturing community:

🗸 I’ve connected with two women who’s work I’ve admired for ages

🗸 I intro’d two colleagues for an International Women’s Day event I’m speaking at

🗸 I had a gorgeous pre-birthday lunch with my amazing friend @sara Dalrymple talking all things business and growth and capacity and writing

How did you get on?

When visibility becomes contribution

My hope is that four weeks in, your relationship with your visibility has started to shift.

That you’ve been able to weave it more into your days, your work, who you are in the world.

As we learned in Being Seen, so much happens when we integrate visibility into our everyday - when we let it amplify our purpose, blend it with thought leadership so it becomes an extension of who we are and what we do.

Visibility literally becomes how we show up in the world, to our work and business, our community.

This is the visibility transformation: It stops being separate - a task to dread, a post to force – and becomes woven into our leadership.

We aren’t “doing visibility.”

We’re being visible as a natural extension of our work.

And when visibility feels integrated rather than a must-do, you stop asking “Should I post this?” and start asking, “Who could this help?”

It’s where contribution enters the chat.

#BeingSeen Week Four

We’re building on everything you’ve cultivated - clarity, conversation, connection—and asking: how do you give it back?

Contribution is about sharing what you know in ways that help others—genuine value-add, true perspective, guidance.

The insight from your work that could unlock something for someone else. The resource that changed your perspective. The woman whose voice you amplify because you have the platform.

This is how you make your mission bigger than you.

When you contribute - when you share generously, lift others, create value beyond yourself - your work becomes a movement. Something your community can be part of in a tangible way.

You’ve spent three weeks getting clear, engaging in conversation, and building connections.

How do you take everything you’ve been cultivating and use it to create change beyond yourself?

You have so much give. You always have. Let’s go.

Making contribution through visibility

Let’s put a stake in the ground, my friends.

I couldn’t partner with anyone other than Vicki Knights on this one. Luminous Vicki’s one of those brilliant business owners who had been in my orbit for ages before we properly connected last year.

Vicki helps business owners and creatives show up and be seen with joyful, authentic confidence. She’s a Visibility Strategist, Positive Psychology Practitioner and branding photographer with over 20 years’ experience in branding and marketing, and hosts the top-rated marketing podcast Showing Up with Vicki Knights – which I had the total pleasure of being a guest on at the end of last year.

And because Vicki truly understands the core of visibility, she’s just launched a Visibility Archetype Quiz to help you build this more.

These are Vicki’s expert tips on visibility as contribution:

1.Share what you’re noticing, not just what you’re selling
The most impactful things I share aren’t polished frameworks or launch announcements. They’re observations. Patterns I’m seeing with clients. The quiet struggles people don’t always have language for yet. Naming those moments builds trust because people feel understood before they ever feel marketed to.

If you want your visibility to feel like leadership, practise articulating what you’re seeing in your work and industry. That is contribution.

2. Model the behaviour you’re inviting others into
I don’t teach visibility as a theory. I share my lived experience of showing up publicly, often imperfectly and sometimes vulnerably. I talk openly about confidence wobbling, about not wanting to perform and about inspiration dipping. That modelling gives people permission to show up in a way that feels more human and less exhausting. Leadership visibility isn’t about positioning yourself above your audience. It’s about walking alongside them and showing what’s possible when you stop pretending you’ve got it all figured out.

3. Let your audience shape what you create next
A lot of my visibility has grown not from deciding what I should create, but from paying attention to what people were asking for or struggling with. Conversations in DMs, questions after workshops, patterns I noticed across clients. Listening to what was needed is what led me to start podcasts, host events, and create retreats.

Contribution-led visibility is relational. When you involve your audience in the evolution of your work, your visibility becomes something people feel part of, not just something they consume.

Week Four Action:

Taking Vicki’s incredible insights how can we apply these into aligned actions this week? Here’s some starting points:

• Post an insight from your work

• Share a resource that helped you – or that you simply loved. It could be a book, a podcast- it could be your favourite coffee shop

• Answer a question in your expertise area

When you have, tag me @antoniataylor with #BeingSeen2026.

Being Seen - Visibility Wrap-Up

A reminder that I’m hosting a Being Seen 2026 - Visibility Wrap Up on Friday 30^th January at 10am.

To embed and deepen our visibility practices, commit to what we’re taking into the rest of the year.

I’ll share details in next week’s newsletter.

Thank you, always, for being here.

Again, to readers not participating in the challenge, regular content will be back in February.

Thank you, always, for being here.❤️

With love,

Antonia

Suddenly it’s mid- January and everything’s speeding up.

How did Week Two of #BeingSeen2026 go? What came from Emma’s incredible prompts on identifying the conversations you want to lead? A little bit of a revelation, right? And what are the steps you’ve taken to take you into the year?

For me, it really came back to clarity again – how I bring my own perspective to the core conversations I’m shaping on visibility, thought leadership and creativity.

As I worked through the exercises, too, I noticed how choosing a conversation, going deep into it, embodying it, had transformed my work, my business, my brand. By getting under the skin of visibility for women, I’ve been able to set a new narrative around my own visibility practice - to show up and expand my own capacity to be seen.

Of course, there’s SO much work to do on alignment and refining messaging – I’ve had “update bios” on my to-do list since November. But beyond your positioning, truly owning a conversation can open a whole new level of growth in your business, your business, your creative practice.

Connection as visibility

It’s time for Week Three. And we’re talking connection. Which happens to be a value of mine, so it feels extra special.

Let’s look at how connection and visibility are woven together, support each other. Deepen relationships, expand community. Create a space for our ideas and thinking and longings to land and grow – whether it’s marketing or creative work.

We all crave deep connection.

It’s why we keep showing up.
It’s what ties us back to our purpose.
To be seen, heard, understood – and how we do this in our relationships and communities.

One of the most fun parts of Being Seen’s movement has been the connections it’s brought.

Introductions to new colleagues and potential partners.
Re-connecting with old clients, rekindled and deepened friendships.
New relationships and conversations and collaborations.
To be able to reciprocate this – to connect people in my world with one another too.

As a community-driven leader I’ve always known that this work doesn’t exist in isolation – those relationships, community, networks – are the scaffolding to your visibility.

And I also believe that as our social feeds and inboxes get flooded with more AI content that need to connect - human – to human- is only going to grow. 2025 was the year I finally got my post-pandemic in-person act together and it’s transformed my business and who I am inside it. How I connect to it. How I connect to myself.

At the end of last year, I found myself in a room that 2022 Antonia would have killed to be in. Because of one connection.

This is what it comes down to – that growth that comes through connection, through expanding connections, stepping into new rooms, engaging with new perspectives.

#BeingSeen Week Three

In that spirit, Week Three is set to be a fun one.

I’ve teamed up with the Queen of Community, Tia Talula, a content creator and multiple business owner, who has nurtured and grown her gorgeous community with such care and attention and authenticity. She’s also just launched a Substack on midlife style, work, creativity and personal growth. Please go follow.

Tia’s capacity for her community is truly astounding. And, because of our connection, I was lucky enough to work with her for Being Seen’s launch event. She also happens to be Cypriot.😉

These are Tia’s tips on nurturing connections and community:

1. Lead with truth, not performance.
   Community grows when people feel seen, not sold to. I share from lived experience- the becoming, the questioning, the discernment - rather than polished conclusions. This invites conversation, not comparison.

2. Invest energy before expecting return.
   I comment thoughtfully, reply with care, remember names, and acknowledge people publicly. Connection isn’t built through broadcasting - it’s built through presence. What you invest energetically always comes back multiplied.

3. Protect the quality of your connections.
   Not every audience needs to be large - it needs to be aligned. I’ve learned that depth beats scale. When you show up consistently as yourself, the right people stay, engage, and grow alongside you - and that community becomes a true support system for your work and life.

   

   ---

Week Three Action:

This week I want you to take some time on a Connection Inventory. Grab a notebook and 15 minutes to answer these questions:

• Is there someone you’ve been meaning to connect with forever – on a professional or personal basis – that you’ve been holding back from connecting with?

• What stops you from reaching out to people you would love to connect more fully with?

• When do you feel most connected to your community?

• What action could you consistently commit to invest in your community?

And then I want you to reach out to ONE person to build genuine relationship this week:

• Invite someone for a coffee – you could do virtual, in-person if you can

• Introduce two people who you think should know each other

• Follow up with someone you met once but never stayed in touch with

Share your actions below or tag me @antoniataylor with #BeingSeen2026

And to just go a little deeper, I’m hosting a Being Seen 2026 - Visibility Wrap Up on Friday 30^th January at 10am.

We’ll gather, reconnect with the visibility steps we’ve taken throughout the course of the month, commit to what we’re taking into the rest of the year.

Details will be shared ahead of the session - for now, hold the space in your calendar. I’d love you to join us.

And for non-visibility participants, thank you for holding this space – normal service resumes in February.

Thank you, always, for being here.❤️

With love,

Antonia

Hey friend,

Welcome to Week 2 of Being Seen Visibility Challenge. How did Week One go?

Honestly, a LOT came up for me.

There was an excavation of old wounds. Even thinking about posting on LinkedIn twice a week called me to examine how much space I think I should be taking up. How I’ve been capping myself without realising.

Because there’s a part of me locked into old stories and internalised socialisation - classic good girl behaviour.

Making space for everyone around her but her.
Minimising the parts of herself she’s dying to express.
Downplaying her potential, capability and capacity.
Erasing entire parts of herself.
Perfecting the art of non-existence.

So when I ask myself “what’s stopping me from being more visible?” I know the work I need to do.

We all have so much un-learning when it comes to our visibility.

And as I worked on the exercises around possibility, I found myself returning to the Marianne Williamson quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?”

Who are we not to be who we know at cellular level we want to be? And how does this play out in our relationship with visibility?

I’d love to know what came up for you.

Leading Conversations

Moving into Week Two: we’re talking conversations, my friend.

The ones you want to lead, to own, to be recognised for.

When you consistently show up in specific discussions – bringing your unique perspective, asking real questions, challenging thinking - you build association with those topics.

People start to connect your name with your expertise. It’s how authority develops: not through broadcasting, but through genuine engagement. Trust follows when you show up authentically, contribute generously, and stay curious.

The conversations you choose to own shape how you’re seen, what you’re valued for, and who actively seeks you out.

Sustained, meaningful participation in the right conversations – one that ideally, hasn’t been put through a machine and starts with human thoughts, human voice and human questions – that listens - that’s how you build a reputation that connects, resonates, creates change.

It’s how you build thought leadership.

A powerful point that came through Being Seen, is how, as leaders, as creatives, as business owners, we can intentionally expand the conversation: how we invite our community into these points of connection, with intentional leadership.

#BeingSeen Week Two

Things are about to get juicy, team.

For Week Two I’ve invited my good friend Emma Griffin, website copywriter and hook strategist, to guide us through the prompts. Emma takes your marketing message from run-of-the-mill to run and tell EVERYONE -so you can finally show up as the real deal in your industry. She’s basically the Sienna Miller in her industry – bold, brilliant and entirely herself. And she lives in Reading now.

Sign up for her Feel Good Copy email series (designed to help you ditch the “shoulds” and write well without rules), or check out her Substack on nurturing a creative practice outside of paid-for creative work here.

Emma suggests we start getting clear on our conversations here –

1) Identify - Which conversations do you want to lead, and why?

Do all of them fall naturally under your business umbrella, or do some feel nebulous and unrelated? What are some ways you can make these dialogues feel more naturally linked to your work? In what ways might you be overthinking the things you want to say, and diluting your voice, opinion or thoughts to fit in with an online/business version of you that doesn’t actually exist?

2) Alignment audit - Audit your marketing from the last 6 months.

Were the conversations you led aligned with your most authentic thoughts? Or were you skirting around the truth of what you had to say? Are there any blocks stopping you from sharing what you want? Fear of judgement? Fear of being cancelled? Fear of disappointing your audience? A lack of language for the nuance of what you do? What do you need to shift going forward to lead these conversations? List three things you’ll change in 2026 to make visible ownership of these conversations feel natural to you.

3) Messaging - Be honest: are you 100% clear on your own messaging, or does it all feel a bit woolly?

Often when we are struggling to show up and be seen, it’s because we aren’t clear on what we want to say anymore. Maybe you once were, but your business and audience shifted so the old conversations you once led with passion now feel too small. Maybe you were never clear, so you never quite landed on The Thing you want to be known for. Spend some time thinking about where your messaging might not reflect your wider mission, and what tweaks you need to bring into it.

Week Two Action:

As Emma invites you to, list three things you’ll change in 2026 to make visible ownership of these conversations feel natural to you.

You don’t have to answer everything. You don’t have to have it all figured out. It’s still January.

Just start the conversation with yourself about the conversations you want to lead. To support the foundations of your evolving visibility going into the year.

Write down what comes up. Get honest. Get specific.

And as always, I’d love to hear what you’re discovering.

Share one insight below or tag me @antoniataylor with #BeingSeen2026 wherever you are.

And if you want to invite a friend or colleague to join us, it’s not too late to start now.

Let’s go.❤️

With love,

Antonia

Hey friend,

Happiest New Year to you. I hope the days have been peaceful and restorative.

It’s New Year’s Day and, as promised- as much to myself as to you, dear reader- I’m launching the Being Seen Visibility Challenge.

Together, we’ll take small steps toward cultivating our visibility practices with creativity, connection, and an entirely manageable cadence. The intention? To build on our presence, expand community, and enter the year with a little momentum. A little luminosity for winter days.

#BeingSeen2026

The challenge starts here- in this newsletter, every Thursday throughout January, so you can dip in over the weekend or whenever it works for you.

Expect an exercise, prompt, or action each week to reframe and reset your relationship with visibility in your work, your business, your life.

I’ll also share this across Instagram and LinkedIn. You know, to keep it very real.

I’m planning some collaborations and an online gathering or two to embed the work.

Each week, we’ll focus on a different aspect of our visibility practices, building on the findings in Being Seen and everything I’ve learned as part of this:

✨ Clarity - who you are, now
✨ Conversation - engaging with others
✨ Connection - building relationships + community
✨ Contribution - sharing value, lifting others
✨ Capacity - sustaining your visibility practice with ease

And I’ll be right here with you, working through the challenge and sharing what comes through.

#BeingSeen Week One

To get going, let’s spend some time with this mini visibility audit:

Where are you now?

• Where am I visible now? Across socials, in my business, in my industry? Does this feel restrictive or expansive?

• What’s my relationship with visibility right now? (Avoiding it? Overthinking it? Exhausted by it? All of the above?)

Where do you want to be?

• Where do I want to be more visible? How does this reflect the true essence of who I’m evolving into this year and beyond?

• What’s stopping me from being more visible? What can I leave behind here? What have I outgrown? For example, a habit or belief that no longer serves my visibility is...

• What would change if I allowed myself to be more seen?

What does this look like?

• How do I see this new level of visibility? In my business, my work, my creativity?

• Thinking about this new level of visibility, what qualities or behaviours does this version of me embrace as part of my visibility practice? Is it one intentional main grid post a week to support my leadership and impact? Setting aside 10 minutes a day to nurture my LinkedIn community? Committing to that monthly networking event I skipped twelve times last year?

And can you take one of these into this first week of the #BeingSeen2026 Visibility Challenge?

Week One Action:

Write down your answers.

That’s it, my friend.

Just get honest with yourself about where you are and where you want to be. Get clear on how a visibility practice can support this. Remember, we’re thinking: evolution over massive transformation.

And as part of this, I would love it if you shared any key learnings, surprises, or intentions either below or on your platform of choice. Tag me @antoniataylor and #BeingSeen2026, or comment below with one insight from your audit.

For now, have a happy, healthy, visible 2026.

And if you want to invite a friend or colleague to join us, please forward this newsletter. Everyone’s welcome.❤️

With love,

Antonia

Hey friend,

Writing this, I’m heading into the last week of work in my business. Wrapping up today was always the goal—possibly tying up a couple of things over the next few days. You?

Like so many people who run their own businesses, I love the time between Christmas and New Year to take stock, reflect, and plan. It’s literally one of my favourite times of year.

The spaciousness.

The possibility.

Maybe the new notebooks.

Reframing the winter arc

A few weeks back I received a beautiful marketing email about the “winter arc.”

The poet in me latched onto this idea of a seasonal metamorphosis, of winter’s deep beneath-the-surface work.

I was thinking solstice-y light. Notebooks out. Retreat style. Dreaming myself into a cosy chrysalis.

I hadn’t appreciated the “winter arc” is in fact a TikTok-fuelled intensive personal development strategy that you level up into, October through to December, to create momentum and move into the new year all peak performance. Possibly even ripped.

The vibe: Everyone’s partying, I’m building.

It feels a little Stephen Bartlett. Locked in and loaded. Much as I loved his recent DOAC with Brené Brown, I am too depleted for this level of commitment right now.

Instead, I’m taking the idea and making it my own—Winter’s Arc: Antonia’s Version.

Less optimisation, more reflection.
Less PR bitch, more poet.
Less pushing, more presence.

Into the quiet season

Heading into these quieter weeks, I feel myself craving rest, resets, and recalibration. Q1 already looks full and, like Robert Frost said, “I have promises to keep.“

Mostly to myself. It’s time to press pause.

Here’s what I’m taking into my chilled-out, self-paced winter arc:

Creative reset

As a devotee to a “Create First” practice, these past few months have seen my habits slip a little.*

Sneaking in a piece of work over a writing session. Sending a client email instead of reading a poem. Getting a task ticked off rather than sitting with a piece of writing.

I know the creative practice I’ve built over the years feels like a luxury, but it’s also deeply essential to fuelling the other parts of my work. It’s who I am. And I’m starting to feel it.

It’s easily fixed. Resetting a writing schedule. Allowing myself time in coffee shops, notebook in hand. Reconnecting to creativity. Reading all the poetry. There may be naps.

*Completely

Reflection

Thirteen years running my own business, I know that you can’t set goals without understanding how to become the person you need to be to hold the new outcome. This starts with reflection. Inventory. A point of becoming.

I’ve mentioned I’m a fan of Selina Barker’s Goodbye 2025 Hello 2026 journal. I’m also going to come back to my morning pages practice—another thing that’s slipped.

Being in nature

While my walking pad has been hands-down the best money I spent in 2025, it has meant that while I’ve hit my daily 10k steps goal (give or take), I’ve been out in the world less. For someone who loves sunlight and trees and Vitamin D, this isn’t working out. Again, my bad choices have been optimisation and function rather than sustenance and soul.

The last few years I’ve had the lovely tradition of a long solstice walk with two cherished friends. I’ll start there.

Nervous system work

For recalibration and capacity and connection. I’m reading Anchored by Deb Dana, taking deeper breaths, trying to slow the f**k down. Just for now.

I’ve also been learning about co-regulation—being around other people who make you feel safe and connected. I am so lucky to be in the orbit of so many incredible women: expansive, supportive, inspiring.

If I’m being honest, sometimes I feel guilty writing about this- like “Look at me with my amazing successful friends.” Especially when so many people experience loneliness, particularly at this time of year. I get it, because I do too.

And I also deeply value the community I’ve built, the connections I’ve fostered, and the friendships I’ve invested in that have formed a huge part of enriching my business and work and life. And I think it’s important to celebrate those people around you. So here I am, celebrating you.

Being Seen Visibility Challenge

I shared this in the last Conversation and am so excited by everyone who’s said “I’m in.” I’ll be pulling this together in coming weeks.

It’s going to be an exercise, prompt, or action each week to reframe and reset your relationship with your visibility practice.

Possibly some lives and online gatherings to build:

✨ Clarity - who you are, what you stand for

✨ Conversation - engaging with others

✨ Connection - building relationships + community

✨ Contribution - sharing value, lifting others

✨ Capacity - sustaining your visibility practice with ease

Because one thing I know about visibility is that it starts with how you see yourself.

The challenge will be delivered through this newsletter, supplemented with LinkedIn and Instagram.

Expect the first email to land in your inbox 1st January. I know. But starting matters.

For now, I’m wishing you a happy Christmas and peaceful New Year. With hugest gratitude to you, friend, for being here another year.❤️

With love,

Antonia

Hi Friend,

Happy December to you.

When people ask me about the post-Being Seen buzz, I hadn’t anticipated the full demands of a launch. I figured it would be a busy couple of weeks, and life would quickly get back to business as usual. The snow globe flurry would settle.

Spoiler: this didn’t happen. Instead, it’s been a new level of business as usual. A full, demanding season. Which is what I wanted. And it means Being Seen’s doing the work it was meant to. Which, in a time of bro-coding and algorithms suppressing women’s visibility, this is more needed than ever.

As an intuitive business coach reminded me last week (yes, this is me now): this is a movement. So, we keep moving.

Actually embodying visibility

Before launching Being Seen, I knew I would have to step up my own visibility. I’ve shared how being in PR brings its own complex dynamic with it: your job is literally to shine a light on other people. Not yourself. Layered on top of the other sets of complexities that visibility brings.

I’d be completely lying if I didn’t say that at times, sharing a post on LinkedIn has given me a niggly twinge: “You should be prioritising your clients.”

Truth is, I also expected to be more visible online. I set out weekly posting schedules. Mapped out my week to see where there would be shareable highlights for Instagram. Set monthly targets of how many LinkedIn posts to do.

I couldn’t drive up the volume of output. I’d get home to the end of the day and realise I hadn’t documented the cute coffee shop I’d had a meeting in. Or grabbed the selfie of the dinner with my gorgeous ex-work friends.

Did it even happen if I haven’t posted it on Instagram?

Being visible off-line

Any reader of this newsletter knows that it took me all of 7 minutes to give myself a hard time on my lack of Reels and B-roll. That I hadn’t amplified my Instagram presence. Side note: we did break LinkedIn at launch which was a lot of fun. Thank you again to everyone who shared.

My intention is to truly embody the visibility I advocate for women at work.

Then I thought about all the ways I have been visible in my business.

The undocumented ways I’ve been in the room, shown up.

The connection coffees expanding my network.
The meetings to explore future Being Seen collaborations and potential opportunities.
Attending client strategy days and briefing breakfasts and launches as a way of being part of their worlds.

I’m a huge champion of behind-the-scenes content. In Being Seen, we explore the many ways you can integrate your work and meetings and life into how you connect with your community. I wouldn’t know how to run my business without LinkedIn.

But visibility isn’t always about being online either.

If you’re heading into a meeting that demands your full presence.
If you want to use the time building relationships and not be looking at a screen.
If you simply want to fully be in the moment - without distraction.

We lead with our presence and our connection– visibility follows

Visibility needs clarity

As I go even deeper into visibility thinking, what’s emerging is this: it starts with clarity.

Clarity on how you want to be seen.
Clarity on why you want to be seen.
Clarity on who you want to be seen being.

I know I’m someone who wants to be seen as present. As connected. Who leads with full focus.

Whose visibility is the product of this.

Sure, I can sneak in a cheeky location shot. I’m not yet adept at loo selfies yet but you know, there’s time.

As we head into next year, I want to expand my capacity to do both. Online and offline. I want to integrate deeper, to embody more. This is the work. This is building visibility practice.

With that, I would love to invite you to join me.

I’m launching a Visibility Challenge the first week of January.

Four weeks of you and me being beautifully, unapologetically seen.

I haven’t figured out the logistics – or even the title – yet. I had the idea on Tuesday.

It’s going to be a series of micro-actions to build on our presence, expand connections and start the year with a little momentum for our visibility practices. A little luminosity for winter days.

As someone who has never posted to Instagram or LinkedIn more than once a week – this is the bar I’m setting. Low touch. Strong gains.

I’ll share details soon. It’s going to be free. Let me know if you can join me below or hit reply. And get a head start by sharing with a friend.❤️

See you in two weeks.

With love,
Antonia xo

“November.
The dark comes early.”

- Marie Howe, Veteran’s Day

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Hi friend,

Welcome to November.

October was a bit of an OMG month for me.

Being Seen’s launch.

Adjusting to my eldest being a university student.

Trying to support my friends going through the same.

It’s been a lot.

So much I managed to miss my last newsletter. That thing happened when I sat down to write it and, when I opened my laptop, it no longer felt true. And while “I had a different newsletter planned” is basically The Conversation’s content schedule, I had no back-up plan.

And I was also running on a touch of post-launch depletion.

So hi, I’m back. I’ve missed writing this and being here with you.

3 things for November🧡

The John Lewis Christmas ad is out, the pre-Christmas drinks DMs are landing, and it feels like the year is truly running away from us.

I know we’ll all be looking to go into these last weeks with intention and focus, making them count in our businesses and our work and creativity – while trying not to crawl to the tinsel-covered finish line.

What’s ahead for your November? I’m starting here:

1. Recalibration
I’ve written about my challenges with “next-ness” before. My work with Being Seen is just getting started, but even the day after the launch, rather than sitting with the initial success of the event and white paper, I found myself moving onto the next task, the jammed to-do list, the client priorities.

November is about recalibrating and building on what’s next. Right now, I’m in between the tension of wanting to maintain the momentum and that little voice nudging me to start slowing down.

Time for reflection.

Some white space.

Let’s see.

2. Letting things take 30 seconds longer
At the start of October, I was lucky enough to win a coaching session with amazing Kaitlyn Kessler (who’s podcast I mentioned here).

In what’s been a full, full season, she reminded me of the role that busy-ness also plays as protection, a stress response.

Among many other insights – like the power of making your exhales longer – she asked if I could let things take 30 seconds longer.

Making my first coffee.

Slowing down before I send the next email.

Letting myself read a poem first thing before I dive into my to-do list.

November feels like a good month to allow everything to take that much longer – even for those of us who rush as state of being.

3. Community as visibility
So I *may* have had the unwritten goal to “break LinkedIn” when I launched Being Seen.

The reshares/ event posts/ comments…It felt like we did. I’m still working my way through the analytics.

But it goes beyond data.

What struck me most was the full room at launch. The tangible generosity of colleagues and clients and friends who travelled to celebrate, to show support, to care.

And since – the offers to make intros, the connections, the invitations to podcasts - the ripple effect.

And while as a community-driven leader I’ve always known this, witnessing it next-level in action hit home in a new way. The reciprocity and essential-ness of community as the scaffolding to your visibility.

None of this works in isolation.

November is about coming back to this – spending more time in community whether that’s here on Substack or at a London café catching up with a business bestie.

I’d love to know how you’re building your community into your visibility this month

It’s good to be back here. Let me know your intentions for November in the comments below or hit reply. As always, I’m grateful for every ❤️ and response.

With love,
Antonia xo

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Some November recommendations for you:

1. I had a gorgeous conversation with brand photographer and visibility strategist, Vicki Knights, for her podcast Showing Up. Vicki is a masterclass in joyful visibility and I loved chatting through the language of personal brand, the visibility paradox, allyship, boundaries about what we share online, pre-empty nest syndrome and the care sandwich.

2. So great to be back on home ground with this Startups article, uncovering the specific experience of visibility as a female founder.

3. I’ve not been able to spend much time with poetry lately but Heaven Looks Like Us, a beautiful, essential collection of Palestinian poetry, reads like a love letter to Palestine - its land, its people, its history, its future.

   I couldn’t recommend a single poetry book more.

Hi Friend,

I’m writing this fresh from the launch of Being Seen, a new white paper looking at women, leadership and visibility in the workplace.

The report launched to a room of incredible women – and four men. One was my husband. One was one of my school friend’s husband. And one was a journalist who I’ve also known since school days…

Still, the response to Being Seen speaks to how urgent this work is

Behind Being Seen

Post-pandemic I started to notice a subtle shift in women’s representation in the work-place – it felt like we were being pushed further into the margins – proximity bias, female talent pipelines emptying, International Women’s Day activations becoming more performative, tropes like “lazy girl jobs” and “girl math” filtering the language.

And, each time I anchored myself in the margins of my own making – clinging to shadows and stories about my own visibility, as a business owner, a writer, a poet. Persistently keeping myself smaller than if I’m being honest, I felt comfortable with.

While this was observational, pretty soon the data started tracking too.

· My 17-year-old daughter won’t see gender pay parity in her lifetime – the World Economic Forum has revised this to figure back to 123 years away this year.

· The Lovelace Report found that overlooking women in tech costs the UK up to £3.5 billion as more women leave or stall mid-career.

· With Emma Walmsley exiting GSK as CEO a couple of weeks ago, we now have seven women CEOs in the FTSE 100. Seven.

It felt like we entered a new age of sexism: where open misogyny just became the weather, and DEI programmes were hauled back, like the bullies had been waiting at the school gates all along. It became urgent.

I had to go deeper into the dynamics and currents and tidal forces that shape how we develop our professional visibility.

Women Leading Visibility

This white paper reveals why solving the female visibility challenge – at scale – matters now. At the heart of this report is the visibility paradox: invisible women get overlooked, visible women face a backlash.

I’ve been in PR for 25 years now – I know how to build a reputation. But I know that visibility can’t happen at an organisational level alone – it’s about the atoms of our experience and stories and perspectives that come together to build a profile. It’s always deeply personal. There’s a biology to visibility. And this is the bit I really wanted to excavate.

Because as contributor, Nat Lue shares, “Visibility has costs. There’s capital that goes into visibility – emotional, professional, spiritual.”

For women, it feels like something else we have to create a work-around for, another problem we need to fix, another to-do in our already packed diaries. It’s exhausting.

And I knew – because I’d seen – another way through. A way to embrace the potential and power of allowing ourselves to be fully seen.

To engage with our visibility on our own terms.

Visibility that Works

Being Seen features eight senior leaders who’ve cultivated a visibility that works for them. How they built their own pathways to Being Seen anyway.

Nicky Regazzoni, Co-founder and co-CEO of The PR Network, whose impact-focused leadership approach made flexible working visible and possible in her industry

Syndie Simon, Inclusion & Diversity Manager, Culture & Brand, Grant Thornton UK, whose intersectional advocacy helps to create advancement pathways for a more diverse group of women

Nat Lue, Author, Podcaster, Speaker , whose community-building framework has turned difficult conversations into breakthrough moments for women everywhere

Claire Williams, Chief People Officer, Ciphr & Founder of The F Suite - who systematically embedded visibility into leadership development and performance reviews and changed C-suite thinking.

Selina Barker, Career and Life Design Coach, author and founder who has shared her work empowering people to move from surviving to thriving in real-time.

Genelle Aldred, Advisor on Executive Visibility, Author & Podcaster, who overcame personal tragedy at 19 to become a TedX speaker.

Caroline Goyder, Vocal and Authority Coach, and TED Talk Speaker, who helps individuals and organisations unlock the full potential of their voice.

Tamu Thomas, Author, Keynote Speaker & Leadership Coach, who shows women how to step into their visibility without asking for permission.

The thread that runs through? How they’ve championed women in the workplace and used their platforms to amplify other women’s voices - creating more space for female stories to drive change

Towards Being Seen
My hope is Being Seen is the start of something - a movement. Because we need to be seen now. And to keep being seen. In our work, our businesses, our impact.

As Tamu says, visibility is activism: “Women being visible normalises other women being visible.”

I’m done with vapid International Women’s Day LinkedIn posts curated by a social media executive who’s probably on less pay than her male peers as her boss pats himself on the back from the golf-course.

This is about shifting the culture of visibility for women at work – whether it’s in the boardroom, or at your laptop.

One that is safe, supported, and celebrated.

This is for you, friend.

If you’ve ever held back on sharing an insight in a meeting or in your newsletter or on frigging Facebook because of that lingering threat of backlash.

If you’ve ever held back on launching a new programme or posting the Reel you spent 3 hours painfully editing for fear of being too much or not enough or just too tired.

If you’ve ever felt that maybe, you are ready to be fully seen and expressed, but you’ve bought into a social narrative that’s eroding your creativity and visibility as we speak.

Read Being Seen now.

Then forward it to your colleague who’s tired of being the only woman in the boardroom.

And your girlfriend who didn’t share her promotion on LinkedIn to avoid being accused of bragging.

To your daughter/ niece/ intern who’s watching it all happen.

Let me know how you’re Being Seen today.❤️

With love,
Antonia xo

“Seeing yourself as a prime mover in your life, I think is a bold, amazing step.”

Sharon Olds

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Hi Friend,

I’ve been deep in launch mode for my new white paper Being Seen – Women, leadership & Visibility at Work. It’s a report that explores the true experience of building professional visibility as a woman - in the board room, at your laptop, at the all-hands, from the coffee shop – let’s face it, in the kitchen while prepping a lunchbox.

A visibility that’s rooted in presence and authority and truth. Some confidence helps too.

It’s felt like a lot. I’ve had to ramp up my own visibility as part of this. On LinkedIn. On Instagram. In my business. Towards the end of last week, I could feel the niggly desire to withdraw creep in. That urge to pull the drawbridge up.

In a conversation with one of my incredible contributors, coach and founder of Project You, Selina Barker, I got this reply:

“It is only appropriate that for a visibility white paper you should suddenly want to hide.

Of course it is.

It’s all those all parts sneaking in again:

- The fear of being judged – really, Antonia? Ok, you have 25 years in PR, but are you qualified?

- Of being misunderstood – Have I made it clear that I’m not gender-essentialist and this is not just a woman’s problem?

- Fear of not being enough – Should I have run some quant research too?

- Fear of being too much – You, again?

Capacity for being seen

Being Seen explores the paradox that still defines so much of how we show up at work: women’s contributions get overlooked when we keep our heads down (hi, entrenched job gender imbalance), but when we step into visibility, we open ourselves up to the consequences of overstepping into unspoken codes of behaviours, of expectations.

One thing I know about the “I’ll just do the LinkedIn post tomorrow” is it’s not laziness or a lack of ambition. It’s pure biology. It’s our nervous system pulling us back into safety.

Posting and pitching, Instagram selfies, cold email – all puts us out there. Outside the safety of the pack. Exposed. Vulnerable. Seen.

That’s why I believe in visibility as a practice. And why I wanted to dig deeper into how women can integrate building reputation into their own body of work, into their routines – and yes, their to-do-lists. But in a way they feel good about doing and making and sharing. Rather than something that relies on sheer willpower. So we don’t feel like we always have to go above our nerve.

Which is why we put the post off.
Forward the speaker request to a colleague.
Or postpone the promotion request or new offer launch.

Empowerment over overwhelm

There is a way towards Being Seen.

I’ve gathered thought leaders from across industries to share how they’ve successfully built and intentionally cultivated their professional reputations as business leaders, industry disruptors, and culture makers. The eight incredible contributors tell this story of possibility through their experiences, perspectives and insights.

- We have Nicky Regazzoni, co-founder and co-CEO of The PR Network, a global B Corp PR agency who has given flexible work to 100s of senior women since setting up the business with a 100% remote model in 2005.

- Genelle Aldred who overcame personal tragedy at 19 to become an executive comms advisor, author and TedX speaker

- Claire Williams who as the only woman (and youngest person) in the boardroom has gone on to set up a network supporting female leaders

- Tamu Thomas who brings a radical perspective to the joy and impact of visibility in transforming other people’s lives – giving us all permission to take more ownership of our professional reputations and narratives

I’ll be sharing more in coming weeks.

Without too many spoilers – the thread that runs through the conversation is that building a professional profile - by developing and in some cases, investing in, their personal relationships with visibility - has become integrated into how they lead. How they work. They’ve made visibility part of their day. On their terms.

Which means they go on to champion other women in the workplace, use their platforms to amplify other women’s voices – to create more space for female stories and drive change. And as we head into that magical time of year when the gender pay gap means women start working for free don’t we need this?

Building your visibility practice

As I got a little bit wobbly over the weekend, I came back to this: my own visibility as a practice.

This isn’t about gritting your teeth and making the Reel or pushing yourself so far out of your comfort zone, you develop a skin rash.

It’s about the small steps we take to expand our capacity to be seen. To feel more supported. To feel safer. It’s the repeat of it. The strengthening of a muscle.

The LinkedIn comment that becomes a post.
The story that leads to the main grid.
The pitch for the speaker opportunity that leads to the new client.

Because here’s what also happens when you do:

• You get to own your visibility on your terms – without that feeling of your creativity and potential is suffocating inside you

• You shape your own narrative – with intention and purpose. How isn’t this self-leadership at its best?

• You rewrite the outcome – I know this because I’ve done it with my business, my poetry – this white paper.

Being Seen launches 7^th October. All Conversation readers will receive a download link.

After you read it, you’ll have:

• Insights from women who’ve already walked this path

• A blueprint for visibility that doesn’t require permission

• Strategies to cultivate your visibility practice – that empower, rather than overwhelm

For now, I’d love you to share a step you can take today. Share in the comments below or hit reply.

As always, I’m grateful for every ❤️ and response.

With love,
Antonia xo

“All the months are
crude experiments, out of which
the perfect September is made.”

- Virginia Woolf

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Hi friend,

Welcome to September.

I’ve been writing “3 Things” for a while now. It’s become a fun data point as I go back in to see where I was this time last year. Where I’ve got to.

I just re-read last year’s “3 Things for September”. It was filled with the anticipatory grief of the last of school days and kids leaving. It’s been a long season.

On that, thanks to everyone who responded to On being in the 18^th Summer. The late, great Nora Ephron said, “Everything is copy” and it can also be a vulnerability hangover. My inbox tells me it was a good thing.

3 things for September💛

Back in July I wrote about how this summer I was building momentum, being ok saying “yes” to more, being in the room.

It’s the first week of September and I feel like I have a plan.

I know September should be about resets and restarts and reboots. All the back-to-school energy. Whereas, I’m kind of just keeping going.

As I planned the three things for this newsletter, the voice in my head whispered, “Isn’t this a little basic, Toni? Maybe a bit boring?”

But then, don’t small steps grow into big things? They’re deeply essential and connected. They become the bricks we build with.

Also, everyone reading this newsletter knows that the reality of this work isn’t the highlight reel of horse rides on the beach, running your 6-figure-month freedom business. It’s the Google sheets and time blocking and yes, the quick coffees with a colleague to get away from your laptop now and again.

With that, here’s September.

1. More white space

White space in my business, in my working day, my creative practice.

It’s always been something I’ve cherished. I’ve paid good money to coaches to help me cultivate more of this. It can feel like a luxury. Shouldn’t it be non-negotiable?

I’ve been thinking about the place of busy-ness and rushing in my life a lot lately. Of course, it’s totally because I blinked and my son’s going to university. And I’m coming up to 13 years in my business and I feel like I still have so much to do.

At the start of the summer, I started getting super-curious about the role of the nervous system in my business. To listen to the nudge saying,“Slow the **** down.”

I know there’s more here; that work for me = safety. Something I can mostly control.

One for a future newsletter.

In the meantime, I’m scheduling in white space throughout the day.

Re-learning how to not fill every pocket of time in the calendar with doing.

I’ll report back.

2. Systems, honey

I’ve always winced when I hear other business owners talk about systems. My business is built in notebooks.

But as back-to-school gathers pace, I need more precision. More clarity in how I want my weeks, months, years to map out.

I’ve been playing with Notion to try and get more intentional with my social media. That I have posts planned this week is pretty radical.

I’ve also drafted an actual launch plan.

And because I think my accountant may fire me after my last VAT return, I’m looking at my bookkeeping.

3. Self-care (cringe-free)

Because how else can we do the things we want to do? Create our stuff? Build our thing? Every dot is connected.

Again, we’re going in entry level.

Walks with no podcasts stuffed in my ears (see white space).

A weekly coffee shop date with myself to plan, dream, be (see white space, see systems).

Micro-breaks throughout the day (see white space, see systems, see self-care).

Tell me your September intentions below.

The next Conversation sees me enter into my white paper Being Seen – Women, leadership & Visibility at Work era. I can’t wait.

As always, I’m grateful for every ❤️ and response.

With love,
Antonia xo

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September recommendations for you:

1. Newsletter: Safia Elhillo’s girls that never post is a gorgeous behind-the-scenes on this brilliant poet’s creative process – the snacks, the fashion, the friends that fuel her poems. She also shares incredible workshops with paid subscribers

2. Book: My friend and – I’m so excited to say – white paper contributor, Tamu Thomas’ Women Who Work Too Much has felt relevant this week especially. Joy, nervous system regulation, bandwidth – it’s all here.

3. Podcast: Over the summer I came into the orbit of Xanthe Appleyard and Kaitlyn Kessler. You know I’m discerning about what I consume (mostly 😉). Wanting in public – on business building and content strategy and life desires - is a masterclass and coaching session and coffee with your best friend.

“Honey, I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry ̶
you walk ahead of me.”
Marie Howe

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Hi Friend,

How’s your August been?

It’s big end-of-summer vibes here. We’re preparing for my eldest to head to university next month.

My daughter goes next year.

It’s a mood.

You bet I had another post planned.

I’m landing in back-to-school season with a lot going on in my business. A poetry deadline. A launch.

But I feel like I’ve been carrying around this piece all summer. And like with my forthcoming white paper, I’ve learnt that if a piece of writing or idea follows you around, you need to turn around and acknowledge it. To let it in.

Full disclosure, I’ve gone back and forth on sharing this one. It’s vulnerable and it’s more steeped in nostalgia than a can of peaches. But then what is August if not a time for sweet, stoned fruit and endings?

Also, it goes against everything I teach - to silence ourselves first.

We’ll be back to business in two weeks.

Being at the end of the 18th summer🧡

1. A few years back, there was this meme on the internet.

“You only get 18 delicious summers with your kids. This is one of your 18. If that's not perspective, I don't know what is”.

You must have been around 13 at the time. Which gave me five more according to social media psychology.

I’ve been counting backwards ever since.

It wasn’t perspective. It was a paroxysm of purest panic.

2. We’re coming towards the end of your 18^th summer. Suddenly there’s no buffer.

Years became months, became weeks, became days.

Now you’re making lists for university kitchenware and dorm-room bedlinen. You asked me to order you some notebooks.

3. On the steps outside the Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya, you’re telling me how in Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell had to adjust to the philosophy of "mañana mañana". A softer approach to time. To urgency. To hurrying.

Ok, he was fighting a civil war. Still.

We have the same in Greek. Σιγά σιγά. Slowly slowly.

I never understood this. Or I ignored it. Either way, I rushed instead.

4. You were five when I set up my business. My then-boss told me I couldn’t go to your nativity play so I had to make up a doctor’s appointment.

My intention had been to build a freedom business. With flexibility and school hours and never to miss a pick-up.

Of course, I never worked harder. And I always felt I needed more time to work.

Now, I have it. And your bedroom door is open.

5. Your first summer it rained constantly. There were sandbags on the high street and flood warnings. Walking along the river-path where I’d take you most days, the grass has turned to rubble in the heatwave. It looks like scorched earth. I try not to draw an analogy.

6. In January, an energy healer told me that now was the time for me to give more attention to my work and business. That it was my time and I needed to. Is she right? I haven’t been back.

7. I’ve always found it hard to write about motherhood. Whether in the context of my business or my poems. I think because I found it easy and that’s hard to say out loud. Challenges and stresses and curveballs – yes. Of course. But you made it so easy.

8. And I always wanted so much for you. For you to believe in yourself half as much as I do.

9. A few months ago, you told me “You’ll still be my mum.” I know this. I repeat it constantly.

10. Clearing out my email, I found a 2014 note to your dad, mapping childcare plans.

A couple of weeks of sports camp.
A few days with your grandparents.
A holiday.
Winging it the rest of the time.

You move so fast through every stage of childhood. Now I know what felt like stress was actually a golden time.

I remind myself not to say this to younger mothers.

11. On Instagram, I saw that by the time your child is 18, you’ve already spent 92% of the total time you will ever spend with them.

I think about the 8%.

I unfollow.

12. This summer I haven’t felt burnt out in my business. In previous years, I feel like I crawl towards our holiday depleted and done. This year, I had more to give. I took notes with me when we went away. I feel a different sense of purpose. It feels like renewal. Like I’m building something. This whole new chapter.

13. When you and your sister were very little, and everything was sort of on fire, I read a book saying, “The days are long, but the years are short.”

I repeated it.
I quoted it back to friends.
It didn’t stop the years passing.

14. I come across a podcast called Life After Kids. Its latest episode is called “Preparing Emotionally for Your Child’s College Departure.” I hit Play Next.

15. This endless summer is drawing to a close. I hope it’s exactly what you wished for. Your boys’ trip and festivals and night after night in the pub with your school friends. Everywhere, there’s sunflowers and blackberries and the trees are heavy with apples. The weather’s already turning.

16. Did I rush through it? Did I pay attention? Was I always distracted by work or deadlines or to-do-lists? Did I rush you?

17. My friends heap generosity and advice onto me.

The build-up is worse than the event. (Nat)

This month will be hard, but you’ll get through it. Promise. (Kate)

All will be well. (Paula)

18. Motherhood is terrain. Utterly unchartered terrain.
And this new season is a whole new landscape to navigate.

You, my sweet boy, have always had such a strong sense of direction. I remember your first time in Paris. Were you 10? How easily you guided us from Notre Dame back to our hotel in the Latin Quarter when I got lost.

I know you’ll hand me the instructions to read this new map.🗺️

Ouff. Thank you for staying with this one. As always, I’m so grateful for every ❤️ and comment. Or just hit reply. I know a lot of my peers and colleagues are in this boat too (or just past/ before it). I send you love.

Back next month. Business as usual

With love,
Antonia xo

PS I nearly called this “Being at the end of the frigging 18^th summer”. I thought best not.

“To have a voice means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others,
and your own life.”

From Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit

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Hi Friend,

I may have already told you that I’ve spent the past few months exploring a question deep in my heart: how women are seen — in our work, our creativity, our leadership.

After nearly 25 years in PR, I felt called to look deeper. To understand the forces that shape how women build visibility in and for their work, show up online and off, and claim space in a system that often asks us to shrink. To stay small. Dim our lights.

This autumn, I’ll be sharing Being Seen (working title 😉) — a white paper gathering insights from brilliant women leaders on how they’ve shaped their professional presence. We talk strategies, setbacks, and the real impact that showing up with intention has had on their careers, their businesses, their lives.

There’s so much more to come on this.

For now – because it turns out I’ve been writing about this since forever - I’m revisiting a piece I wrote this time last year — on voice, and what it means to use ours.

Coming back to your voice (again💛)

Last week I ran a brand story workshop with a very switched-on, super-commercial and successful female founder.

Who hasn’t posted on LinkedIn in 7 years.

Or proactively marketed a business she believes in. And wants to grow.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to. Rather, deep in the running a business, she lost her own voice.  Got out of the habit of doing her own marketing.  Of showing up.

I’m always curious about the barriers that hold us back from promoting our work. I hear it a lot from the women I work with.

Worried about over-sharing.

Being too much.

Not being enough.

Being judged for being “too self-promotional.”

The ick of drawing attention to yourself.

Imagine that. You’ve done great work. You’ve helped people. Made a difference. And now you want to talk about it?

You’re right. That’s just gross. 😉

Finding reasons to show up

There’s a lot going on in the world. It’s easy for this to leak into our “why bother?” thoughts.

The sense of over-saturation: does the world need another Substack? Or another LinkedIn post on all the lessons from 45 birthdays?

And while Instagram Reels suggest otherwise, it’s been a hard year.

Sales cycles are painfully slow. Calls keep getting cancelled. One second, clients are asking for project start dates. The next, leaving the ghost-like trail of silence in your inbox.

Friend, while it feels otherwise. These are reasons to keep showing up.

Why using your voice matters – a reframe

When I work with clients in my LinkedIn workshops, I love to remind them that using your voice/ taking up space/ sharing your work with the world is a vital contribution.

Often to something bigger than us.

Sure, you’re talking about a talk you gave at a company conference, but who else are you celebrating? Or when you promote a new service or product or course? Aren’t you inviting your audience into something that could help them grow?

Be closer to the person they want to be.

It’s the opposite of self-serving.

 The transformative power of showing up

Ok, in my heart, I know Rebecca Solnit wasn’t talking about PR or brand or newsletter marketing when she wrote Recollections of My Non-Existence.  But as I was re-read this quote (the one at the top of this newsletter), it reminded me that using our voices is a responsibility, a way to grow and to make things better for your:

Community – I use LinkedIn as an example here because it’s what I know. Still considered a platform for tech bro hacks or accountants from St. Albans, I’m seeing so many more female-led conversations happening across the platform. Sure, algorithms are at play, but the more space we take up, the more we create for others.

Using your voice, commenting, having conversations – all expand that space. And hold it for your community. This applies across all platforms.

Relationships – Using your voice means building relationships – whether that’s colleagues, customers, readers, prospects, your network – through work you (I hope) love. Speaking up, commenting, bringing your POV, helps build trust and credibility.

Thinking about a call I had with a legal client yesterday; because I’ve been following his LinkedIn lately, the conversation was richer, the connection deeper. Right now bots can’t do this.  

Self – I honestly believe there’s a self-transformation that comes with showing up in and to your marketing. A commitment and accountability that spills out into who you become through consistent – not constant – visibility.  

You create space to become the next version of you. As a leader, a content creator, a business owner, a writer, a creative.

If you’d told me five years ago, I’d be sharing poems and personal essays online, alongside my PR work and marketing writing, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Because that version of me didn’t exist yet.

I wrote myself into her.

In between ALL the silent weeks and bad hair days and months I didn’t feel I had anything to say and MASSIVE Instagram hiatuses.

In those spaces, and outside of them.

I got closer to the person I want to be.

Now, you go. 💛

Thank you for being here. As always, I’m so grateful for every ❤️ and comment. And as I build more work about the theme of visibility I would love to know how it shows up for you. On good days and bad days. If you could change one thing about your own relationship with it what would it be?

And let me know if you want more details on the white paper launch in October.

Back next month.

With love,
Antonia xo

‘But here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.’

- Rick Bass

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Hi friend,

Didn’t June just whoosh?

Thank you so much to everyone who responded to my last newsletter. On chasing what work used to feel like and catching up with what it feels like now.

My inbox and gratitude were overflowing.

Which has also given me food for thought around the future of this newsletter and where its home will be. One to think about.

3 Things for July💌

Has your summer suddenly become very full? The days are gloriously long and brimming. Weekends packed. We’re all moving at a certain pace. Which is fast. And hot. And spilling over.

I’ve been so careful about overcommitting in recent years, I hadn’t realised that maybe I do have capacity for a little more this summer. So long as they’re the right things. To make the most of this lovely season of light and warmth and energy.

Anyway, 3 things for this beautiful new month.

1. Committing to momentum

I’ve been thinking about momentum a lot lately. I had a little epiphany last week, realising a project hadn’t moved on as much as I wanted.

Checking in on my own behaviour, I clocked that I simply hadn’t put in enough time. Often enough. I’d allocated a couple of hours a week to it. Building a stop-start rhythm that just wasn’t moving the dial. Looping around in a circle on repeat.

I’ve always believed that small, micro-steps make a difference. They do. But some things also require giant leaps. So, I’m upping the pace on a couple of projects.

I wondered where else in my business I’d let this half-in, half-out cadence affect everything I’m trying to create. July – and this second half of the year – are all about getting back into the fast lane.

2. Being in the room

June was busy with work events.

A networking thing here.

An in-person business growth event there.

As I continue to recalibrate in this new world of work, one thing I’m clear on. Being in the room – with other people with skin on, in conversation, in community – is where I feel most like myself.

Extending, deepening relationships.
Holding space.
Learning.

Ditching the voice in my head telling me it’s a faff to leave the house at 4.30pm and reminding myself that I get to (perks of teenage kids).

Remembering a Taylor Swift meme about jetlag being a choice when I worry about missing my 9.30pm bedtime.

Send me the details of your next event, friend. I’ll be there..

3. Checking in on my silence

How many times over the last 20 months have I created some content, meant to post but felt so overwhelmed and crushed by the horrors in the world that instead, I’ve opted for silence?

As this pattern formed a groove in my brain, I realised just how small this was making me. That ultimately, if I waited for a day when there wasn’t something in the news that made me flinch and despair, I’d be quiet forever.

Look, we all need to read rooms better.

To choose our timings on launches and messages and posts.

But I realise too that my staying silent, not bringing new ideas and thinking and creativity into the world serves no one.

This isn’t just about visibility for visibility’s sake. It’s using our voices well, thoughtfully and with intention.

It’s easy to tell yourself your silence is respectful. I don’t doubt it is.

But is that brave?
Is that the most generous thing you can do for your community?
How does that change anything?

I remind myself of the cost of not showing up. The toll that spending so much energy hiding parts of yourself takes. And that to work with other women, encouraging them to share their voices, means I have to unmute myself and go first.

Where’s somewhere you’ve perhaps been hiding too?

Thank you for being here. I’m grateful for every ❤️ and comment. Tell me what you’re bringing into your July.

With love,
Antonia xo

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Some July recommendations for you:

1. Newsletter: I’ve been loving my friend Sara Dalyrmple’s fieriness and whole vibe in the The Scoop, supporting women in sales and business and brilliance. If you’re not signed up, head over.

2. Book: Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou. I get asked a lot about the best books on Cyprus. This short story collection gives lyrical flashes into its history through a myriad of characters – from a king of Egypt through to a chamber maid at a fancy hotel. I inhaled it.

3. Podcast: Wasn’t expecting to appreciate this as much as I did. A deeply grounding episode on navigating the rise of AI from Gabby Bernstein (Trust me).

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“Work is love made visible.”
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Hi Friend,

A couple of weeks back, my friend Tiffany Philippou wrote an eye-opening piece about work. Breaking the unspoken assumption that we’re all operating with chronic burn-out, Tiff suggested we’re grieving.

Grieving for work as we once knew it.
9 to 5, water-cooler moment, Pret sandwich lunch work.
I-can-steer-my-own-career work.
Work that infuses our productive days with purpose.

She writes: “Work as I once knew it no longer exists.

“My relationship with work has had a quiet ending. It’s like we’re in a relationship that’s over…I can’t recall a conversation I’ve had recently with someone who’s told me that they’re enjoying their work. There’s a collective feeling of stagnation and despair. Is anyone thriving? Growing? How wild, in this climate, to ask: is anyone feeling fulfilled?”

I always say I can take me a moment to catch up with where I am.

Reading Tiff’s piece I realised that since the pandemic, I’ve been trying to get back to that feeling I used to get after a “good day’s work.”

Accomplished. Complete. Maybe a little wired even.

I simply hadn’t caught up with this new world of work. One that feels more nebulous, a little shapeless.

And that I’ve been chasing a ghost.

Trying to get back to something

This newsletter isn’t about hybrid working, or whether we all need to be in an office (although the wave of return-to-office mandates suggests a hankering for an old-world order).

I also have to caveat that as a creative business, my work life is entirely of my own making.

I have the privilege of working from a laptop in a safe home office I love. With clients I care about. I built my business so I could work at a level I wanted to, while also having a cup of tea at 3.30 as my kids download their school day (or not).*

And while nothing fundamentally changed about how I worked – scheduled weekly client calls, delivering solid PR strategies, securing strong comms results – it feels like the fabric of what made up my work has somehow got thinner.

The relationships feel more fragile.
My network less robust.
Ghosting has become a thing.

It’s bewildering to navigate a world where the sand constantly shifts beneath you as you move.

Weeks are filled tracking tasks, and to-dos, issuing client pitches, sharing updates – the regular rhythm of PR. Still, I move through the workday with no sense of arrival at the end.

It still feels like I’ve been trying to get back to something. Something I can’t quite reach.

*I’m also massively glossing over the real and stressful childcare challenges that informed this decision now I’m at the other side of the parenting journey.

The end of work?

Conversations around me are fuelled with redundancies and “mutual partings of ways.” News pieces are filled with the impact of AI and the end -of- the world predictions that come with it.

At a friend’s launch party last week, a software engineer I was introduced to said, “My job will be the first to go.”

Like in a recession when everyone says they’re in the front line (I’m in PR so I know the “budget cut” conversation well).

It’s hard to stay motivated when your work feels so precarious. How can headlines predicting the loss of 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs - using language like “AI bloodbaths” and “job killing” - not keep us awake at night?

Hattie Crissell recently named it as FOBO: the fear of being obsolete. At a time when we should all be thriving in our careers and reaping the rewards of all those career ladders we climbed, are we all reaching for ways to stay relevant? The irony of wanting to do our best work as we operate from a place of low-grade existential crisis.

Work as reclamation

Like you, work has never been “just a job” to me. It sits deep in my DNA – I overidentify with it.

I want to say “to a fault” but I don’t know if it is.

From my first day as a Saturday girl in my local library at 15, I knew it was something I was good at. It became wrapped up in who I am. If I think about it, I wonder if it was already who I was?

Growing up, I watched my grandfather rebuild his life - devastated by the 1974 war in Cyprus – through hard work. Brick by brick – first his home, a shop, a second one. Rising at 5am each morning to work at putting his life back together. How, through his work, he could return to his sense of self, create a new legacy.

When I was 8, my mum went back to work as an editor for a government organisation. I watched her reclaim how she moved through the world. The identity and definition her work gave her as she leapfrogged her male colleagues from one promotion to another. How she became more of herself.

Work has always been about the fullest of expression of who we are.

Of possibility. Of potential. Of becoming.

I wouldn’t know who I was without it. It’s hard and confronting to type here.

Into a brave new world

A couple of years ago, I learnt this magic trick: how not to spiral when the s**t hits the fan in my business. If a long-standing client served notice on a contract, for example, a project didn’t go through, or I missed out on a pitch.

I learnt to look at the data, at my own track record.

That somehow, I always worked out a way through.

To take the setback, learn from it, figure a way out how to move forward into something new – often more aligned. Often, better.

I learnt to trust myself in my business. In my work. In the creativity and resilience and persistence that had got me to this point.

And I know the narrative now is what’s worked before, isn’t working now.

Ok, but you. Your creativity and resilience and persistence – you’re working.

And while work may not feel the same, I’m also not the same person I was five years ago.

I’m someone who starts the day with a create first commitment most days– something I never would have given myself permission for previously.

Who blocks off most of Mondays to work on her business.

Who sends actual cold emails.

Who connects with her solar plexus before client calls.

Perhaps the ghost I was chasing was me.

And now I’m ready to create something new. Something I can touch.🌊

Work stories are my lifeblood - literally. I’m in B2B PR. Tell me how you’re feeling about work; where you are with it and what you want from it and what you’re doing about that.

And THANK YOU for being here. I appreciate every ❤️, comment and reply.

See you all the time.

With love,
Antonia xo

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A Brand Story for a Brave New World

If you’re also catching up on where your business is/ who you are in this brave new world, I’ve opened a handful of slots for my 121 Brand Story Playbook sessions.

✅ To help make your brand story so clear, it sings.
✅ Connects deeply with the right people.
✅ Makes it impossible for your clients to not keep choosing you.

Together we’ll develop:

✅ Magnetic Messaging– with clarity, trust and the confidence that converts consistently
✅ Stories that Sell – A storytelling framework that drives desire and demand to come back to time and again
✅ A Content Ecosystem – rooted in thought leadership pillars that bring a new level of authority and agency – and the opportunities and impact that come with that

This isn’t about trying to outsmart/outshout an algorithm. It’s about using your voice strategically, effectively so that you step into your next level of visibility and become your own sales funnel.🫶🏼

“If you’re looking for someone who ‘gets it’ and who ‘gets you’ when it comes to B2B brand messaging – Antonia Taylor is that person. Antonia’s curiosity, perceptiveness, marketing nous, sense of humour and magical way with words shone through every interaction we had.

They all combined into a messaging session that was well thought out, packed with aha moments and that was in equal measure cathartic and empowering. I loved it.”

Suzy Timms, Founder & Director of Insight Avenue

‘I am paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have as if it were our duty to find things to love,
to bind ourselves to this world.”

- Sharon Olds

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Hi friend,

And hi, summer. Also, hi mid-year point.

Every corner of the internet feels full with mid-year resets right now. Maybe it’s just my algorithm, but I’m being targeted by masterminds telling me I need to accelerate and smash and crush a bunch of targets I’m not sure I ever set.

So much striving. So much chasing.

And I’m the worst culprit.

Last Friday, I sat down to write a client award submission. I’d had a productive morning and, to be honest, the vibe was very much “just one last thing.” The voice in my head reminded me how grateful my future Monday self would be that I muscled through.

Then another thought crashed in: What about your present self?

What about Antonia in this moment?

I’ve mentioned before my addiction to next-ness. Of having to work at being present in place.

Instead, I shut my laptop and took my daughter into town to buy a new top for her 17th birthday party. Which was lovely and fun and for the record, Monday Antonia supported this (ok, not very rebellious) decision.

3 Things for June📝

One of my favourite things I used to write on Instagram was my “What’s working now” series. It was a short vignette—essentially a bunch of glimmers from my business, work, and life that I was grateful for. Things like:

• Shorter to-do lists

• Scheduling monthly check-ins

• Notebooks

• Co-working Wednesdays (what happened to them?!)

• Working on my business

I don’t know why I stopped (although the last one I wrote was in September 2023, so I can guess).

I wonder too if, on some level, I expected the world of work to return to something that felt more familiar.

But at this mid-year point, instead of starting something new, I’m going to meet myself where I am, recalibrate and build on what’s working now. Because some things still are:

1. More time-blocking

The next couple of months are fully mapped with a handful of business and creative projects—which is exciting and also a lot. So I sat down and put all the time into the calendar to make it happen.

Time-blocking doesn’t feel sexy or spiritual. But it anchors the commitment.
And it makes you own your bad choices when you deviate.

2. More visibility as a practice

Last month, I pledged to share more BTS content. No viral hits yet, but the practice of thinking about content—and sharing it across my key platforms—has helped me tune into content-ready moments, find opportunities to support other businesses, and build a deeper level of engagement with the world beyond my home office.

I’m not quite at a daily visibility practice yet, but a few posts a week are definitely tapping into muscle memory.

3. More betting on myself

This was something I started the year with.

But between clients taking their PR in-house, struggling to stick to a mega sales programme, and forgetting to cancel a very expensive media database subscription—I let this intention slip.

Still, here we are, halfway through the year. And while the world feels on fire, and some days I feel like an 11-year-old panting her way to the school cross-country finish line—out of breath, painful stitch, desperate not to be seen coming in last—we’re still in the race.

Whatever that is.

And remember, the year after, she came in third.
Which felt okay.

I want you to bet on yourself too, okay? Tell me how in the comments below.

As always, I’m grateful for every ❤️ and response.

With love,
Antonia xo

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Some June recommendations for you:

1. Essay: My brilliant friend Tiffany Philippou wrote this profound essay on our forever-changed relationship with work. As someone who has been chasing the hit of pre-pandemic work days for FIVE years, this was a huge awakening for me.
   
   

2. Book: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, tr. Sophie Hughes. More on the world of work. And living. And finding purpose and authenticity while social media and designer furniture and slow cooking have different ideas for us.

3. Podcast: Listening to Helen Sandle’s podcast on glimmers and wider nervous system regulation, I’d forgotten I’d written about it a while back. But I do remember it resonating and getting lots of comments from lovely readers. Listen to this if your nervous system needs some support.

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“There’s a practice available to each of us – the practice of embracing the process of creation in service of better. The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output.”

Seth Godin

Hi Friend,

1. I found myself questioning whether I was going to write this newsletter this week. I noticed metrics on my last one slipped a little. Substack has become so noisy. My friend Claire Venus posted that Substack open and delivery rates have “tanked”.

Moments like this make you ask: What’s the long game here? Should I be using this time elsewhere? Who is this ultimately for? Also, everything that’s happening in the world.

Then I think of that low-vibe, feeling of not writing this piece, not connecting, not showing up to community. The icky FOMO I wouldn’t be able to shake off on Thursday morning - my publishing day. Like I was ghosting myself.

2. Lately, I’ve switched up my to-do-list. I’m almost embarrassed to write my deeply analogue planning process, knowing ChatGPT could probably do it better.
Each Sunday afternoon, I take my A4 length list and organise it in a notebook under:

· 5 Most important tasks
· 5 Secondary tasks of importance
· 5 Additional tasks

When tasks get carried over, week after week (which they always do) there’s a little reckoning. As I confront my own resistance to what I’m not actively pursuing, shifting one task after another onto a fresh list, I have to ask: What am I gathering this pile of undone things for? What am I holding myself back from — and why?

3. As poets, we’re taught to name the ache— the specificity of a particular longing. Whether it’s loss, grief, homesickness, regret, or love.
To find language around that.
What’s the ache that comes with not doing the thing you long to do?
Of not being the person you long to be?

4. I recently flicked through some of my old journals from, maybe, five years ago (the parts that I could read my own handwriting😘). They’re from before I had a consistent creative practice, or anything close to what I’d call a “writing life”.
The current running through them is palpable — the feeling of inhabiting the shadows, the longing for more. The vice grip of stuck-ness, of not bringing what was inside of me into the world. That sense that my real life was elsewhere.

5. I’ve been thinking a lot about the connection between creativity and visibility— how expressing ourselves in our work and businesses can become a practice.
Not because it’s another “should” or out of fear of missing out on opportunities, or pressure to be seen performing in my business in a certain way.
But because not expressing ourselves fully keeps us smaller.
What we shut down externally, we also close off internally.
And there’s a cost to that.

6. What’s the cost of not showing up for you?
Of breaking the promise you made to yourself on Sunday evening to show up this week, only to get to Thursday and realise… oh.
For me, it’s like the low-grade, persistent hangover you get after two glasses of — possibly crappy — wine.
It’s the backwash that repeats when you don’t post the Reel that could support your upcoming launch, when you sit on the LinkedIn post until it times out, when you miss the third newsletter in a row.
That gap between who you want to be — as a creative, a leader, your most authentic self — and the version of you that says, “I’ll do it tomorrow. Maybe.”
Instead of building the business and impact you know you're longing to create.

7. What if your marketing — your self-promotion — became your most creative and strategic outlet?
Not your most dreaded, niggly chore?
What if it became a process that not only sustains your business, but sustains you — in how it shapes your life, how it connects you to your community, how it makes you more visible in your days?
Beyond brand success, alchemising into simply… who you are.
A truly more expansive life.

8. On LinkedIn, my friend and London Writer’s Salon co-founder, Parul Bavishi, shared a Rick Rubin quote:
“The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
I messaged her and asked if I could steal it for this newsletter.
Isn’t it the same for the creative? The founder? The marketer? The poet?
It’s all the tiny, daily things you do that add up.
The things you say yes to.
The things you get done.
This is who you become — stepping out of your shadow life into the brightest sunshine.

9. I have a poetry deadline this week. I have to send my mentor a handful of edited poems by the end of the week. I sat down with a new-ish poem today. I played with a line break. Typed the word “dissolve” as a prompt to come back to. Changed some syntax. Closed the document.
That was it for the day.
It felt like enough.
I’d done the thing.

Friend, name one thing you set out to do this week, this month, this year.
The one taking up all the headspace right now.
What’s one small action you can take toward it?
Share it in the comments below.
And go do it.

As always, I’m so, so grateful for every ❤️, comment and reply. Thank you for being here.

With love,
Antonia xo

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‘May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel alive.”

Fennel Hudson

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Hi friend,

What are you making May your month of?

Mine’s a little re-focus as we rush to the mid-year point.

Make that a big re-focus. Looking at ways to anchor more deeply in this month of Bank Holidays and short weeks and that uptick you see in your calendar as we all start living our best al fresco lives and dive into the glorious pace of summer.

Also, I’m switching up my 3 Things for…series a little. I always want to bring more value to this newsletter. Each month I’ll share an intention/ micro- strategy focused on visibility and profile raising each month. Ones I’ll use. Proven techniques I share with clients.

It’s an experiment. Let’s see what happens. Come along with me for the ride. And with that…

3 Things for May🩷

Some intentions I’m taking into this new month with me:

1. Re-focus, re-focus…just focus

I’ve been struggling with distraction lately. Of course it’s the usual culprit of too much mindless scrolling, the toxic impulse to reach for my phone the second I have a thought I’d rather avoid, possibly over-consuming. It’s leaking into and out of my minutes, my days. So much so, I tried some Lion’s Mane gummies (because Instagram told me they’d improve my concentration). Basically £35 on over-priced Fruit Pastilles.

This month is about plugging all those places I let me energy and focus leak out from. Even as I write this, I can even feel my left hand twitching towards my phone.

Because it’s confronting to acknowledge this.

To acknowledge how much of myself I give away to avoidance.

Also, as an adult woman, who has run a business for 12 years and has a self-management toolkit, of course I know what works.

📋Re-prioritising.
⏳Time blocking.
✔️Completion

I may add “inbox detox” to the list.

2. Our worlds, behind-the-scenes

Ok, I know this one comes up here a lot. Like so many solo-business owners I spend most of my workday alone. There’s always that balance of delivering the work vs. being with people who refuel you, who energise you. Which ultimately means you do that work better. From a place of pleasure and appreciation, rather than pressure.

In a move to be more discerning about how I spend my time, I somehow stripped out so much colour and texture. And fun. Which inadvertently trimmed down my own content. There’s only so many desk selfies I can share on Instagram.

Behind-the-scenes (BTS) content is always my favourite. Of course, it’s still edited and filtered.But there’s that sprinkling of storytelling, that invitation to be part of something, to be vulnerable enough to be seen trying.

So I’m committing to sharing my own BTS content x3 times a week as an effort to rebuild this muscle. Join me.

3. Choosing resource over resilience

Parking my privilege, I’d say I’m well-resourced as a creative business owner and writer. Rich in connections, relationships and support. As every reader of The Conversation knows, I still have overwhelming moments of stuck-ness. Caught in the loop of telling myself I know what I need to do. And yet…I’ve had “CEO day” on my to-do-list for 8 weeks now.

Sometimes you need that space held for you.

This month I’ve invested in a messaging refresh as I work out how to balance the parts of who I am in the world, as a PR and poet, so I can grow with this expanded identity. I’ve also signed up to a women’s business and personal growth event.

Just putting a little bit of attention and care back into my business.

I’d love to know what your May plans are. Hit reply or share in the comments below.

As always, I’m grateful for every ❤️ and response.

With love,
Antonia xo

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Some May recommendations for you:

1. Read: I’ve long been a fan of Tamu Thomas’ deeply progressive work on toxic productivity and her limitless way of thinking. Coming back to her book Women Who Work Too Much at a busy time.

2. Learn: I just completed (ish) Claire Venus’ brilliant Joyful Growth challenge. For the first time thinking about what could be possible for me here on Substack. For anyone thinking of making the Substack leap, start here.

3. Think: Those outside the Substack universe may have missed this story. Glennon Doyle joined Substack. Then un-joined. Because of how people reacted. What does this say about how we treat visible women, powerful women, women with platforms? And why other women’s success can make us all mean girls.

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“I was meant to be a breaker of some stories and a maker of others…even a vessel for the most precious cargo you can carry, the stories waiting to be told, and the stories that set us free.”

- Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Non-Existence

Hi Friend,

1. Of course, I had another post planned today. 😘I started writing it last week, realised I’d planned to post it on the Thursday before the Easter break and that perhaps, this served nobody. Then somehow, as I came back to it, it felt like the story had moved on. At least for now. Isn’t that what stories do?

2. Coming to write this, I didn’t feel I had a bright shiny package to offer you. I felt like I didn’t really have anything to say. But I knew I didn’t want to not show up. To fall back into the familiar trap of silencing myself before I even start.

3. So much of my life feels tangled up in a messy middle right now. I’m working on a new offer for corporate clients, waiting for feedback on a creative project, trying to support my 18-year-old in the thick of A-levels. Like there’s a handful of stories orbiting around me, that I can’t quite pin down.

4. My algorithm is flooded with ads for storytelling masterclasses. Promises to create your 6-figure story and high-ticket offers and blah blah. Like we have one perfectly formed story we need to use in our PR or marketing. Of course, I believe in clarity and untangling your stories. I also believe in story structure. I don’t believe this has to be perfect before we share them.

5. In my poetry, I keep finding the way that women’s stories have been silenced throughout history – from the bible through to Substack. You know I love my Greek myths so forgive me if I start with Cassandra, the prophetess, who could see the future – including the destruction of Troy - but nobody listened to. The New Yorker just did this great piece on how Mary Magdalene was written out of the bible. The darkness shone on women’s stories is too huge a topic to grapple with here. It’s a degree subject. That shapes women’s experience every day. As Elissa Altman wrote, “How many stories are not being told, by women, by people who grew up in cultures that limit storytelling?” I think of my grandmother. I think of women everywhere. Especially now.

6. How do we reclaim all these stories? It’s a whole newsletter in its own right but I love the “Greek Girl Myth”* renaissance for this reason. Work like Nikita Gill’s and my wonderful Primers colleague and friend, Laura Varnam, unlocking one silenced woman’s voice at a time.

7. Many storytelling courses still use Joseph Campbell’s hero's journey template: hero goes on adventure, hero triumphs over decisive event, hero returns transformed. The end. It’s also called a “monomyth” which, by definition, means one single story. I was not expecting to bring the patriarchy into this essay today but how many women’s lives fit into a singular story arc? (I’m not gender essentialist, and I don’t think men’s do either). How many versions of you – mum/ daughter/ sister/ partner/ friend/ boss/ business owner/ colleague/ cat feeder/ WhatsApp present organiser have you been by 9am most days?

8. Sometimes you’re coming to your story from the beginning, sometimes 2/7ths of the way through. Sometimes from the messy middle. Or the bit just after that. Not every story is neatly tied up in a bow either. Sometimes it just ends. And a new one starts.

9. We are all so rich in stories. Why would we tie ourselves to just one? The How I started by business/ burnout/ changed my money mindset – all so valid, but we’re more than each of those. Our stories live alongside each other and spring from each other. Stories run through us like rivers, a current to our life force, moving us forward into the mouth of the ocean. Then they start again at the water source. Gathering more as they go.

10. How can your stories expand you? Each of us has a multitude of touchpoints, of resonance and relatability and inspiration. That connect to forgotten parts of us and new selves. That reach the different layers of who we’re speaking to. In the stretch bit of my barre class at the weekend, Marnie Alton, spoke of how the Joni Mitchell records she listened to as a teen in Canada, with their stories about California and life and love, shaped her decision to move to LA. How this became the tapestry of who she is. I was immediately transported back to my own teenage self, 17 and quietly reading Syliva Plath for the first time, dreaming of leaving and cities and freedom. A stitch in my own tapestry.

11. Stories that have helped me lately: One from Steph Caswell talking about inconsistent income when you run your own business. This brave and honest piece from Nat Lue. Maya C. Popa on how deep the origins of achievement run. I’m so grateful each of these incredible storytellers didn’t talk themselves out of not sharing their story.

12. Perhaps it’s ok for me to do the same. Perhaps we need these stories even more.The ones from hard places. Lonely places. Stuck places. Even this messy place. Perhaps it’s even a responsibility.

Where are you in your story right now? What’s the one you’re not quite ready to tell? Will you share it anyway?

As always, I’m so, so grateful for every ❤️, comment and reply.

See you on the Stack or right back in your inbox.

With love,
Antonia xo

*Myths of other origins are available

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