Many husbands, many lovers, and a life of writing. When my fifth husband died, grief shattered me. Yet rebuilding taught me a vital truth: loss and divorce weren't the end of my story. It should also not be yours. https://fiveweddingsandafuneral.substack.com/p/paying-for-the-mirage-what-a-narcissists?r=8h73v And here's my latest post: A classic case of grief meets grifter. After losing my soulmate, I fell for an "irresistible bohemian" who turned out to be less free-spirited rogue and more freeloader with a personality disorder. Live-in spectator for his ego? Check. Unwitting sponsor of his Turkish sailing holiday, rent, and booze supply? Double check. Turns out, he wasn’t a romantic rescue project; he was just a textbook narcissist hunting an empathetic target. But the (eventual) joke was on him: I finally saw past the mask, cut my losses, and cancelled his free ride. Expensive lesson? Absolutely. But reclaiming my sanity? Utterly priceless. Read the full story here: https://fiveweddingsandafuneral.substack.com/p/paying-for-the-mirage-what-a-narcissists

... for you, @Jill Hart. I've just resurrected my Substack with a new article. Am I allowed to post about it here?

How did we reach the end of July? It's rodeo weekend round here - which means more fireworks - feels like we have fireworks and parades in this town every weekend in July - next month will be the fair and then life will settle down for fall. (my very favorite season). Yesterday's Mastermind was all about notes and it was so great to have so many of you join live! Highlights? 📝 Post Notes daily. (Three per day is the sweet spot, but one consistently is far better than none. Use the scheduler so you never miss a day.) 💬 Spend at least as much time commenting as posting. Meaningful conversations are what make Notes work. 🌎 Don't stay inside our community. Support each other, then intentionally branch out into conversations happening across Substack. ❤️ Leave comments that add something to the discussion rather than simply saying "Great post!" The goal is to become memorable. 🤝 Build relationships before trying to build subscribers. Subscribers are the byproduct of genuine connection. 🔄 Return to older Notes and continue conversations. A new comment can bring an older Note back into circulation. 📚 Engage with articles and Chats, not just Notes. Every interaction increases your visibility. 🎯 Think of Notes as networking, not broadcasting. You're joining conversations, not posting advertisements. 🚪Use your Notes to open the door to your publication rather than trying to sell directly in the Note itself. 📈 Consistency beats occasional bursts of activity. Showing up every day compounds over time. 💜 Your personality is your advantage. People subscribe because of the person behind the publication as much as the content itself. Catch the replay w/transcript here 🌱 ✨ 💜 🤝 📝 💬 🚀 ☕ 🌿 Tuesday we'll be doing the Substack Setup Intensive LIVE again - we begin at 10am mtn #🎯START HERE to join us.

It only took 3 tries but they were finally able to fix my A/C yesterday. What started out as something I thought was one thing - a water leak - morph into something totally unexpected. Did you know that if the drain line for your a/c gets clogged it will shoot water out of random places and flood your basement? Yep, that's what happened. On top of the line being clogged it was clogged in a way up high space that the first guy missed on 2 occasions. He thought he'd blown out the line but apparently there is another place in the line that he missed and that was totally gummed up. All is well now - and we slept gloriously. 🪅🥳💃🎊🎈🎊💃🥳🪅 This week's monetize your mission mastermind is going to be all about notes - creating them and leveraging them to grow. If you're serious about Substack this is going to be a big one for you. (yes, there will be a replay) We do these Thursdays at 2pm mtn - they are free and everyone is welcome. Mark your calendar here 🪅🥳💃🎊🎈🎊💃🥳🪅 You may have noticed with going through notes here that there is a "related notes" section that often shows up under the note you go to visit 🪄Related Notes is Substack's way of keeping a conversation going. When someone opens a Note and scrolls through the replies, Substack often shows a selection of other Notes it believes are about the same topic or would interest that reader. You don't turn this on, choose the related Notes, or tag them manually -Substack selects them automatically using its recommendation system. ✍️How Related Notes Work When someone reads your Note and scrolls through the conversation, they'll often see a Related Notes section. These aren't Notes you've linked to yourself. They're chosen automatically by Substack based on what its algorithm believes is related to the topic or interesting to that particular reader. That means every Note you publish becomes another opportunity to be discovered - not just in someone's Home feed, but alongside other conversations happening across the platform.

One of the things I love about this community is that we are not out here by ourselves trying to navigate Substack and wondering if we're the only ones (insert the latest thing you found yourself thinking/confused about) And I especially enjoy when people share stuff with me, they discover so we can all talk about it. It really takes the pressure off to have all the answers - which in case you didn't know - I don't. Yet having this space where we can all bring what we've discovered to one place makes everyone richer for the experience, don't you think? 📣Yesterday two people shared a new feature with me and each had a different way to use the feature - The first was @Ciska Venter who shared that there was a new feature where we can segment our audience - in her example she shared that we can hide under a "pay to reveal" banner bits of a post so we don't have to pay wall the entire post. (If you're curious about pay walling that - you can read more about it in this thread - Dissecting a Paywall Post) 🎉And then later in the day @Soph Newman shared a post someone on Substack had created explaining how to use the feature to paywall based on different levels to encourage upgrading. I suspect that today is going to be a day of making videos for me 1) how to make the wordmark so it blends into the header section (it's been a busy week - but I haven't forgotten) 2) thoughts on using the segmented audience feature to inspire paid subscribers In order to have paid subscribers though you must be accepting payments... @Isabel Bar is turning her payment option on soon - today? Pretty excited for you, just saying! In the process she discovered she was doing something that I was afraid I was going to do early on - and that's get tangled up in editing the wrong email - She talks about it here it's so easy to do.