Thank you!!

A love letter to each of you

Thank you for taking the time to read my essays. Your support means so much to me. If you enjoy these newsletters, please consider sharing Moxie with friends via email or on social media. You can also upgrade to a paid subscription which entitles you to an additional essay every Tuesday. Your support of my work allows me to keep writing on this platform and to keep making free content- with minimal ads- on other platforms. Regardless of subscription level, thank you for being here, I love you and am grateful for your support.

Yesterday, on Tiktok, I profiled the iconic Atoosa Rubenstein, former editor of early aughts teen bible Seventeen Magazine, for my “history class” series on TikTok. Atoosa saw the videos (I sent them to her) and sent several incredibly kind DMs and also reposted the second video with an incredibly kind and thoughtful caption. I know I have posted about this several times on my instagram story. Stay with me, my girls. This essay about more than just my correspondence with Atoosa.

Her caption is posted in full below, please read it if you’d like. I want to focus here on the latter part of her words.

via instagram.com/atoosarubenstein

“What my colleagues didn’t know back then was that I was single minded in my efforts because I wanted to save any young version of me out there that I could. I couldn’t save myself from the abuse I went through as a kid, but I would try my best to make sure we DID save and be of service to as many of our girls as possible. It was an honor.

… I loved you when you when I didn't know you and I continue to love you now that you are my … peer.”

This week has been very difficult for me, from a “person who writes and exists on the internet” perspective. Some person or collective people found something on an Instagram account that they thought would upset me and sent me screenshots (from burner accounts of course) along with messages that had a level of vitriol that was too horrible to screenshot and repost. Think various messages along the lines of telling me that I am worthless and should consider taking my own life.

I am an adult and I know, at this point, better than to let some senseless person too ashamed of what they are doing act with their face and name attached to their actions bother me. But knowing better and not feeling hurt- devastated- by messages like this are entirely different things. Why am I doing this? Why am I subjecting myself to this when I so easily could not?

The easy answer is that it is my job and I have neither the qualifications nor the disposition to work in an office. But there are many other jobs that would fit my skillset and that do not require subjecting myself, my friends, my family to torment and mocking. I have not pursued any of those jobs. For every nasty message, I get 100 nice ones. You all make me laugh and cry and trust me with your secrets and sharing who I am, getting to know you, is a dream. My girls, do not give up a dream.

I do not have the influence or the following Atoosa has. I don’t have corporate backers or an HR department. I am not equivocating our influence, I am identifying with her motivation. I cannot- will not- quit doing this work because I believe sharing experience and knowledge in an honest, vulnerable way helps people. I think even the positive fluff, fashion and skincare and profiles of wealthy ladies, is helpful relief from the stresses of life. I care very much about the opportunity to help, give advice and information, and to inspire. I want to do this because I want to create something that the sixteen year old version of Hannah would have enjoyed and felt encouraged by.

Please do not misunderstand, my girls, I am not saying that I am a martyr of the Zuckerberg generation. Sharing with you is no sacrifice. It is an absolute privilege. But sometimes it’s emotional and heavy. The act of hitting publish builds a sense of community. Writing or creating something worth publishing is- at times- isolating and scary.

When I started on TikTok, I mostly shared silly day in the life and Birkin bag unboxing videos. I still share those things but I’d like to think that I am also creating something more honest and hopeful and comforting. Reading teen magazines as a kid, I thought I could grow up and become a magazine editor or a socialite or another type of it girl because no one told me that I could not, no one told me that many of the wealthy women on glossy pages were fundamentally different from me. And, as it turns out, they aren’t.

I suppose I am saying thank you for being here and for reading. Thank you for the kind messages. Thank you for sharing your triumphs with me and also your struggles. Thank you for trusting me to give you advice and for making me laugh. Nasty messages and threats do not make me consider quitting because doing this means so much to me and it is never lost on me that I can only do this because you all read it. Whether I know you or not, I love you. I hope you all will continue to allow me to do this work. I hope that- to at least a few of you- I can be the big sister I never had.

It is an honor. The greatest one I can imagine, actually.

I love you,

Hannah Stella