When Slowing Down Sets You Free

How an autism diagnosis opened the door to build creative work that lasts

I used to be dangerously good at beautiful beginnings.

In three or four weeks, I could spin up a whole business: name, brand, website, copy. I loved getting drunk on launch energy — that wild sense that anything was possible and it had to happen right now.

And then, quite predictably, I would crash into a wall.

My energy nowhere to be found, I would flatline — uninspired, confused, embarrassed. Where had the momentum gone? Where had I gone?

Looking at the remnants of my latest project, I could still sense a whisper insisting, this has potential. But I was sprinting toward an invisible finish line, convinced the idea would vanish if I didn’t keep running. Over time, I became so tired of spinning things up only to watch them fade out.

Years ago, during a particularly isolated chapter of my life, I had an idea land like lightning: The Nature of Voice. A multi-part series to explore how life experiences shape our relationship to being heard — and how that plays out in our writing. You can see some of the promotional material below.

Part of the promo materials for a course I would launch back in 2021 and then shutter after one (maybe two?) live sessions…

The idea for this showed up during a time of immense grief and inner transformation. I was sandwiched between two second-trimester miscarriages, deep in fertility testing, largely disconnected from the outside world. I hadn’t yet been diagnosed as autistic, but I was mid-research. Friends were sharing their diagnoses and alarm bells were going off.

I built everything for this course: outlines, infographics, slide decks. I hosted a small group session. And the feedback was validating: folks said it was “staggering… impressive.”

But beneath the praise was another truth: this was too deep, too fast, too much. I didn’t know how to meet people in the middle with what I saw so clearly. I didn’t have the tools to translate the depth of the idea into something digestible — and sustainable.

So, like many projects before it, I let it go.

It wasn’t because the idea wasn’t good. It’s because I didn’t yet know how to stay with something long enough to let it evolve.

I thought the problem was me. That I lacked discipline. That I was only good at shiny beginnings and terrible at everything that actually mattered.

But I was asking the wrong question.

When the Floorboards Started Talking

In 2022, I became a first-time mom while living in the remote Colorado mountains. My daughter was four months old. The days were quiet — and disorienting.

I was surrounded by beauty and completely depleted. And yet, every day, I felt invisible hands tightening around my throat, urging me to get back to work. To be visible. To make something happen.

It didn’t matter that I was exhausted and re-learning how to live in my own body. That voice was still there: Now or never.

I didn’t yet know that life as I knew it would upend a few years later. But I could feel something shifting beneath me. The foundations I had relied on were already giving way.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have the energy to create something beautiful just to watch it fall apart.

So I did something downright frightening: I slowed down. Way down. All the way.

Instead of chasing another urgent idea, I started listening to the creaks in the floorboards of my own resistance.

If I felt that familiar push-push-push voice rising up — the one screaming, You have to do this NOW or you’ll lose everything — I stopped.

I lifted my hands above my head and waved my arms side to side. I grabbed a new recipe and started chopping herbs. I bent over and touched my toes and wiggled my hips around. I changed my sensory setting. I let the pressure lift before it crushed me.

And then I came back to the work… differently. I returned only when I felt a clearing inside me. I came back when I knew I was steady again, and ready.

What I Built (By Accident)

When I first began writing on Substack, I had 12 readers, no social media following of my own and barely enough sleep to see straight. I didn’t set out to create a new publishing system for people putting their work online.

I just wanted to stop collapsing under the weight of my own ambition and blind spots.

But slowly, almost by accident, I started building things that held. That worked. That lasted. Here’s what emerged:

The Creative System

Pick a theme for your newsletter. Play with formats. Publish on a rhythm that respects both creative instinct and reader value. It sounds simple, but it’s built on cyclical listening — not forcing a product into the world to hit a metric.

The Readership Mindfulness System

Your audience isn’t just consuming. They’re in relationship with your process. When you honor your own rhythms, you model permission for them to do the same.

The Nudge Cycle

Gentle, intentional promotion that feels like an invitation instead of an interruption. This is marketing that follows natural energy, not artificial urgency.

None of these came from a strategy deck. They were nervous system adaptations — and they worked because they were personal.

Listening to Resistance

When I say I listen to the creaks in the floorboards, I mean I’ve developed a heightened sensitivity to the difference between creative challenge and creative force.

• Creative challenge feels like: This is hard, but I’m curious where it goes.

• Creative force feels like: If I don’t do this NOW, everything will fall apart.

That distinction changed everything.

Challenge invites us to explore, reflect and choose to engage. Force demands that we keep going, regardless of what we sense is right or how much something is painful.

Now, whenever I feel that old sprint energy rising — the panic, the push, the need to produce — I pause and ask: What is this resistance trying to tell me?

Sometimes it says: This isn’t the right format for this idea.You’re not ready to share this yet. You need to rest before you create something worth reading.

The Real Paradox of Going Slow

Of course, I won’t sit here and pretend that slowing down was some strategic and diabolical choice that made me rich over night.

At first, going slow felt like a death sentence.

After I was diagnosed as autistic, a quiet crisis crept in: If I can’t keep up, if I can’t produce like everyone else, if I can’t mask my way through hustle culture anymore… will I ever be taken seriously again?

I was drawing painful conclusions about myself — not because they were true, but because I was measuring my worth against standards that were never designed with me in mind.

I thought slowing down meant disappearing. I thought it meant losing relevance. I thought it meant no one would ever hire me, trust me, read me or follow my work again.

But here’s what I’ve found, and I hope this is encouraging to you, especially if you’re neurodivergent and publishing in a space like Substack:

Slowing down is not the end of your voice — it’s what allows your voice to carry.

It won’t look fast to others. It may even look like silence. You might have to pivot some systems, pause paid subscriptions, reimagine your writing style and vision. But inside, slowing down helps something begin to shift.

When you stop sprinting toward visibility… When you stop overriding your own internal cues… When you stop forcing promotional ick and instead let your work emerge on your timeline…

The work gets better. The audience finds you. The doors open, quietly — and then steadily. That’s what happened to me.

My newsletter started growing. My voice and wisdom and courage deepened. People came — not because I marketed harder, but because I finally started sounding like myself.

And now, even in the middle of a divorce — a season that’s stripping everything back to the studs — the work is still holding. I’m not breaking. And neither is the system. Because the system wasn’t built to impress the world. It was built to endure whatever life throws at me without losing me in the process.

For Fellow Recovering Sprinters

If you recognize yourself in this story — if you’re tired of exciting beginnings that lead to exhausted endings — let me say this:

The problem was never your lack of discipline. It was your lack of support and also likely rest, time and a better, more truthful concept of what projects require to lift.

You don’t need to push harder. You need to have a chance to listen more deeply.

Your creative instincts aren’t obstacles to productivity — they’re the source of everything that’s ready to come to the surface. Your instincts are your sustainability.

What if resistance wasn’t something to override — but something to see as workable, something that’s actually on your side?

✉️ An Invitation

If this resonates — if you're tired of systems that push you to the brink instead of helping you stay in the arena — I'm opening a small cohort starting Sept. 8th.

Five days. Ten people. Together, we'll explore the creative system I described above: finding your theme, playing with formats and building a publishing rhythm that actually sustains you.

This isn't about productivity hacks or growth tactics. It's about finding your way to publish your work consistently without burning out, self-erasing or performing your way to exhaustion. Let's build systems that keep you showing up — thriving, not just surviving.

If that sounds like what you’ve been needing, you can learn more here.