🗓️ Beyond Survival: a year in review

Reflecting on 2023

A snapshot from my writing desk in January 2023

Before 2023 ends, I wanted to take a moment to look back at the year that’s been. I published my first substack post almost one year ago and have really enjoyed exploring and growing this platform. I’ve been aware of Substack for years, but was initially reluctant to join (beyond just registering to secure my username). In my decade-plus of newslettering, I’ve hopped from Tinyletter to Mailchimp to Squarespace’s email client and probably others I’ve now forgotten. I’ve been burnt by the constant crash and burn of writing-adjacent tech platforms, and just didn’t want to spend the time learning another thing. 

But I’m glad I did. In the last year, my audience has doubled. I’ve started making a (very small!) income from the work I do here, and I’ve met some amazing people. I’m proud of the space we’ve created to talk about life after trauma, and grateful to be able to do what feels like my most important work without first needing an editor’s approval.  

Here are some of my most popular posts from the year, in case you missed them: 

50 things I've learned this year

Watching Gaza

Beyond Survival: A Reintroduction

Introducing: Survivors on Screen

🔥 There's something missing from the conversation about burnout: trauma

Rethinking cooking

What these pieces have in common is vulnerability. They are essays that I laboured over, writing many drafts, editing and revising several times. This was often interrupted by a period of self-loathing for how much work it was, how wasteful I was of my time and how I was never going to be able to actually publish something. In the end, those were the pieces you loved the most. (I published it too recently for it to make the list, but I got some lovely notes about this piece on spending Christmas day alone which feels like part of the same category.)

My least popular post was about The Rose of Tralee, which is fair. It’s a niche Irish festival that is declining in cultural capital every year, though I still think it’s a good piece. (“Women are not flowers!”)

I’m unsure about my Friday “I’m grateful that” posts. It has become a reliable part of my weekly routine to sit down on a Friday morning and write about gratitude and whatever else has been on my mind that week, but they haven’t proved that popular with readers. Is it because they’re less sharable? Less considered? I like being able to round up a handful of cultural recommendations too, but perhaps they are too skimpy to be useful? I used to do long link roundups which were fun to compile but I know some readers found them overwhelming. What do you think? 

I haven’t been doing those Friday posts that long (first one published October 27th) and the last few have gotten a bit more traction, so I’m planning to stick with them for now. But please let me know if you have strong views either way.

2023 was a big year for my writing, more generally. 

Last January, I published a piece about my experience of sexual violence. It was the first time I wrote about it publicly and I’m both very proud of myself and still processing. (More on this another time!)  A couple of months later, I wrote another piece about what it's like when people joke about sexual violence.

Last March, I wrote about my mother’s death in a car accident, and later joined Claire Byrne in the RTE Radio One studio to talk about the piece. (I wrote a little about the experience of publishing that piece here.)

I wrote about the importance of Pride. 

I wrote about how State-funded fertility treatment excludes queer couples, and spoke with some of the families impacted by the decision. 

I wrote an essay about falling in love with my (Italian) partner through food for Scoop! 

I had my first literary publication, about a haunted hot water bottle, in Púca Magazine. 

I wrote three reading lists for Longreads on queer ecology, Italian food and the choice to become a parent. 

I wrote about queer literature for GCN, spotlighting books by Carmen Maria Machado and Ocean Vuong.

🙏 Thank you for accompanying me through this year.

Thank you for spending your valuable time and attention with me every week. Thank you for forwarding my emails to people, and for stopping by to like or comment. If there’s anything you’d like to read more of in 2024, please leave a comment below or hit reply and let me know. 

I appreciate your time and attention. 

---

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend. It helps spread the word about Beyond Survival’s mission. 

✍️ Beyond Survival is written by me, Clare Egan, an award-winning writer and journalist. You can read more about me here. 👋 Click reply to say hello anytime. Thank you for being here!