Entry #27 • May 26th, 2026

There's Art in Storytelling Too

Dear Reader,

Before I tell you about the future of Just Me, I think it’s important to first tell you how it all began.

Back in high school, I took a photography class that I absolutely loved. What that class really awakened in me was the ability to see art in ordinary things. I’d look at something as simple as a sidewalk or curb and suddenly see beauty in it. I became fascinated with the realization that art is everywhere, absolutely dripping from everything…if you’ll just slow down long enough to notice it.

There’s art in storytelling too.

I didn’t fully realize that until much later.

I’ve had a knack for telling stories for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure where it came from exactly. My Grandpa was a storyteller, so maybe I inherited some of it from him along the way. During my high school years, I accumulated some pretty wild stories of my own, stories I still hope to share someday, perhaps through Just Me. Some I wrote down (and desperately wish I still had copies of), while others I only shared in person with close friends. They were stories about what God was doing in my life, and people seemed genuinely drawn to hearing them.

Somewhere at the intersection of that photography class and my love for storytelling, a dream quietly formed.

I imagined traveling across the country, interviewing ordinary people along the way. I believed then, and still believe now, that everyone has a story worth telling. I wanted to photograph people, hear their lives, and compile those stories into books filled with both images and words. I wanted to hand the proverbial microphone to people who would never think they belonged on a stage.

I never pursued that particular dream though.

Instead, I pursued another one that somehow led me here: married to my best friend, raising eight kids, and owning a little shop much like the one I used to pretend-play as a child.

Over the years, I’ve found myself deeply drawn to artists who capture the stories of others well, like Humans of New York and Soft White Underbelly. I have so much respect for what they do and the dignity they give to ordinary human stories. Maybe someday I’ll pursue that old dream in some form too.

But for now, the place I’ve found to pursue writing is here, through Just Me and the store newsletters. About a year and a half ago, I finally felt like I was beginning to settle into what a “writing career” might look like for me…though I still use that term very loosely.

Writing Through the Interruption

This is a bit of an aside, but it feels important to say because it remains so incredibly vivid to me.

At this point, my life is split into two timelines: Before Diabetes and After Diabetes.

Maybe someday that sharp division will soften, but right now it is an unmistakable line in our lives. And for my son, it’s a reality he has acknowledged too. He feels that same harsh split of before and after.

Just a few months Before Diabetes entered our lives, I had finally started developing a real plan for storytelling through writing.

Recently, I found some old notes where I had brain-dumped ideas for how I wanted to structure it all. My plan was to write “installments” — almost like chapters — every week or two and send them out to anyone who opted in to follow along. I was going to use our family’s June 2025 trip to Mexico as my opportunity to get a solid head start and write a bunch of them at once.

And I was going to begin with my very best story: how I met my husband.

Shooooo-wee.

That one’s a story.

I wanted these installments to create the kind of anticipation old cable TV used to create. Remember when you had to be home in time for your favorite show because there was no streaming and no DVR yet? If you missed it, you missed part of the storyline entirely.

That’s what I wanted the emails to feel like.

Like episodes people genuinely looked forward to.

Funny enough, about a year and a half ago when I was fleshing out these ideas, I asked ChatGPT what a reasonable email length would be for this kind of writing.

Bahahahahaha.

It suggested something like 500–800 words.

I remember thinking, “That’s insane. It takes me 500 words just to set the stage.”

And honestly…that still feels true.

So here I am now, one year later, sitting and writing up at my parents’ cabin for Memorial Day weekend.

Last year at this exact time, we were about a week and a half away from our Mexico trip. I could hardly wait. I was so excited to unplug from the business for the first time ever for an entire month. I imagined slowing down, spending uninterrupted time with my family, living without constant expectations for a few weeks, and finally beginning to write.

The trip sounded glorious.

But somewhere in our lives, that hard dividing line between Before Diabetes and After Diabetes had to be drawn.

And it happened on day three of our thirty-day trip.

Hasta luego to my unplugged vacation where I was going to peacefully hang out with my family and become a writer.

I won’t belabor the point because I already feel like diabetes is all I talk about in these entries (I know that’s not really true, but it feels like it sometimes). But the truth is, it completely consumed our lives. When we came home from that trip, it felt like all the wind had gone out of my sails. Every ounce of energy I had went into learning how to keep my son alive.

Still, I couldn’t shake the desire to write.

I had given that dream so much space earlier in the year that I couldn’t fully let it go.

So I decided I would just begin anyway.

Not with the carefully planned stories I originally imagined launching with. I would simply start right in the middle of the current story we were living through. I would take my nonexistent readers through it with me in real time.

In many ways, the writing became part of how I processed the grief.

An Eventual Home for Just Me

I did have to figure out a platform for all this writing though.

Because I own a business, I’m already pretty familiar with email marketing platforms used to keep customers updated on store happenings. So initially, it seemed easiest to simply use the same kind of platform for writing too.

But I wasn’t entirely sure that was the best long-term path.

I spent quite a bit of time researching the pros and cons of traditional email marketing platforms (things like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, etc.) versus established writing platforms like Substack or Medium.

In the end, I decided my existing email platform would be the safest place to begin this little writing endeavor.

I was very intrigued by Substack from the start, but honestly, it intimidated me a little. It felt like the platform for the “big dogs,” which I definitely did not consider myself to be. It also felt a bit too exposed for something that still felt so new and raw to share publicly.

This current setup with my existing email platform has served its purpose beautifully in these early months of writing.

More than anything, it proved something I wasn’t entirely sure of at the beginning: that these entries mattered to people.

The stories — or rather, your stories — that many of you have shared back with me after reading different entries have left me speechless more times than I can count. One Dear Reader recently told me that Just Me gives words to things she has felt but didn’t know how to express.

I never imagined Just Me would resonate with people in that way.

And because of that, I want to make it more accessible.

I want it to be easier to share. Easier to discover organically. Easier for new Dear Readers to stumble into.

That’s where Substack really shines.

It’s a platform built specifically for long-form writing and reader discovery. And the best part for all of you is this:

Nothing really changes on your end.

The emails will still arrive in your inbox exactly the same way they always have. You do not need to download an app or suddenly become a “Substack person.” This simply gives me a better home for the writing itself and, hopefully, an opportunity to grow the readership over time.

I anticipate growing the audience over there slowly and methodically.

My plan, as of now (though that could always change), is to upload the Just Me archives one entry at a time each week. There are more than six months of entries to work through, so while that happens, I’ll continue writing and emailing you all exactly as I always have.

If you already use Substack and would like to subscribe there too, I’ll share a link in the coming weeks. And honestly, if you’ve ever wanted to reread Just Me from Entry #1, Substack will probably become the easiest way to do that.

There’s one more thing I really want to make clear though.

There are currently 239 of you here.

And whether you realize it or not, you all hold a really special place in this story for me.

You gave me space to process. You read along when there was no “audience.” You replied with your own stories and somehow made this feel less lonely.

While Substack does offer ways for readers to support writers financially, my plan is to grandfather all of you in freely (no cost) as what I’m calling: The First Pages Dear Readers.

You are the originals.

Nothing is changing for you right now. Keep opening the emails. Keep reading. Keep replying whenever you feel nudged to (it means so much to hear from you).

I simply wanted you to hear directly from me first that Just Me will also be available on another platform in hopes that it might eventually reach more people who need it.

Thank you again for being here.

Cheers Dear Reader, I’ll see you again soon in your inbox,

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-Just Me[gan]