My First Year on Substack

Lessons on creativity, resilience & why I'm not going anywhere.

Hello & welcome to PC with Lou,

Today marks one year since I posted here on Substack & I could not bear to end the year on 109 posts - so this is 110. There will be no paid post from me tomorrow, I snuck this one in a day early instead.

One year ago today, as a stay at home mum to a one year old, a seven year old & a ten year old, I decided to do something just for me. It was time to return to doing something day after day that didn’t ‘serve’ anyone else. Some people find that in exercise, others in book clubs - I set up a Substack & started writing.

Parenting Connected grew from the belief that the small ways we connect back to ourselves are what allow us to show up more calmly, more present, & more ourselves within our families.

I was thrilled to find an actual desk in our hotel room last weekend.

I hope this piece won’t become a depressing one - I myself am unlikely to ever want to read something that focuses only on the negatives of anything. But what I do hope to offer you here is a realistic peek behind the curtain at my own experience of building a Substack from nothing & how I got here after years of dreaming about having an online niche or presence.

But sadly, this isn’t one of those stories where after just one year my Substack became wildly popular or earned me tonnes of money - but it’s also not one of those “I’m leaving because this place sucks” stories either.

I started off this journey a little delusional about what I would achieve here in a year. If I’m honest I had listened to too many social media creators & high profile public speakers tell me that “it was possible if I just believed”. Well, I’m here to tell you that I did believe, for a very long time, that I had to just keep showing up & believing - & I guess that has paid off in many ways (consistency, an archive of decent work & my writing has improved a lot). But it’s also been more mentally challenging than I imagined it would be.

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Before Substack: The Long Way Round

Before I ever landed here, there were years of trying to find a way to work for myself.

After leaving social work in 2022 & finding out I was pregnant with our third baby, I became slightly obsessed with the idea that I could build an online income around my children. I watched the courses, listened to the podcasts, believed the stories of women doing it from their kitchen tables. And I believed I could too.

So I tried.

I built a course that no one bought.
I wrote a manuscript that was politely rejected.
I chased platforms that promised growth that never came.
I started social media accounts, closed them, started again.

All while navigating pregnancy, a newborn with feeding difficulties, & the reality of becoming a family of five on one income.

2022- pregnant with my third kid & seeking self employment.

At times it felt naive. At times delusional. At times deeply uncomfortable financially & emotionally.

But underneath all of it was a very simple desire - I wanted to build a creative life that allowed me to be present with my children. I wanted to walk them to school. I wanted flexibility. I wanted autonomy. I wanted work that felt like me.

My son ended up having silent reflux so badly that it led to him refusing to feed & eventually concerns around his weight gain. On top of this I was very much still trying to find my feet as a mum of three with kids at different ages & stages. Finding a balance & a sense of routine and connection for all of us was challenging in those early days. For the most part I put my ambitions to the side & concentrated on my role as a SAHM.

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Then, in January 2025 a newsletter I had subscribed to for a while moved onto Substack (a platform I had not heard of until that point) & once I was on there & had a look around I felt like I had found ‘my thing’.

I have had a passion for writing for years. I first started blogging in 2012 about my husband & I moving to Qatar - where funnily enough I got a job as PR Assistant for an American construction company which included setting up, managing & creating content for all social media platforms, as well as writing magazine articles, newsletters, and internal & external copy.

Looking back, I often wonder if this is where my love of social media & writing in a professional capacity really began. This was in the very early days of social media, Instagram didn’t even have the video feature yet (remember flat lays?), it still remains the best job I ever had.

I was SURE that all the failures that had come before had all happened just to lead me here - to the right medium, the right platform & the right people. I posted my first long form article on Substack on 25th Feb 2025 but I told no one except my husband. When I say my growth on Substack has been organic I mean it.

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Why Parenting Connected Exists

As I hinted at earlier, the name for this space, Parenting Connected, grew from my aspiration to create a family life that felt genuinely connected. Over time I had come to realise that this doesn’t just mean connection with my kids, but also with myself (the only way I know how to parent in a truly connected way) & with my husband.

I’ve learned that atmosphere is everything, & that our kids absorb far more than we realise. When I feel grounded & my relationship with my husband feels steady, they benefit from that in ways that are hard to put into words.

Parenting Connected will always be about securing your oxygen mask first.

I quietly worked away on here posting on that subject for months before I got up the nerve to tell others outside my household. In October I posted about it on my personal Instagram & to my great relief no one cared lol.

In my head I had anticipated judgment, questions like “why are you doing this again?” or even “what is Substack?” - but most people just expected this kind of stuff from me now & left me to it.

I feel hugely lucky that my immediate family are always in favour of my creative pursuits. My husband has been dragged along for the ride on every single one of my ‘dreams’ & he still believes in me, encourages me, tells me not to stop - even when it has led to some of our biggest challenges.

I also know how lucky I am to have grown up in a family where creativity & self expression were encouraged rather than questioned. My mum in particular has always supported both my brother & I in following our ideas - no matter how impractical they may have seemed at times. Recently I was reminded that not everyone has that freedom when I saw someone close to me navigating the opposite, & it made me feel incredibly grateful for the space I’ve always been given to try, fail, & try again without judgment.

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The Pivot I Didn’t Expect

But ultimately after a year of serious graft (I averaged three posts per week, every week, including the articles still sitting in my drafts), showing up daily on Notes, trying audio & video content, collaborations & engaging with the many other wonderful writers here - I didn’t reach my goal of 500 subscribers. Close but no cigar.

I also learned that not every piece of conventional growth advice works - a collaboration I did actually slowed my growth rather than boosting it, which surprised me more than I expected.

It has made me wary of doing any further collabs but hasn’t stopped me from supporting others. Instead I restack, comment on & share work I genuinely love because community matters to me beyond numbers. I love to shout out writers on here that I admire.

There have been bright spots - I have got a core group of paying subscribers who all chose annual subscriptions & that makes me deeply grateful that the right people found me.

I made the Rising in Parenting list a couple of times & had a few notes take on a life of their own, quietly going a bit ‘viral’ with over 500 likes.

Number 28 WTF!!!!

And 44!!

It felt tempting at times to chase more of those viral moments but I learned that often they send the ‘wrong’ subscribers my way, meaning people who don’t actually align with my typical content. I don’t want numbers for the sake of numbers, what I am building here is for a certain audience, I’m not trying to appeal to the mass market.

This realisation was part of a pivot I made late last year. I realised that my social work tendencies to provide guidance & support had seeped into my writing & I had taken on a sort of teaching role - which was never what I intended to do here.

That doesn’t mean those things disappeared - the nervous system work I used to write about is still very much part of my daily life, I just don’t feel the need to package it up as advice or preach it anymore.

Instead of teaching, I started living it & writing about it in ‘Day in the Life’ style posts & ‘monthly edits’ filled with the small details of what makes life feel good. The things that carried me through hard days. The shows, books, routines, moments.

As the ‘how to’ posts stopped, I lost subscribers - and rightfully so. They had signed up for something I am no longer offering. But I want to be here for a long time & that means writing in a way that feels aligned with what I actually want to bring to the table.

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AI, Originality & Being Human

One thing I’ve been very aware of this year is watching accounts that started after me rocket past with generic AI content. And while it would be easy to feel disheartened by that, it’s also helped me get really clear on what I’m actually doing here.

I’m not on Substack to produce generic content or chase subscribers for the sake of numbers. That realisation is part of what pulled me towards writing more “day in the life” pieces - the nuance, texture, humour & tiny details of real life simply can’t be replicated. In that sense, leaning into lived experience feels like the most natural way to future proof my work.

I think the same is true of moving my monthly edits into video - they’re real, flawed, lightly edited, chatty & unmistakably human.

At the same time, I have a huge appreciation for AI as a tool. As someone raising a dyslexic child (& realising I am possibly undiagnosed myself) it’s not about rejecting AI, it’s about using it intentionally, while keeping the heart of what I create firmly human.

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What One Year Taught Me

So after a year here is what I know.

Notes = eyes on your work.

Some posts you’re convinced will REALLY resonate just… won’t. And most posts will average out to roughly the same number of views - don’t let it discourage you.

When it feels like you’re writing to no one, like no one cares about what you’re sharing, keep showing up anyway. In a year you will have a body of work to feel proud of & a quiet confidence in yourself that doesn’t rely on praise.

Let people see the real you. Don’t show up as “professional” - show up as human. Let people know their chaotic, messy family moments are being written about with humour & love (and no shame in sight) somewhere on the internet, and that therefore they are doing just fine.

Not everyone will “get” you online & that’s ok. My sense of humour is quite dry (I’m Scottish!) & I’m sure some of it gets lost, especially across cultures. I recently posted a Note asking to “find my people” & it got a grand total of five likes. My immediate instinct was to repost it with the caption “clearly they’re not on here… maybe I should try YouTube?” - but I knew some people would think I was actually sad about it.

Hello, is anybody out there? lol.

You have to laugh & keep going anyway!

Some people will find fault with what you say no matter how carefully or thoughtfully you try to communicate. I felt this when I shared a vulnerable post about telling my children that their great gran had died & received a comment from another professional suggesting my post might make other parents feel guilty if their children didn’t react the same way. It was a reminder that once you put your life into the world, you have to make peace with not being understood by everyone.

It’s important to find a way to stay a little bit delulu - blind faith & belief that you can do it are what will keep you writing even when the kids are ill, it’s school holidays, or life throws something heavy your way.

It’s ok that you have so few followers on social media. Keep posting anyway - because you love it & because it’s fun for you.

I also wish I had started a Parenting Connected Pinterest sooner - it feels like a much more natural home for my work than I realised at the beginning.

I didn’t build a huge audience.
I didn’t hit my subscriber goal.
I didn’t make the money I thought I might (honestly barely anything).

I’ve also experimented with affiliate links this year. Anyone can become an Amazon Associate & I signed up because, as a reader, I genuinely enjoy browsing links - even though I rarely buy anything straight away, I like seeing what people are talking about. I haven’t made a penny from them (there’s a minimum payout each month which I’ve never come close to hitting), & yet I’ll probably keep sharing them because I like them in the content I consume.

I can’t be the only one who is nosy enough to click links to things that are not even available in my country??

But I did build something far more important - I built a body of work that feels like me.

I proved to myself that I can keep showing up even when no one is clapping.
I learned what I actually want to say - not what I think I should say.

And maybe that is what this first year was really for.

Not growth.
Not success.
Not numbers.

Clarity.

So if you’re here, whether you subscribed last week or you’ve been quietly reading since the beginning, thank you for being part of this strange, beautiful experiment with me.

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To celebrate 110 posts my husband took me for chai tea & cake. If you enjoyed any of my work this year feel free to buy me a hot drink as a thank you :)

So what does all of this mean for me?

I’m not going anywhere.

Even if this never becomes my “career”, I don’t think I could give it up now that I’ve started. Is it painful at times? Does it make me question my own sanity that I’m posting pieces of my life online for three likes? Yes. But the creative outlet it gives me is what keeps me coming back.

I think I’ll always be a writer, whether anyone reads my words or not, & I feel incredibly grateful that I found Substack a year ago.

Here’s to year two, whatever it brings.

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Until Next Time…

Stay Connected!

Lou