In my natural habitat.

Welcome.

I’m Emily McDowell, an advisor, speaker, teacher, writer and illustrator best-known as the founder of (and now formerly of) Em & Friends, originally called Emily McDowell Studio, which was acquired in 2022 by Union Square Publishing. Some people also know me as @emilyonlife on Instagram, or as co-host of the Quitted podcast (2022). My site is here.

About Subject to Change:

I write about navigating the process of being, and of becoming.

I don’t have a lane, meaning I can’t easily summarize the content of this newsletter in 50 words or less. Part of me wishes I could say something like “weeknight salads for the apocalypse!” or “a safe space for cat lovers!” or “viable side hustles for people who would prefer to be reclining in a meadow!,” because we’ve all been told niche down is how to successfully brand something (including yourself). But after naming a stationery brand after myself in 2012, and spending 11 years creating products for it based on my thoughts and personality, I am retiring from describing my work in seven words.

I write about things like creative burnout; quitting stuff; perimenopause; mental and physical health; entrepreneurship and sometimes business-y things; the truth behind my “success,”; and the lie of productivity culture. And creativity, and recipes (I learned to cook in 2020!), and learning how to live in a body instead of moving through the world from the neck up.

As much as I’m a writer, I also consider myself to be a sort of translator: helping people find the right words for feelings; talking about personal growth in a way that doesn’t make both of us want to jump out the window; reporting live from the human condition. What does it mean to find our way home to who we really are, and like, how?

And sometimes I draw pictures.

What do I get as a paid subscriber?

Note: As of December 2024, all paid subscriptions have been suspended and new ones can’t be purchased, while I back off on email frequency and focus on some other kinds of work. Everything is free right now.

The ability to comment and interact on posts is limited to paid subscribers, as well as access to very personal posts about my health. (These days, this feels better/safer to me than broadcasting this information to the whole internet.) You’ll be able to read all the posts in the archives; most posts are paywalled after a couple of weeks. You’ll also get access to any bonus material I create or host; for example, our weekly Zoom support group for the 100-Day Project. Your paid subscription also supports me in the work of writing, which I deeply appreciate.

New posts are almost always free for everyone to read. This is primarily because I hate the anxiety-inducing pressure of having to deliver essays on a certain schedule. I write when I have something to say and when I can make time to say it, and if you’re down with that, great.

Social media has trained us all to expect to get “content” for free and create it for free, which is ultimately an extractive system unless you’re also selling something else. Most people with large-ish followings use sponsored posts and ads to compensate themselves for this work. I’ve never done this, not because I have moral opposition to it, but because it just never felt like me. But writing is work, art is work, content is work. And I want to live in a world in which we normalize paying for work that we find inspiring or entertaining or informative, if we have the means to do so—even if we don’t have to.

So, if it would feel good for you to buy me the equivalent of an 8-ounce latte every month (I live in Portland, where a 12-ounce will easily set you back six bucks), if you’ve enjoyed my work or it’s helped you in some way and you want to support it, thank you for becoming a paid subscriber.

My life story (TL;DR):

I’m a writer, illustrator, and recovering company founder and CEO. A former cynic from Boston who moved to California and slowly, reluctantly, over many decades and much internal protest, became someone who wears crystals in her bra (only occasionally, only when it’s extremely important). I use the term woo-adjacent to describe myself; many people who know me IRL would remove the -adjacent, and you might too, but all in due time.

I don’t remember a time in my childhood when I wasn’t depressed. I started seeing a psychologist when I was eight and started taking Prozac when I was twelve, in 1989, which I am certain saved my life. In 2011, after 25-plus years of talk therapy and meds, I had become extremely self-aware about why I was in pain (helpful!), but I still wasn’t happy. That year, in an effort to try something different, I left my job in advertising and began a Master’s program in spiritual psychology, but I wasn’t yet ready for all the manifestation talk and drapey purple outfits, and I dropped out a few months before graduation, choosing instead to focus on the company I’d recently started.

That company was the stationery brand Em & Friends (originally Emily McDowell Studio), which makes cards and gifts for the relationships we really have, in all their messy glory. I struggled to find the kinds of cards I wanted in stores, so I created them myself.

Em & Friends’ most significant contribution to the world is Empathy Cards, which are a more honest, supportive alternative to traditional sympathy cards, and were the first of their kind. Having cancer in my 20s showed me in no uncertain terms that our culture doesn’t teach us how to talk about illness and grief, so a lot of people just don’t, which is not good for anybody. Traditional sympathy cards didn’t help. “Get well soon!” is fine if you have a broken leg, but isn’t a super helpful thing to hear if you, uh, might not. A terrible irony of human existence is that the times when we most need support in life are also the times when people REALLY don’t know what to say, and Empathy Cards were designed to help bridge that gap. 

Empathy Cards were featured in over 300 major news outlets in 22 countries, putting me on a very short list of people who ended up on national television for making greeting cards. Following that, with empathy researcher Dr. Kelsey Crowe, I co-authored and illustrated the book, There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love. 

For about six years, some element of my work was in a near-constant state of “viral,” which sounds amazing, and in many ways it was, but it was also exhausting and overwhelming and kind of destroyed me.

I worked like I was on fire for two decades, trying desperately to accomplish impressive things in an attempt to be happy. And by 2018, I was also a miserable non-person, a quad-shot espresso with feelings, an email-reply robot. And from this place, because I physically could not keep going, I finally surrendered to doing whatever it took to stop being aware of my pain, and start actually healing it.

In 2018, Em & Friends merged with Knock Knock—a larger, independent publisher of gift products and books with a complementary ethos and spirit—and in 2022, both brands were acquired by the publishing arm of Barnes & Noble, and I exited the company. I’m very proud of this chapter of my work life, and I also feel complete with it. After spending a couple of years residing in the painful, confusing, liminal space of “well, WTF do I do now?,” I’m currently working as a coach-sultant for folks with product-based businesses, and developing new offerings focused around quitting and navigating liminal space.

Thanks for being here.