Once upon a time, okay, 20 years ago, before social media was social media, there was a group of us women who wrote what were called "personal blogs." Do you remember those?

We wrote about our real lives, our struggles, our feelings, the big questions we were grappling with, what we were learning, what we were afraid of and the small courageous steps we took into the unknown. We didn't write for likes or clicks or follows. Those didn't matter back then.

In fact, most of us wrote our blogs because something in us needed to write and share what we were experiencing with other women. We didn't care how many people even read them. We knew that even if just one other woman resonated with what we wrote, our purpose was fulfilled. But mostly, we wrote because we needed to put our lives down on paper and witness them ourselves.

We didn't write for perfection or performance. We were raw, messy, honest, open, and vulnerable.

And most of us who wrote blogs also read them. We had a list of our favorite sites, and we'd take the time to pour a cup of coffee into our favorite mug of the day, sit down at our computer or tablet, and we'd read. Slowly, mindfully, letting the words and what they might have to offer our hearts and spirits settle in. We'd go through our list of favorite blog sites to see if there were any new posts, and this is how we nourished each other.

Then came social media and suddenly, raw and real were passed over for perfect and having it all together. I've never been a woman who has had it all together and I never will be. My house is a mess, it's dirty, the dishes are in the sink for days, and I learned early on that to be a creative, self-employed writer, to work from home and be a mother (of small children back then), something was going to have to give. Housework was that something.

So, there are no Insta-worthy photos of my house, workspace, or life. There are very few photos of my life, period.

As social media grew louder, many of us slowly stopped writing blogs. We hoped early on that the new shiny social media might be the new place to share. It wasn't.

And so personal blogs stopped being written. And women stopped offering the real, raw stories of our lives, our experiences, our thoughts, our learning to one another online.

Clicks and likes and follows and monetization meant constantly having to out-do your last post, and it also meant constantly feeding the social media machine. Which, as Jenna Kutcher pointed out recently, there is a particular exhaustion that comes from pouring your creative work into something that just disappears.

Substack is the closest thing we have to personal blogs now. But it's still not the same.

So, why am I sharing all this with you?

Because I miss personal blogs. Because I'm craving the real, raw, authentic, messy lives of other women who have the courage to share their imperfection.

Because I'm craving imperfection online.

I know, what a crazy thing to say.

But it's true. And now with AI making sure every piece of content is written correctly without typos and with "improved readability" (F-readability! I want to read how YOU write like I want to hear how YOU speak and it doesn't have to be perfect grammar and orderly sentences. Spit it out as it comes and tell me what you're thinking in the best, most jumbled way your gorgeous humanity can!)

The other reason I am writing this blog post (and yes, I AM reviving the personal blog -- this is "Britta's Heart" and you'll find my personal writing under this category on the Heart Tru Living blog)... is because I need to share the raw, real vulnerable stuff of life without having to think about performance.

I'm craving belonging and community and the tangible and the real. And my best guess is, you are too. We all are in this AI era. (It's why I just opened a brick-and-mortar store, a story for another day.)

So, this is where we start. Here. Again.

Twenty years ago when I was just starting my freelance career as a writer in the tech industry, ALL the advice insisted that I must do "internet marketing" -- which was new at the time and which everyone was adamant that it was the ONLY way to market your business.

They were right that we were moving online.

They were not right about me and my business.

Every time I tried to "market my business online" I felt sick to my stomach. I was so averse to the whole thing that I nearly screamed with joy (I don't scream. Ever.) when an artist (I think it was SARK??) wrote something brilliantly liberating in her blog. She was describing her similar aversion to online marketing and said she came to the conclusion to " F-marketing. I decided to just respond to what moves me."

And THAT is how I built a multi-six-figure business over the next 20 years.

By leaning into my guidance and responding to what moves me. Radical advice, but it was exactly the permission my heart needed to do my business my way.

Fast forward to 2026, and I find myself right back at that moment.

AI has decimated my freelance copywriting career. Suddenly, the tech industry doesn't need contractors to write content. AI will do it for them. The expertise they paid me and my fellow freelancers for has been traded for the speed and efficiency and low cost of AI. (To be fair, AI CAN write if you work with it and train it. But what it can't do is replace the human spirit behind the writing. Tech may eventually figure that out. Or not. I'm not sure.)

But here I am having to reinvent myself. At age 50.

And here I am grabbing onto SARK's words just as vehemently as I did then.

I'm sick and tired of online marketing strategy, tactics and what is now a very crowded marketplace on social where everyone is shouting at you to try to convince you that you're doing Meta ads wrong, you're missing the secret to the algorithm (it took me three attempts to spell algorithm right, you'd think I'd know this by now lol)... and overall vying for your $27 to try to capture you into a sales pitch that looks like a freebie, but it really is a funnel...

It's become all so predictable and... noisy and "salesly designed to seem not-salesly" (but it IS).

I should probably explain that 18 months ago, I foresaw that AI was going to disrupt my career and income and so I began building Heart Tru Living - a quiet, calm online brand for women who want to live by their hearts and boldly lead themselves through change. Online courses and coaching, with (eventual) retreats and special gatherings.

Soulful, authentic, real, and rooted in the decades of spiritual wisdom and years spent counseling people into deeper more authentic lives. My copywriting work paid the bills. My soul work has always been coaching and counseling others.

So, I have also spent 18 months steeped in learning online marketing. Including automation and CRMs and email marketing and all the back-end technical stuff that without AI and machine learning, would normally have taken a full agency team of designers, writers, programmers, automation specialists, advertising, creative editors, finance, and branding professionals. And tens of thousands of dollars.

The learning has been good. I have skills now that I know will serve me in the years to come. And I understand how online marketing works.

I just don't like it.

It gives me an ick. Just like it did 20 years ago.

So what am I supposed to do now? I've built a gorgeous website, brand, and three deep life-changing courses that I believe fill a gap in women that very few of us have ever had anyone point out. I believe I (along with many if not all women) are here at this time on earth because the patriarchy's dominance is breaking and wise women need to be here, doing the work we have always done. Just more publicly.

I believe this is soul work.

But I do not want to be part of the noisy, crowded online social media market where ad after ad follow the same tactics to try to convince you that you need what they're selling.

I don't believe in convincing anyone they need something. I certainly don't want someone trying to convince me of that.

Which takes me back to resonance.

I buy instantly when I resonate with something. I don't even need to read the whole sales page. When I know, I know.

And I believe the women who will benefit from what I've created at Heart Tru Living will also know. I trust them to know and respond to what moves them. And if it doesn't move them, well, then, it's not for them, at least not at this time.

I've been really wrestling with how I want to show up online with this business.

What I'm coming back to is that I need to do this my way.

It's not going to look like what every online marketing expert insists it should look like. I'm going to run this business the way my heart wants to run it.

And I'm going to believe in the magic and miracles that happen when you do.

I'm also resurrecting the personal blog.

No, you won't hear about my husband, our kids, what we do day to day. That's private and it will stay private.

But you will hear about what's going on in my heart and mind, what I'm experiencing, what I'm learning, what I'm wrestling with -- the real, raw stuff of life that women have always needed from other women.

We need to be witnessed and to witness other women's inner lives. It's where we find belonging and where we give ourselves permission to be vulnerable and brave, too.

For the sake of avoiding trolls and haters, I'm going to keep comments turned off. You can message me privately if you wish to share.

There won't be a schedule to when I write these posts. I'll write when I feel led to write and I will trust that it will resonate exactly when it's meant to with whom it's meant to.

And lastly, don't expect perfection. There will be some typos.