Wow, An Actual Newsletter.

My cousin's wedding, my email list fiasco, my new instagram handle, my old assistant drama, and my new "assistant," & birth trauma

This past weekend was the first of my first cousin’s weddings.

I am the oldest of all of my first cousins. I am 34, which I’m partially in denial about, and allllllll my 20 first cousins are younger than me. The third oldest of all of us got married Saturday. His name is Sean. He is 31. My brother, who will be 32 tomorrow, is engaged. His name is Shane. Yes. Confusing. Same age. Almost same name.

Reminds my of how I had a roommate whose name was Myka, and her brother’s name was Michael. I remember saying… “wait… what? Those names sound almost exactly the same? What were your parent’s thinking?” And she said, “Yes, I know. I don’t understand either.”

Email List Woes

Right before the wedding, I checked my work email for some reason, and saw that I had about 30 emails replying to an automated “list-cleaning” email that was sent out two days before, asking people if they wanted to still be subscribed to the list (not this email list, but my website’s email list that your email was likely imported into substack from.)

The subject line was: “Are my emails bothering you?” and it said some longer version of: “You haven’t interacted with my emails recently and we want to respect your inbox, so if you want to keep receiving emails, please click this link! Otherwise we will stop emailing.”

It was a pre-written, dry email that Ontraport wrote (Ontraport is the email service I’ve used for a few years through thefuckitdiet.com), but I edited the email a few months ago to make clear the email was from me, thinking it would be a great thing that Ontraport could send out to people who never open emails, in case they didn’t want to be subscribed anymore. But… apparently, it indiscriminately sent to everyone on the email list.

Lots of people were either… confused, annoyed, or both. And I understand why. Though yes, email marketing services often send out an email like that to make sure that you’re still engaged with the content, it was supposed to only send to people who hadn’t opened an email in a while, but… it sent to everyone. All 42,237 of them. Probably to you, too.

And, not only did it send to everyone, but most of the people who received the email from my website’s email list, are also receiving these substack emails, and some even pay for substack… so it was very confusing. To say the least.

The angriest email:

How sweet it is to be loved by you, Jen.

So, anyway, while I was supposed to be getting ready for the wedding, I wrote another email saying a long version of: Sorry sorry I confused you! This was a mistake/glitch! You’re also getting substack emails AHHHHH.

And by the time I sent the second email, there was no more time to curl my hair, so I had to put it in a little twisty bun and hope that it semi-curled it during the 50 minute drive to the wedding. Not that it couldn’t be straight for the wedding, but my hair is naturally straight, so it just felt too easy to keep it straight. I felt like I was supposed to slightly suffer in order to get ready for this wedding.

Email List Woes Conclusion

The update on that list cleaning automation is: because it didn’t work properly, I cancelled it altogether. Meaning, some people may have opened it and read it thinking “great, I will just ignore this and I’ll be removed from the email list,” but they now will not be. They will eventually receive another email when I email about the F*ck It Diet (because I’m creating a fancy, self-paced TFID course because my current one is janky), and when they do, they will have to unsubscribe the old fashioned way: unsubscribing by clicking the link at the bottom of the email.

So, that email list is for future TFID mailings/info/programs. And this is for everything else. Or: that one is for @thefuckitdiet, and this one is for @carolinedooner.

However, I am still sorry for the confusion and the weirdness with there being two separate email lists now, and that many you are on both. But after this very moment, I am done talking about emails, and how the email sausage is made. I AM FINISHED TALKING ABOUT EMAILS IN MY EMAILS.

Shiny New Verified Handle

And hey, speaking of @carolinedooner and @thefuckitdiet …. a miracle occurred, and I was able to change my instagram handle from @thefuckitdiet to @carolinedooner even though the handle was taken by a 50-something year-old lady in Dublin who clearly had forgotten her password and made another account: @dooner.caroline, and I know that, because those two accounts had all of the same followers. But when I DMd her on her active account telling her I was an author, and asking if I could pay her to change her handle so I could use it, she blocked me, and so did all of her 25 friends/followers who I also reached out to. (@dooner.caroline is not her actual handle because as much as she is my enemy, I don’t want any chance she will be harassed.)

Then I learned that instagram won’t let you change your username if you’re verified anyway (and ohhh I tried), and I decided instagram was slowly killing me from the inside out, on top of throttling and hiding all of my content, so I gave up.

I surrendered, as they say.

ENTER: My new assistant.

But first, my old assistant drama…

My Old Assistant Drama (would you expect anything less)

During the fiasco in March, when the author of Health at Every Size was cancelled (here is their rebuttle that was posted over the weekend), I was dragged into it somehow, because everyone had to pledge allegiance to those who had been “harmed,” or else they were gone after too. And I refused, knowing the consequences, because I never signed up to be in a cult, and I felt like that accusations were way overblown. And… I just… refuse to participate in public take downs. So then, I was included in the second “update” slam piece that everyone in the “HAES community” started sharing a week later.

^^If this makes no sense to you, that’s good. Just know that: there was a big cancellation, I refused to participate, so I was roped into the list of “bad” people back in March. Yes it sucks, but it also was interesting timing, because I was ready to stop being so focused on anti-diet content day in and day out, so I unfollowed every single person who participated and shared the hit pieces out of fear, and one of those people happened to be…. the wife of my long-time virtual assistant.

Meaning, my virtual assistant’s wife shared a slam piece that included me in it, saying I was some terrible person who believes that cancel culture is real. (hahahahaha. haha. I am a monster.)

So, I reached out to my virtual assistant, and asked if this was time for us to part ways. She was very involved in the Health at Every Size community, and she had a lot of personal experience and niche knowledge that she was able to use to help support me in responding to emails and moderating my live programs. It was great while it lasted, but… the times they are a changin.’

Anyway, she responded that she didn’t know I was a part of the people being called out, and that she likes to avoid drama, but yes maybe it’s time to part ways because she has been uneasy working for me after someone told her that I’m “not in full support of strong mask and vaccine requirements.”

So anyway, that was that, but what that means is that I haven’t had an assistant for the past two months, hence why I didn’t realize that I’d gotten so many angry and confused responses to that automated “list cleaning” email until right before a wedding.

But! I connected with someone in a group on telegram, who said she wanted to start working as a virtual assistant the very day I had just parted ways with my virtual assistant. The timing was perfect, I told her I might want to work with her, thinking she probably didn’t have many skills, but I could teach her. I knew we were like-minded in a few ways, and that was maybe enough for me after what I’d just been through.

TURNS OUT, she used to work for a big production company as an executive assistant, (and is also well-versed with internet marketing)… and has a whitelisted email account that has direct access to instagram because she used to do a lot of work with the production company’s movie instagram handles… and boom, she got me the handle @carolinedooner, verified it, and then switched it with my big account @thefuckitdiet, and made @thefuckitdiet handle the new, smaller account. Which is… crazy, because I had fully let go of this plan, even though I prayed to God that I could have the @carolinedooner handle two years ago.

Ha. What a great use of prayer, yanno?

God works in mysterious ways and gives me weird and mysterious things, but refuses to give me a husband. It’s so annoying.

Anyway, she has big plans for my F*ck It Diet self-study program. So when she saw my list cleaning email she replied: Caroline no! What are you doing? We need this list! Luckily for her and for me, it didn’t work anyway, and so now we are back to square one, with a big confused and annoyed list. HA.

Trauma/Bodywork/Emotions/Energy Work

My next free newsletter post (in approximately 2 weeks), is going to be a long post about my current take on trauma, energy, emotions, and all the rest.

But, as a teaser, I took a long long break from any sort of self-help, energy work, emotions work, bodywork… everything. Pretty much for the past 4 years, I’ve just been coasting. No yoga. No meditation. No massages. No acupuncture. No nothing. I was just sick of having appointments. And I was sick of working on myself.

But I’m back babyyyyyyyyy. Back and ready to make new mistakes and spend and/or waste money in new and innovative ways.

I jusssst started to get “craniosacral-fascial” work done on me. I asked my instagram following how they healed their restless legs without drugs. Restless legs is a … neurological condition? Nobody really knows. Its hell though, keeps you up at night because your legs are so uncomfortable, and you have to keep moving them to stop the discomfort, and it has “no cure.” Magnesium helps, but not enough. And though there are drugs, in most cases, I’d rather suffer through the thing I have, rather than take a pharmaceutical and develop another condition as a side effect.

A few people told me their restless legs were connected to their TMJ… and that I should see an OMT (orafascial myology therapist?). Well, I did. And she told me I have “tongue tie.” Which I didn’t know what a thing. So instead of rushing into a surgery to fix it, I started going to a craniosacral fascial therapist, who often works on babies who have feeding issues or brain inflammation issues, to release their birth trauma from their fascia (connective tissue that runs throughout our bodies).

I was pulled out from my mother with forceps because I pooped in the birth canal, allegedly. What a way to start a life. Pooping and being yanked into existence, only to apparently have lots of misalignment and tightness throughout my whole body because of it, and that tightness is continuing to affect everything? Apparently?

To be honest I can’t vouch for any of this because I’ve just started down this path, BUT I have a lot more thoughts on bodywork and trauma where this came from. More in the next free email.

Thanks for sticking with me through lots of confusing emails.

Thanks for being here.

-Caroline