This newsletter is not content (thank god)
On releasing the burden of being the brand
Happy Monday! It’s been exactly a month since my last newsletter. This is for a mix of reasons:
Long-overdue back-end maintenance and redesign (shout out to the complete tech meltdowns since I arrived in Greece—love ya)
Chronic WiFi issues with a tangle of comically complex obstacles to resolution
Yet another move, thanks to said WiFi chaos
And, of course, the ongoing process of grieving my past life (more on that here and here, if you’re new), while scrambling to keep up with the breakneck pace of change in this new one
But also: my practice is entering a new phase—one shaped by several structural and conceptual shifts I’ve been slowly implementing over the past 18 months. Slowly, because each shift has required thousands of micro-adjustments to stay aligned with a larger vision that continues to reveal itself in greater detail as I work.
That unfolding is what I’m here to share today.
If you’re not in the mood for a process deep dive, all you need to know is I’ve paused paid subscriptions for the month of April, while I hash out things like continued publication structure and what paid features will look like moving forward.
For those who do delight in a detailed debrief—the long version is below.
Shift One: The First Vessel
Some of you may not know this, but when I started my coaching practice in 2021, I worked almost exclusively with complex trauma survivors in the early-to-middle stages of recovery, in collaboration with their psychotherapists.
With their therapists, they did the delicate work of stabilization and unpacking the pain of their pasts. With me, they built the skill-based foundations for post-traumatic growth—bridging their therapeutic insights into daily life through clear, actionable steps.
This work was deeply personal. As a complex trauma survivor myself—someone who spent years being re-injured in the clumsy hands of highly credentialed, yet psychologically and emotionally immature practitioners—I cared profoundly about creating the kinds of spaces I once lacked.
Spaces where my clients would be listened to with authentically engaged curiosity, not dismissed into oppressive diagnostic categories.
Spaces where they would leave session with clarity about their next steps, not lost in a fog of pain and confusion after yet another hour of dissecting the past.
Spaces where questions, conflicts, tensions, and differences were met with interested openness, rather than shaming defensiveness.
Spaces where practitioners who claimed the trendy mantle of “trauma-informed”
actually understood what the fuck that meant,
were personally and professionally prepared for the responsibility it entailed,
and took their own growth as seriously as their clients’.
Beyond providing a much-craved high bar for professional skill and integrity, my work with survivors also brought healing to cycles of my own pain.
To witness and support people who reminded me of my past selves helped release those selves from the shame they’d carried. Shame that had been reinforced by well-meaning but ill-equipped facilitators who interpreted my struggles as evidence of my defectiveness, rather than healthy responses to the horrors I’d survived.
In a way, I had to become the safe, skilled practitioner I once needed to prove to myself that my past needs weren’t too much. That I wasn’t too much. That those needs could not only be met, but met joyfully, and without obligation.
Over three years of hard work, that proof was built beyond question. The cycle was complete. And in mid 2023, a new cycle began quietly unfolding.
Shift Two: The Artist Knocks (or rather… bashes)
It started as a subtle, but nagging tension.
As a trauma-trained coach, my scope of practice required a high degree of discretion when it came to sharing details about my life, in session and online. That’s because trauma survivors in the early and middle stages of recovery need crystal clear professional boundaries and steady structure to nurture the stability their lives often lack.
So while the wave of “radical authenticity” sweeping through social media disrupted the traditional neutrality of healing spaces—for better and for worse—it didn’t align with the kind of work I was doing. More often than not, it created confusion and harm, rather than clarity or repair.
I knew this not just professionally, but personally: I had previously been the client of not one, but two trauma therapists whose compulsively intimate online presence bled into our sessions, crowded the space between us, and eventually suffocated our working relationship.
While those same intimate shares on social media had brought me to their practice (relatability sells y’all), they also undermined the function of the container.
I realized that to do my job well, I needed to be a blank canvas. I had to model the structure my clients were building within themselves by holding it in session and online. In practice, that meant showing up in a role—in many ways, as a “brand”—rather than as my full, complex, multidimensional self.
For a time, that separation worked. It allowed me to do what my past as a performing artist taught me to do best: embody a role with integrity and precision. Meanwhile, in the background, I quietly worked through multiple life-altering events, longstanding health challenges, and a backlog of sensitive personal material, far from the pressure of the spotlight.
Personal invisibility, at that stage of my life, was less a matter of shame than necessity. As I facilitated my client’s becoming, my own becoming required the conditions of a cave, a chrysalis, or a stone castle—not a glaringly ring-lit digital stage.
But eventually, the container that had once nurtured both my clients and I began to constrain me. The wildly expressive and exhibitionistic artist-self I had sidelined to build my practice was flinging herself at the walls.
She wanted out.
And the longer I waited, the louder that banging got.
Finally, I was forced to admit that something needed to change.
At first, I thought I could appease my artist-self by channeling her creative energy into my Instagram presence—playing with original graphics, colour schemes, and new fonts in my educational content. But the need to create within the bounds of “brand cohesion” and professional role containment still felt stifling—as evidenced by my periodic absences and the bi-monthly vibe-shifts on my IG feed, lol.
I took up painting and aerial training again, hoping they might offer an outlet. But my artist-self didn’t want to be a hobby—a mistress competing with my work-marriage for scraps of attention. She wanted to be central, legitimate, integrated, and most importantly, uninhibited in her expression.
Specifically, this part of me was bursting to write more openly about the raw, messy edges of my personal growth process—out loud, in public.
That meant I had a choice to make: Keep coping with the growing tension of fragmentation, or pivot my practice to serve a niche that could hold my multitudes without crumbling.
I chose the latter.
But of course, that kind of pivot couldn’t happen overnight. You can’t just ghost trauma survivors as their professional support person. Cause that would be… you know… traumatic.
So I’ve been moving in phases—slowly deconstructing the role that has shaped me, as well as the systems that have supported it, while designing something more flexible in its place. I’ve also given myself permission to not make it all make sense right away. To let the process be experimental, yet still intentional.
First, I had to grieve the reality that the work which had been—and still was—so meaningful to me, was no longer the right fit. That process was real, and took time.
Then, came the work of easing clients through the shift.
I stopped taking new clients in the early-to-middle stages of recovery,
supported my long-term clients as they anchored into the later stages of their recovery,
and thoughtfully off-boarded those who needed more time to make that transition than I could sustainably offer.
I slowly began sharing more of my personal self in session, with consent, always while offering my clients clear pathways to discuss the potential impacts of those shares.
I evolved my copy to reflect the people I was now calling in: successful, ambitious, multi-dimensional creatives and edge-walkers, with years of personal growth and healing already under their belt. People who were intelligent, sensitive, and self-aware, but struggling to find facilitators who could meet them at their level of depth and help them break new ground—creatively, relationally, professionally, and in the hidden psychic terrain they hadn’t yet mapped.
Shift Three: Unburdening from the Brand
It also involved reevaluating where and how I share myself online.
Last May, I began shifting my focus from Instagram to Substack. It felt more boundaried than IG, but less exclusive than a traditional newsletter. A comfy middle ground.
It also felt like the right place to ease out of a purely “teaching” role, and experiment with more personal disclosures—writing from the edge of my own growth, without the risk of a client encountering something they weren’t ready for.
Substack has spared me from the existential torture of crafting clever hooks to shrink complex ideas into something swipeable, optimized for short attention spans.
My work—depth work—is not for short attention spans.
It took me four years, and turning away the majority of client inquiries that came through social media, to really accept that. The people most aligned with my work tend to find me through word-of-mouth or after hearing me speak in long-form spaces like podcasts—places where I don’t have to flatten myself to fit the format.
The truth is, I never wanted to make “content.” I wanted to be in relationship, in service, in creative process. And while the challenge of short-form writing stretched me as a communicator, that season has run its course. It’s no longer generative. It’s incongruent.
Content fills the void. This has it’s place, don’t get me wrong. But the kind of creativity I care about most—the visionary kind—emerges from the void. Content crowds that space. It clutters the silence art needs to take shape.
Instagram has never been my canvas of choice. I used to think the app itself was the problem. But it’s not the platform I resent—it’s the burden of being a brand.
I don’t want to be a brand. I want to be a person. A complex, creative, evolving person. And after more than four years, I still haven’t found a way to be both without sacrificing something essential in either.
What’s funny is I’ve tried to step back from Instagram before. More than once. But those attempts never stuck, because I didn’t put the right support structures in place to hold my business without it. This is especially ironic, because it’s something I coach my clients on all the time (oops!): to not just walk away from the thing that no longer fits—but to build something that can hold them on the other side.
This time, I did.
I invested in multi-layered support to implement alternative strategies like podcast guesting (s/o Chelsea Riffe), professional relationship-building (s/o Levina Li), and back-end systems (s/o Klara Hascakova) that could sustain my practice without the constant demand for visibility. I resourced the transition like it mattered—because it did.
So now, reclaiming my Instagram as a personal space doesn’t feel like disappearing. It feels like returning to the way I used it in 2014. A place for photos, collected fragments, and occasional ramblings. Not a platform. Not a funnel. Just a window.
Because what I’m craving now is something else—a space unburdened by demands for legibility, or the performance of expertise. A place where I can be in process, not just in position.
Which, in many ways, is simply an extension of what I already do. My literal job is to design spaces that support growth—spaces where people can unfold, question, create, and imagine. SpaceUnknown was built for exactly that. This is just another iteration of it. One that includes me too.
Shift Four: What’s Next
I’ll try to keep this part brief, since this thing’s already long as hell…
As I’ve moved into this latest phase of implementation, the next few have started revealing themselves—through dreams, morning pages, and random flashes in the middle of my workday. Based on the scale of what’s coming into view, I’m guessing the next arc of implementation will take another 3–6 years. Good thing I’m in this for the long haul.
I’m not sharing much yet—not because it’s a secret, but because opening the oven too early tends to fuck with the cooking process. So you’ll just have to stick around for a hot slice when it’s ready.
In the meantime, enjoy the scents wafting from the kitchen.
Stay exquisite :)
— Antonia
And when you're ready for the next step…
1. Learn more about 1:1 coaching, and apply for a complimentary, commitment-free discovery session with me here.
2. Learn more about UnfoldingSpace, my twice-monthly group coaching membership here.
3. Up-level your self-regulation and mindfulness skills with Open Studios—an app that looks, and feels, like riding in a sexy wellness spaceship.
This resonated with me in a lot of ways. Too many similarities from my story as well. I agree in wanting to be a human being rather than a brand, fuck that.
Celebrating this new version of Antonia! 😍