Dear Wonderful Readers,

I was looking forward to updating you with the next part of my story. Until s**t went down on the internet. (See recent weeks here and here).

Given that this s**t went down in the last 48 hours, I haven’t had the chance to process things properly yet. However, I was still determined to write something for you today. Luckily, I also have one exciting update for you that I hope will be a strong metaphorical band-aid over this situation for us all.

Without meaning to, this week, my life turned into a very dramatic and scary telenovela. Perhaps I was asking for it by writing about my love life in Mexico with no filter and very thin guises of anonymity for the other characters. But to be honest, the Instagram harassment and the casual threat to my personal safety have put a downer on the whole situation. I had to confirm that these people don’t know where I live. Guess what that did to my nervous system and my latent PTSD? Not good things! Lol. Don’t worry, I know who they are and why they’re mad. But it’s a bummer because the story was just getting juicy!

Many of you have contacted me to say how much you loved my stories these last couple of weeks, and for that, I am truly grateful and inspired to keep going. However, when the haters mount up, the amount of b******t I am experiencing starts to tally and counteract the good. If this newsletter paid me a s**t ton of money, which I hope it will one day, then maybe I wouldn’t care. But right now, as a labor of love, it starts to hurt when people keep lobbing daggers at me through the screen with expert precision.

I will be the first to admit that I am not perfect. My flaws include having far too much curiosity for my own good, a propensity to meddle in other people’s business, and publishing whatever I want without giving much thought to who is reading it. Yet the closer my stories reflect my personal life, the stranger these situations become. Do I go on a date with a weirdo so I can write something off-piste about it? Do I pursue people and experiences to sensationalize them with spice later?

This week was a hard lesson. I learned that I should not do things just for the story itself, especially if that would put me in danger. What happens when the characters confront me in real life? It’s a mindfuck. I have to develop a thicker skin while treading more carefully. As my woo-woo friends have suggested, this may be what the current full-moon-eclipse is trying to teach me (Still, don’t ask me about astrology; I know nothing about it.).

But ultimately, I do love writing for you all. Especially in recent weeks, I have absolutely loved these little serialized chapters. You get to read a bit more of the same story each week, and the momentum is exciting because I have a clear sense of what I’ll reveal next. That keeps me on my toes with all of you. I want to keep that cadence going, but as you can tell, I’ve had quite a rough week. So hopefully, next week we can start again with a new series of mischief I’ve been up to.

However, not all hope is lost. Here are some things that have been bringing me back to life:

* Reaching out to all my closest friends in Mexico. Thank you all for being an incredible source of emotional support and helping me through with your witty and sometimes ridiculous reflections.

* Getting drunk with said friends, catching up on all the gossip we’ve missed and laughing a lot to help take my mind off things.

* Hugging myself. It’s the best way I’ve found to give myself compassion thanks to Dr. Kristin Neff.

* Channeling the strength of my ancestors. Do you know how f*****g tough you have to be to survive the Irish winters? Before electricity and central heating? Part of my family has lived in Donegal for probably thousands of years. Those people, the women especially, are tough as nails. Their strength is part of me.

* Cleansing everything. I exorcised all the bad energy in my house by opening all the windows and burning copal, and then sage, which I originally got from the Taos pueblo in New Mexico. I feel witchy and lighter.

Lastly, before I share the exciting update, I want to comment on how we treat women in our world. It is disappointing to me that some people like to blame women for men’s bad behavior. What about holding the men accountable for their actions? What about some self-reflection? Using a woman as a scapegoat, blaming her for everything and calling her a liar is old news, and it’s childish.

I used to blame women for things or think that they were just being inconvenient and difficult when they spoke their minds. That was until the Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar cases convinced me otherwise. It was shocking to me that while many young women in each case were assaulted by the same person, a big reason why they didn’t come forward is because they thought no one would believe them. However, false reporting for rape, for example, is estimated to be between 2-8% of accusations. That means we should believe other women about 92-98% of the time. So, let’s bend the moral arch of the universe a tiny bit. Let’s start believing other women, rather than blaming them. How about that?

Anyway, that’s more than enough of that. The good news is that my head is bloody but unbowed, probably because a quarter of my blood comes from generations of stalwart Irish women. Now we can move onto something much more interesting:

The Exciting Update: Launching “Ask Tash 💁‍♀️”

Today, I’m very excited to launch an experimental section of Misseducated called “Ask Tash.” It’s a new and special way that I can connect with all of you, and the concept is simple.

Like an advice column, you can email me any question to misseducatedtash@gmail.com, and I will answer it for you as honestly and openly as possible. If you would like, with your permission and anonymization, you have the option of me publishing your question with my response on Misseducated as well.

You can also find “Ask Tash” on the Misseducated homepage.

Yay!

Love you all. Thank you, and we will start a new series next week, I hope,

Tash

💌 ✍️