What Happens When You Disappear?

On boundaries, silence, and what to expect from my Substack.

Context: As I write this, I’m lying in bed with 90 Day Fiancé playing in the background. I love double-screening while I write—it helps with brain fatigue. I promise I’ll explain more about this as you get to know me, but let’s get back to it.

I used to share everything on social media. It’s probably how you first found me or my work. I joined Instagram back in 2011, and through it I built my career and an incredible community—online and offline. But in the summer of 2019, I stopped sharing—because overnight, the life I’d carefully built fractured.

My marriage collapsed, my body began to break down, and as we all careened into 2020, my life accelerated, driven by unresolved trauma, grief, and survival.

Over the next few years, I retired from full-spectrum doula work, eventually raised almost seven million dollars in venture capital, launched an app, navigated a divorce, endured two major surgeries, escaped the urban sprawl of Los Angeles for the high desert solitude of Landers, co-hosted The goop podcast, came out as lesbian, got engaged, lived through the peak of the pandemic, and received a diagnosis that profoundly shifted my understanding of myself.

Survival required that I turn inward and set firm boundaries. Building a startup extracted absolutely everything—my drive, my spirit, my creativity—and left no room for anything else. I felt surveilled, deeply aware that my ability to raise venture capital and grow my company was intrinsically tied to my online persona. Pulling away from social media wasn’t a deliberate strategy at first; it was self-preservation. But in retrospect, those six years of barely showing up online saved my sanity and taught me the delicate power of disappearing.

However, when I sold my company, LOOM, to Perelel Health in October of 2024, everything shifted. I found myself surrounded by space—and craving to reconnect with my voice, my body, my wellbeing, and the online community I’d quietly stepped away from. Selling LOOM forced me to redraw the lines between my professional and personal worlds.

Soft Boundaries is my first attempt at exploring how to do exactly that.

It’s about softly opening back up and letting people in with discernment. It’s about finding a way to share my story while protecting my peace, and pouring out everything I've learned and continue to discover about how to self-soothe in a chaotic world.

I’m grateful to the lovely folks on Substack’s partnerships team, who reached out last year and gently nudged me to start writing. I’m not sure I would have started this without them. Thank you for helping me meaningfully divest from the insatiable, toxic, ad-riddled algorithm of Meta and X.

Soft Boundaries will be crushingly personal—stemming from the intersectional realities of my life as a Black, lesbian, first-generation Nigerian-American woman. This is where I will share thoughts I’ve kept hidden, explore what it means to be “well,” and unpack what’s helped me keep going.

That said, I cannot overemphasize how deeply uncomfortable launching this Substack makes me feel. As I type this, my stomach is lurching, pleading with me to shut my laptop and find something numbing but nutritive to do (like rewatching the first season of The Pitt…if you know, you know). Instead, I’m collaborating with my discomfort rather than fighting it.

Our world is tectonically shifting. Chaos is constant. Everything feels far too loud, and we’re all chronically online and chronically exhausted by what we’re forced to witness—yet we continue to show up. My hope is that Soft Boundaries will offer some reprieve from the clanging, provide resources to help you self-soothe more efficiently, and give me a chance to get a few things off my chest.

So—what can you expect as a free subscriber?

Access to a selection of essays—that just might help you create a softer, and more intentional one.

What do you get if you upgrade to paid?

💡Practical tools and essays filled with ways to help you self-soothe.

☎️ Exclusive live chats with me once a week—about sex, love, relationships and women's health—download the Substack app to join.

🎟️ Invites to offline events—plus first access to my book club that only happens once a year.

Here’s what paid subscribers are saying:

“Your writing has always spoken to me as both a healthcare provider and woman. Your awareness of both self and community is so well expressed in an age where loneliness and chronic stress abounds. Plus, you’re funny and relatable! Happy to have found this.”

— Johanna Hanley, paid subscriber

“You are a truth teller, and I need help in this chaotic world.”

— Elizabeth G, paid subscriber

What else do you need to know?

I’ve taught thousands of hours of classes and coached hundreds of people through life transitions, hard questions, and unexpected thresholds.

I bring that same depth, insight, and clarity here—and as a paid subscriber, you’ll be stepping into a space thoughtfully crafted to nourish your curiosity, deepen your self-understanding, and offer practical tools to support your wellbeing.

That said, take your time—upgrade whenever you’re ready.

My hope is that together we’ll build a space anchored in self-reflection, resilience, growth, and ease—and most importantly, that Soft Boundaries becomes a shared place to question, redefine, and explore what it truly means to care deeply for ourselves and each other, even as the world relentlessly demands otherwise.

🧡🍊

Erica