Here's Your Chance to Participate in the Gift Economy

I could really use your support, Aunties.

Hey Aunties,

This weekend I received notification that my disability benefit is being discontinued.¹ As many readers will know, I’ve been relying on long-term disability insurance from my former employer to make ends meet as I try to build this newsletter and turn it into my primary source of income. I plan to appeal the decision, and I will certainly keep you posted on how that goes. Based on my previous interactions with this insurance company, I expect the process to be slow and not at all transparent.

So, wow, would I rather not be writing to you about this. It feels shameful to air this kind of personal problem, and somehow not very classy to use my platform to ask readers for support. Thanks to the crappy-and-getting-crappier system we live in, so many of us are going through hard times right now — including many writers, lots of whom don’t air their financial woes on the internet. There’s a voice in my head telling me to suck it up, maintain a cheerful front, and hustle harder.

But boy is there a lot of internalized ableism and capitalism in that line of reasoning, isn’t there? In our society, we’re not supposed to ask for help. We’re not supposed to need help. If we fall on hard times, according to the capitalist narrative, it’s our own fault. And being really real with you about my own particular baggage, Aunties, the internalized voice that says this is my fault has been with me for as long as I can remember. It’s extra loud right now. I am practicing not to believe it. May we all not believe that voice.

Instead, I hope we can all believe the voice that says we’re good enough and we’re doing our best under often-untenable circumstances. I hope we can believe the voice that acknowledges that the system we live in — here in the United States and also in many other parts of the world — sucks and is rapidly getting worse. People with disabilities routinely live in deep poverty. Part-time jobs almost always pay crap and have no benefits. Not enough people are doing the necessary carework that allows society to function, while some people (including insurance company executives) contribute nothing to the care economy and indeed hoard the resources that others need to live. It is not fair and it is not okay.

The alternative, which I’ve been writing about as determinedly and wholeheartedly as I can every week here at The Auntie Bulletin, is a society built around generosity and care, gratitude and reciprocity. This is what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls “the gift economy.” In such an economic system, she writes,

Wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.

Get The Serviceberry from your public library or local independent bookseller, or buy it online at Bookshop.org. Through October 2025, 100% of affiliate link revenue goes to Treehouse Foundation, a nonprofit that funds intergenerational affordable housing for foster youth, foster families, and elders.

In the dharma world (which is important to me), this form of gift economy has actually supported all Buddhist monastics for over 2600 years. The spiritual community ensures that nuns and monks are fed and housed (monastics cannot handle money), and in return they offer their teachings freely to one and all. In modern times, non-monastic lay teachers have also adopted this model. They offer dharma talks and guided meditations and retreats without charge; whatever compensation they receive is freely offered by those who appreciate their offerings. This practice is known as dana, which means “generosity” in Pali, and it is predicated on a fundamental understanding of our utter dependence on one another.

The beloved Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh described dana this way:

When we truly see ourselves as others and others as ourselves, we naturally want to do everything we can to secure their happiness and well-being, because we know that it is also our own well-being and happiness. We exist in interbeing with all of life.

There is a kind of vegetable in Vietnam called he (pronounced “hey”). It belongs to the onion family and looks like a scallion, and it is very good in soup. The more you cut the he plants at the base, the more they grow. If you don’t cut them they won’t grow very much. But if you cut them often, right at the base of the stalk, they grow bigger and bigger. This is also true of the practice of dana. If you give and continue to give, you become richer and richer all the time, richer in terms of happiness and well-being. This may seem strange but it is always true.

Now, I am not a dharma teacher, but when my financial situation feels precarious, I take refuge in contemplating the millions of people over the centuries who have been supported by their communities in exchange for offering what wisdom and guidance they can. These include spiritual leaders across global faith traditions as well as healers, midwives, teachers, scribes, poets, musicians, and — latterly — union organizers. While members of these professions have rarely gotten rich in terms of money, in many times and places their needs have been met by the appreciative generosity of the communities they serve. And in many cases, the more they have given, the richer they have become in happiness.

Okay, so Substack is a weird model because it absolutely functions within a venture capitalist tech entrepreneurial system that incentivizes its overlords to maximize profits and eventually to prioritize the interests of its future shareholders (once it goes public, which of course it will). It’s is a highly competitive marketplace where writers offer their services in exchange for money, Substack takes its 10% commission, and the credit card companies get another 3%+ in fees. That’s market economics for sure. But on the other hand, much of the writing on Substack — including most of what I publish at The Auntie Bulletin — is offered for free. The idea is that writers will be voluntarily compensated by readers who value what we’re offering. This smells like a gift economy to me, and it’s how I hope things can work for my newsletter most of the time.

Because Aunties, when you write a newsletter that’s largely about generosity and community care and the gift economy, it’s truly difficult to figure out what to paywall. The reality is that I get a lot more paid subscriptions when I paywall things, but with so much of what I offer here, paywalling truly doesn’t feel right. An interview with an queer interracial couple who became foster parents in their early 20s. A post about how we can love, respect, and care for our elders — and receive such care ourselves as we age. A big list of concrete ways for Aunties to support new parents. A conversation with another Substack writer about pregnancy loss, perinatal loss, and what makes Mother’s Day complicated for so many of us. A post that’s literally about sharing.² I want such posts to be accessible to those who need them, so I offer them in the spirit of the gifting economy, in service to the communities I love.

I do believe The Auntie Bulletin is genuinely making a difference. For example, this note I wrote a few weeks back went a bit viral on the Substack app:

Recently a loved one who reads my newsletter told me that it’s really been changing her approach to community care. I was like, “How so?”

She told me about her neighbor, a single mom, who has to do a necessary midnight airport pickup a couple times a month. This mom had been having to wake her kid up in the middle of the night every other week. My friend said that she’s started staying overnight at their house instead, and she loves it. She’s gotten much closer to the kid and the mom and is feeling more rooted in her neighborhood. The routine is easy and it’s only a few blocks away.

So now there’s a single mom out there who has reliable, free, overnight childcare, a kid who has an important new adult in their life, and a new Auntie. Everybody wins!

Stories like this make me so happy. I’m realizing that the more I talk about about and model practical everyday community care, the more others decide they might give it a whirl.

Interdependence is contagious.

I mean, isn’t that a great story?? I like that it went viral and brought in a bunch of new subscribers,³ but I like even more the content of what actually happened — i.e., the world got a little less sucky, a few people at a time.

I get beautiful feedback from readers on a very regular basis. Lots of Aunties tell me this newsletter is helping them form stronger relationships with the kids in their lives and better support the parents they love. Parents tell me they feel more seen, that they long to live in the kind of world they see reflected here. There are people who have decided to have kids — or decided not to — on the strength of an Auntie Bulletin post (and hey, if you decided not to, can I gently point out that I saved you a quarter of a million dollars? You’re welcome! Please upgrade to paid!) Alloparents of all stripes, including grandparents and step-parents and big cousins and friends of the family, report that they’re feeling more resourced as well as more equipped simply to put words to their own lived experience. And hey, me too! We exist in interbeing, dear Aunties!

I also believe The Auntie Bulletin is helping to seed an absolutely essential cultural conversation. Its reach isn’t huge — this newsletter currently has about 5500 subscribers total — but I know for a fact it’s got people talking about Auntiehood, alloparenting, chosen families, kinship, and community care. Our hurting world needs these kinds of relationships very badly. It needs these roles and relations to become normal, accessible, everyday, and even ho-hum. Imagine living in a world where telling someone you live in co-housing doesn’t send them into paroxysms of longing, because they live in co-housing too. Imagine a world where, when the moms start talking about their kids, the Aunties (plural) feel welcome to chime in with equal enthusiasm about the kids in their lives, boring the few “happily childfree” people with their summer camp registration woes and lengthy endorsements of young adult graphic novels. Imagine a world where your problem is that you know too many of your neighbors and it takes you forever to walk anywhere because you keep having to stop to chat or help somebody out with something.

This world is within reach. So many of us here are already working on it.

Oversharing Time

Now, I know some readers will be feeling worried about me (hi, mom). To be clear, I do have some savings to fall back on for the time being. I also have a deep bench of loved ones who have my back, bless them. I’m unlikely to wind up destitute any time soon. But in the long run, Aunties, I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

The Auntie Bulletin currently has 416 paid subscribers, and that comes out to an annual income of less than US $20,000, which is not enough to live on. Due to disability I’m not able to work full time on a regular 9-5 Monday-Friday schedule — this became very clear over the past year as I tried to juggle multiple gig jobs — and if I can’t make a better living as a writer, I can’t keep writing this newsletter. That would be super sad for me and I think it would also be pretty sad for society.

Here are the possibilities:

1. I win my appeal with the insurance company (famously easy to do — does anyone know Erin Brockovich?)

2. I go back to working full time for an employer (or more likely, multiple employers) and hope I can hack it, which I don’t think I can, but maybe this whole situation is my fault and I just need to suck it up and hustle harder — wait, Lisa, stop that!

3. I manage to grow The Auntie Bulletin, a lot, and generally find ways to make more money as a writer

To be clear, option 3 has been my plan all along, but the loss of my disability insurance benefit will mean I need to speed up the timeline and figure out how to make ends meet before I run out of savings. I’m also really, really hoping option 1 pans out. (You’ll hear about it if it does, I promise!)

Going forward, I do plan to continue paywalling things sometimes. I aim to offer value for all readers above the paywall, as well as high-value content below it. I’m also exploring various other ways to add revenue, including potential Auntie workshops and/or retreats, freelance writing, and a proposal for an Auntie book that will maaaaaybe (fingers and toes crossed) sell for a decent advance.

In the meantime, you’d be doing me a major solid if you’d upgrade to a paid subscription, Aunties.

And if you want to invite me to come on your podcast or be interviewed for your newsletter or speak at your Auntie (?) event (hahahahaha jk those don’t exist — yet) or write a monthly column for your internationally-respected left-leaning newspaper (ahem, The Guardian, I’m available) or sell my Auntie book to your publishing house for a healthy six figures, do feel free to hit me right on up.

In all sincerity, I’d love to reach a wider audience and I’m always excited to connect with new colleagues. Ask Dana Miranda, Ann Friedman, Anya Kamenetz, Jody Day, Rosie Spinks, Ryan Rose Weaver, Sri Juneja, Stephanie Forman, Jessica Slice, Elissa Strauss, or Ragon Duffy and Kelly Gerner of the Kindred Spirits Book Club podcast (check your inbox for our conversation about Auntiehood in Anne of Green Gables this coming Friday). Collabs and connections are absolutely my jam.

Thanks for reading, Aunties. This has felt to me like an extra-cringey PBS pledge drive and I wouldn’t be surprised if it felt that way to you, too. But it matters, and honestly I’m proud of myself for being brave and putting myself out there. May we all get to live in a world where we can ask for and receive the help we need.

Americans and Canadians, doesn’t this image just take you back? I wonder, if we called these numbers, if we could still pledge our support to WNED in Buffalo. If you want to give them $7 a month instead of me, I will not be mad.

Nothing Sold, Bought, or Processed

The Auntie Bulletin is an ad-free, feminist, anti-capitalist publication that will never try to sell you anything and donates 100% of revenue from Bookshop.org affiliate links to organizations supporting vulnerable kids. Through the end of September 2025, the recipient organization is Treehouse Foundation. Look for receipts in early October.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! You get the secret scoop that if you can’t afford a paid subscription due to financial hardship, you can reply to this email to let me know and I’ll comp you a 12-month paid tier subscription, no questions asked. This deal will always be available, no matter how broke I am, because we’re all in this together.

1. In case you’re interested, the insurance company is claiming that my health issues are resolved because, over the past year, notes from my healthcare providers don’t have much to say about the most debilitating symptoms of my primary health condition, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. (These symptoms are chronic pain and significant daily fatigue leading to brain fog). The reason there’s not much about these symptoms in my doctors’ recent notes is that there’s little more they can do. In the year or so following my diagnosis, I was seeing up to nine different specialists, but at this point, it seems everything that can be done has been done. I’ve made all the lifestyle changes; I’ve had the surgeries; I’m taking the medications and the herbs and the supplements. I’m back down to mostly just seeing my primary care provider. To the insurance company, the absence of ongoing documentation evidently indicates that I’m all better. If they had ever made that information available to me before discontinuing my claim, I would have made sure to bring up my disability symptoms at every doctor’s visit and request that it be entered in their notes. There’s a lesson learned the hard way.

2. I dare you to paywall a post about sharing and then sit with the dissonance of that. It simply cannot be done!

3. Welcome, new subscribers! I was going to apologize for sending you such a needy post so early in your subscribership, and reassure you that it’s not usually like this here, but then I remembered that asking for help when you need it isn’t needy, it’s good and wise and we should all do it. And I also realized that, actually, it is “usually like this here,” insofar as Auntie Bulletin posts tend to be both personal (sometimes too personal) and political (you can never be too political), and to offer practical ways to enact community care in daily life. So even though this post was uncomfortable for me to write and share, it is actually well aligned with the overall project of this newsletter. I hope you find The Auntie Bulletin useful and meaningful! And hey, no pressure on brand new subscribers to immediately upgrade to paid. Stick around and check it out for the time being, see if it adds value to your life. I’ll still be here for at least a good little while to come.