TGIF

Thanks to the tiktok ban I presume, there are a lot of new faces on Substack. If you are new here, welcome! You might’ve landed here without knowing exactly how. Substack has a great recommendation feature that adds you to newsletters your other writers suggest. If that’s how you got here without realizing—hi, I’m Victoria Winter.

I’m not here to sell you anything, offer life hacks, or dish out discount codes. I’m not a formal writer or a niche expert—I’m just a 37 year old South Carolinian who enjoys sharing thoughts and perspectives. I started this letter last year as a way to get back into a writing practice and to take it a step further to see how I felt to put my inner world into words with people on the outside. Over a year in, I can say it's the best thing I've done for myself in a long time, and I highly suggest trying to do the same if you're looking to get a little bit deeper this year.

If this doesn’t feel like something you’d like to continue receiving, the unsubscribe button is here for you, and truly, I see it as a form of self-care, not rejection. I think it's really important for us to feel comfortable saying, "this actually isn't what feels like is serving me in this phase of life." But if you do want to stay, I share my perspective on life—typically pretty rosy, sometimes not so much (like today)—and I try to be okay with the messiness, not being an expert in a world filled with them, and just sharing it with some really lovely people that help me process life even deeper. So if that sounds good, I would love for you to stay.

Lately, I’ve been having conversations about dark nights of the soul. I’ve had mine, and I talk about it often, not to dwell but in a form of healing to honor those dark places with more light and less judgment. Seven years ago, after having my first child, I quickly descended into a depression I never saw coming. Anxiety had been my lifelong companion, but this depression was completely new territory.

Fortunately, that phase lasted only a few months until I got the blessing that is modern medicine, and I could see clearly again. But this time, I saw things much more clearly. All my coping mechanisms—overworking, neglecting my needs, chasing external validation—were now impossible to ignore. As they say, it scared me straight.

That's when I started the journey of figuring out what I could take ownership in. I truly believe in the chemical nature of anxiety, but I realized I was giving it a lot of support to keep going. I began meditating, reading about behavioral patterns, listening to podcasts on self-help—anything to try to understand myself and how I was showing up in the world better, not just new band-aids to put on my life. My most constant emotion these days is peace. And I say that honestly—it feels even better than how good I thought it could be when I started this journey of wanting a life of peace and ownership for how I show up in it. I'm really proud of that.

But what I’ve been learning lately is that you can’t fully transcend your past. You just have to face it with fresh eyes, and clarity can be really uncomfortable. I have to accept that there were seeds I planted when I was living in full anxiety/control mode that continue to pop up, and I have to be accountable for them. Nobody else can do it but me.

As I am getting to the end of this newsletter, I am struggling to remember the point I wanted to make when I sat down to write. But maybe not having a point is the point. Not everything can be tied up with an easy bow and turned into a story or a chapter in our lives. It's still unfolding, and that's okay. The things that you think you wrapped up are going to bubble back up, but it's how you handle it on the other side that's important, even when it's still really complicated.

2025 has been off to a confusing start to so many of us. I want to extend advice I was given recently that was profoundly simple and yet still very challenging. “just feel how you feel.” As much as it’s become our culture to find an answer for everything quickly or take immediate action, we can sometimes forget that we are allowed to be confused for a bit. Time and space bring clarity, but only if we allow them to exist. 

Happy Victoria will be back soon! I feel her closer now that I had this therapy session with strangers on the internet so thank you for holding that space for me.

Wishing everyone a terribly boring February!

Thanks for reading victoria winter ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.