Why I'm Stepping Back from Substack (and What's Next)

Meet The Herstorian 2.0.

Hello lovely human,

I’m dropping in on this wet (of course, it’s wet) Bank Holiday to give you some updates.

Firstly, I’m stepping back from Substack after 4-ish years here. I’m not closing it down entirely and you’ll still be able to peruse all the content on here. But instead of writing to you every week, I’m putting that time into something more sustainable for both my energy and my bank balance 🤞

2025 is the year of dissemination. I’ve had some really cool gigs over the years and worked with some awesome people, but it’s time for me to stop writing history for other people. It’s now time to intentionally and sustainably share my herstorical archive with the world because nobody benefits while it’s sitting on my laptop.

It’s taken me a while to get comfortable with this newness. It feels like a big move (hello scarcity mindset), especially as my personal life has undergone *monumental* changes in the last 18 months and is still in flux, but if I’ve learned anything from studying women for 20 years, it’s that women need something more than what I’ve been giving. I’m so, so tired of seeing and hearing women justifying their humanity and questioning their value when I’m sitting on evidence that clearly shows how they co-created civilisation (and, often, led the charge entirely). Let’s call this legacy work.

Here are some of the things I’m working on for you right now:

1. I’m recording my most popular talks so they can be watched on demand. A history of patriarchy? Yes. How to authentically teach women’s history? Yes. And a few others, too.

2. I’m writing an introduction to women’s history. Forget the “add women and stir” model of doing history (because it’s doing the square root of naff all to move us forward), so this is all my wisdom from the last 20 years, bundled up and made as accessible as possible. I think it would be great to turn this into a course, too.

3. I’m also writing some themed deep dives into topics that have the most Substack reads and inspire the most questions in my inbox. STEM has been a solid favourite for as long as I can remember, as are spirituality and the witch trials. It’s so important for us to reclaim what (and who) has been lost, forgotten or deliberately written out. I hope this series will go some way in reclaiming and also reframing our understanding of the past. Because when you write women back into history, the status quo cannot be maintained.

So, moving forward, I’ll share occasional updates with you on Substack but right here will be my new home and shopfront. You can also catch me on LinkedIn and TikTok, where I’ll be sharing those juicy herstorical snippets.

I hope that you stay with me for The Herstorian 2.0 and thank you for being part of the journey so far. As always, you are welcome to share ideas if there’s something particular you’d like to see in this next chapter. Just hit reply.

Until next time,

Kaye x