Assalamu alaykum, I’m Shagufta.

Welcome to my Substack! Let me introduce myself properly.

My name is Shagufta and I live on the west coast of Canada. I love long chats over cups of tea, notebooks with beautiful paper, exploring new places, good art, watching sunrises and learning widely. In every course, fellowship or job I’ve ever had, the cards and notes I’ve received afterwards have always described me as the person most likely to recommend an amazing book to others. I’m a racialized visibly Muslim woman with a disability/chronic illness that deeply shapes how I move through the world.

By training, I am a social planner, researcher and emerging somatic practitioner and I feel my deepest sense of joy in helping individuals and organizations birth new ways of being. My ways of help are as an educator, a writer and a coach.

What is this newsletter about?

I have been writing this newsletter since February 2022, but for 12 years before that, I ran a blog and audio stories series called Seriously Planning. More recently, I ran a YouTube channel and online community about diverse books.

Over the last two years, these newsletters have explored marriage, faith, travel, equity, recurrent miscarriages, books, art, grief and health. After I experienced a major health change in November 2022, this newsletter became a place where I talk about chronic illness and disability and how it has shaped and is shaping my life.

At this point, this newsletter is about practising hope through art, healing, curiosity and community. It is easy for your life to shrink when you are consistently ill, and in this newsletter, I share how I am practising living a life of contribution, friendship and love in the specific body and life that I have.

Why subscribe?

This newsletter is for curious and hopeful readers striving for a more equitable world and a life of wonder, softness, beauty and gentleness. As a subscriber, you will regularly receive content about hope, the connection between somatics and social change and disability and chronic illness. I talk a lot about wonderful books.

A subscription can:

  • provide joy

  • Help you focus your reading selections

  • Offer a place to think through softness and equity work

  • Offer reflections about slow, steady healing work

I started this newsletter to share things I’m reading, watching, listening, noticing, learning and practising, in the hopes that sharing can help sustain you through whatever change-making work or grief you are going through and offer a bit of hope.

With a free newsletter, you will receive semi-regular posts about things I am reading and watching and thinking about.

Why upgrade to paid? How will this newsletter help me?

With a paid subscription: You will receive 3-4 posts a month. These will include:

  • Longer essays

  • Regular curation/round up of things I’m reading and listening to

If you work in a large organization, or even if you work for yourself, you may feel like there is never enough time to read as much as you want. A paid subscription can offer a few fresh ideas to your work and life every week in a form that synthesizes concepts, highlights key take-aways and offers more detailed information.

Note: An annual subscription is 25% cheaper than a month to month plan.

With a founder subscription: All of the above, but a founder subscription is for folks who would like to help me to write more in the newsletter and in my essay collection. It is more of a gift. Founder members can also participate in a regular book pharmacy, where I recommend books/give a prescription based on what you are looking for.

Stay up-to-date

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox. If you aren’t receiving newsletters regularly, please check your spam folder.

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A newsletter for curious and hopeful readers.

People

Writer and social planner in pursuit of equity, joy and good books. Opinions my own.