13 Killer Brand Strategies for 2024: Tiny True Stories #7
It's not what you think.
Welcome!
to the seventh edition of Tiny True Stories! If you’re new here, hello, and thank you! I’m so happy to see you. This is a monthly newsletter where I share supershort true stories you can read in 10 minutes or less (sometimes my own, and new this year, sometimes other short pieces I love!) I also share recommendations for other things I loved this month—food, books, poems, memes, anything. Tiny does not just mean short—I often write about the forgotten, small details of our lives, where most of us spend most of our time.
Well, mostly.
It’s a new year and I feel like I should offer some sort of wrap-up or wisdom or prediction. I started this newsletter last year and I have loved writing it and getting to know all of you so much. Is it cool to write “love” this much in a newsletter? Whatever; out in 2024: caring if you say “love” too much.
But I’ve never been great at summary. My vision is both too narrow and too wide and the date of January 1 feels too arbitrary. (Yes, I realize I wrote a book about life lessons. Let me tell you it was VERY HARD OKAY!) Last year had many moments I’ll cherish, and some of the worst moments of my life, as all years do. That’s the place I seem to end up every year, heartbreak, joy, yes.
Here’s the first tiny true story of this year. If you are a writer or a creative or a person on the internet, maybe the word brand is gross to you, too. This piece is for you.
Today’s Tiny True Story
13 Killer Brand Strategies for 2024
Someone told me, “I was surprised to see you write about war.” It’s not in my brand, she said.
Okay, so I will write about the mark I found on my daughter’s chest many hours after she fell down, how bad I felt for not noticing. How about the single brown freckle perched over each of her eyebrows—is that in my brand? I’ll tell you about the way my husband taps his feet while he’s asleep, as if he is dreaming music; I’ll write about the fog that licks down the hillside like a heavy blanket, the way it illuminated a spiderweb stretched across both our kitchen windows; is it my brand that I couldn’t see the web until after the dullness of the fog and dew, how fog can be gray and sparkle at the same time? Maybe my brand is the way I once knocked all the seeds out of a red bell pepper in one blow, the inside as perfect as the whorl of my daughter’s ear in the sun; how she was very sick and the doctor said she had a double ear infection but she didn’t seem bothered, how I wondered whether she was free of pain, lucky, or somehow already learning to pretend not to be. Is it my brand to tell you how the air feels in December in California, like a good apple cold from the refrigerator, or the decisive sound of a lid on a pot when you are done working and all that’s left to do is wait? Is it on brand to tell you my father’s sneezes are so loud they scare me into anger, so much that I haven’t lived at home in 18 years but whenever I see him and he sneezes he says sorry like a reflex and this is a kind of love; or how my daughter’s hair has grown so slowly she is three and we haven’t cut it yet and my husband asks if, when we finally do, he can keep a little bit of the irreplicable blonde that is disappearing forever, how he asks is this weird and I tell him no, this is love too. Not war, but okay, maybe I will tell you about watching a friend feed her two young children, and how her own mother leaned over and put some crackers in her grown daughter’s mouth when she had no hands left to feed herself—does that fit neatly into my brand strategy?
How can I not write about war when my life looks like this? I love to write small, to look as close as the seeds in a pepper or the thread of a spiderweb or the pinprick of a freckle, the small ache of a hurt you cannot fix, or a love you cannot name. Do I need to tell you these tiny moments exist in wartime too, even in genocide, that flowers always insist on growing, that even children killed in war have freckles beloved by their parents? The worst part is I have no idea if this is my brand; I have never lived in a war zone, only consumed the pain of others through my phone. That is my brand: I can only write this tiny little essay instead.
One morning my daughter woke up nearly two hours before she usually does. It was still dark outside. I brought her into our bed, told her it was still the middle of the night and we were only going to sleep and not play. I tried a thousand ways to get her to fall asleep. No bombs fell on our house. The only thing I feared was being sleep-deprived. I was so tired that after an hour, when it became clear that neither of us would sleep again, I burst into exhausted tears. She said, “Mommy, are you laughing?” I told her, no, honey, I’m crying because I’m so tired. She sidled over to my husband, terrified of me.
Every single morning since, when I say good morning to her in her bed, she says, “Is it not the middle of the night, mommy? Are you not so tired?” She is still scared of my tears. It’s my brand to wonder what other questions she could ask. To wonder what questions could run repeat in her mind when the fears are much bigger than a tired mother. My daughter does not ask me where we are going to go, if we are going to survive today. This is my brand: to tell you that every morning since, she says, “It’s not so dark this time, mommy.”
Letters of Recommendation
This very good, dry, not sweet at all nonalcoholic cider I had on New Year’s Eve. I had this and a fancy dinner and was in bed before 11, which is exactly what I wanted to do.
Getting old. I recommend it. Mostly.
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, by Sabrina Imbler. This is a book about sea creatures, but each one is also about human identity and love and oh my god it’s the book I would love to write if I were smarter than I am. Go get it immediately.
As always, thank you for giving just a little of your time to me. See you next month. I’ll be happy to see you no matter how your resolutions are going.
love this one. ❤︎
I love any brand you happen to wield. Thanks for writing