Hi! I’m Violet Carol, author of Mother Love Letters.
Welcome to my Substack newsletter — home to stories about weathering milky midnight storms, adapting to life after childbirth, and learning to love a sea of purple stretch marks.
I’m a mom. And a thousand other selves. I write about them all.
In my posts, you’ll find personal essays, photoessays, and poems about matrescence and identity. I also share books recs (Mom’s Shelf) to highlight my recommended reads and collective discussion pieces (Mothers Assemble) to highlight the messy and magical shared experiences of pregnancy and motherhood that bring us all together.
About Mother Love Letters
Mother Love Letters is an intimate account about my personal experiences as a new mom. I’m writing about rediscovering all of my selves while wandering through motherhood — sometimes gracefully, other times in weeks’ old pajamas covered in baby drool.
There are a lot of stories in my newsletter for moms (and dads), but I also share anecdotes about grappling with radical transformation and embracing the unknown.
Mother Love Letters is about balancing motherhood with personhood and every identity in between.
I’m sharing my stories in the hopes that you’ll feel less alone in your own experiences. I’m here to laugh, cry, and dramatize it all with you in words.
And a Little About Me
Violet Carol is my writing alter ego and allows me to separate Me the Writer and Me the Mother from all of my other identities so I can write more freely.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Florida and subsequently with my JD from Santa Clara Law. Soon after, I opened my own virtual law firm focused on protecting labor and disability rights for workers. I love the intersection of law and policy — how the pen, when wielded against abuses of authority, can be one of the most powerful tools for advocacy. But I’ve always loved the writing the most.
Like most young bookworms, I grew up hugging a too-tall stack of books between my arms. I wrote as much as I read and dreamt of seeing my own words being held in the arms of others one day. I never knew where to put my writing, and I watched it pile up in bursting journals over the years until my passion for creative writing was reignited when I found myself burnt out on legalese, clinging to storytelling and all its magic.
I started sharing my poetry and prose on Instagram and now I’m here on Substack, writing fervently in every spare minute I can find, usually while nap-trapped, and hoping for the day that creative writing becomes the answer to what “I do.”
How to Subscribe to Mother Love Letters
All you need is an email! You can subscribe on the Substack app or on the Substack website. Mother Love Letters can be accessed directly here.
Free subscribers receive biweekly personal essays and all public posts via email.
Paid subscribers receive all posts via email (4+ per month), including: personal essays, photoessays, poems, curated book recs (Mom’s Shelf), and collective discussion pieces (Mothers Assemble).
All payments received from paid subscriptions are directed to my daughter’s 529 plan to help support her own passions and future education.
Whether you’re just stopping by to read a post, sharing my newsletter, or joining Mother Love Letters as a subscriber, I’m endlessly grateful for your support.
