Welcome to My First Newsletter
I'm happy you're here.
Hi! I’m new to Substack and ready to be part of a digital village square that is:
less about draining our dopamine and perpetuating the already overwhelming feeling of ‘not-enough-ness’ and
more about exchanging art, ideas and content that feed my soul and support the liberation of myself and others.
a bit about me:
My name is Sylvia. I am named after my Hungarian great grandmother and kitchen witch, Sylvia Sabina Krivanek. I couldn't be more proud to carry her name.
I lived in Brooklyn - Crown Heights and then Red Hook - for 6 of the last 10 years. Before that I lived in Nairobi, Kenya where I found the most kind, thoughtful, funny, and vast network of friends, as well as my now husband, Eric.
I was that city dweller who purchased an 1830 farmhouse in upstate New York in 2020 while the world was reeling from COVID. We weren’t sure how we would balance our lives between Brooklyn and our new home, but through trial and error, some years upstate and back in Brooklyn, as well as a brief stint as Airbnb hosts who let you pick veggies from their garden, we made it work.
I’m now living full-time in upstate New York, in the Finger lakes, near the town where I grew up.
I just turned 35 and, for now, that feels just right.
I’m about to become a mother. After an arduous journey trying to conceive, I became pregnant via IVF. There’s so much about this journey I’d love to share but put simply, it feels like the greatest honor to nurture and care for this little one. I hope I never take that for granted.
I’m a recovering humanitarian aid worker. I worked on innovation teams researching and implementing improved foreign aid models in health and education. Like most in my field, I have developed a healthy criticism of this work. I also believe that attempting to make the world a better place to live for the most vulnerable is not wasted effort and this work can be the catalyst for a whole lot of good.
I was a caregiver for my father with ALS. He passed in 2022 and my journey with grief shaped me immensely. Holding his hand and speaking to him while he died made me sure there is something magical - and some may say divine - that happens on the threshold of death.
I love Brooklyn and NYC and I love the rural Finger Lakes. I’m less interested in the suburbs and most ‘in betweens’ in life. Give me the extremes please and thank you.
I garden a lot and have since I was a child. When I think back to the things I did as a kid that made time disappear, it was pottering around in our vegetable garden, watching as the tomato plants crept up the stakes and the vines got heavy with fruit.
Every time I travel to Europe, I’m reminded that we don’t have to live these crazed American lives and that free healthcare, public transportation that’s on time, and food that doesn’t taste like cardboard are within reach.
I’m a huge fan of secondhand furniture and enjoy curating my environment. Caring for our farmhouse and the land it’s on is something I will never be finished with.
My newsletter is a platform for my musings and connection. I don’t intend to charge for it. I want this to be a space for play and creativity and while I may structure it more down the line, for now consider it my diary:
a peek into the things I’m thinking about, creating, growing, and nurturing at home and in my community.
I want this to be a place to question the norms and systems we’ve been handed and provide the inspiration to build something new for yourself and your community.
If you would like to follow along, subscribe below and share it with a friend. I’d be so grateful for your help building this community.
with love,
Sylvia
ps. some snippets of life…
pps. come join me on Substack! Let’s leave Meta behind.
Welcome aboard~!