About the studio

I'm Elizabeth. I write slow letters from a small desk in West Texas.

Cheryl Inspires started in 2019, in a spare room in Midland, with a wobbly desk and one email subscriber (my mom). It's grown up since — but the intention hasn't. Everything here is written by hand first, in a notebook, before it becomes anything else.

A woman writing in a notebook by a sunlit window

The short version

How this all started.

I named the studio after my grandmother, Cheryl, who kept a spiral notebook by her toaster for forty-one years. Every morning she'd write down one line about the day ahead and one line about the day before. That was it. No app, no system, no productivity guru.

When she passed, we found seventeen of those notebooks in a shoebox in the hall closet. I read them for a week straight. Then I quit my corporate marketing job in Midland and started writing letters to strangers on the internet about paying attention to their own lives.

Six years later, that's still the whole business.

A little history

The studio, year by year.

  1. 2019

    One notebook, one reader.

    Started a personal Substack from my kitchen table. Wrote 14 letters before anyone I didn't know subscribed.

  2. 2020

    The slow-morning workbook.

    Made a 24-page PDF for readers stuck at home. It quietly sold 900 copies and paid my rent that summer.

  3. 2021

    First small-group session.

    Eight women on a Zoom call for four Sundays in a row. Six of them still write to me.

  4. 2023

    Moved into the studio.

    Rented a small room off South Street in Midland with a real door and a real window. It changed everything.

  5. 2025

    4,000 Sunday readers.

    Still writing every letter by hand first. Still keeping the list small on purpose.

How I write

A few working rules.

Short over clever.

If it doesn't fit on the back of an index card, it's not ready to send yet.

Specific over vague.

"Tuesday at 4:17" beats "sometime this week." Every single time.

Kind over correct.

I'd rather be a soft place to land than a smart one.

Slow over viral.

I have never chased a trend and I don't intend to start.

Come sit at the table.

The Sunday letter goes out at 8 a.m. Central. It's short, it's honest, and it's free.