Most charged word in copy. Scholar-Activist Site. Semana Santa Semillas.
An audio narration is avaiable:
Good morning clients, friends & community…
As I take in sun and coffee this second day of April on La Línea’s east shore, at the Cuban chiringuito Kaleu…
Listening to a beach remix for Aaliyah’s “Try Again”…
I reap the rewards of quiet mornings and months.
In March, I finished reading four books—by far my biggest flex yet in digital minimalism.
My clients are realigning their business visions to focus on being more intentional with their time and energy. Offerings are shifting or simplifying.
We are all arriving to where we want to be after the “long birth,” as expressed by a friend.
Like we’re all on the same wave, surfing to shore: The refuge of our bodies, our sovereignty, our inner awareness.
For many of us, that also means coming home to our websites and our email lists.
Let’s get into today’s fresh content, hot off the cafe table.
Bienvenid@s! Welcome to Q2 of my 2026 newsletter format.
🌕 Full moons reveal client stories and more about my portfolio.
🌑 New moons look at creative flow and what unblocks it.
Thank you for being here! I’m Shayna, and I create/maintain websites for dancers, hermits… and badasses.
Table of Contents
The April Aries-Libra Axis: I, We, and You in copy
With Audra’s full moon in Libra Cosmic Report, we learn of the Aries-Libra axis. She expands on the axis further in a great podcast that interviews a guest astrologer on the U.S. geopolitical situation from the celestial perspective.
It’s the shift from I to We.
Personally when I read messaging that says, “You think this, you feel that, you do this, you want that, you need this…”
I usually stop reading.
I get that “you” in copy is more direct and a powerful way to form a connection. It can read more as a conversation than self-promotion.
But it requires you to actually know your audience, and the truth is… do you?
My perspective is influenced by a paradigm shift in 2016, when I was in massage school.
Our communication modules taught us to use “I” statements in a therapeutic context.
“You know how you have so much pain in your shoulder that you can’t wake up most days…?“
Well, what if you have no pain in your shoulder at all?
So many times the “you know” statements are much better replaced with “I,” so as not to superimpose one’s ideas on the truth of a person’s situation.
“I statements” were radical for me. Life altering. Because it was really the first time I could finally learn what I thought of things, how I would address them.
I literally had to be taught to think (and speak) for myself, formally in school.
I recognize the power of “you” in copy, but it’s also one of the most loaded words you can use, so you’ve got to be careful and recognize that.
Dya’know whaddaymean?
What do you think?
Is a website right for you?
Lol, only you can answer that. Working in web design, I’ll be biased.
The truth is, many people don’t “need” one.
Many people swear by platforms for doing what platforms do best: optimizing. Distributing. Discoverability.
And many are content to connect their domain or get some subdomains going, and then they bounce when folks collectively ride the next wave to the next platform.
Arguments against:
Arguments for:
- Why Personal Websites Are Replacing Social Media
- You Need a Website, Not Another Social Media Account to Manage
If you’re someone pro-website, the truth is the options to come across one are more accessible than ever. With one prompt in an AI builder, you can have a snazzy site inexpensively, if not free, and instantly.
But you know I’m a developer, so this is not where I’ll park my sombrilla. Let’s draw a line in the sand.
Park your ⛱️ sombrilla and draw a line in the sand
Ryan Clover compares a website to a door into a world. This world is the deeper work of how we have a greater impact.
As we build this world, we also have full control over it. We’re not on some other platform, dependent on an algorithm. We get to decide how we express and uphold our values, attracting those who understand us and want to connect.
There’s a lot that goes into development and websites in general. This is what keeps us excited about intersectionality and interconnectivity.
Aaalllll kinds of stuff goes into web development (and potentially your website):
- designing layouts and styles
- configuring features
- connecting the domain
- adding content
- and a million things to learn (blogging, graphics, memberships, online events, courses, digital products, e-commerce, email lists, no sé qué, no sé cuánto, design principles, search, conversion, oy vey…)
But the beauty of building this world—with a website that iterates and grows with you—is that you bring people into your world.
You learn to build that world through their eyes. Slowly, slowly, we learn of others’ motivations as we inhabit our own.
Where I wrote today’s newsletter.
What websites translate to on an individual level is having our own place where you can provide value and build your email list of contacts.
The website piece and the email list piece go hand-in-hand.
To me, these “essentials” of the website and email list give us the most agency and therefore most freedom to be ourselves while creating the changes we want to see, with whom we’re meant to.
“There is a lot of advice online for SEO and paid ads and cold outreach and social media presence,” Ryan Clover said in a workshop.
The marketing “hell” of many experts getting very loud can be overwhelming.
But I’m a hermit as much as an opportunist, so I advocate for the quiet way.
I have totally seen people grow their business or their organization in very calm, very non-pushy ways: not using social media at all. Not even being concerned with it. And never doing ads.
—Ryan Clover
It’s totally possible to have a quiet business, relax, and release.
Fewer tools, more space.
More understanding, less convincing.
The paradox is that this deeper relaxation is more security, more solidity in one’s being, more creative expression. And perhaps, for those “deep” people among us, deeper work means more money.
“Wealth usually refers to money,” writes Nick Wolny in Money Proud, one of those books I read in March (photo and link to purchase above). “But we will broaden its definition to include time, attention, health, relationships, and personal growth.”
It’s not to say that Nick isn’t concerned with money—far from it.
But why not cast a wide beach umbrella?
The paradox is that the people who are the most confident don’t need to self-promote, and the people who are least confident are the ones who engage in the most self-promotion.
Mark Bolino
Client Story #3: Sheena’s Site for a Healing Justice Visionary
Let’s finally talk about Sheena Sood: a badass client.
[And please note that this is all still just a draft of my thoughts. I might have to put something more eloquent together before releasing the portfolio to the public and building the more public-facing story. xoxo]
I first met the activist-scholar and yoga teacher through the Maple Creative client community. I’d see Sheena around in webinars.
As a yoga enthusiast, I was always intrigued by Sheena’s work. But it wasn’t until interviewing Sheena for the Equitable Welllness podcast that I got better acquainted with her work elegantly knitting yoga, social justice, and shared anti-imperial values.
Not until that podcast did I consider that ‘scripture’ from the likes of Patañjali and other sages could be colonial, supremacist propaganda. She’d have much more to say and the scholarship to draw from.
It is really an honor to have worked with Sheena, a true healing justice visionary.
Sheena’s Testimonial
Sheena was so kind as to answer the following three questions about working with me on her website rebuild.
Before
Since Sheena’s rebuild assignment was a Maple Creative collaboration, I can’t take all the credit. Ryan Clover set the initial template of her “sapling” website by choosing the theme, configuring Sheena’s design choices, and giving us the starting point of her header and footer.
Sheena then hired me as a contractor for custom building of the pages. We worked out of a website outline document provided by Maple to insert and design the content.
The main challenge with Sheena’s project is that she had a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of content, as someone who has published in journal articles, book chapters, and editorials for news outlets and magazines, and also somebody featured in interviews, podcasts, and public talks.
(And also someone working on her own book project and various research papers and editorials at any given time.)
We needed to find a way to organize her vast body of work.
On Sheena’s past website, her bibliography looked like a series of links on a list. I’d hoped to display those works in a way that vividly illustrates Sheena’s brilliance.
On the past site, I also had to dig around to find her media appearances, which I thought should be brought out boldly and clearly in the navigation menu.
Finally, Sheena has extensive yoga experience. By the end of our collaboration, we were finally adding content to her yoga section, which includes:
- retreats
- healing justice work
- decolonizing yoga workshops
- her kids’ program called Yoga Warrior Tales
There was still just a lot of content to finish adding.
We worked together in a three-month “holistic marketing” retainer that included weekly check-ins as accountability partners to stay on track with finishing the website.
After
What I’m most proud of is that we were able to organize Sheena’s work in a way that has flow and structure.
The crest jewel of Sheena’s website, in my opinion, is her publications. I’m glad we were able to separate those or distinguish them from her research and from her earned media.
I’m also glad that we were able to highlight but distinguish her university teaching from her yoga teaching, and how all of her yoga offerings are also differentiated.
Since publishing the new website quietly, Sheena has been named to the American Yoga Council’s advisory council, along with such “yoga celebrities” as Leslie Kaminoff, author of Yoga Anatomy.
But the invisible outcomes I celebrate today are shared in her testimonial:
Working together with Shayna really allowed me to see that there are people out there who (inner)stand me, my work and my purpose in fusing yoga with social justice scholarship. The benefit is that Shayna allowed me to see myself and helped me find the confidence to put myself, my site and my programs out in the world in a way that helps me build on my future.
—Sheena Sood
Retreat 2027
It’s Semana Santa here, and along with the first chiringuito opening is the return of locals to the beach.
I’m starting to plant seeds now and brainstorm a potential collaborative retreat (in person) in summer 2027.
My idea involves contacts in Europe as facilitators, as well as any friends afield who have an interest.
It could include:
- yoga
- somatics
- flamenco
- decolonizing business
- rest and breath work
The location would be in Spain, to be determined. It also doesn’t have to be a lot of people to be a nice intimate retreat.
If you’re interested in learning more about this opportunity, organizing with me, or contributing a workshop or offering, go ahead and reply to this email (before I create an official waitlist).
On that note! Let’s end it on that.
Plant those seeds of dreams. 🌷🌹
p.s. Psst! You’ll love Wispr Flow!
One of the perks of working in a web design agency is behind-the-scenes recommendations of tools in a trusted toolbox.
While I traditionally enjoy writing by hand to draft newsletters, I’ve lately gotten hooked on an AI transcription (voice-to-text) app called Wispr Flow, and I’ve downloaded it for my phone and laptop.
Some of this writing was transcribed (dictated) or freestyled with this tool, before editing.
This privacy-respecting app with zero data retention is a joy to use, fun to play with, and frees up a lot of creativity! We’re obsessed. Visit the Maple Creative toolbox and read Ryan’s review here.
Or use my link to get the first month free.
(As required by cookie consent regulations, you California and EU visitors coming to Wispr Flow would have to accept cookies at the cookie consent prompt to support me directly, at no extra cost to you. 😉
