Dear HuffPost readers,
I’m Noah Michelson, director of HuffPost Personal, a section of HuffPost that shares real stories by real people. I’m writing to you today to tell you a bit about the incredible essays my team features and to ask for your support.
From the day that we launched HuffPost Personal in January 2018, we’ve been committed to featuring diverse voices that speak to the unprecedented challenges and uncommon joys of 21st-century life. From unpredictable love stories to unbelievable medical mysteries to the unexpected delight one woman found when she got a job at Olive Garden, our essays are candid, passionate — sometimes even shocking — and offer glimpses into the lives and experiences of people just like us — or absolutely nothing like us. Either way, our readers regularly tell us they find themselves more informed after reading our pieces and often feel just a little bit better about the world — and the people — around them.
If you believe in deeply personal journalism — the kind that connects us in our hardest, most honest moments — please consider becoming a HuffPost member today.
That’s because personal essays have power — the power to communicate experiences and emotions that might not translate as effectively or poignantly via more traditional news articles. HuffPost is one of the few independent news outlets dedicating an entire department to sharing these kinds of stories every day because we value this unique kind of alchemy and the connections that are possible when it occurs.
Giving our readers the opportunity to enter into someone else’s experience through their own words feels more urgent than ever, and this year we have featured numerous authors writing about how their lives have been impacted by Donald Trump’s return to the White House. One man shared the devastation he felt when he was fired simply because he’s an American. A woman who oversees a lab that does vital medical research wrote about having her funding cut and the dangers that many of us could face because of it. Another writer detailed what happened when her neighbor, a Jan. 6 insurrectionist who went to prison, was released by President Trump and returned to her neighborhood.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom. Beautiful things also happen on HuffPost Personal. In fact, just a few weeks ago we ran a piece from a man who launched a nonprofit to pay off student lunch debts. After he published his essay on our site, HuffPost readers donated over $20,000 to aid him with his mission.
None of this would be possible without you. Your support helps us keep the lights on at HuffPost, and it means we can keep sharing these personal stories. If you want to help ensure we can continue to do our work, we’d love to welcome you to our reader membership program.