I’m the kind of person who keeps quotes written in notebooks or on Post-It notes. The habit started as something of an anxious tick when I was a teenager, a way to remind myself of positive vibes or self-confidence when I didn’t have enough growing of my own. It’s a routine that got me through getting my PhD, when love notes of “you can do it” covered my walls during the week before my dissertation defense. I even have my computer programmed to replace blocked websites with inspirational quotes when I lock myself off the internet to write, reminding me of Cardi B saying “Knock me down nine times, but I get up 10” or Serena Williams’ “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.”

I know it’s corny, but it also works. I’m sharing this perhaps embarrassing habit because when trying to figure out the words to announce my departure from Autostraddle, I was reminded of this quote that I have scribbled in the margins of my most recent notebook. You will have to forgive me, because I forgot to write down the proper attribution, so I will paraphrase here. But the quote says that if you love something, then you pour all of yourself into it. If you love something — and I mean really love it — you will fight and sacrifice for it, but you’ll get back what you put in. And yes, if we are honest about how hard love can be, there will be humbling vulnerability and heartbreak, but in the end it’s always worth it. Because in the end, there will always be love.

Ultimately, that’s how I will always feel about Autostraddle. Autostraddle started as a group of friends huddled over a laptop, a lore that’s familiar to many of us who’ve been here for years, and fifteen years later it’s still not done growing. I’m not being facetious or grandiose when I say that it’s been the honor of my lifetime to be a part of this team for any length of that journey. It’s been an honor to pour myself into these pages, to serve the greater project of this community behind the scenes in keeping this website alive and here for its next chapter. It’s hard to write this letter now because the one thing I have always wanted as a leader was to listen, to center the needs of our writers, readers, and our other editors instead of shining a light on myself. I believe in grit and working hard, but I also believe that doing so only meets its highest calling when you are working towards something bigger than yourself. So, with that in mind, every late night spent falling asleep in front of my laptop, every canceled dinner plan or missed family outing, every time I had to postpone laundry or groceries — they were all worth it. YOU were all worth it. Because what we were all building was never about any one individual among us.

It’s also not sustainable for someone to spend years falling asleep in front of a laptop. Which I know a lot of you already know, because you have told me yourself! You’ve left comments on my articles, gently reminding me how important a work-life balance is in order to keep going (a lesson that I will admit, it’s taken me longer than it probably should have to internalize). If you’re going to grow a garden, you have to learn how to water yourself first.

I’m not sure where my next steps are going to take me, but I have known for a while now that the kind of personal life that I want for myself is hard to cultivate while you spend every waking hour staring into the endless blue light of a laptop screen. That feels painfully basic to say out loud. But for an over-worker and chronic overachiever like me, someone who learned early on to mask any self-doubt or worries of inadequacies (the kinds of feelings so many queer people wrestle with from the minute we realize we’re “different”) behind a impenetrable field of perfectionism — saying that you need to re-learn what’s become up to this point your defining trait in life in order to find what you most want next, well that is fucking scary. I finally feel brave enough to do it, and I finally value myself enough to do it. I learned how to do that at Autostraddle.

That’s how love works. You give and give of yourself, but if it’s done right, you get replenished in return. I am so grateful for everything that I was able to give to Autostraddle in my time here, first as a reader parked in the comments section with my very long opinions about television, then as a team writer, as an Associate Editor, Senior Editor, Deputy Editor, and now in my time as this website’s Editor-in-Chief. I hope I brought all of my smarts and humor to the table, my compassionate leadership, a willingness to do what’s hard, my passion for platforming Black and brown queerness, and an insatiable appetite for jokes about my love of Queen Latifah (maybe that last one more than anything else). I first became Deputy Editor in 2020 — barely three months into a global pandemic and so many uncharted waters ahead of us. I became Editor-in-Chief nearly one year to the day after that, and I said “I want to see us… into the next chapter. I want to build a platform that outlives us. That’s my goal.”

I’m so proud that together we have seen Autostraddle through the worst of the pandemic. What I’ve also learned is that Autostraddle will always outlive any one person at its helm. Because the magic of Autostraddle comes from all of us who have loved it, and will continue to love it, for so many years.

Countless hands touch the project of Autostraddle that as readers you never get to see. I want to thank each and every one of them, people who for so many years, every day, worked to make this website and community better with the precious care and tenacity it deserves. For nearly the last seven years, I’ve felt incredibly lucky to have known Autostraddle from the inside out, every corner and nook and cranny, because I loved it first as a reader, and I want to tell each of you reading this — no one does this magnificent hard work, hour after hour, day after day, without deeply loving this place. Editors, writers, graphic designers, brand partnerships and membership, our tech team. No one puts in the time here without believing deep in their bones that telling your stories, reflecting you back to yourself on your own terms, is worth it above all else.

The current editors of Autostraddle, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Drew Burnett Gregory, and Riese Bernard are just… There are just no words for what working with them has meant to me. I wish I knew how! And I’m a writer! I should! But the task is too mounting, too impossible. I hope they will forgive me for coming up short at this moment, and know that my lack of words is because of an abundance of deep feeling, not a lack of it, which has stunned me into silence. This team is something special. I cannot wait to see where they are taking Autostraddle next.

Nico Hall has also done so much for Autostraddle as our Fundraising and Membership Director to keep Autostraddle here and queer during a pandemic that ended the future of so many other small businesses and publications like ours. When I speak of the late nights I’ve put into Autostraddle, there is no one that I spent more of those late nights with than Nico or Riese, often with great sacrifice. But those hours also allowed Autostraddle to still be here today, and that is something that I am incredibly proud of. More than all of that, Nico has become a friend. I also want to thank Heather Hogan, the Autostraddle TV Team, the WNBA group chat, and a deep thank you to Natalie Duggins. You all became more than coworkers. It will always have meant more than you know.

And I want to thank the writers of Autostraddle because as editors, there is no greater privilege than being trusted with the words of another and to help give them life. Every writer whom I have known during my time at Autostraddle has left a mark on me and impacted me in such a way that I still wouldn’t know how to pay back. They laughed and joked with me, checked in on me when I was down, they pushed and challenged me to become a better leader and a better person. Thank you.

I also don’t want to lose touch with any of you reading this letter! Thank you to the readers of Autostraddle, thank you to our AF+ members, all of you are the reason we do this work and you are the reason this website exists at all. Thank you for allowing us to be the ones who tell your story. You can find me next on Instagram (where I swear I’m doing better about posting more regularly!) or on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). Please come hang! I’m going to miss you terribly. You’ll also be able to find some more of my writing here, where I’ll be pivoting to becoming a contributing freelance writer.

It’s funny. If you’ve read my story or about my relationship to this website before, you’ve maybe already heard me say this: for as long as I’ve been gay, I’ve rolled over in the morning when I first woke up, picked up my phone, and checked Autostraddle.

It’s true. And I’m excited for this next chapter, because I’m excited to also fall back in love with Autostraddle as I first knew it, as a reader.

I can’t wait to join all of you reading this, on the other side.

I love you,
Carmen