The Nuance Diaries

Hi! ​I’m Alexa. Storyteller and Alchemist. I’m a coach, writer, and multimedia creator. ​My magic is making something out of nothing — wildly compelling stories out of thin air. I love helping people figure out who they truly are and what they actually want, so that they can take center stage in their own lives. I coach 1:1 clients and facilitate custom workshops. I’m the author of The Start of It...

READ/LISTEN ON SUBSTACK (and subscribe while you're there!) "I bet your feelings for her will go away as soon as the play ends. You’re probably not actually gay." The first time I wondered if I might like women, I was playing Hermia opposite a girl playing Lysander (traditionally played by a man) in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . For the first time in my 21 years, I was questioning my h...

SUBSCRIBE Read The Start Of It All Read '5 Life Lessons From The Devil Wears Prada 2' Book a Coaching Session with Me! Welcome back to The Nuance Diaries! I’ve been playing around with how I describe what I write about here, and recently landed on this: “Unfiltered alchemy from your most unhinged group chat. Consider my vulnerability a permission slip for yours.” I kind of love it. Thoughts? I wro...

Read This on Substack (and subscribe!) Me all of last week, “The amount of think pieces we are about to see on LinkedIn about the Knicks… Fast forward to me, last night, writing this between Q2 and Halftime to avoid freaking out. As a Broadway Baby , I have often likened sports arenas to theater performances in order to understand the appeal. When the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl a few years ago,...

Less than 0.1% of the global population will ever write a book. Not publish — write. Someone told me that statistic recently, at an event where I talked about my book. Around 0.0086% are published authors. Over 50% of U.S. writers are women, which is major, major progress. And when we filter by Black women? We make up 4% to 7% of published authors in America. Regardless of the exact stats, which a...

This is less of a speech, more of a pep talk, and really — just some reflections from someone coming up on their 10-year college reunion who feels like graduation was just yesterday. Instead of picturing me on a podium in regalia, let’s pretend I’m sitting next to you on the floor of your dorm as you pack up your things, or sitting across from you at brunch after graduation, or in the backseat of...

Subscribe to The Nuance Diaries on Substack Buy my book Book a session + Check out client testimonials I’m going to list out some different kinds of people. I’ll tell you what they all have in common in a second— but you can guess first for fun if you want. * People with chronic illness * People with PTSD * People with Complex PTSD * Trauma Survivors of any kind * Disabled people (physical and/or...

Have you read Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 ? If not, I recommend doing so! So, what does a girl do after the worst panic attack of her life leads to a broken mug, a surprising amount of clarity, and a new song? She stays up all night so that she won’t miss her early morning flight, and then takes her first flight in forever to Missouri, for her middle school bestie’s wedding. It was absolutely bea...

A week or so ago, a new subscriber told me that the following piece really resonated with them. The sentiment behind that piece has never felt truer, and these reflections came from the same chamber of my heart as that piece did. I saw the Wild Party on Sunday night. It was indeed a wild, wild party. It was so good and so intense. Earlier that day, I watched another intense performance — Hippolytu...

Have you listened to Part 1 and Part 2 yet? If not, start there! Broken things have long been romanticized in humanity’s search for renewal and redemption. The Japanese art of kintsugi is probably my favorite example. ""KINSUGI" literary means gold (金 KIN) stitching (つぎ TSUGI) in Japanese. It is a Japanese art form of mending broken porcelain with lacquer (URUSHI), dusted with gold, or silver....

If you haven’t listened Part 1 yet, go ahead and do that first, HERE . ______________________________ While my memories from the night of the panic attack are sparse, the ones from the following morning are vividly clear. I woke up thinking I had Covid. I felt like I had been hit by a truck ten times over in my sleep. I tried to shake it off and get ready for work, but my body made it very clear t...

On the eve of the lunar new year, three days before my birthday, I finally threw out the jagged glass pieces of a mug that I had broken six months ago. I never thought it would take me six months to throw out a reminder of one of the worst nights of my life, but here I was. I held it in my hands one last time. I took a few pictures (even though I already had plenty.) I outlined the pink handle and...

Happy Pisces Season. Happy New Year. Happy Ramadan. Happy Lent. Happy Lunar Eclipse. And happy “my birthday is in two days!” I wrote this song (which can also be read as a poem) almost exactly a year ago 2/26/25, around 2 AM. I had just turned 30. Here I am, about to be 31. I could ramble on quite a bit about how much I like this song, and how surprised I was to revisit it after a full year of, qu...

“Cause not everything means something honey/ so say the unsayable/ say the most human of things.” Transcript at https://thenuancediaries.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thenuancediaries.substack.com/subscribe

**Part 2 available at https://thenuancediaries.substack.com - embedded in this post. Hi. I did something I’ve only done twice before. I hit record and start talking. And then I hit publish. You can listen to Part 1 above, and Part 2 below (embedded.) And then you can go listen to this song from a few months back. It’s such a cheesy saying — love and light. But I am genuinely sending you as much lo...

I want to tell you a story. It is 2018, and I am a recent college graduate. I’m 23 years old. My high school best friend and I decide to take a little trip to Montreal. We’ve never been. It seems like a really fun idea. She knows French. It felt like a cool thing to do. And we’re in New York City, so it’s a short flight. We get on the plane early in the morning. It’s a very full flight. Boarding w...

I’m so ‘scited*. I’m ‘scited to share this new thing I made. *Scared and excited, as Glennon Doyle would say. More excited than scared, though. When I thought about posting on Instagram, threads, and even TikTok, I felt more scared than excited. And so, I’ve decided to share this with you, and only you, first. What is this? What’s she sharing? Cards. Custom, handcrafted cards. Created by me, with...

What if the wind was a knife? Swooshing around Slicing invisible cuts Inside you, right through you Everyday What appears to be a breeze to everyone else is lethal for you Thousands of invisible cuts Countless invisible cuts No one can understand They ask, “What’s the matter?” Because they can’t see you bleeding That same wind that circles you like a hitman Transforms into a calming breeze in othe...

Click to Subscribe + Read The Full Post Here Hi everybody. Happy New Year. I can tell 2026 is going to be the best year ever because nothing objectively horrible and unimaginably awful has happened yet. It’s all been sunshine and rainbows everywhere. I, for one, am bringing a squeaky clean slate into the new year. New year, new me. 2025 Alexa? Never heard of her. I want to be unrecognizable. The s...

Check out this post inside the https://thenuancediaries.substack.com for further reading and listening! The days are getting shorter The nights are growing long. The birds will be migrating Taking with them all their songs The air is crisp and chilly We’re trading shorts for scarves ‘Tis autumn, ‘tis autumn, ‘tis autumn. The leaves are changing color Look at their vibrant hues The tree branches wi...

“I’m tired of being amazing. I don’t want to be amazing anymore.” The single sentence becomes the crux of the show and of modern motherhood. Jenny Kaminski (Dakota Fanning), a hardworking publishing executive, meets Marissa when they’re hiding out in the bathroom at a school event. The two forge a friendship over twinning in the same dress and dealing with the same dilemma. They are tired of the p...

I saw a stranger with really kind eyes a few months ago on the Lower East Side. This man with kind eyes looked like he was in love with this girl. I thought to myself, Will anyone like that ever fall in love with me? Would they love me if they knew who I was? What I’d been through? The dark shit clogged inside me? I realized a year or so ago that whenever I pictured my future self, she looked diff...

The basic answer? I don’t want to. If someone wheeled a beautifully decorated tree into my house, I wouldn’t turn them away. If I woke up to a perfectly decorated Hallmark movie-style house in Vermont, I’d be delighted (and also a little terrified that I’d been robbed/kidnapped.) But because life is not a holiday movie , the job of decorator/mover/organizer falls to me. And this year, I’m putting...

Important housekeeping update over here about paid vs. free subscriptions! I sometimes look in the mirror and think, “Weren’t you supposed to make something of your life by now?” It might sound mean — but it’s one of my tamer negative thoughts. I try to think of all the things I’ve accomplished and the friends I love, who I know love me back. It’s not that I’m not grateful — there’s just this boul...

I thought I was going to wrap up the “The Best Showgirls are a Wicked Kind of Wonderful” series this week, but after seeing Wicked For Good last night —- that’s not where I am mentally; I want to reflect on this iconic film in a different way. (I will finish that series soon though, don’t worry!) Below is a thread that I posted ( on threads, where I’m posting more commentary ) before passing out o...