Building something in the margins of your life is lonely work. You spend a great deal of time and effort on an article you’re really proud of, hit publish, and it largely vanishes into the feed. You tinker and fiddle with your app for hours, push it live to the App Store and refresh, refresh, refresh, waiting for the downloads to start rolling in. You hit submit on your LLC application between bites of food at your desk between meetings. The milestones are small, sometimes even too insignificant to share to the group chat.
Jen and I had been on our own lonely journeys, building and exploring work outside of our 9-5s for a few months, when we both mustered up the courage to connect with someone in our Substack orbit. Coincidentally, we both took our first shots with the same person: Rebecca.
It’s been an incredible gift to make friends with other women who understand the loneliness and the joy and anxiety of building something around a 9-5, motherhood, and otherwise very full and vibrant lives. So when we realized we all have July birthdays, we thought: what better excuse to throw a joint birthday party?
If you told our moms back in the 90s that we’d be throwing a joint birthday party with people we met on the internet, they would have grounded us for life.
So it’s a good thing it’s 2026 and we’re only getting older and wiser, which means we’re wise enough to know the value of surrounding yourself with people who get it–even if you found those people online!
That’s why we’re excited to invite you (yes, you!) to Wins & Wishes: A Substack Birthday Bash on Sunday July 26th at 4PM EST/3PM CST/1PM PST.
We’re using our July birthdays to share in the celebration of reflecting on our wins from the last year and setting wishes for the year ahead in the company of other women who get it. You know those accomplishment ceremony cakes you’ve seen all over social media? We’ve created a virtual version of that using AI.
So, whether you’re celebrating your birthday this month too, or just want a mid-year checkpoint to dust off your New Year’s resolutions, we’ve got a slice of cake with your name on it.
You don’t want to miss it!
About the Birthday Ladies:
Jen Nordhem works in tech by day and on the side she teaches moms about AI. She’s building her ideal portfolio career in public, which includes community building and AI education (AI is for Moms) and product building (Moms’ Night Out). She’s a mom to two boys and lives in New York. You can also find her dabbling on Instagram at @jenmakesworkwork.
Rebecca Spitzer is a mom of two who has been building relationship platforms for mission-driven organizations for decades. She’s now building her own apps in the margins: a party planner, an AI idea notebook, and a dashboard for Substack friendships. She has always loved planning birthday parties, especially custom craft stations - including, famously, decorating AOL CDs with puffy paint in 1999.
Tiffany Soroko is a multi-passionate mom in Chicago who spent the last decade climbing the corporate ladder. Now she’s officially off the clock, writing, building, and taking her time back to spend it on the things that light her up.
My birthday is in July too!
Does a first week of August birthday count for the celebration and cake??? 🍰