Book Release of ‘The Buddha at My Table’
Women and Children First Bookstore
5233 N. Clark
Chicago, IL 60640
October 26 @ 7:30 p.m.
I’m Getting Older, And I Love That!
I’m an April baby. And I’ve always thought spring is a great time for a birthday. Who wouldn’t want to come bursting into the world accompanied by birds chirping and flowers blooming?
I think of spring as a time of renewed energy, purpose, and possibility. It’s a time to get moving again after the impatient, closed-in feeling I get as winter winds down.
How to go from Spacey to Spacious
I’m at the coffee shop, head down over my laptop, wearing a look of concentration that makes everyone around me think I’m being productive when, in fact, I’m berating myself for my absent-mindedness.
I left the house without my cell phone and had to drive back to get it. It was already an hour past when I meant to leave and I have no idea where that hour went. As I got back in the car for the second time in ten minutes, I looked in the rearview mirror and chided myself.
You sure are spacey.
You Are More Than a Drop in The Bucket
It’s been a long-time dream of mine to have a team of people supporting my publishing career. Maybe it’s common to every writer who spends years down the rabbit hole churning out words that may never be read. The idea of having someone else believe in you enough to say “let’s share this with the world” has got to be the best feeling ever.
I’m about to find out.
When Life is Like a Sandwich You Didn’t Order
Don’t you hate it when you have to follow your own advice? When writers tell me that they’re stuck, I always point them toward the present moment and ask:
What’s happening right now that you can use?
What is the conversation you’re already having that can be transferred to the page?
So when I was stuck this week about what to blog about, I grudgingly asked myself the same questions. And I didn’t like the answers.
Please Allow Me to Dash Your Hopes
I consider myself the hopeful sort. When I was a teenager, I wrote the words of Emily Dickinson in my notebook:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Top 10 Things To Love/Hate
Like the old song says, there’s a thin line between love and hate. I was thinking about this in January, and in February, and again in March when living in Chicago can feel like being trapped in a cold, gray, concrete box. Every year I try to convince my kids that the grass is greener somewhere, anywhere, else. (This year I was briefly enamored with Texas–huh?) And every year they tell me to stop being a hater.
“You’ll get through this, Mom,” they promise. And I do. Summer comes and I’m in love.
The 5 People Who Will Support Your Success
I admit I’ve never read Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, but I’ve been thinking of it anyway because of five people who taught me an important lesson this week.
I was in a complete funk, stressed out and shut down in the face of a problem that seemed to have no solution. I had a decision to make—one that would require not only a financial investment but also would force me to step into a bigger, bolder version of myself.
How to Reframe Imposter Syndrome
I’d been procrastinating for weeks. I knew I needed an author headshot taken for my book cover, but I hate having my picture taken. Not only that, what if I want to change my hair color? Or get a dramatic new haircut? It never seemed the right time.
Then I got an email from the publisher asking about it and saying something about schedules and blah, blah, blah. OK. Time to act.
Life Is Not All Gumballs and Hearts…But It Should Be
There were 10 of us around the large wooden table. We came together on Valentine’s Day to talk about writing and to have a little fun capturing the memories of our first loves. After a 15-minute exercise, every paper was marked with details that were touching, surprising, funny, and heartbreaking.
We heard about the beautiful red hair of a pre-teen boy; about a first kiss, at 12 years old, in a field, that made the writer’s body feel things she had never imagined it was capable of; about the storybook Germanic features of a first crush that the writer, now in his sixties, can see as clearly as if it were yesterday.
