Like many of us, I am incredibly sad about Dolly’s passing. I adore Dolly. Her music, her movies, her humor, her kindness and generosity and her authenticity. I wrote a blog about her a couple of years ago that I thought I would share now in her memory. You can read the blog here.

Here’s hoping we all try to be a little more like Dolly today and everyday. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

A few weeks ago, in anticipation of my son Hudson moving to DC to start his first job, I began teaching him to cook. He learned how to use spices, peel garlic, generously oil the pan. He learned the difference between cooking pasta or rice, how to check the temperature to make sure chicken is cooked through and how to substitute when you are out of an ingredient.

He was a willing student. Finally. And I was a confident teacher. Finally.

Since my kids left for college, I have found the time and space to enjoy cooking. (10 years healing my relationship with food and moving away from diet culture made this process all the more enjoyable.) Now I love to cook. My New York Times cooking app is one of my favorite apps and I get excited every time I try something new. I have watched dozens of Ina Garten videos, I have taken Julia Turshen’s cooking classes online, admired my friends’ kitchens (Sharon I’m looking at you here). I just wanted to learn. I wanted to be like people who feel at home in their kitchen. I wanted my kitchen to be a sanctuary.

So when Hudson was ready to learn how to cook, I was ready to teach. The stars were aligned. Perfect timing.

Learning new things and sharing what I learn is one of my love languages. Which is why I am so excited to start teaching Wild Writing classes. I am so grateful I was introduced to Wild Writing. I am glad I took the leap and tried something new. And then, I was lucky enough to be able to take the teacher training class with Laurie Wagner, the person who started Wild Writing over 30 years ago.

Now, I am eagerly looking forward to teaching my first classes in the Fall.

Wild Writing could be right for you if:

• you are seeking a safe space with deep connection

• you want the ability to listen without judgment to yourself and to others

• you wish to be seen in your truth

• you would like to discover your authentic voice both on the page and in your life

• you would like to sit back, relax and listen to gorgeous and accessible poetry

• you are a seeker of healing and knowing yourself better

• you love to journal but want to take it to the next level of sharing your writing

• you want to feel present and strengthen the muscle of focusing on your own voice

• you are tired of chit chat, glossy stories, and are seeking something richer, more honest and genuine

Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, Wild Writing is an opportunity to get to know yourself better, to connect with your stories, your wisdom, your emotions. To experience where the writing takes you.

Sign up for a Fall class below. Questions? Reach out to me here.

TWO WILD WRITING CLASSES THIS FALL

-Tuesdays: 10-11:30AM ET starting Sept 15th

-Wednesdays: 6:30-8:00PM ET starting Sept 16th

To learn more about Wild Writing and to sign up, click here!

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Finding Me by Viola Davis

“It’s clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all.”—USA Today

“[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success….Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels.”—Los Angeles Times

In my book, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.

This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories and overcoming trauma, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story, a candid Black actress memoir, will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

Finding Me is the story of my journey, but it is also an invitation to own your own past with radical honesty:

• A Raw and Unflinching Memoir: Forget the polished celebrity memoir. This is a story told with the radical honesty of a woman who ran from her past—from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls to the stages of Hollywood.

• Finding Your Voice: A powerful account of what it takes to be seen and heard in a world that tries to label you, and the courage required to finally stop running and speak your truth.

• From Trauma to Triumph: Follow the path of a little girl who clawed her way through murky memories of poverty, racism, and abuse to discover her life’s purpose and inspire millions.

• A Story of Self-Love: For anyone who feels untethered, this is a love letter to self—a reminder that a life worth living is born from the courage to shed facades and finally, fully be you.

As a fawner, people pleaser, highly sensitive person, Enneagram 2 (the helper/giver), garden variety middle child and oldest daughter, I often feel other people’s emotions over my own.

For years of Wild Writing, I have been moved by other people’s writing. As I listen to others read their own writing aloud, I feel their emotions so deeply. Listening to the vulnerability of others, to other people revealing their truth, I am able to connect with my own emotions.

Last week I did Wild Writing session with a friend. Just the two of us. Miraculously, I felt with my own writing what I usually reserve for other people’s writing. I felt the tears start to well, the lump in my throat.

In the process of writing for 15 minutes straight without letting the pen leave the page in response to a poem, I was able to reflect on a story that I have been telling myself. I recognized nuance in a situation from my past that I had not been able to see before. My writing allowed me to hold several truths at once. To see a story from multiple angles. To honor my own version of the story while keeping other versions in the periphery. Rather than dilute my own experience, this allowed me to hold my pain gently and begin to soften it.

This awakening to a more complicated interpretation of a past relationship created the opportunity to know myself better. In the retelling of this story, I was able to fully inhabit my feelings and to have compassion for myself as well as the other individuals in the story. This deeper understanding of myself and my past can help me invite more authenticity into my life and my relationships. The stronger I am in relationship with myself, the more fully I can be in relationship with others. Relationships not built on people pleasing, and fawning.

Wild Writing is one way to find myself. As we say in Wild Writing, “all roads lead to grandma’s house” In other words, the Wild Writing experience takes you where you need to go. You just have to let it.

For me the journey of life is getting to know myself as well as to learn about the world around me. Turns out I am pretty interesting. And so are you.

Interested in Wild Writing? I am offering a 2 options for 6 week classes (both via Zoom)

-Tuesdays 10-11:30AM ET starting Sept 15th

-Wednesdays 6:30-8:00PM ET starting Sept 16th

To learn more about Wild Writing and to sign up, click here!

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John of John by Douglas Stuart

From the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.

Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn’t the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding together the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.

John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart’s reputation as one of our greatest novelists working today.

You know the feeling. When you can relax a bit. Let down your guard. When you are given the benefit of the doubt. Where people just “get” you. Fitting in is a different vibe. You might feel a bit tired after those interactions. A little nervous. Not sure you said or did the right thing. You may need to dress differently, talk differently, suppress your needs, laugh at jokes you don’t find funny.

Take a moment to take inventory. When have you had to try to fit in? When did you belong?

When I joined Goldman Sachs in my 20s, I belonged. Immediately. These were my people. I fell in love with so many of my coworkers. We laughed and cried at work. We gossiped, we cheered, we inspired, we were inspired.

When I worked for two non-profits right out of college, I had to fit in. Right off the bat my boss informed me I didn’t look “professional” enough and instructed me to buy a new jacket. I should have high-tailed it out of there then, but I was young and insecure. (In my opinion, “looking professional” is a euphemism for looking the way they want you to look. It is changeable and subjective — but this topic is for a another blog).

I have had experiences where I thought I belonged but then things changed and I had to work too hard to fit in. Sometimes we outgrow places. Sometimes places change. The key is to notice and respond.

When I became a mom, I became the most social I had ever been. I found belonging so easily. So many of us were struggling, adapting to being parents and there was so much honesty and vulnerability. My little village of Glenwood was a haven for me. We watched each others kids, we encouraged each other to rest, we shared our worries and our accomplishments. We relied on each other. We were evolving together. Becoming a mother is some serious shit and we learned to laugh and share together. What luck.

Now my husband and I are entering a new phase. A phase where people are making choices about where to live, where to work. We are redefining our relationship to our adult children, to our work, to our spouse, our friends and our parents. It’s a grand reshuffle where so many identities shift.

As I consider the flurry of options, I have found serenity in Wild Writing. Taking time out of my day to write what feels true. To put the thoughts swirling in my head onto the page. To map out my true north.

One of the phrases we often say in Wild Writing is “we love you already”. The hope is that this will help us let go of the desire to impress or try to earn people’s approval. It will allow us to let go of the need to perform or to entertain. It’s an opportunity to take off our mask. This is where true belonging lives. And in the safety of this community, I am figuring out my next adventure.

Click here to learn more about Wild Writing Classes (my schedule for the fall is open!). Click here to learn more about my coaching practice where I help people figure out where they truly belong.

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Whistler by Ann Patchett

“Ann Patchett’s new novel is a rare phenomenon in contemporary fiction: a novel both majestic and intimate, original and masterful in its structure, crystalline in its prose, revelatory in its insights, utterly devastating yet ultimately uplifting in its emotional impact. . . . I think it is her best novel yet.” —The Boston Globe

The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Summer is the perfect time to try something new. Have a little adventure. Wander from your comfort zone. Especially if that new thing allows you to stay inside in air conditioning with a tall glass of ice cold water.

Wild Writing is a practice of writing in community. Using the beauty of poetry to get us out of our own head and into a dreamy space. We write quickly, never letting the pen leave the page so we can outrun our inner critic. We say yes to what comes in order to write something real.

You don’t have to be a writer to enjoy Wild Writing.

You just need a willingness to know yourself better. To be seen by others. And to see others in their beautiful, vulnerable truth. All without the need to fix, entertain or impress.

Join us! I am offering a free trial class this coming Wednesday, July 15th at 6:30 EST. Email me to sign up and I will send you a zoom link. Come see what the magic is!

WILD WRITING TRIAL CLASS (FREE)

Wednesday, July 15th at 6:30 pm EST

A Zoom link will be provided

Interested? Email me at amyalpertlifecoach@gmail.com or simply reply to this email.

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The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff

From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging.

When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.

As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.

A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.

Isola by Allegra Goodman

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A shocking story, made all the more stunning by the fact that it has its roots in true history.”—Jodi Picoult, author of By Any Other Name

“A new generation of survival story . . . an extraordinary book that reads like a thriller, written with the care of the most delicate psychological and historical fiction.”—Vogue (Best of 2025 Preview)

A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this “lushly painted” (People) historical epic of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, The Globe and Mail, Kirkus Reviews, Town & Country, Lit Hub, Christian Science Monitor • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS BOOK AWARD

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

Last week my family took a 10-day trip to Kenya. Early on in the trip my daughter Gabrielle said “remember that time we went to Africa?” She likes to ask this question while we are in the middle of things and it always makes me laugh.

Gabrielle was capturing what we all felt— holy shit! We did it! The Alpert family made it to Africa. A trip we booked a whole year ago. I am an anxious person who prefers sitting on my couch with my dog to just about anything. So the fact that I took a 15-hour flight to Nairobi to then get on a teensy tiny plane to a safari (did I mention I have (or maybe had) flight anxiety too?) is a miracle.

You may be wondering why we picked Kenya of all places to visit? It’s pretty far from my couch. Right. Good point. And I will immediately throw my son Hudson under the bus. He wanted to go to Kenya for his college graduation gift. And he got lots of side eye from the rest of us as we sat in the infectious disease doctor’s office for our Yellow fever shot and typhoid shot and hepatitis shot, and tetanus shot and malaria pills… (you get the drift).

So, how did it go? It was amazing! Really really incredible. I guess we need to thank Hudson for pushing us to do something out of our comfort zone.

A few things:

-we saw over 22 species of animals

-we watched (well I closed my eyes) a lioness kill a zebra

-we went to the tallest building in Nairobi and looked out over the city

-we saw baby elephants nursing

-we fed giraffes

-we peed in the middle of the safari praying no lions would eat us

-we had the smartest guide on earth—Mika. He taught us everything and no question was too hard for him.

-we learned that hospitality could be so exceptional that they make you feel like family from day one

-we learned that communities of zebras, gazelles, wildebeests, topis and impalas coexist peacefully. They all eat different parts of the land so they don’t compete and they have different abilities to spot preditors and will warn everyone if they discover them. It is a beautiful symbiotic relationship and if man doesn’t interfere it is perfectly designed.

-we learned that our kids can get up at 5:30am to make it to a 6am safari run

-I learned that box breathing is exceptionally helpful during a small plane flight from Nairobi to the Massai Mara

-I also saw that my own family coexisted beautifully. We shared our two binoculars among the four of us without one fight. We leaned into our skills to make sure the trip ran smoothly. And Gideon and I got to watch our family experience something extraordinary together. So glad I chose to get up from my couch.

Good News! Wild Writing Free Trial Class!

I have almost completed my Wild Writing Teacher Training under the instruction of its founder Laurie Wagner and I cannot wait to share what I have learned. Check out my brand new Wild Writing web page to learn more about Wild Writing. SAVE THE DATE for a free trial class so you can experience the magic yourself!

Save The Date

WILD WRITING TRIAL CLASS (FREE)

Wednesday, July 15th at 6:30 pm EST

A Zoom link will be provided

More info to come!

Interested? Email me at amyalpertlifecoach@gmail.com or simply reply to this email.

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The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From nationally bestselling author Marjan Kamali, this perfect book club read is “evocative...and a powerful portrait of friendship, feminism, and political activism” (People) set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams for a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions of becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

“Reminiscent of The Kite Runner and My Brilliant Friend, The Lion Women of Tehran is a mesmerizing tale” (BookPage) of love and courage, and a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young.

Elizabeth Strout, who is best known for her novel Olive Kitteridge, came to speak at my local bookstore. I bought my ticket quickly because she is a bigshot in the book world and the event, already moved to a larger venue, sold out fast. One thing that surprised me during her Q&A was how often she shrugged her shoulders and said “I don’t know”. It was very endearing and I loved her honesty and humility. She did not have all the answers—even about her very own book, her writing process and the characters she created from her own imagination.

As someone who suffers from anxiety, I crave certainty. I want to know THE answer—especially to the question, will everything be ok? But the older I get, the more I realize that we rarely have THE answer. We have probabilities, and ratios and “more than likelies”. Will the hurricane hit my house? Who knows? The weather map keeps changing. The wind moves, the moon pulls, and whatever other science-y things happen to change the equation. There are so many moving parts in this world, there is little to actually know for sure (despite Oprah’s promises). And Elizabeth Strout allowed that to be the case. She was comfortable in her uncertainty.

As I am learning to accept that certainty is rare, I am becoming more drawn to poetry. Poetry makes space for the not knowing and leaves things open to interpretations. Poetry provides a space where there is no wrong or right answer. It opens up possibilities to explore and discover and allows us to feel comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing for sure.

I was introduced to poetry when I took a Wild Writing® class several years ago with my teacher Anna Guest-Jelley. Poetry is the foundation of Wild Writing. We begin each class by listening to the teacher read a poem. Then we write extemporaneously (pen never leaving the page) for 10-15 minutes. Poetry is our kindling.

Wild writing is as mysterious as it is grounding. Every time we write, we don’t know what is going to happen. What will come up for us. What path we are going to take. What we will uncover. But in the end we figure stuff out. I don’t know how it happens, but it does. The alchemy of listening to the poetry and then writing is certain—and you know how much I love certainty.

Wild Writing has allowed me to better connect with myself and others. It has brought the beauty of words into my daily life and to feel deeply and live more authentically. There are so many unknowns in life and Wild Writing does not have all the answers. But I have found that the practice leads to more clarity and that is something.

Good News!

I have almost completed my Wild Writing Teacher Training under the instruction of its founder Laurie Wagner and I cannot wait to share what I have learned. Please SAVE THE DATE for a free trial class to get a sense of how Wild Writing works. Experience the magic yourself!

Save The Date

WILD WRITING TRIAL CLASS (FREE)

Wednesday, July 15th at 6:30 pm EST

A Zoom link will be provided

More info to come!

Interested? Email me at amyalpertlifecoach@gmail.com or simply reply to this email.

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PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling, prizewinning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river.

In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead.

In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji and a murderous gangster known as Indian Dave. As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.

Sometimes the only way to learn is to mess up. To do the wrong thing. To jump in and attempt to figure it out. To live and learn.

My brain may be developed—at least my frontal lobe is—but neuroscientists have made the radical discovery of neuroplasticity. Our brains can develop and create new neural pathways until we die. In that case, it behooves us to make mistakes, to take chances, to make the wrong choice. Sometimes that is the only way to grow.

Watching the last season of the show Hacks, there is a scene with Deborah Vance and her friend Marty who are both in their 70s. Marty has just been left at the altar and he wonders how he could have been so stupid. But Deborah has a different perspective. She thinks it is extraordinary to continue to take risks at their age. Their desire to keep trying new things is what keeps the show entertaining and relatable. Their messing up, falling down, and trying again keep us coming back each week.

Personally, I want to keep figuring things out, to keep learning. I want to surround myself with people I can learn from and who have a desire to learn as well. I want to laugh at my mistakes. Not take myself so seriously. To know that I am epically human.

I want my mantras to be:

“Oopsie daisy”

“Oh well”

“Good try”

Even as I am getting older and wiser, there is no way to know everything. Maybe the purpose of life is to keep putting ourselves out there. Showing up. Trying our best—whatever that means. And passing along what we learn to the next generation so they can go on to make new mistakes of their very own.

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Leave Your Mess At Home by Tolani Akinowa

“Warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy

“Powerful… There are multiple messes in Leave Your Mess At Home; I loved reading about every one of them.”—Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans

**A Best Book of April: People, The Millions, Atlantic Journal-Constitution, The Root, Muses of Media
**A Most Anticipated Book of 2026: Electric Lit, SheReads, HelloBeautiful, ScaryMommy

The Longe siblings are really botching their parents’ American Dream.

Sola Longe, eldest daughter, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago for the first time in a decade. She’s a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to quietly put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren’t doing much better.

Anjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America.

Sola’s unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents’ Thanksgiving table, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.

In the wreckage of their fateful reunion, each Longe is forced to reckon with the past, take stock of what really matters, and find a way back to each other. Big-hearted, hilarious, and wise, Leave Your Mess At Home is a poignant exploration of forgiveness, unconditional love, and becoming who you want to be, asking the question: what do we owe to our families, and what do we owe to ourselves.

The Calamity Club by Katherine Stockett

“So immersive, exciting, and downright fabulous, you never want it to end.”--Oprah Daily

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The multimillion-copy-selling author of The Help returns with a bold, big-hearted novel about a group of unbreakable women, fighting for what’s rightfully theirs--and the power of friendship to change everything.

“Pure, hell-raising entertainment.”--The New York Times Book Review

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933.

Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed.

Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister’s seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies.

Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg’s--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan for them to take control of their lives. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women’s freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences.

The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer--an epic testament to underestimated women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious--the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

I became a mother at 29 years old. One of the first in my cohort. When my friends visited me during the first few weeks of motherhood, I watched them leave with envy. Are they headed to a bar, a restaurant, out with friends? It was my old life I was grieving. I was shedding my skin as a 20 something absorbed in young adulthood. I was growing new skin. The skin of a mother.

I became obsessed with watching other mothers, reading parenting books, joining playgroups. I immersed myself in the role of mother. Like osmosis. Taking in what felt right and rejecting the things that didn’t feel like me. Not as cleanly as that sounds-it was a bumpy road defining my own version of motherhood.

Now I am 55 years old and I watch my kids leave the house heading to bars and restaurants and out with friends. And I wonder Who am I now? I am shedding skin again. The skin of motherhood.

This Mother’s Day I sit growing new skin. For a new role. A less defined role. A role that I get to define. Who do I look to? What do I read? Are there playgroups to join without having toddlers to play? I am on a precipice. A new stage of life. One that calls for action, but I just want to rest. I am not ready to dive into the next thing. Which means I am going to sit vulnerably for a while. Without a clear purpose. Without committing myself to the next stage.

Join me as I explore this liminal space. This space of listening, resting, reading, writing, healing, growing, awakening. A place where I am a mother, but not in the fully-embodied way I was for 25 years. I have new skin to grow and space to fill. And I am not going to rush it. Because I don’t need to and I don’t want to. And that’s the truth!

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Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth

From New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth comes a twisty tale of justice, redemption, and one irrepressible woman who’s not done breaking the rules just yet.

Meet Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one years old, gloriously grumpy, fiercely independent, and never without a hot cup of tea—or a cutting remark. She minds her own business in her quiet Melbourne suburb, until a neighbor turns up dead and the whispers start flying.

Because Elsie hasn’t always been Elsie. Once upon a headline, she was Mad Mabel Waller—Australia’s youngest convicted murderer. But was she really mad, or just misunderstood? Either way, she’s kept her secret buried for decades.

Enter seven-year-old Persephone, a relentless little chatterbox who has just moved in across the road (armed with stickers, questions, and no sense of personal boundaries); Joan, who appears to have it in for Elsie; and a healthy dose of public interest—the cops are sniffing around, and the media is circling like seagulls at a picnic.

So Mabel does what she’s always done best—she takes matters into her own hands.

Is she a cantankerous old lady with a shady past? A cold-blooded killer with arthritis? Or just someone who’s finally ready to tell her side of the story?

Sharp, surprising, and wickedly funny, this is the unforgettable story of a woman who’s spent a lifetime being underestimated—and is about to prove everyone wrong. Again.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

In this “profound, resplendent novel”* from Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout, a chance incident sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life

“Strout’s capacious empathy and rigorous attention to the nuances of human behavior and psychology are as evident as ever.”—The Boston Globe

“Artie Dam is someone you may never be able to forget.”—Financial Times*

Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.

My son Hudson is graduating from the University of Pittsburgh this weekend! He is my youngest, so I am saying goodbye to undergrad for my kids forever. My daughter Gabrielle graduated from Bates College in 2023 and is starting graduate school in September. But graduate school is nothing like undergrad, so I must take a moment to acknowledge that another stage of life is behind me.

I have had some time to reflect on life as a mom of a college student and I would love to share some of what I have learned. If you have a kid about to embark on their college journey this coming fall or if you have a kid in nursery school, I have some thoughts (in no particular order):

-Your kid does not need to know how to do their laundry before college (it’s really not that hard to figure out), but they do need to know how to handle challenges that come up. They need to know that they can figure things out. Whether you have a toddler or a teenager, be sure you create opportunities for your kid to develop age appropriate skills and confidence around solving problems.

-If your kid does not get into the college of their dreams they will be fine. I have noticed among my kids and their friends that once they say “yes” to a school they let go of their disappointments and forge ahead.

-Make sure they know that they need to register for classes as soon as registration opens. First year students get the lowest priority, so getting into their preferred classes is tough and registration is usually first come first served.

-Encourage your kid to be a joiner! Have them go to the club fair and join clubs—they can always drop some as they get to know them. Some clubs meet once a year others meet once a week, often you need to join to find out. My daughter named her first year of college “the year of trying new things” and it worked. She joined the sailing club and loved it even though she was a pretty terrible sailer —her favorite day was the day they played wall ball. You just never know.

-You know those kids who just met five minutes ago on campus and are already best friends? Yea, that’s doubtful. Everyone is just latching onto people at first. Some initial friendships stick, some don’t. My kids were slow and steady to build their friend groups and that worked for them. But it is never easy to feel like others have found their people day one. Usually that’s just not true.

-Don’t worry too much on buying things for their dorm room. They can always buy things along the way. Most importantly, make sure they have the things that ground them and keep them healthy: Medicine (so they don’t have to leave their room if they have a fever or stomach ache or a cold), their favorite drinks and snacks, photos, comfy pajamas, headphones and anything else they use on the regular at home.

-Book your hotel for move-in day and family day (usually in the fall) ASAP.

-Encourage your kid to take advantage of resources at school: professors, advisors, tutors, career services, health services (get their flu shot!), their RA. They do not have to do this alone. And you are not their only resource. Let them build their village.

Remember, college is like life. They will have good days and bad days, relationships will ebb and flow, there will be successes and challenges, there will be mistakes, oh lots of mistakes, but also lots of opportunities to learn from them.

Anything to add to this list? Please comment below:

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18 Things I have Learned in 18 Years of Parenting

“Oh That Didn’t Go Well…” Conversations with Teens

The Joys of Traveling with Teenagers (Seriously!)

My First Year with an Empty Nest

The Ecology of Caregiving: Why can’t we just hold them?

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PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

Below are a few parenting blogs I wrote over the years:

• 18 Things I have Learned in 18 Years of Parenting

• “Oh That Didn’t Go Well…” Conversations with Teens

• The Joys of Traveling with Teenagers (Seriously!)

• My First Year with an Empty Nest

The Ecology of Caregiving: Why can’t we just hold them?

This blog should be required reading for all caregivers. A beautiful piece from my writing friend about caring for her aging parents. Be sure to follow her substack .

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:

The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.

That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….

Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.

Every morning, after letting my dog Willow out a half dozen times and filling her bowl several times, she finally sits down next to me on the couch with a satisfying huff. Her chin eventually resting and her eyes softly closing. Then I take that deep breath as well. We made it. This is what I look forward to.

I am pretty sure I would be more accomplished if I moved to the table to work with my first cup of coffee each morning. After all, my most creative and productive time is in the morning with my coffee. My brain buzzes in that mystical way that allows me to think better, be more clear, take more risks. Wouldn’t I be more productive if I sat at my desk, back straight, shoulders back, feet on the floor? I believe I would.

But here is what I also know. I don’t know how many more mornings I will have with Willow sitting beside me, satisfied, resting, calm, happy. The two of us breathing together, hearing the birds outside, watching the deer amble by and wondering why the neighborhood dogs are barking. On the couch, we experience the world together as only slow connection can do.

Having raised two kids I know intimately that time is precious and moments are fleeting and connection is everything. I turn 55 on Sunday and I am wondering what is important to me. How I want to spend my time in this new phase of life. I am still unsure. Bouncing around the options. Paying attention to others. Questioning with wise people. Journaling, writing and reading. But it is these small moments, these small choices, that make a life. And I will start my mornings here, with my dog, on the couch.

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This Book Made Me Think Of You by Libby Page

A National Bestseller!

“A lovely, affecting paean to the power of books and enduring love.”—People

A woman receives an unexpected gift from the man she loved and lost—a year of books, one for every month—launching a reading-inspired journey to live, dream, and love again in this glimmering and heart-stopping novel.

Twelve books. Twelve months. One chance to heal her heart…

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. But mainly because Joe died five months ago....

When she goes to pick up the present, Alfie, the bookshop owner with kind eyes, explains the gift—twelve carefully chosen books with handwritten letters from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.

At first Tilly can’t imagine sinking into a fictional world, but Joe’s tender words convince her to try, and something remarkable happens—Tilly becomes immersed in the pages, and a new chapter begins to unfold in her own life. Monthly trips to the bookstore—and heartfelt conversations with Alfie—give Tilly the comfort she craves and the courage to set out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to share her journey with others, her story—like a book—becomes more than her own.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

A GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

"A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear…will have you cackling and gasping right to the final page."
—Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

Springtime can feel discombobulating for some: cold-hot-cold-hot-cold-hot. Waking up and needing to check the weather to see if you need to put on shorts or a winter coat. Personally, I love the back and forth. After a few warm days, I welcome the cold and vice versa. The change in weather keeps me on my toes. I notice things more. I am more in tune with the way the sun hits my face or the feel of wind on my skin. I am more alive and alert.

It also helps me balance my yin and yang. Cold days allow me to snuggle in with a blanket and a book. On the warmer days I am out walking, seeing my neighbors who have been hibernating and feeling a little more energized. Balancing my yin and yang is essential for my happiness.

As I look ahead, I see that I have a bunch of yang in my future: lots of travel and a college graduation to boot. Not much time to sit on my couch and recharge. In the same way I have to pay attention to the changeable weather in spring, I am going to have to pay attention to my internal state. How am I doing? When do I need to take a breath, a nap, sit with a book. I am going to need to build in opportunities to check in and slow down and take everything in. When can I insert some yin in my life?

What is my meaning and purpose right now?

As I prepare for this season of abundance—travel, friends, family, milestones, I am going to have to adjust my goals. What is important to me in these next couple months? What do I have to let go of to make room for all the activity and stimulation? How will I know when to push forward and when to hang back in order to align with my deeper purpose while respecting my energy capacity? I can be kind to myself. I can remind myself that this time is temporary, just as every season is. That after all the commotion is over, I can sit on my couch again with a cup of tea.

What is coming up for you in this season? Do you need to prepare? Do you need to identify meaning and purpose for this time as a way to stay true to yourself? How can you be kind to yourself?

Scroll Down for:

-Do You Mind If I Just Daydream in My Head Right Now

-Flexibility and Rigidity: Finding the Right Balance

-Ode to Naps: Go Ahead Take One

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

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“Do You Mind if I Just Daydream in My Head Right Now?”

My daughter’s ability to lean into her yin.

Flexibility and Rigidity: Finding the Right Balance

A blog I wrote years ago struggling with the same dilemma of balancing my yin and yang.

Ode to Naps: Go Ahead Take One

Naps make me so happy. So this article was a joy to read.

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Both a riveting mystery and a love story, This Story Might Save Your Life is one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year." —Amy Tintera, bestselling author of Listen for the Lie
“A heart-pounding thriller and a heart-melting romance, this is the most compelling novel I’ve read in years.” —Annabel Monaghan, New York Times bestselling author of It’s a Love Story

Best friends Benny and Joy like to say they’ve been saving each other’s lives since the moment they met. Until the day Joy disappears and Benny is suspected of murder . . .

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny is desperate to find them, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK | NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named a Best Book of 2025 by Time, NPR, Goodreads, and others.

“[A] propulsive puzzle of a novel.” —The New York Times Book Review

“This story swept me away with its big dreams, love, and unexpected twists.” —Reese Witherspoon

In this electric, voice-driven debut novel, an elusive bestselling author decides to finally confess her true identity after years of hiding from her past.

Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now.

As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda fantasized escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she’ll be a whole person again.

“An addictive page-turner infused with humor and heart, The Three Lives of Cate Kay balances the dishy allure of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo with the empathy of Slow Dance. A joy to read from first page to last” (Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author).

In my Wild Writing® Teacher Training, we are reminded before we write that there is no need to perform, no need to entertain. We are reminded that everyone in the room loves us already. Ahhh, deep breath.

Writing is so much more fun without the need to perform. And I am finding life is more enjoyable without the performance. Performing drains my energy. When I leave an event, a conversation, an interaction that requires me to perform in some way, I am exhausted. Feeling depleted after an interaction is my best barometer for how real I was able to be. And this awareness is enhancing my one beautiful life. Being real on the page and witnessing others be real on the page in Wild Writing has made me hunger for the truth in all aspects of my life.

Vulnerability and honesty are contagious. The more I hear people reveal their truth during Wild Writing the more I crave it. Speaking our truth is liberating, empowering and scary.

It requires courage to see ourselves as we truly are and not push it away. Bravery is noticing what is real within us and then allowing others to see us. There is nothing more exhilarating than reading aloud something I have written that is vulnerable and pure. Allowing others to see the real me gives others permission to reveal their true selves as well. And watching others reveal their true selves gives me permission. It’s cyclical — we are interconnected.

How can you be brave with your own truth? Who do you want to be brave with? How can you be more honest with yourself? Where do you not need to perform?

Check out this beautiful poem that inspired my thoughts for today by the glorious poet .

Scroll Down for:

-The Skin I’m In

-Lights, Camera, Action

-The Novels Everyone Will be Talking About in 2026

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

The Skin I’m In

I wrote this two years ago, and looks like I am on the same journey towards authenticity and truth.

Lights, Camera, Action

A blog from 2023 about my desire to let go of performance

The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026 (NYTimes gift link)

So many good books!!!!

Clutch by Emily Nemens

“White Lotus with more sincerity and heart.” —Los Angeles Times

“This story casts a smart, sociological eye on ambitious American women’s experiences while also being a compulsive page-turner.”
—The Atlantic

A close-knit group of women navigate mid-life’s biggest challenges—marriage, career, addiction—in this “sharp, funny, utterly engrossing” novel (Lynn Steger Strong)

Named a Best Book by The New York Times Book Review, People, Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Bustle, and more

Five friends, twenty years, one reunion trip.

As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.

The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue reunion: Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.

Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.

Kin by Tayari Jones

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.

In my Wild Writing Teacher Training, my incredible instructor Laurie Wagner teaches us to say “yes” to what is arising. When we write, never letting our pen leave the page, we are told to allow whatever comes up. This can sometimes be strange, or scary or unexpected. But we are instructed to let it happen. To keep going. To get curious. We take out our metaphorical shovel and dig. We let our thoughts unravel on the page and trust that it leads us somewhere good, somewhere necessary. Wild writing is a doorway into our unconscious, our deep thoughts, things we may not want to or be able to explore on a regular day.

What if we could welcome the unknown in the same way outside of a writing practice? Bring the same curiosity to our partner’s critique, a health diagnosis, a child’s concerning behavior, a boss’s feedback?

Curiosity makes life more interesting and less scary.

I went to a beautiful retreat this past weekend where we explored our “edge”. The women in attendance were deeply curious about their own journey as well as the journeys of the other women in the room. After only 1.5 hours we knew each other in a way that is hard to do in real life. The program was lead by the wonderful Katrina Busselle and she lead with questions. We were meant to get curious. What are we ready to do in our life? What are we not ready to do? And everything in between. There was so much permission. So much welcoming—from the moment we walked into her inviting home-that we could invite in aspects of ourselves that we usually avoid. We said yes to what arose in both ourselves and others. We abandoned judgement and got curious.

Let curiosity be your compass. When something is interesting to you, notice. Follow the crumbs.

When you are not sure who to date next, where to live next, where to work next, what to do next, follow your curiosity. Then get out your metaphorical shovel and dig. Have faith that it will lead you where you need to go.

Scroll Down To Read:

• Go All In: Let Curiosity Lead the Way (from the vault)

• Bring on the Experiments

• The Shelves We Carry

• The Biggest Friend in the Group

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

Go All In: Let Curiosity Lead the Way

My son Hudson has been following his curiosity since he was a toddler. And it has taken him to some interesting places. Check out my blog about him here.

Bring On The Experiments

Katrina Busselle is a visionary with tools. In this blog she suggests we try little experiments to try something new and outsmart our resistance. It is a quick read with a powerful punch.

The Shelves We Carry

has a profound way of both looking at and writing about life. In this blog she explores the loss of her mother through the lens of their shared relationship to libraries.

Witnessing her once-powerhouse brain shrink, her memories vanish, her conversations dwindle, and access to a lifetime of lived experience slip away, I faced the loss of something much larger than her death. I was watching the library burn in slow motion, long before my final goodbye.

Read this beautiful piece of writing. You won’t be disappointed.

The Biggest Friend in the Group: Five ways to manage your nervous system in the face of comparison

My incredible somatic coach wrote this pragmatic and empowering piece. While the piece uses body size as the example, her strategies and tools are helpful to anyone experiencing the pitfalls of comparison. Take Stefanie’s compassionate reflection with you whenever insecurity is getting in the way of living your one big beautiful life.

Good People by Patmeena Sabit

“[A] gorgeous and powerful debut.”—Tommy Orange, The New York Times

“Good People is the year’s first great novel.”—The Minnesota Star Tribune

“A stunning read. I could not recommend it more enthusiastically. . . . What a spectacular triumph this book is. This is the Afghan novel I have been eagerly waiting for.”—Khaled Hosseini

ONE THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2026 SO FAR

Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.

The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.

When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?

Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.

In an interview with the wonderful Leslie Jones she brilliantly reminds us “Life is Gonna Life”. Yes! Preach it! Life is gonna life. We cannot stop that.

And this is what I am learning. Life is going to life, AND we can be kind to ourselves during a tough time.

What do you need to DO?

-Imagine a sick child or your sweet pet, what would you do to take care of them? You would first try to figure out what they need. Now do this for yourself.

-Pay attention to what your body needs.

• Do you need to slow down: read a book, take a bath, get a massage, get some fresh air, pour a cup of tea

• Do you need to speed up: do a hard workout, go for a walk, run errands, clean the house

• Do you need to be around people or be by yourself?

• Do you need to do some research and learn more about your situation? Or do you need to resist gathering information

What do you need to STOP doing?

-Get off social media if it is making you crazy

-Stop blaming yourself and telling yourself that this is all your fault, or it would not have happened if…. (how is this story helpful?)

-Stop hanging out with people who make you feel bad about your situation — even if they mean well

-Stop ruminating. Ruminating makes us think we are solving a problem when in fact we are just going in circles and exacerbating the problem

And when the tough time ends….

Treat yourself like you are just getting over a sickness. Be kind and gentle and don’t overdo. Your body has been strained as if it had a virus. Feed your body, rest and take it slow as you re-enter the world.

What do you do to be kind to yourself when you are going through a tough time? Please share in the comments…

Leave a comment

Scroll Down To Read:

• Ah Shit! We Let Pedophiles Decide Our Beauty Standards

• The Unstoppable Alysa Liu

• The Three Answers You Already Know But Keep Avoiding

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

Ah Shit! We Let Pedophiles Decide Our Beauty Standards

Please read this today and tomorrow and on and on. is a rock star!

The Unstoppable Alysa Liu

This article by explains how Alysa re-entered the skating world on her own terms. Alysa shows us that when we demand that our voice be heard, great things can happen.

The Three Answers You Already Know But Keep Avoiding

This is such a simple and gentle reminder from the wise writer . Transformation doesn’t have to be big. It can be small choices moving us in the right direction.

No is how we stop pretending to be someone we’re not. Yes is how we step toward what feels genuine. I don’t know is the space where the next version of us can emerge.

How beautiful if that?

This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern American family—steadfast, complicated, begrudging, and loving—from the bestselling author of Isola

“Wise, witty . . . a deliciously readable book [about] the delicate minutiae of family life, played beautifully, boldly, brightly in a major key.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“Goodman’s mature and deftly written book suggests that, in family as in art, there is no such thing as uncomplicated happiness.”—The Wall Street Journal

Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubinstein family, it could go either way.

When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.

With This Is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.

They say…

That you are too old or too young to find a job, or you have too large of a gap in your resume or you are too experienced or not experienced enough or that you have been in your prior job too long or too short

They say…

That you should eat only meat or only vegetables or lots of dairy or no dairy or no sugar or gluten or eggs or the pyramid upside down or right side up. You should eat as little as possible, but not cause food waste or have an eating disorder

They say….

Don’t buy lattes so you can save your money but you should buy moisturizers and makeup and clothes that are flattering and maintain your youth and look professional or look like you are making an effort

They say….

You should hold your baby all the time, you should make sure other people hold your baby, co-sleeping is bad, cribs are bad, put your baby on a schedule, feed on demand

They say…

You should sleep more but make sure you get your steps in, that you should be ambitious and make time to smell the roses, to put your dishes away before you go to bed, to never go to bed angry, to be an early bird or a night owl

This is what I promise you:

They are not in charge of you

They have biases and histories and traumas

They are on a journey and are learning as they go along

They are as confused and as changeable as you are

Whatever they say can be questioned, turned upside down, inside out and backwards. It is based on a moment in time, with a certain set of facts. Don’t be controlled by them. Let their words wash over your skin but not be absorbed into your bones. You are the boss of your own life.

Scroll Down To Read:

What Will People Think? Who Cares?

Do Your Rules Make Sense

The Choice to Choose

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Below are a few of my previous blogs where I have explored the ideas of “They Say…”

What Will People Think? Who Cares?

Do Your Rules Make Sense

The Choice to Choose

The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

“Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend as he navigates the road up ahead. A profoundly moving experience.” —Ann Patchett

“Deeply human...a beautifully quiet and devastating book.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle-age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair twelve years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work.

So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past—an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son—en route, maybe, to California. He’s moving towards a future he hasn’t even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he’s made that have brought him to this particular present. Pitch-perfect, tender, and keenly observed, The Rest of Our Lives is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.

The Road To Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnet

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death—by the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals

“A miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.”—John Irving

AN NPR AND LIT HUB BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.

But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.

Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who’s adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.

This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.

Just showing up I got to see my friend Sharon, host extraordinaire, celebrate Shabbat with her lovely family. Her homemade challah (actually two of them), hearing her daughter say the hamotzi (the blessing over the bread), her gorgeous kiddush cups. Watching Sharon make us a delicious dinner with aplomb. Walking around her bountiful kitchen lined with dozens of cookbooks. Waking up to European-style coffee made on her fancy coffee maker with a million levers and tools that brought me back to a cafe I visited in Spain last spring.

Just showing up I got to hear my friend Julie tell us about her incredible labor of love—creating the organization Waste Free Greenwich. How she studies best practices and then creates them for her community. No fear, no fanfare, just a desire to make the world a little better.

Just showing up I got to witness my friend Sujatha lead an immersive meditation at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery where the room was quiet and still and pulsing with peace. I got to watch how Sujatha immediately put people at ease and welcomed them into the beautiful and vibrant space. I got to digest her words reminding us to have equanimity, to see the humanity in others and to have hope for a better world.

Just showing up I got to have a transformative experience at a Wild Writing Teacher Training. Our extraordinary teacher Laurie Wagner welcomed us into her sweet home. We were greeted with strong coffee and homemade muffins, given name tags and encouraged to settle in. We were all just where we were meant to be. Witnessing the exquisite writing of others; absorbing their truth. The room vibrated with warmth, grief, excitement, regret, ambition and love. My fingers were tingling just being in the presence of so much wisdom and vulnerability.

Where do you need to show up? Please do what you can to make it happen. It can be magical.

Scroll Down To Read:

• Pep Talk: On Writing As the World Burns

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

Pep Talk: On Writing as the World Burns

At my writing retreat, I heard dozens of poems. The power of poetry is new to me. This writing by captures the importance of reading poetry in times like these.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.

In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.

With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

Wreck by Catherine Newman

“Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman’s prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also profound. I couldn’t stop reading, even though I didn’t want it to end.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs

“Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep—equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. I didn’t just read it—I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph.”—Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People
The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned.
If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.)
Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who’s back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.
It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.
With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be.

After watching the show Pluribus, I see the difficulty of having Chutzpah. Ahhh how easy it is to go along to get along. Carol knows down deep in her kishkes (a deep, gut-level feeling or intuition) that things are not right. That the world isn’t better just when it is easier. That the friction of life IS life.

Carol, and others, have inspired my word for this year: Chutzpah. Chutzpah means audacity, bravery, courage. The example provided in Collins American English Dictionary is “Einstein had the chutzpah to discard long-established theory.”

I want more Chutzpah in my life. I want to be like Carol. I want to be like Einstein. They are my northstars. But I have other living, breathing north stars in my life. Friends who have Chutzpah. And I want to be more like them.

I want to be like my friend Sujatha Baliga who I met freshman year of college and knew she was going to do incredible things. She was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow for her decades of work in conflict transformation and restorative justice. She has channelled her life experiences, wisdom and charisma to help others. She has had the courage to take a charged topic like criminal justice and offer an alternative framework of forgiveness and justice reform.

I want to be more like , a somatic coach (also, my somatic coach), who fosters courageous liberation. Stefanie brings nuance to the conversation around women’s bodies, beauty standards and healing. She is smart, curious and provocative. I love this quote from one of her blogs: “So when a woman opts out [of beauty and diet culture]—when she lets her face soften and says “I’m not playing”—that is some bold disobedience.” Ooooh do I love how she names it—fearlessly. This is what I want more of in my life.

I want to be more like my yoga and writing teacher Anna Guest-Jelley. She created a thriving community called Curvy Yoga "in 2010 because she figured she couldn’t possibly be the only person on Earth who wanted to practice yoga in an accessible and enjoyable way in a curvy body, which turned out to be quite the understatement.” Anna offers something new, original, disruptive and, it turns out, magical.

I want to be surrounded by people like my friend Katrina Busselle who writes about courage. She has made a business of helping others be brave so they can do extraordinary things. Check out her book A Million Reasons Why You Can’t and Choosing To Do It Anyway. When I told Katrina that I am a nervous flyer which makes me a nervous traveller, she wasn’t having it. “Ok” she said “well you are just not going to be a nervous traveller anymore. It’s not working for you. You are going to tell yourself a different story”. I was like ok, I can do that. And Voila! I’m off to California in a week, Bahamas in April and Kenya in June.

How can we be brave enough to forgive, to challenge the status quo to create a community for people who are seeking an alternative, to do things that scare us? This is my goal for the year. To have Chutzpah in a transformative, disruptive and loving way.

I encourage you to follow my northstars along with me. Sujatha, Stefanie, Anna and Katrina are rock stars and I hope you invite them into your life too.

Who are your northstars when it comes to courage? Share below so we can expand our brave community.

Leave a comment

Scroll Down To Read:

• Courage (From the Vault)

• Heather Cox Richardson’s blog for today

• Unlearning Language that Shrinks our Self Worth

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

Courage

I wrote this blog back in 2017 and it still rings true for me today.

Heather Cox Richardson’s blog for today

I guess I am not the only one thinking about courage on MLK day. Please read ’s beautiful blog about heroes.

Unlearning Language that Shrinks our Sense of Self-Worth: And Finding the Words to Expand It

We need to be brave and take up space in our writing. So much communication is in the written form between email, slack, text, social media. Let’s start writing with confidence. This blog gives clear advice on where to begin.

Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

The must-read New York Times bestseller that's redefining hospitality and inspiring readers in every industry.

- Featured in FX's The Bear and Showtime's Billions
- JP Morgan NextList Pick

Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.

How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. Guidara’s team surprised a family who had never seen snow with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner; they filled a private dining room with sand, complete with mai-tais and beach chairs, to console a couple with a cancelled vacation. And his hospitality extended beyond those dining at the restaurant to his own team, who learned to deliver praise and criticism with intention; why the answer to some of the most pernicious business dilemmas is to give more—not less; and the magic that can happen when a busser starts thinking like an owner.

Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.

I attended a powerful and meaningful vigil for Renee Good this past weekend in my local community in Maplewood NJ. Leadership spoke about how we can make a difference as individuals and as a community. One of the speakers said “community is a verb” and that resonated with me. I am watching people step up around the world:

• Thousands standing up for Renee Good who was murdered in Minnesota by an ICE officer

• Fundraisers for the Mississippi synagogue that was destroyed in an arson attack

• The brave women of Iran revealing their faces at the threat of death in the hopes of freedom

• The “Walk for Peace: 2,300 Miles of hope” where Buddhist monks are walking for peace across the US.

These large scale acts of community are inspiring.

I have benefited from community on a smaller scale as well. When my kids were little, I relied on my community every day. I was in playgroups where we supported each other during playgroup and beyond. My kids felt safe in many neighborhood homes as we took turns watching each others’ children so each mom could find some peace. I feel so lucky that I could drop my kids off at various friends houses. The kids would play and I would do what I needed to do—whether it was to go to a doctor’s appointment, food shop or just have a couple hours to myself at home or at a coffee shop. My community gave my kids the gift of a happier mother and provided them the comfort of knowing how many people they could trust and rely upon beyond their immediate family.

My community continues to support me. During Covid we walked to our neighbors houses to gather outside and process the craziness of those days. Now, I get together with community to write postcards for elections around the country, attend rallies and protests, and to support vulnerable people. We also support each other when we are battling illness or grieving a loss of a loved one.

Last week I bit the bullet and became a volunteer for Lasagna Love. Lasagna Love’s mission is “to feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities. Through our neighbor-to-neighbor movement, we connect volunteer lasagna chefs who want to help with individuals and families in need, providing home-cooked lasagnas made with love.” I have been cooking a bunch over the past few years and thought it would be a perfect combo of loving to cook and supporting my larger community. I have signed up to deliver a home cooked lasagna that I make to a family I am matched with throughout the year. A friend of mine has made 300 deliveries (!) quietly without fanfare for the past few years. She is my inspiration for doing this. Here is a video of me practicing making lasagna so I am ready to go when I get my first match. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. (If you can’t see the video for some reason, you can email me and I will send it to you. I am having some technical difficulties….😬)

Wish me luck!

How can you serve your community?

-Think of a community you care about

-What are your skills or interests?

-What is your availability? How can you make time?

-Do you want to do something one time or on an ongoing basis?

-Who inspires you?

Please share in the comments below any plans you have to support your community in 2026. Your contribution may inspire others.

Leave a comment

Scroll Down To Read:

• 12 Gatherings in 2025 I can’t stop thinking about

• The Risk of Caring

• I Don’t Want a Job

Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about my newsletter.

12 Gatherings in 2025 I can’t stop thinking about

I cannot get enough of who wrote The Art of Gathering. Her writing, her podcast, they are all just so good. I secretly dream of creating gatherings this good. Someday. Maybe. Just read her post and see if you are inspired too!

The Risk of Caring

A hopeful, beautiful message by . Below is a piece I pulled from her blog—but definitely read the whole thing!

I want to tell you your efforts matter, and your practices matter, and your noticing matters, and your witnessing matters, and your attention matters, and your longing matters, and your willingness to try matters, and your attempting matters, and your questioning matters, and your dreaming matters, and your loving matters.

I Don’t Want A Job

If the title resonates, you will love this brilliant piece of writing by .

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.

Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Most of us are familiar with the three F’s of trauma—fight, flight, or freeze. But psychologists have identified a fourth, extremely common (yet little-understood) response: fawning. Often conflated with “codependency” or “people-pleasing,” fawning occurs when we inexplicably draw closer to a person or relationship that causes pain, rather than pulling away.

• Do you apologize to people who have hurt you?

• Ignore their bad behavior?

• Befriend your bullies?

• Obsess about saying the right thing?

• Make yourself into someone you’re not . . . while seeking approval that may never come?

You might be a fawner.

Fawning explains why we stay in bad jobs, fall into unhealthy partnerships, and tolerate dysfunctional environments, even when it seems so obvious to others that we should go. And though fawning serves a purpose—it’s an ingenious protective strategy in unsafe situations—it’s a problem if it becomes a repetitive, compulsory reaction in our daily lives.

But here’s the good news: we can break the pattern of chronic fawning, once we see it for the trauma response it is. Drawing on twenty years of clinical psychology work—as well as a lifetime of experience as a recovering fawner herself—Dr. Ingrid Clayton demonstrates WHY we fawn, HOW to recognize the signs of fawning (including taking blame, conflict avoidance, hypervigilance, and caretaking at the expense of ourselves), and WHAT we can do to successfully “unfawn” and finally be ourselves, in all our imperfect perfection.

Grab a cup of cocoa, a pen and paper, warm socks, a cozy blanket and situate yourself in front of a roaring fire with holiday jazz music playing in the background. Now close your eyes for a moment. Take a deep breath in. Exhale. It’s time to imagine 2026.

What do you want 2026 to look like? What do you want to do? Who do you want to see? Where do you want to go? Let’s begin by reflecting on 2025:

Begin by reflecting on 2025….

• What worked?

• What didn’t work?

• What sort of worked—and needs a few tweaks?

• What something you want to continue doing?

• What is something you want to stop doing?

• What is something you want to start doing?

Now, let’s get out our 2026 calendar and get to work:

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

🫙 Put the big rocks in first

I remember being taught a long time ago the idea of putting the big rocks in first. Meaning, add the most important things before there is no room for them. I imagine for many of us, the most important thing to make time for is our health. Which honestly is not very fun, but here is a guide to make it easier:

Health

🩺 Schedule Doctors’ Appointments:

What appointments do you need to make? Mammogram? Colonoscopy? Dermatologist? Doctors’ appointments are hard to come by (and often annoying to schedule). The more open your calendar is the better. My suggestion: start scheduling doctors’ appointments and then plug in everything else around them.

🛀 Make time for Self Care:

If you look at my google calendar, self care is in yellow. I make sure there is yellow in my calendar each week. You may want to assign a color as well to make prioritizing self care more obvious. For me, self care involves movement (e.g., walks, yoga, lifting weights), massage, baths, reading and rest. Reserve vacation days now so you can be sure to take time off work throughout the year.

🤗 Reflect on Relationships

• Who do you want to see more of?

• How do you want to spend time with your family and friends?

• Reach out to people to start to book time together in your calendar

For more ideas on how to build your village, read my blog Establish Connection.

🧺 Stuff we have to do but don’t account for:

Do you schedule the annoying, time consuming, invisible work on your calendar? Things like groceries, laundry, cooking, carpools… These activities take time and attention. Give yourself the gift of booking them in your calendar so you can more adequately assess your availability.

🧑‍🍳 Hobbies

How can you make time for your hobbies this year? Can you schedule time each week or each month? Does your hobby involve other people who can be accountability buddies?

Not sure what hobby you want to pursue? Here are some blogs I wrote that may help:

• Go All In: Let Curiosity Lead the Way

• Balabusta In Training

🌈 Activism/Volunteerism

Is this your year to get more active in politics or your community? I wrote this blog, Imperfect Activism about my own activism story. Check out Everyday Activism to learn more about how you can become more involved in 2026.

💼 Career Goals

Is this year the year for a promotion? For a career pivot? For a job search? Schedule time on your calendar to move forward in whatever way makes sense for you. Sometimes we need to make the decision that this is the year for change. Take a moment to consider your career goals.

• Thinking about pivoting in your career? Read my series on Career Pivots

• Are you looking for a job in the new year? Start working on Linkedin. Here is my LinkedIn training program to help you better utilize this helpful job search platform.

• Want to stay in your job and get ahead? Here is an article with tips for this: Job Hugging: 8 Tips to Get Promoted

🤩 What are you looking forward to?

Having something to look forward to is essential. It doesn’t have to be big, it just has to delight you. Below is a blog I wrote about what I am excited for. Maybe it will give you some ideas….

• Broadway Shows & Season Changes: What are you excited about?

😰 What are you nervous about?

I have a lot of air travel this coming year with a very, very long flight in June. I personally don’t love to fly. I am working on my flying fears by taking a course and participating in a fear of flying facebook group. I don’t want to let a fear get in the way of my larger goals, which involve visiting family and friends and exploring new places. How is fear getting in the way of your goals and plans? How can you face those fears in a way that works for you?

🌟 What new things do you want to try?

Trying new things keeps us growing and learning no matter what our age. Being new at something keeps us humble and curious. Here is a blog I wrote about trying new things: Make Your Own Uncool: The Sincerity of Trying Hard and another one What Will People Think? Who Cares? Keep trying new things no matter how silly or frustrated you feel being a beginner.

Now… take a look at your calendar. How is 2026 looking? Keep updating your calendar as necessary and keep a bird’s eye view. Getting ahead of your calendar allows you to run the show rather than the other way around. Wishing you a fabulous New Year!

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I want to say thank you for reading my newsletter every other week. I am so grateful for this community. I look forward to sharing 2026 with you! I would love to hear from you. Let me know how can my newsletter support you in 2026.

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Scroll Down to find out What I Am Reading Now

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The Women by Kristin Hannah

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

Heart the Lover by Lily King

From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love

You knew I’d write a book about you someday.

Our narrator understands good love stories--their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.

In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon she finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.

Decades later, the vulnerable days of Jordan’s youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, she returns to a world she left behind and must confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving love story that celebrates literature, forgiveness, and the transformative bonds that shape our lives. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.