March Reflection Guide
and some behind-the-scenes author musings
Hi, everyone —
This month’s reflection guide is attached below for paid subscribers. Thank you, as always, for supporting my work as a writer — I’m forever grateful to get to do this work.
Yesterday was one of those days where I was questioning everything — my path, my ability to write, my choice to pursue what I love, my capacity to sit with the deep discomfort and vast expanse of the unknown of doing so. I shared on Instagram this morning how I was recently circling around thoughts of quitting writing (aka feeling vulnerable and looking for a quick escape route) and finding something I perceive to be easier, more controllable, more stable, less vulnerable, less scary, less uncertain. Like going back to work at Trader Joe’s (I worked there for 10.5 years), or working behind a desk (not a writing one), somewhere I can clock in and out and not even think about any of it once I’m off.
As I move through the process of shaping and pitching book #2, facing heaps of unknowns and the reality of my first book not being a NYT Bestseller or gigantic success by publishing standards (yet still selling more copies than my childhood self could have imagined), my self-doubt has been soaring. The timing of my first book was difficult — I finished it while pregnant and launched it while deep in postpartum, exhausted and not feeling like myself in my body, just trying to figure out this new role I was in. I turned down so many interviews, did zero book events, didn’t have a launch party, didn’t submit essays to publications, didn’t mail special book packages to influencers, didn’t go on a book tour — I didn’t do much at all, because I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. And I am so proud of myself for honoring my capacity, yet there is also grief in what I needed to give up to do so. There is grief in what I needed to accept in order to tend to what most needed tending during a time where my book was supposed to take center stage in my life: my body, my baby, my family, myself.