Are You Phosphorescent?

by Heather Doyle Fraser

Every quarter I contribute an essay to Elan Vitae Magazine. For Spring 2024, I wrote an essay entitled “Phosphorescent,” which was inspired by my March 2024 blog. (If you are curious, you can read that HERE.)

Every issue has a theme, and the Spring 2024 theme is Light. I love to create some contstraint when writing—these guardrails give you a place to start—but when I first thought about Light as a starting place, it confounded me. There were so many ways I could go with this essay—not much constraint there! 

I started thinking of all the ways light makes its way into my life, and I got a little lost. I thought about the obvious first: sunrises and sunsets, pin-pricks of stars, and the glaring light of my head-lamp on a night walk. Then I started thinking of the less obvious— the luminescence of a baby’s skin and the light that brings warmth in a patch of sunlight by the window. Then I found myself hyperfocusing on and marveling at—and this is the absolute truth—the phosphorescent quality of the skin at the inside corner of my daughter’s eyes! (You notice these things when you are a woman in mid-life.) But ultimately, most of these explorations did not make it into this essay (one did, though).

Here’s a short excerpt:

“It’s still cold outside, but I notice the burgeoning of spring every day on my walks. Shoots burst through the soil, defying the snow melt that still covers the grass in my yard. The greening of the grass comes later, but I see hints of it even now. The birdsong has begun to change as more birds come back from their southern migrations. I hear the familiar calls that I have missed in the past few months.

The thing is, even with these outward changes happening around me every day, I still feel like I am in a season of Wintering. This full-body experience craves cocooning and a gentleness as I cuddle into safeness, reconnect with myself, and redefine who I am. And, along with the redefining there is a remembering element as well.

Remembering what feeds and nurtures me.

Remembering what ignites my passion.

Remembering what lightness has the power to do.”

You can read the full essay HERE.

All of this explanation around my process of writing this essay is simply to remind you (and me) that the writing path isn’t a straight one. It requires not only a willingness to explore but also the fierceness to let something go—even if it feels brilliant—when it doesn’t fit the piece. 

This is hard to do sometimes because words are important and precious to us as writers. It’s a practice to compassionately hold all of these competing thoughts and emotions within you when you are writing. But it’s also somewhat of a puzzle, and I am a curious person: puzzles suit me. I’m betting they suit you, too, if you find yourself on the writing path.  When you are working with a puzzle, though, you need some light. (Ahh…full circle.) Light can be elusive when we are searching for it outside of ourselves. What if we turned inward, though? What if we could recognize the light within us to show the way? What if we were phosphorescent?

With that message, I will close today, but I look forward to exploring what a compassionate writing path looks like with you this Spring and Summer. The ComPASSIONATE Writer Spring Cohort will be starting again on May 14. (You can read more about that HERE.) I’m glad you are here to explore this path with me.

How Did NaNoWriMo Work for You?

by Heather Doyle Fraser

November was National Novel Writing Month. I hear people start to talk about this in late October, “November is National Novel Writing Month! I’m going to do it this year! I’m going to write my book in November!”

Let’s be clear about something from the outset, here. I think NaNoWriMo is awesome. I think it inspires people to think big and imagine a world where they are writing daily and that vision seems exciting and sexy, and also a little scary. And if you sign up for NaNoWriMo on their website — if you look around a little before November 1 — you will see that the good people who birthed this idea intend a few things:

1. Your planning of the novel needs to begin before November 1. In order to start tracking those words on November 1, you need to have created an outline and backstory for your characters BEFORE then. They have a timeline (and even that appears to be a little aggressive to me) that suggests you begin the process of outlining and character development in September.

2. You will write the first 50,000 words of your novel in November. That doesn’t mean you complete the writing of your book. That means you write the first draft of the first 50,000 words of your novel. This is a first draft of a portion of your novel — not a completed manuscript by the end of the month. (Average length of debut fiction novels is 75,000-90,000 words.) 

Let’s do the math on this. If you are writing the first 50,000 words of your novel in the month of November and you start on November 1, that gives you 30 days. This means you are writing about 1665-1670 words every single day of the month. No days off. No exceptions made for, “I’m feeling uninspired and really quite cranky today.” No exceptions for, “I had a client crisis at the office this week and had to put in a couple of really long days at work.” No exceptions for, “I got a terrible cold and didn’t sleep well for a week.” No exceptions for, “My child is sick and I needed to rearrange my entire schedule to take care of them.”

No exceptions.

Unless you decide to take one or two days off each week at the outset. Then you have shortened your writing time. Let’s imagine that you allow yourself to take 6 days off of writing. That means on your 24 writing days you need to write 2,084 words in each writing session. 

More pressure. That’s awesome for setting the stage for creativity and inspiration!

Let’s assume you started ahead of November 1 and you do have an outline and you have created a little backstory on the character development front. Let’s also assume, though, that you didn’t spend as much time on these parts of the process as you would have liked so you are feeling a little uncertain. And, let’s also assume that this is a new endeavor for you so you have not cultivated a consistent writing practice that has become a habit for you. 

If you do not have a daily writing practice in place when you begin, your goal of writing 50,000 words of your novel in 30 days is going to be VERY difficult to achieve. This kind of writing requires practice, consistency, diligence, and a whole lot of self-compassion. Writing nearly 2000 words a day for 30 days takes high-level training! It requires you to set up your life to support your writing habit. 

What does this mean? 

Most people who want to write a book are not full-time writers. They have jobs, families, partners, and responsibilities that require their attention. So, they need to make space for writing like they make space for any truly important and value-based endeavor. They have to account for the time and plan for it, like you would plan to workout or exercise. 

For example, let’s pretend you decide you should write your 2000 words first thing in the morning before work. if you are writing before work in the morning, you would need to make sure that everything is set the night before -- you have to be able to get to bed at a consistent and reasonable time to get up at a presumably unreasonable time to devote yourself to the writing practice before the rest of your responsibilities take center stage (work, adulting, etc.).

The thing people forget when they declare their intention to write a book in a month is that you need to train in order to be able to write nearly 2000 words a day. In order to write this many words consistently per day, you need to have been working up to that number. Your very first writing sessions shouldn’t even have a word count expectation associated with them in my opinion. At the beginning, time alone is your goal. You may not be able to guarantee a number of words at the beginning but you can control how long you sit in front of your laptop.

Just like exercise, this writing journey is a hard one when you feel alone. Even though writing is a solitary endeavor, though, you don’t need to feel alone. And writing in the same space with someone, having compassionate support, and accountability partners all makes this difficult task of writing easier. Doable. And that’s where NaNoWriMo gets it right – all of these people all over the world are engaged in the same challenging activity.

I would like to set the stage though for a more compassionate approach. First off, whether you are writing a non-fiction book (my specialty) or a novel, you need to spend the time upfront on the WHY, the WHO you need to be to write it and WHO you are writing to, the WHAT (hello book plan!), the HOW (What do you need to clear from your schedule? What decisions do you need to make upfront?) and the WHEN. Then you need to get into training mode – consistency is key!

Daily writing practice (or nearly daily) is not only what will help you finish your book, it will also help you to cultivate a deeper relationship with yourself and your writing. It’s pure gold.

So, if you didn’t finish your book in November, no worries! You didn’t have all the information upfront. You weren’t ready. Let’s take it slow and commit to 20 minutes per day, shall we? And if that sounds like too much for day 1, let’s commit to 15 minutes. In a week, you’ll be able to up the time a little just like you up your reps in the gym. 

You can do this… If you want it. If you want to put in the time, day after day, over and over again. Let’s train together. Not for the sprint of one month, but for the long haul. Start now so when November 2022 comes around, you will be in the homestretch rather than behind before you even begin.

If you are looking for a safe place to practice, come join us at The Writing Practice. Learn more at https://mailchi.mp/cmcollab/the-writing-practice.

What Is It That I Am Feeling?

By Erica Sonnabend

Wow.  What a year it’s been.  

I feel like that statement is one we're all hearing now that we've marked a full year since a global pandemic came crashing into our lives, but it really is fitting.  

I certainly do not say these words lightly - quite the opposite, actually. The deep emotions behind that statement and what they represent are what strikes me the most when I hear that statement. There has never been a time in most of our lives that the whole world has experienced loss from the very same root cause.  

As the weeks of uncertainty turned into months, I witnessed a shift in the collective conversation in our society that gave me hope.  Initially, we were talking about the world shutting down, frightening case numbers, and lack of toilet paper, but then something else happened.  While we were still talking about those drastic changes in our daily lives, we also started talking about how those changes made us feel.  

Our conversations became a mix of both intellectual facts and the corresponding emotions that accompany them. Words such as mindfulness, awareness, wellbeing, compassion, and connection started popping up during nightly news reports, on social media, and in zoom calls all over the world.  We as humans were speaking our emotional truth like never before.  That truth was filled with all sorts of feelings - fear, sadness, longing, relief, gratitude, isolation, anger, desperation, love, etc.  People started discussing problems with sleeping, eating, working, feeling stuck, being disoriented, and connecting to joy as a result of the pandemic.   

Guess what all of those feelings are?  Yup...GRIEF.  Our usually “grief avoidant” society was experiencing loss in so many unprecedented ways that many of us started talking about our losses and our feelings instead of relying on the social norm of not really expressing our challenging emotions.  As someone who has discovered the many benefits of dealing with all of my emotions (those most often viewed as either positive or negative), this is such a welcome change.

By July of last year, I had many people (including news media) reaching out to my grief support practice to ask what grief actually is and how someone can tell if they are experiencing it.  To answer that question, I offered the definition of grief that completely changed my perspective on loss. 

"Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the change in or the end of a familiar pattern of behavior."    - John W. James 

Why is this definition so important?

Personally, I walked around thinking something emotionally was wrong with me after experiencing the death of my father, the end of my marriage, changes in my health, and challenges in my career. I believed that once my dad had been gone for a year, I was supposed to magically feel better, but I did not.  I struggled to cling to what others told me about “being better off” when my marriage ended.  And let us not forget that “everything happens for a reason” platitude. Those sentiments were offered out of love for me which I appreciate; however, I was still stuck and stuffing my feelings down.

The problem was that outside of the death losses I had experienced, I didn’t consider that the other changes in my life were also losses. Consequently, the conflicting feelings I experienced didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand why I continued to feel the way I did so I kept those feelings hidden.  I believed that loss was about death and that feelings of grief were reserved solely for that reason. 

Grief is certainly about death, but it is also about so much more.  It's about any change in your life that has deep emotional value to you. Only you can determine what those loss events in your life are and how you will integrate those losses into your future life. It is important that we realize that feelings of grief are not just limited to the date (or the year after) your loss occurred.  Loss and change can cause ripple effects throughout our lives in various ways.  Expressing the varied emotions that come up is absolutely essential.

As we moved through this past year, many of us came to realize that the definition of grief we'd been relating to for so long was too narrow.  So much that was familiar to us came to an abrupt end and the changes are too many to count. Recognizing that feelings of grief and loss are not limited to specific changes helps us to expand our conversations.  The figurative stop signs we used to encounter are replaced with open hearts and listening ears which leads us down a path toward healing.

There is much work ahead for us as we continue to battle this pandemic into year two. We will need to rely on each other and keep pushing to eradicate this public health crisis that has taken far too much.  The losses are many which means the need to connect to our emotional truth is greater than ever.  Let’s continue to shift our conversations about every aspect of our loss experiences by speaking our truth about how we feel when a “familiar pattern of behavior” changes or ends.  

Wow.  What a year indeed. 

Be well, friends.

To See or Be Seen?

by Dr. Chia-Ying Chou

How often do we show the world what we think it expects to see?

a loyal employee

a smart businesswoman

a friendly customer service agent

a knowledgable teacher

a friendly Uber rider 

a supportive friend

a sweet daughter

a helpful coworker

a dependable spouse 

How often do we spend hours and hours with people and only see what we expect to see?

a loyal employee

a smart businesswoman

a friendly customer service agent

a knowledgable teacher

a friendly Uber rider

a supportive friend

a sweet daughter

a helpful coworker

a dependable spouse

How often do you really see someone? How often do you really let someone see you?

their/our

ever-changing micro facial expressions

spoken and unspoken thoughts

speakable and unspeakable truth

joint pains

weeping hearts in solitude

jealousy and loneliness 

wishes and hopes

faces with no make-ups

words with no intended impression making

How lonely can we be in connections? How connected can we be in loneliness? 

If you look at someone in their eyes 

and REALLY SEE THEM, 

you’ll know

that every moment you share with them

is a beautiful miracle of the universe.

My Grandmother as My Perfect Nurturer

by Heather Doyle Fraser

Perfect nurturer...

You rest quietly, inside,

Beckoning, come forth.

I think about my grandmother all of the time these days. I still have the vanity dresser that she gave to me when I was 13 years old. It’s a focal point in my adult bedroom, just as it was in my teenage bedroom. It’s part of the set that my grandfather bought for them when they were first married in 1927. 

I remember when it was in their house on Clinton Heights and it lived in the “green room” — that’s what we called the room with the two twin beds and the double bed, which was of course, green. Oh, that room! That’s where we cousins were jumping one afternoon from bed-to-bed-to-bed-to-loveseat-to-hopechest-back-to-the-bed-again and where, on one of those fateful leaps, I fell and broke my arm… but that’s another story. The vanity dresser sat in the dormer alcove of that room and it was the perfect little space for it. There was good light from the window and you felt nestled in and protected.

My sister and I never slept in that room when we spent the night at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house on the weekends. She could have had us sleep upstairs. There were two perfectly good bedrooms up there and four beds between them, but instead she made me a bed on the couch (or davenport as she called it) and put my sister on a cot next to me. She left the hurricane lamp on for us that sat on a side table at the end of the room. It wasn’t easier for her to make-up these make-shift beds for us, but she knew that we felt scared to be “so far away from her” upstairs. 

Sometimes, though, when I got a little older, I would go upstairs and I would sit at that vanity and write in my journal. I would open the drawers and explore. There were small boxes of buttons — I remember that — and thread, but I don’t remember what else was in those four drawers. I remember writing in my journal there — I actually probably called it a diary at the time, now that I think about it. I confessed my preteen angst and I’m sure, some fear and uncertainty, too. I also remember self-consciously glancing into the mirror every now and then while I was writing. I remember wondering what Grandma did as she sat at this vanity and looked at herself in the mirror when it was in her bedroom. 

It’s funny, because even now when I look in that mirror and sit at that vanity I still wonder — daily — what she thought and how she felt. Now, I keep my makeup in one of the drawers and hair brushes and hair dryer and flat iron in the others. I have her photo, my perfume, and sometimes some fresh flowers from my garden on the vanity. I look at her sometimes — so young in that picture — as I’m getting ready. Sometimes I am just preparing for a work-at-home day (every day these days) on Zoom calls. Other times I am getting ready to perform at a show with the band (this hasn’t happened in a while). In either case, I look at her photo and it gives me strength.

When I look at that photo, particularly recently, I think about the fact that she had nearly her whole life in front of her when that picture was taken. She was just 18 years old, and yet, it was 1923 so she had lived through so much already. World War I was over. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920 was a memory. She would have been in school when that was happening, just like my daughter Eva is now. There would have been mask mandates — did she wear one? I think often about how strong she was to have seen and experienced so many hardships in her lifetime. Shortly after she married, the stock market crashed, the country spiraled into the Great Depression and then was catapulted into World War II. During that time she also gave birth to seven children and experienced so many wonderful things as well. 

She may not have realized it when she was in the midst of raising those seven children and being a partner to her husband — or maybe she did, I don’t know — but she was running a business like me. Her business, though, was her family. I think about all of the cooking and cleaning and managing of the household she must have done with seven children and a husband who had his ran his own dental practice out of their home. I would venture to guess that most times when she sat at this vanity she was tired. But she rarely let that show, at least not to my knowledge. She was almost always doing something. I think the only times I saw her sitting were when she was eating, or sewing, or watching The Love Boat with me and my sister on Saturday nights. Even when she was “doing” she knew how to “BE” with the ones she loved, though. You could feel her fierce love for her family in everything she did. This is something I think about as I navigate my life on a daily basis and her presence still brings me comfort. She was an example for me at a very young age of what alignment of values, words, and actions looks like in practice. Oh, and something else, compassion. 

My memories are filled with what I recognize now as acts of compassion, love, kindness, and determination. When she died, I was just 13. I never knew her as an adult or even a late teen. Just the same, though, my memories are plentiful and vivid because she gave to me with a freeness that only comes with knowing who you are at your center. She knew who she was at her core and so she was able to give without fear or insecurity to the people she loved. This is why she always comes to my heart and my mind when I need that comfort that she gave me as a child. She provided that love, but also that exemplar of a person in integrity, and that nurtures me. Some things I think about when I think of my grandmother:

• Cooking a meal from scratch is a way to show love to the people you love. Food is nourishing and delicious and can be something that brings family and people together.

• It feels good to help others and do for others.

• Do what you love and if you can serve others while you are doing that, then you’ve hit the jackpot. Grandma was a talented seamstress, very creative, and perseverance in motion. She loved to sew, but didn’t find a need for new clothes for herself all of the time, so to meet that need to create and make something beautiful, she would make all of her grandchildren (26) Halloween costumes. My favorite costume that she made me was a cross between Glinda the Good Witch and a Princess. She used an old pink quilted bathrobe of hers and embellished it with so many beads, baubles, taffeta, and tulle. It was so beautiful. Oh and there was a gypsy costume she made for me — she used an old dress of hers and added fringe and buttons and beads and scarves — it was perfect!

• Red raspberries taste like summer. Every time I eat one, I close my eyes and think of the bushes at the back of her yard on Clinton Heights. Some days I would go back there and look for the super red, ripe ones. They were in a hedge that sat a bit away from the back edge of her yard so I could sit down there, nestled in this safe, quiet spot. Unseen from the house, I would gingerly pick one and quickly pop it in my mouth, over and over, savoring the sweet taste and feeling the sun on my face.

• It’s really handy to have an apple tree in your backyard, especially when you bake pies and make apple butter. Has anyone ever made a mini-pie just for you with your first initial etched into the top crust? Thinking about this little pie coming out of her oven brings me back to her kitchen and puts the taste of tart and sweet apples with that flaky, buttery crust into my mouth. 

• When your street is newly paved it is the PERFECT time to get out your roller skates — the kind that tie onto your shoes are just FINE -- and glide down the street to the stop sign. (Okay — I’ll be honest — in my mind I glided, but those tie-on roller skates sometimes came untied and there was no gliding happening when your feet accidentally jumped out of those beauties.)

• She would have loved the messaging of Reduce — Reuse — Recycle! Living through The Great Depression and raising a large family she was ALL ABOUT THIS! For instance, there are so many uses for everyday household items that you might accidentally throw away. Here are some examples:  1) Rubber bands -- There are so many uses for rubber bands! I don’t know all of these uses, but one of the uses is to create a huge rubber band ball that you can bounce around the kitchen. 2) Twist ties -- There aren’t as many twist ties these days, but I do have a collection of bread tags in my kitchen drawer as an homage to Grandma. They are surprisingly handy when you are washing dishes — great scrapers for stuck on food! 3) Bread bags -- I know you might be tempted to put leftovers in old bread bags. No. The best use for old bread bags happens right after a rain shower. First,  put one bag inside your shoe and then put another bag over top of your shoe. Double protection! Sure, the ones on the outside become pulverized as you run around, but your feet don’t get wet from the rain or the puddles. They will be really sweaty, though. (This makes me laugh every time I think about it!)

• Ice cream is the perfect dessert on nights when you don’t feel like making sour cream cookies (you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten these, trust me), pie, or pineapple upside down cake. “Ice cream just fills in all the cracks! You are never too full for ice cream.” This is a direct quote from Grandma, and I think, words to live by.

• Front porch swings are the most wonderful inventions. I loved sitting on her front porch swing in the summer, especially at night. Sometimes she would come out and talk with me there, and I felt understood and seen. She was 67 years older than me, and yet she still talked with me, person to person, not at me like someone else might. We would talk about books sometimes (my favorite subject) and she leant me books from her girlhood. The two that I remember most, gingerly reading them and turning their yellowed pages were Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin published in 1903 and Moods by Louisa May Alcott published in 1864. It’s not lost on me that she gave me these books to read -- her personal girlhood copies — when I was a girl and both of these books were written by women. At that time when these books were written, that was remarkable and I’m sure it sent me a subtle message that I could be a published author someday, too.

This list could go on and on for a long time. In fact, each thing on this list is probably a story in itself. For now, though, I will just leave it here. Whenever I think of her and all of these memories, I am acutely aware that she is still with me. This is how I have always felt. My grandmother was small in stature, but as you can see, so big in my mind and my heart. She was fierce and compassionate, generous and kind, thoughtful, and action-oriented. And, I know she was human so she was also a lot more. Everyone has duality, but when you know who you are and what you stand for, your actions come easily, and this is what I always felt when I was with her. This is what I feel when I think of her now. 

And even though I do have her vanity and use it daily, all I have to do is look down at my own hands to feel close to her. I see her hands in my hands. They are small but strong. I remember the first time I noticed this was when I was living in Boston after graduating from college. I had moved there about six months after I graduated and even though there were things that I really liked about living there, it was hard. One day I was riding home from work on the train and I was feeling particularly down and weary. I looked down in my lap at my hands and I realized that my hands looked just like my grandmother’s hands. It filled me with relief and comfort at the time and still does. When I got home to my apartment that night I wrote this poem:

IN THIS CITY (1996)

I saw her hands today — Grandma’s.

They were on the train...

Hands that were loving and kind, here

On a train that is crowded and stuffy-rude.

They don’t fit in this city.

Her hands live on Clinton Heights,

In Ohio’s apple pies, and

Homemade Halloween costumes…

They are hands of hugs and

Squeezes and tender-safe goodnights,

Calm and mothering.

They are not hands of city

Subways and faceless crowds,

But they are here,

Maybe to tell me that I am

Not alone.

Words = Meaning + Intention

by Heather Doyle Fraser

As I’ve been enjoying the haiku lately, here’s one to start us off:

Words are important—

Their meanings and intentions.

I will uphold them.

A few weeks ago, I set up a meeting with someone who specializes in marketing authors, particularly those who self-publish. I sent an email asking for a conversation because I was curious about what he does and how he does it. We work with the same people and I thought perhaps we might have some common ground and maybe it would be fertile for a collaboration of some kind. I was excited at the prospect because collaborating with like-minded people is one of my favorite things… right up there with raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles, and warm woolen mittens!

In my email, I gave him insight into my background and experience in both publishing and coaching, and I also filled him in on what drives me and how I infuse compassion into my work with my clients. I was thoughtful with my words, and I crafted that email with clear intentions and explicit language regarding the possibility of collaborating together.

Fast forward a few days and we have a call lined up. We jump on, and I can sense from the first few minutes that this isn’t going to be the collaborative call I had envisioned. He was selling to me, not interested in collaborating with me. He asked me about the books I have written, and I showed him copies (we were on a video call) and briefly described each one. I also told him about the work I do with my clients and what they write about for the most part. I shared my screen to show him my website. He saw the word compassion and presumably heard me talking about it. Then, he had an aha moment, “Really what we do is compassionate marketing!”

I will admit, I was intrigued.

“Tell me more about that,” I entreated.

He proceeded to describe funnel marketing. I was trying to figure out where the compassionate part came in, and then he said it, “We create these quizzes that really highlight their pain. Then we send them emails that are targeted to that pain, which of course leads them to all of the products -- and that’s where we up-sell them.”

Hmmm… compassionate marketing… Do you know the meaning of the word COMPASSION?

At that moment, all things stopped for me. I heard the metaphorical record scratch and the music of this dance we were engaged in abruptly stopped. You see, I am operating under the following definition of compassion:

“A standard definition of compassion is, a sensitivity to the suffering in self and others with a commitment to try to alleviate and prevent it." 

~ Dr. Paul Gilbert, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy

What this person was describing was not compassion. Not by a very long shot. Compassion is fierce and requires the motivation and commitment to help alleviate or prevent someone’s suffering. As he talked, his motivation was clearly not this. His intention was not this. He wanted to exploit—not alleviate—pain to build lists and sell products.

And let’s be clear— I know everyone has a job to do, and each job is different. But let’s not use a word—ignoring its meaning—in order to manipulate. He knew the word compassion was important to me, so he grabbed it and appropriated it, hoping that I would in turn grab at the chance to work and collaborate with someone else who talked about compassion.

Nope.

I don’t know what compassionate marketing is— if there is such a thing— or what it looks like, but I know that it isn’t the picture that this person painted for me. I’m willing to keep looking for someone who can help me find that. 

I’m building a network of people who know the meaning of compassion and it is at the core of what and how they do everything. It’s layered into their essence and being. I don’t want to collaborate with someone who is exploiting and up-selling people’s pain. When I engage with someone it will be to create something wonderful in their lives. And if that something is a book, the process of writing will be intentional. It will build on their strengths and joy. And while I hold space for those strengths and that joy, I will also tenderly hold space for their suffering and their challenges. We will bring them in together to create meaningful beauty.

I want everyone who comes to the Compassionate Mind Collaborative to know that no matter who they engage with, they will be met with compassion, caring, and commitment. And that’s why I won’t be collaborating with people who don’t hold these same values. There’s too much of that in the world and I am drawing a line in the sand.

Intention and meaning are important. They make a difference when speaking. They make a difference in writing. They are worth fighting for in my eyes because they define who we are and how we operate in this life.