Hi friends,
I thought this image an appropriate way to begin this week’s blog.
What a year it’s been, huh? I hope that even if 2020 hasn’t gone how you expected, you are managing, surviving, and giving yourself credit for thriving amid some pretty turbulent times.
You’re doing amazing.
And speaking of things not going as expected…I wrote a book.
It’s called “Questions You’ll Wish You Asked: A Time Capsule Journal for Mothers and Daughters” and…
It’s not the book I meant to write.
Earlier this year I decided to write a tiny book to act as a companion to my coaching – some extra tips for clients and help for people I’ll never work with. Mindset, confidence, unhooking from praise-type stuff. Sounds pretty good, right?
But that book didn’t wanna be written. Every time I sat down at the keyboard I felt a pit in my stomach and some real severe blobbity blobs. (Not just the writing block kind – the kind of body wisdom I’ve come to recognize as “STAAAAAAHP IT just stop-stop-stop it right now, Melissa.”)
So I did stop – and I wrote this book instead.
In the now seven years since I lost my mom, I’ve been compiling a list of questions I wish I’d asked her before she died unexpectedly.
“What were your biggest fears as a child?”
“Are there any books you hope I’ll read?”
“What do you think happens when we die?”
“Is there anything you always want me to remember you saying?”
These questions - the same questions I’m often urging everyone to ask their parents – became a journaling book for mothers and daughters.
A mother now myself, I want to cement thoughts down on paper for my daughter – whether she wants them one day or not, they’ll be here for her, just in case.
At first this book felt like a detour, but the kind that leads us exactly where we’re truly supposed to be in the first place. (Are they all?)
I’m excited to share it with you, and if it sounds like something you (or someone you love) will benefit from, I hope that you’ll order it.
You can find it on Amazon at the link below, order directly from me by emailing me (FollowYourFire@gmail.com) or (if local to Sacramento) it’s available at Time Tested Books downtown.
I hope this book brings you closer to those you love, reminds you why YOUR thoughts matter enough to be written down, and also reinforces that you too can do anything.
(A year ago right now, writing a book seemed impossible. But I just did it. You can do it too – or whatever it is you have your heart set on. Yes, YOU.)
I hope you’re sufficiently navigating the trauma of the human experience…and remembering to seek out the Good Bones in life. (Poem below.)
Always cheering you on,
Melissa
Good Bones
by Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.