Happy 11th birthday and a joyous welcome home

In 2005 on this very date, I sat down at a bulky, old, desktop computer in my family room surrounded by the noise of living, and started writing. The computer was on a file cabinet, not a desk, with no space for my legs, so I sat sideways, typing.

At the time, I was 45 years old. My oldest daughter was 12, and my youngest child was just a little over one year old. John, my husband, was going to turn 49 the next month.

Life was chaotic in the way it is with kids and owning your own business, which is John and I both do. I was 9 years into running my own business and John had already logged 23 years owning his bookstore. I had written two business books and circumnavigated the globe a few times, starting when I was 16 and an exchange student to Sri Lanka, and then into my global diversity work. I had divorced one husband, married the real one, and was living in Asheville, North Carolina, for just one year, after over 20 years of living in downtown Washington, D.C.

At the time I started writing, we lived near downtown in Asheville, in a 110-year-old house with original radiators that clanged and sometimes scared me, they were so loud and unexpected and competent. I had just the month before finished a long diversity training project for a major global corporation that had kept me on the road every single weekday for several years, taking just enough time off from that work to have a baby and go back on the road.

It was time to stop moving. It had been time for quite a while.

So, I sat. I had no idea where my next paycheck was coming from, but I decided to use the downtime to start writing stories to leave behind for my two children. I wrote on the ugliest Typepad blog imaginable. I didn’t care, and didn’t know. The whole story of why I started writing what I did is here.

That year, as I wrote, a lot of people found my blog and started reading it, and we started having conversations, and building community. It turns out, many of us want to live more intentional, mindful, meaningful lives, and many of us (all of us) have stories to tell, and in the telling we can discover their meaning. The blog won awards, even though it broke every blogging rule, which I didn’t know at the time. Very long essays, just once a week, when the experts call for 800-word posts every day. Turns out, ignorance really is bliss. I just wrote.

Amidst the toddler screams and learning to walk, amidst the middle school angst and sleepovers and band concerts and marching band performances, amidst the deaths and betrayals and illnesses and diagnoses and disappointments and joys, I wrote. Amidst the weight gains and losses, the hurt feelings, the panic at aging, the starting and graduating of college by one child and the Autism diagnosis of the other, amidst cancer in our household, amidst business brilliance and betrayals and failures, amidst the decline and deaths of parents, and amidst all the living of the life with all its pockets of sunshine and rain, I wrote.

And I’ve never been happier than the first two years of that writing.

After those two years, a publisher came to me and asked to make a book from my stories, which became Life is a Verb, my favorite of the books I have written. Why is it my favorite? Because while it was my third book at the time (now third of 8 books), it was my first that was fully embodied in me, not in a role I was playing as a business person, not in what people expected to hear, not in what was “best practice,” not in what was safe or simply well constructed.

It was the first that was fully me, and it was written with one single intention–to leave my stories behind for my children. Not to write a blog, not to attract readers, not to get a book contract, not to impress people, not to show my cleverness. Simply to leave behind my stories for my children. That was it. I ignored my audience, and I wrote what I longed to say (which is my advice to all bloggers who ask me the secret of my success. I can see their shoulders droop ever so slightly when I answer in that way.) I wrote like an orphan, disconnected from what people might say or think. I wrote in the days before bloggers posted how many minutes it would take you to read their post, as if that was a measure of anything.

And then, the book was successful. Readers invited me to their communities to read from it, and I went. To 42 cities, none of this wild tour organized by my publisher, all by community. That was one of the most amazing times of my life. Such community, such trust, such love, such exploration of what matters

And then, my publisher wanted another book, and another, until I had written eight altogether.

I know I have made strong offers with these books. I am proud of them. I have written books that have changed lives–I know this because so many people have told me so. And I have loved each of my books in a different way, believing they have made strong offers into the world.

But I have never loved one as much as Life is a Verb. Why?

That single intention. It changes things. It deepens the work. It frees you up. It helps your voice resonate inside your own body until you feel it bouncing in there, and it echoes so deeply it must come out, having filled up all the space inside. We believe writing is an intellectual act; it is an embodied one instead, one we must feel in our bodies. That is truth. That is wholeness. That is saying what you long to say, and finding out what you long to say through the act of writing, not before.

The photograph accompanying this post is one of my favorite photographs of myself, ever, ever, ever. It is the very moment I opened the box of books from the publisher and saw Life is a Verb for the first time, a moment captured by John as he watched.

Why is this a favorite? I had two previous books by this time, so why this one?

Because the other two books, while important contributions to the field in which they were written, felt like out-of-body experiences. The first was a Fortune magazine “best business book” for the year it was published, but when I opened that box, I felt nothing. When I opened the box of second books, also a business book, nothing. But when I opened that box of Life is a Verb, oh, the rush through my whole being. That was a fully embodied feeling, a happiness I had not experienced, the feeling of being fully, truly alive.

And yes, I felt that way not only because it was fully me, my voice, but because it had beautifully become a community project honoring all those who had contributed art to it in an amazing turn of events just before publication.

I want that feeling back. I want that feeling I felt when I was writing in 2005 back in that family room surrounded by a Spongebob Squarepants soundtrack. And there is only one way back to that.

37days will start again this year, and it will again have a single intention: as a gathering place for my writing. Back to that family room, which happens to be in a different town now. Back to writing for two children who are themselves now 23 and 12 because that time has brought about big changes, as time does. Back to writing under headphones for hours and playing with words as if they were living, breathing souls, which they are, in ways we cannot know unless we are swimming in them. Back to whole days without social media, back to a different simplicity, back to me. Back to disregarding Amazon and publishers and book contracts and top ten tips for writing, back to this single, solitary voice in a room still blessedly surrounded by a life that has changed immeasurably. Back to the structure of my land.

Back to exploring ideas and feeling the excitement of them, back to diving into deep, sometimes difficult personal truths, back to understanding that the bright sun we crave both enlivens and creates deeper shadows, back to finding that a whole day has passed and I have sat, writing, through the whole course of that sun, and feeling deeply satisfied at that journey. Back to reading my words aloud and feeling them in my mouth for days on end, back to taking my time to find exactly the syntax that feels like the story feels, back to placing and re-placing words in an order that most satisfies me when I read them. Back to voracious reading that informs my use of language, back to what I care about most, back to writing that shapes and reshapes story.

Back to me.

Happy 11th birthday, 37days and me.

And welcome home.

——-

What you can expect on this blog in 37days:

Tuesdays: My essay for the week, in which I am deeply, truly writing again

Wednesdays: Poetry Wednesday, in which we explore the poetics of narrative and the narrative of poetics

Thursdays: Thinking Thursdays, in which I share ideas I am bumping up against

Fridays: Strong Offer Fridays, in which I share my projects with the world