April 30, 2026

Two Months

The last two months have been a little bit wild, especially when you consider that most of my months aren’t wild at all. I’m a creature of habit, wedded to routines, and so I was nervous about the busy schedule that began unfolding for me with book promotion this spring. But oh, it’s been wonderful. So much fun, so much joy in connecting with others, so much gratitude for the opportunity to promote and share my book (and also that these efforts have created momentum so that it feels like the publicity machine is flying without me having to generate all of that energy myself).

I remember someone telling me once that having a second baby feels a bit like what you’ve always imagined having a baby would feel like (as opposed to having your existence blown to smithereens, which is what happened with my first child) and this experience of releasing my fifth book feels analogous—when I imagined being an author, I wanted to feel like this.

Some of this is luck and timing—the wind has been right, and its powering my sails. Some of this is having realistic expectations, and having some of them exceeded. It’s also being okay with the inevitable disappointments, and having stable ground beneath my feet with which to weather these—holding that Pema Chodran duality of big and small at the same time. And not looking for things from publishing a book that publishing a book is almost never actually going to deliver—arrival, self-esteem, certainty, an identity, meaningful respect, love or friendship. The thing is the thing, and that thing is publishing a book, nothing more and nothing less, and I’ve really just had a really good time, and what more can a person ask for?

Want to read more about this? My two recent Substack essays for paid subscribers are “A Yearning that Pours” and “This Book Launch Will Be Different.”