The very real pain of not giving up
Dear one, It’s not like you thought it would be, is it? To put it mildly, this past year did not go to plan. It was a reckoning, in every sense of the word. We’ve ...
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How to actually live on purpose
Riddle me this: How do you proofread the book you’ve spent five years writing — a book about how you don’t owe anyone a fake, better-than-human version of yourself — without being a total perfectionist ...
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Please tell me we can do better than this
This Sunday morning, I am up before the sun. My toddler daughter and I have breakfast; I clean oatmeal from places I didn’t even know oatmeal could go. Once I corral her into clothes and ...
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The Most Likely Way You’ll Take Back Your Time
Having a baby has changed the way I make choices. Time with Baby Girl McGraw is such a big YES for me that it puts every other decision into sharper focus. “Do I want to ...
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You get to trust your intuition
Dear readers, if you missed last week’s missive, please go there first. It’s time to listen and learn from the people who are doing the hard work of shifting and healing systemic racism. Also, when ...
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If only you knew (what it’s really like to write)
Over a dozen of you wrote to me last week to share how much the missive meant to you. Thank you. As I read message after message, I shook my head and thought, “Wow. If ...
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There is a way, and you will find it.
Have you ever had a strong sense that there was something you were meant to do … but then second-guessed that knowing, because you couldn’t see how it would work? Ever spent time in silence, ...
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All the things we need to drop (and one that remains)
Do you remember the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail, when Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly were both so darn PSYCHED to read their email? For all their differences, the characters had this in common: They ...
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So I Wrote You a Fairy Tale (For Real)
I started writing a book back in 2015. After about a million rewrites, I’m very happy to share that You Don’t Owe Anyone will be published by Broadleaf Books a year from yesterday, on April ...
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I used to keep this quiet
There’s a quiet, poignant scene at the beginning of Eat Pray Love, where Liz Gilbert reads a line from a Louise Gluck poem: “From the center of my life, there came a great fountain…” This ...
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I couldn’t get this off my mind
There is a man who lives down the road from me in Alabama. Let’s call him Andy, because that is nothing like his name. One of the very first things you’d notice about Andy is ...
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Say goodbye to second-guessing yourself
Don’t you just love those moments in life when you have total, complete clarity? When all at once there is ZERO ambiguity, and you know exactly what’s most important to you? Even if it’s hard, ...
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