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Why I Still Remember a Betamax Tape I Bought at Eleven

When I was in sixth grade, I was convinced I would marry John Taylor of Duran Duran, if only I had the opportunity to meet him. 

Since that was out of the question being as how they didn’t allow middle schoolers into bars and I wasn’t permitted to go to the concert when they rolled into Philadelphia, I settled for a Betamax tape of their documentary—Sing Blue Silver.

The problem was my parents didn’t agree with that either. It was $29.99, around $100 in today’s money. 

Not a small ask for a preteen.

My parents adamantly opposed the purchase and answered my whines of “It isn’t fair,” with “If you want it so much, go buy it yourself.”

So I did.

Birthday money, Christmas money, babysitting money. Coins and dollars counted daily. My math skills had never worked so hard. Subtracting what I had from what I needed; averaging what I had collected over the months I had been working at it, using that to guesstimate when I would have the money to bring my beloved home.

Every dollar I set aside was a small act of devotion to my favorite band, but it was also a vote of confidence that I could commit to something and choose it over other things. 

Every babysitting job was a choice — does this money go toward the tape, or candy at the mall?

Birthday money that could’ve gone toward immediate satisfaction went into my piggy bank instead. For months, I chose fund over fun. That’s not a small thing for an eleven-year-old.

Finally, after four months, I had enough (but later learned a very valuable lesson about tax). 

Forty-two years later I still remember saving for that tape.

Although it took longer than I wanted, the waiting had an impact on me I never expected. Wanting something you can’t immediately have is its own education in delayed gratification.

Delayed Gratification Is a Big Deal

girl in white crew neck shirt
Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

Delayed gratification sounds like a phrase out of a child development book. But for me, it was entertaining the wanting long enough to befriend it.

For most people, if you pay attention to the wanting and it becomes a part of your life, it makes you feel stronger. That was true for me too, although when I committed to this savings, I didn’t go into it thinking — “I will grow from this lesson.” 

Avoiding the temptation of the easy thrill of “Buy this. Forget saving up. It will take too long.” made me feel like I could do hard things.

It was the same excitement I experienced at the end of Lent, when I looked back knowing I had successfully given up sugar for 40 days.

When I finally walked out of the store with that tape, something changed for me. It wasn’t just a purchase, something I’d toss on a shelf. It was more than a physical item that I had bought. 

It was a path to more.

I learned something about myself and what I valued. The things that collected dust on my shelf were the ones that arrived without effort.

This one was different. I had decided I wanted it, decided it was worth working for, and then proved to myself I could save and follow through.

I think about that memory a lot now.

We live in a world engineered to eliminate the wait — one click, same-day delivery, streaming anything, instantly. I’m not nostalgic for inconvenience.

The Deep End Idea: What do we lose when the act of wanting is snuffed out by a credit card.

What happens to the feeling of desire when it’s never allowed to ferment long enough to become something greater? It’s grape juice that never transforms into a prized vintage.

Craving that gets immediately quenched doesn’t teach you anything about yourself. You never find out how much you wanted it. You miss the satisfaction of sacrifice and commitment. You miss the pride in following through.

I was fortunate. My parents’ “no” was actually a gift, even if it didn’t register that way at eleven. It gifted me an opportunity to find out something about myself.

Not every kid gets that, which is its own kind of irony.

I wonder sometimes what gets skipped when that moment never arises. The item doesn’t matter. It’s the experience of setting a goal, embracing the desire, and making it happen through your own effort. That particular satisfaction doesn’t have a substitute.

You can’t buy the feeling of having bought something yourself.

I still have my tape, though the Betamax is long gone. Now the tape is just a colorful paperweight. But when I go into the attic and pull out my Duran Duran memorabilia, it still makes me smile.

Because I’m proud of that purchase. I worked for it. And that’s why out of all the tremendous gifts I was given over my childhood; it’s one I remember most.

When you’re able to pursue something and obtain it through your own effort, it leaves an impression. It separates it from the rest. And it’s something you remember long after the “pain” of waiting for the item subsides.

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Where in the World Did Sisterhood Go?

My husband asked me last night who my best friend is. I said, “You.” He pushed. “No. Like, a girlfriend.”

The honest answer is complicated. 

My best friend died by suicide several years ago. We had been inseparable for more than half our lives when she decided to exit, stage left. 

Losing her didn’t just leave a hole — it left a question I’m still answering.

I don’t think that question is simply “why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?” That’s the story we tell. The real point (or concern) is something else.

Making friends isn’t the hard part. Show up to the same places consistently — a bar, a community pool, a farmers market, a neighborhood book club — and you’ll accumulate friends. Casual ones. The kind that keep loneliness at bay.

But casual is not the same as close.

Deep friendship requires something harder to manufacture: shared struggle, confessed vulnerability, the cumulative weight of time spent showing up for each other. 

You can’t rush it. You can’t outsource it. And you absolutely cannot find it on an app.

Men, for what it’s worth, seem to have made peace with the casual version. Ask a man about his best friend’s new baby and you’ll learn the gender. That’s it. No weight, no birth story, no middle-of-the-night update. 

Just: “Had the baby. Boy…I think.” And he’ll be entirely content with this arrangement.

And hey, if a football game and a shared meme is enough to sustain a friendship for thirty years, good for them. 

But something different has happened to women. And it’s worth calling out.

A hundred years ago, women didn’t just have friends. They had infrastructure.

Group of people in vintage clothing on a lawn
Photo by The Oregon State University Collections and Archives on Unsplash

In the early 20th century, women held up enormous amounts of household and community life — cooking, preserving, nursing, stretching budgets, managing children, and maintaining the family’s social standing — all without the systems we take for granted now. One economic history estimate puts household work at 78 hours per household per week in 1900.

These were not women of leisure. They were unpaid operations managers.

But from that work came something we’ve quietly lost: each other.

Because no one woman could do it alone, they didn’t try to. They traded labor, passed down remedies, shared food, issued warnings, and showed up unannounced at each other’s doors because that was simply what you did as a polite person. 

The woman next door, the aunt down the street, the older church lady who knew what to do when a baby wouldn’t stop coughing — this was the network. This was life.

Women’s clubs formalized it. Between the 1870s and 1920s, these clubs built libraries, funded schools, pushed public health reform, advocated for child labor laws, and created leadership pipelines in a world that shut women out of formal power. 

There were also home demonstration clubs — funded under the 1914 Smith-Lever Act — teaching canning, nutrition, food safety, sanitation, and household efficiency. Older women taught younger women how to run a household, read a social situation, survive a marriage, treat an illness without a doctor twenty miles away. 

Now we buy them an espresso machine that costs several days’ salary and wish them well.

At the turn of the last century, women taught each other how to operate in a world that gave them all the responsibility and none of the authority.

What We Traded for “Freedom”

woman in white shirt holding black ipad
Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

Women today have things our great-grandmothers would have marched for — careers, financial independence, legal standing, the ability to leave a bad marriage without becoming a social pariah. 

These aren’t small things. No one wants to romanticize a world where women had no exit.

But we traded the support structure for freedom.

The two-hour commute replaced the neighbor. The meal delivery app replaced the casserole. The parenting group replaced the genuine friendship, at least until your kids age out of the same activity, at which point those connections quietly fall away. 

We form communities of convenience and then wonder why we feel alone.

The modern work culture hasn’t helped. It rewards individual achievement over collective care. Competition over collaboration. Being impressive over being present. 

Women absorbed those values right alongside their male counterparts and then most of us came home to the second shift.

A century ago, women gathered because they had to. Now we have to choose to. 

And few of us have the time and energy to make that choice.

The grief is silent. It looks like mindlessly scrolling on social media feeling less than and wondering why you don’t have those things, that relationship, or those trips. 

The night my husband asked the best friend question, I didn’t have a clean answer. I have women I love being around and those who make me laugh. I have a friend or two who can tell me what to do when and how to line my eyes to not make them appear droopy. 

But the woman I would have called first is gone. 

And I have not yet built what she and I had, because that kind of thing takes decades and luck and an uncommon willingness to let someone see you at your worst.

And it takes the emotional energy to dedicate to it. It also takes giving up recuperation time to invest in deepening connections. We have a choice to do this in a way our ancestors didn’t. For them connections were necessary to survival. For us, it’s something we have to make time for or fit in around the other responsibilities in our lives.

So where does that leave us?

I think we know what we’ve lost. I’m less sure we know what it would take to get it back.

What do you think?

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How I Carry Sadness When Life Gets Heavy

This post originally appeared in Substack. Follow me there.

The world feels heavy for me this week. Not because I’ve been caught up in tragedy or terminal illness, but because many of my friends have. Young people. People with families. People barely in middle age.

Then there’s the deep pain I feel for the family of the boy killed in Spain while vacationing with his buddies. They left the bar. He stayed. A simple enough decision that ended his life and forever altered his family’s.

sad woman on dock at sunset

And my heart breaks for all of them. The ones I know and the ones I don’t.

I know what it’s like to lose someone unexpectedly. My best friend took her own life at 45. In fact, I’m writing this on the anniversary of her death. She feels especially present to me right now. She chose not to come out of the winter and see the beauty of spring.

I also know what it’s like to lose someone to an incurable illness, where their own cells turn on them. I’ve watched the withering, the gasping for breath at the end, and marveled at how even a few days can make a difference.

And I’m consumed with sadness over the pain people are feeling now and for what’s ahead of them. I think about the “lasts” they’re haunted with—not knowing they would be lasts. And I think about all the firsts they will endure without their loved one—first Christmas, first birthday… 

There are always questions. Why them? There’s guilt that it didn’t happen directly to you, and worry that it will.

So what do you do to break out of the deep sadness caused by real, logical grief and not just what-ifs?

What I Do When I’m Filled with Sadness

The key for me is to move outside of myself. When I’m dwelling only on my own pain, I simmer in it and it cooks me. But when I turn outside of it, I can see something else.

Here’s what I do to get outside of myself:

  • I listen to the birds sing, all their different songs. The melodies, the chirps, the strange mechanical sounds of the myna.
  • I pet my dog and notice how soft he is.
  • I compartmentalize and try to forget whatever sadness is in my heart. Hey, I’m keeping it real. My first reaction is always to run from the pain.
  • I throw myself into work. Here I am, writing.
  • I take a shower or a bath, even if it makes me cry a little.
  • I try to convince myself this pain is part of the human condition. This one doesn’t work all that well, but I’m trying.
  • I go for a walk and look for something that shouldn’t be where it is, like a flower pushing through a crack in the sidewalk and then I marvel at how that could happen and everything that needs to go into it.
  • I sit in the pain. Usually after I’ve tried to outrun it, I ruminate and let myself feel all of it.
  • I listen to a mix of my favorite songs. It’s hard to stay sad when Cyndi Lauper or Katrina and the Waves is coming through the speaker.
  • I pay attention to personal hygiene. This one doesn’t make me feel better the way it seems to for some people, but it keeps me from feeling worse.
  • I read.
  • I try to think about it as a learning experience. Admittedly, this one sucks. But the intellectual in me is always trying to make sense of what feels like random pain.

What I’m Not Good at in Managing Sadness

I obviously don’t have all the answers. I’m not Brianna Wiest. 

Here’s what I tend to screw up:

  • Knowing what to say. I know, a writer without words. But the words I write are labored over. In the moment, I’ve got nothin’.
  • Hugging. I’m not a hugger, and I know that’s what most people need at a time like this. But I’m just not good at it. I’m awkward and sticklike. Nothing comforting in that.
  • Keeping a positive attitude. This is why I usually say very little when faced with a grim medical prognosis. Stage 4 is the end in cancer. There is no stage 5. I assume everyone knows this, but sometimes they don’t. And when I say something matter-of-factly and see the horror on their face, like they’re only now realizing their loved one may die without a miracle, I feel terrible. So when friends share medical details, I try to put on my best poker face and simply nod because in times like that, I have the bedside manner of Dr. House.
  • Being part of a community. I process loss by myself. I withdraw. I’m not the person who brings you casseroles, even though I know I probably should.

Things are unbelievably heavy right now, on so many fronts, for so many people. I often think of this as the “end of the empire.” A time of great riches and great pain. I’d like to tell you how to barrel through it or offer you a big hug, but that’s not me.

What I can do is walk with you in silence. We can listen to the sound of each other’s breath and remember that this is the only moment we have.

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Even People Who Preach Clarity Feel Lost Sometimes

There are just so many choices.

Do you want to live in the city and be able to walk everywhere, meeting new people every time you go out? Or do you long for acres of quiet where the only noise disturbance comes from the angry-sounding blue jays?

Do you want the ocean at your doorstep, or the mountains outside your window?

Do you want to be fit and have a Hollywood physique, or do you like to eat?

Do you want to tend a garden or travel the world?

The only answer I can definitively give is that I want acres and acres of property on the ocean that is in walking distance of a small town that has delicious restaurants that few people ever go to and that everyone knows me there but also stays out of my business and that every calorie-laden favorite I have is suddenly good for me and delicious with less calories than an asparagus spear.

Whew.

But alas, that option doesn’t appear to be available–at least not anywhere I’ve been so far.

Life is full of choices that often mean settling for one and discarding the other.

That’s why one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get clear about what you want.

Flotsam and Jetsam

When I was a kid, I loved tossing sticks into streams and watching them navigate the current.

Some would right themselves and glide through rapids like they knew exactly where they were going. Others would get stuck in the muck almost immediately. What fascinated me was how often I was wrong. The ones I was sure would make it didn’t. The ones that looked doomed somehow kept floating long past where I could see them.

Those sticks were flotsam and jetsam. Just pieces of wood pushed wherever the current decided.

We’re not supposed to live that way.

We’re supposed to make decisions. Choose directions. Decide what kind of life we want to build instead of drifting wherever the current happens to take us.

At least that’s the theory, if you’re not a stick.

It’s All Been Done Before

This season, I feel a little like one of those sticks.

Part of it is that there are several new things happening in my life right now. Things I can’t fully control. For someone who likes to know where she’s going and what she’s having for dinner every night, that can feel unsettling.

Especially when I’m supposed to be writing a book about clarity for high achievers.

The rough draft is about seventy-five percent done. On paper, that should feel like progress. Instead, I’ve felt oddly adrift.

Part of the problem is that I’ve always liked finding a new path. A different way to get somewhere.

In school, I used to get frustrated during science experiments when the teacher already knew exactly how they would turn out. The entire scientific community knew how they would turn out. We were just repeating the steps.

I wanted to experiment with something that might surprise us all.

That same instinct has been following me around while writing this book. Since I started, I’ve seen at least four other people release books on a similar topic.

And I know what I would tell anyone else in this situation. I wrote about it in The Glinda Principle. The topic might be the same, but the voice and the story never are.

Still, there are moments when it makes me feel a little… dull. Like I’m just repeating an experiment where everyone already knows the result.

The Truth About Clarity

But the older I get, the more I realize something about clarity.

It isn’t permanent.

We talk about “figuring out what you want” as if it’s a destination. As if once you arrive there, the path stays paved forever.

It doesn’t.

Figuring out what you want is like landing a helicopter on a moving boat.

Sometimes the landscape shifts. Circumstances change. New questions appear that you didn’t know to ask before.

And suddenly the person who usually has a plan finds herself standing in the water again, watching a few sticks float past and wondering which direction the current is actually going.

The difference is this.

When I was a kid, those sticks had no say in where they ended up.

We do.

Even in seasons when things feel uncertain, we still get to decide whether we’re drifting or steering.

Right now, I may not know every turn ahead.

But I do know this.

I’m not flotsam.

And neither are you.

Sometimes the most important thing isn’t knowing exactly where you’re going.

It’s remembering that you still get to steer.

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The First Thing You Need to Do to Be Successful

Everyone wants the secret. The shortcut. The perfect routine that leads to instantaneous success.

But at the risk of this blog post being labeled clickbait, there is no immediate button you can press to be successful. No magic pill you can take or star you can wish on.

But I do know what has to be aligned and fully functioning to be successful. And it all comes down to one thing.

Energy.

No, not what Nikola Tesla wanted to give to the world for free.

Personal energy — the stuff that keeps you going.

Energy fuels creativity, focus, your curiosity, your patience with a messy first draft, your willingness to sit down again tomorrow.

And if you let everything else drain you first, there’s nothing left to write from.

Energy Is Your Writing Taskmaster

Most people talk about making time to write, but that’s only half the equation.

You can carve out an hour on the calendar and still have nothing to give if you feel depleted. You’ll sit down, stare at the screen, and it feels like trying to push a car uphill. That “free” time does nothing for you if your energy is non-existent.

Protecting your writing life means protecting the part of you that wants to write at all.

So, how do you do that? Cut out your biggest drains.

For most people, that looks like:

Avoiding People Who Drain You

This is hard because you may not be aware of how draining they are. It’s not always dramatic toxicity on par with a “Housewives of” show from your town.

Energy drains can be subtle:

The friend who turns every conversation into a complaint session, and you come away feeling worse about the world than when you sat down with them.

The family member who “checks in” but leaves you tense from all the questions.

The social circle that expects you to be constantly available, constantly agreeable, constantly on.

This isn’t villainizing anyone. People are like chemical elements. Some people help us make something very useful (say sodium and chlorine making table salt). Those pairings add value. But that same element, chlorine, mixed with ammonia creates a toxic vapor. Neither element is to blame. But the latter is a hazardous situation.

After you spend time with someone, do you feel clearer… or smaller?

Do you feel more like yourself (or the person you want to be)… or like you need a map and a shovel?

Guarding your energy means getting honest about who is your sodium and who is your ammonia.

Avoid a Job That Takes Everything From You (if you can)

I know this one isn’t simple. People have bills and responsibilities. Not everyone can quit a draining job tomorrow.

But you can stop pretending it doesn’t cost you.

If your work leaves you emotionally fried, mentally numb, or physically exhausted, writing is going to feel impossible because you’re running on fumes. Creativity runs on a full tank.

If you can’t quit a draining job, maybe you can:

  • Create boundaries around availability.
  • Take your lunch break away from your desk.
  • Refuse extra tasks that aren’t yours.
  • Plan your writing for your best window, not your leftover one.
  • Even small changes can give you your mind back.

Say No to More Things So You Can Say Yes to Writing

Most people trying their hand at writing have other things going on. And most of those things take precedence, like earning a living, spending quality time with loved ones, etc. That’s fine. Everyone needs to know what their priorities are.

But your priorities don’t have to include volunteering for every group that asks.

Most of us say yes to everything else first before saying yes to ourselves.

That means yes to obligations. Yes to favors. Yes to “quick calls.” And events you don’t want to attend. Yes to responsibilities that aren’t actually yours. This is especially true the better you are at those things. People know you’re an easy yes who will get what they need done.

This is problematic when you try to write with whatever scraps remain after your thousand yeses.

If you want to be successful, you have to treat your energy like a budget. You don’t get an unlimited supply.

If writing matters, it has to get the first cut — not the leftovers.

Don’t Vegetate in Front of the Television

I’m going to say something that will rile people up: TV is an energy drain disguised as rest. It’s passive. It lulls you. It puts you into a state where your mind is consuming instead of creating. And it takes longer portions of your day than you think it does.

An episode becomes three. “Just for a minute” becomes the whole evening. One Game of Thrones episode takes more of your day or night than a movie does because you can’t watch just one.

That doesn’t mean never watch TV. I’m not anti-TV. Just don’t let passive entertainment become the default way you recover from life.

Choose things that invigorate you instead of sedating you:

  • A walk.
  • Music.
  • A conversation with someone who energizes you.
  • Reading something that wakes your mind up.
  • Journaling.
  • Sitting outside with a cup of coffee and letting your brain wander on purpose.
  • The goal is not productivity. The goal is vitality.

My Rule With TV (and Why It Works)

I watch TV in my dormant stage. That’s the in-between season — when I’m finishing one book mentally and circling the next one. When I’m thinking. Gathering. Letting ideas percolate.

But once I decide what the next book is and I start writing?

I move away from TV watching and limit it to certain hours. I cut it down on purpose because I know what it does to my creative energy. It makes writing feel farther away. It keeps my brain in consumption mode. And consumption is where we get fat and happy, not where we have the hunger to create something amazing.

Guard Your Energy Like Your Work Depends on It

Because it does.

Before you worry about marketing or the perfect outline, before you worry about how long it’s taking, ask this:

What’s draining me that doesn’t deserve access to my creative life?

Protect your energy.

Success isn’t built on willpower alone.

It’s built on having enough life left in you to put words on the page — and enough clarity to come back and do it again.

Finally, if you realize you don’t have the emotional energy to write your story, you don’t have to do it alone. Bring in a partner who can help keep you on target and walk you through the emotional minefield of your story. I can help.

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Middle Age Math

middle age math

Memoir does two things at once. It helps someone survive something. And it helps someone else understand it. But more than that, memoir reminds us that we are all moving through the same cycle—just at different points in it.

Thirty-five years ago yesterday, my father died. He was 67. I was 18.

I wasn’t prepared to lose a parent.

And neither were my friends.

They supported me with the familiar, well-meaning: “Let me know what I can do.”

But we were 18.

Some of us hadn’t even lost a pet yet.

They didn’t know what to say. They felt awkward. My sadness interrupted the narrow, self-focused existence most of us were living during freshman year—and that’s exactly how it should be at 18.

We thought our parents were old—but also somehow permanent. Mortality was abstract. Something that happened later. So we didn’t talk about it much.

Now I’m older. Many of my peers have lost a parent. Some have lost both.

The Season We Once Stood Outside of Has Become Our Own

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my place in that lifecycle.

Parent. Child. Possibly soon, grandparent.

The thought makes me smile. It also makes me shift in my seat.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t disappear with age, it just takes on a different nuance, a new role to play. You’re no longer the carefree young kid. You’re in charge of people and you wonder who in the world thought giving you that level of responsibility was a good thing.

When you’re young, you don’t really think you’re going to get old. And then you get there in a hot thirty seconds. And when you do, you can’t imagine who launched you into this place where you should know what to do and say only the right things.

It’s taxing being in charge of people where only last weekend it feels like you were at a frat party getting free drink tickets because you flipped your hair in the right direction.

The Math Changes

One minute you’re trying to decide what you want to do when you grow up.

The next minute people expect you to know—because you already are grown up (at least according to the IRS).

Aging changes how the world sees you.

When you’re young, people assume you’re not ready yet.

When you’re older, they begin wondering whether you still are.

You start to notice subtle considerations like the quiet calculations you make before walking the dog in the rain. In the awareness of uneven sidewalks. In the passing thought that a fall might mean a different level of injury now than it once did.

When someone mentions the year 2000, I instinctively think, not that long ago.

And then I count.

Twenty-six years.

You Understand It Later

Someone my age might read this and nod.

Someone who is 25 might roll their eyes.

I would have.

I read an interview with Bruce Willis where he said at 40, “I feel like a 25-year-old kid in my heart.” Until he looked in the mirror.

At the time, I thought it was funny, maybe slightly delusional on his part

Now I understand. Perspective doesn’t just change how we see people. It changes how we see stories. I read literature differently now than I did in my twenties. Things hit me that I didn’t notice or understand before. When I read the short story “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, I didn’t understand his progression through his neighbors’ pools. It seemed like Cheever had indulged in his favorite vice a little too long before picking up the pen that day. But now I know that life really does fly by with the brevity of your best summer.

Meaning Comes After

Memoir meets people where they are in the lifecycle. It helps someone living through a season feel understood. It also helps someone approaching that season feel prepared. And it helps someone long past it remember who they once were.

Your story stops being a collection of events.

It becomes meaning.

And meaning is what endures.

If you’ve found yourself revisiting old memories differently lately—seeing them with new perspective—you may already be closer to writing your story than you think.

When you’re ready to explore it, you don’t have to do that alone.

.

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5 Hard Things I Tell My Clients

Most people think ghostwriting is ‘just writing.’ It’s not. There’s a lot of work done shaping the story, deciding what makes it in and what doesn’t, and translating memories into life lessons that everyone will understand and relate to no matter what their experience.

It’s tricky. I’m part confidante, part grammarian, part impersonator (I want the book to sound like you), part story strategist, part producer, part project manager, and part guide (after all, I have to make sure we don’t get lost in the process.)

That’s why sometimes I have to give my clients some tough love so that our work together is the best it can be. If you’re considering writing a book, whether you do it with me, AI, your assistant, or on your own, here are a few hard things I tell everyone.

Tough Love Advice When Writing a Book

  1. Some stories will be left out. A strong book is selective. More detail usually dilutes the message.
  2. If you tell your truth, some people angry may be angry. Real life involves real people, and they may not agree with your version.
  3. A good book makes people feel things—and you might not like what they feel. Reaction is part of impact and you can’t control other’s reactions. The goal isn’t universal approval. It’s resonance.
  4. You don’t have to tell everything. Privacy is part of craft. If a detail doesn’t serve the message, you can protect it.
  5. This process can be emotionally demanding. Even business books ask you to make meaning out of experience. That takes energy.

What This Looks Like When We Work Together

My job isn’t just to write clean sentences. It’s to help you shape the story, choose what belongs (and axe what doesn’t), and build a book that’s tight, coherent, and true to your voice.

While each project is vastly different, my professional goal for each is the same. I want my clients to hear the phrase, “I thought about your book long after I finished it.” That’s the mark of a story told well.

If you’re considering a book and want a strategic partner in the process, reach out.
Use my contact form and tell me what you’re trying to say, who it’s for, and where you’re stuck. I’ll reply with next steps and let you know if I’m the right fit.

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Your Story Might Be Someone Else’s Escape Route

Every time the lottery grows to multi millions, most people play the entertaining game of “what would you do with the money?”

Paying off a home or buying one, cars, vacation villas, jewelry, designer clothes…there are a million ways to unburden yourself of your newfound winnings and each of us has our own ideas of how we’d do it. (Although, paying off a mortgage or buying a home is the number one way most Americans confess they’d spend their money).

And I’m not any different. I’d pay off the house.

Maybe take a vacation. Definitely would pay for the boys’ college and pay off the small remainder of my car loan.

But my extravagance, if I was one of those billionaire winners, after I covered all the things that add stress to life, is something more outlandish.

My own private island?

Hardly.

How I Would Spend My Lottery Billions

I would make a list of all the things I have ever wanted to do or experience, but because I chose another path in life, I never did.

I’m not talking about buying a Ferrari. That was never something I saw myself doing.

I mean things like moving to Maine and becoming a lobster (or is it lobsta?) fisherman.

Exciting things that could’ve been. Lives I could’ve lead. Very “Midnight Library.” (Love that book’s concept.)

Then I would take that list, find people who are currently doing those things, and pay them to show me their world. And I could experience all of those things–if just for a week. <Sigh.>

That’s why I love memoir.

Before I discovered its beauty, I thought memoirs were trashy tell-all books that celebrities paid others to write.

Now, I know better.

A beautifully written memoir can help you do as George R.R. Martin said,

“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”

I’ve read memoirs about lobster and crab fishermen, addicts, a twenty-something with a terminal illness, a funeral director, a homesteader, someone who walked the Pacific Coast Trail (and another who walked the Camino de Santiago), a trekker to Mt. Everest, a girl trapped in an attic, and countless memoirs of people trying to find themselves among awe-inspiring settings.

With some memoirs I came away wanting to switch places with the author, while others I gave thanks that I wasn’t in their position.

But all of their stories made me appreciate their experiences.

Reading builds empathy and no genre builds it quite the some way memoir does. After spending several hundred pages with an author, how can you not feel something for them?

Many people tell me they want to tell their story but few follow through. Much of that is because they wonder if their story is worth telling. I assure you someone is waiting to live life the way you have or to learn something from the challenges you’ve experienced.

While your perspective may be unique, your story is about connection, and helping people see things through your lens. By doing so, you help people not feel so alone. And that is an incredible service.

Until I am able to find a way to live a thousand lives of my own, I will escape into the adventure of memoir.

I hope you will too.

If you have a story to share, but don’t have the time to do it, contact me today. We’ll see if we have a compatible view on the project and a mutual respect of venturing into the unknown.

Until then, keep living.

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I’ve Never, Ever Done This Going into a New Year

I am a list maker, a thinker, and a goal-driven middle-aged girl.

Yes, all those things. (And yes, the phrase middle-aged “girl” is probably best understood by most of my Gen X compadres.)

But for the first time in my “adult” life, I went into this new year with absolutely no goals, promises, or resolutions.

It just wasn’t in me.

Oh sure, I thought about them.

No Resolution Rose to the Top

I have plenty of things I can work on to better myself and improve my career. But none called out to me. No area of my life seemed more poignant than another, demanding my attention and the righting of the ship, so to speak.

Since the turn of the calendar page, I’ve asked myself why I didn’t follow my usual zeal of creation and promises into the new year and it came down to several things.

  1. I’m in a different season of life. My kids left for college this past August. In some ways I have more free hours, but in others I’m facing new demands on my time and patience. Creation seems more difficult for me these days. It feels like a season to replenish, to let the fields grow fallow for a moment or two, to catch my breath.
  2. I want my choices to be impactful. This year, it was all about timing. The end of the year happened too quickly. I was in the driver’s seat for holiday celebrations and I believed that I was at the center of making everyone’s every meal as well as ensuring all of their Christmas delights were incorporated into a two week period. That left me emotionally exhausted with very little time for introspection. (Something I really need.) I didn’t want to default to the obvious resolution–lose weight, get in shape (although that’s a good idea and I have a lot of work to do in that area). I also couldn’t quite pinpoint the answer to the old question of “What’s the one thing you can do today that would have the biggest impact on your tomorrow.”
  3. I’m worn out. I’m not naturally a people person. I felt worn out by social commitments this year. I need some extra time to recharge. That’s why I’m taking a groundhog approach to early 2026. Hoping to see my shadow in the spring. Until then, I plan on a little hibernation and being more selective with my social obligations.

At the end of 2025 I gave myself permission to ease off the gas pedal and I’m working now on protecting my time.

I guess that in itself could be a resolution. (See how hard it is for me not to latch on to something? I’m a work in progress.)

As you metaphorically write your story this year, it’s important to understand that every chapter is different. Some are page turners and others are plot builders for future action.

But both are essential.

What type of chapter are you in right now? Are you in the middle of a big build-up or a plot twist? Perhaps, you’re learning something about the main character.

Give yourself permission to enjoy each chapter and what it offers to the greater story.

If you’re ready to explore the deeper themes in your life or help others learn from your experiences, I can help. Contact me today and let’s talk about you and how we can get your story out into the world where others can enjoy it and apply your lessons to their own challenges.

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The Only Gift You Need (but you have to be the one to give it)

Amidst all the hustle and craziness of this time of year, the Ghost of Christmas Past lingers close in my mind.

During those few stolen moments early in the morning before the sun rises and the slumberers awaken, and the cracking fire is my only companion, my mind often wanders to where I am this year compared to last. I reminisce about who is no longer in my life, what challenges I’ve faced this year that wasn’t apparent last, and think about who has entered my life.

It’s not morbid.

It’s my way of telling myself that the only constant is change.

This year, we sold a house in a state where I had spent two decades raising my children. We moved 1,000 miles away to a new time zone. There I met dozens of people—several of whom I now call friends. Our youngest kids went to college—one in the state where he was born and one in the state I spent my youth, each 1,000 miles away from where I am now.

We’ve spent more time with family who had previously been far away. We traded our flip-flops for cowboy boots. Yes, we’re those people.

I ghostwrote a book with a double transplant survivor about the importance of keeping a great attitude. And I’m talking to other people who want to tell their stories.

I walk more than I drive these days.

We visited my brother in Hawaii, I saw my son win a dance contest with his fraternity, I took my other son on a two-day road trip to school. I was there when my mother celebrated her 90th birthday.

I’ve embraced AI as a necessary part of doing effective work, even if it will probably replace me. And I’ve explained how to best use large language models on a few webinars.

I won an award from the Florida Authors & Publishers Association for my book The Glinda Principle but couldn’t attend the awards banquet because our house sold much quicker than expected and I was in mid route to a new life when my author peers were walking across the stage.

We glamped in Wimberley, Texas; attended our new hometown’s Oktoberfest; shopped for wedding dresses with our soon-to-be daughter-in-law; and raced to Pittsburgh thinking our youngest was experiencing appendicitis.

Life is certainly different than this time last year when I didn’t realize half of what was in store.

But there are still things I’m working on—carryovers, residuals, the same things in many respects. I still carry more weight than I should and eat more sugar than is healthy. And I haven’t booked as many speaking gigs as I had on my 2025 goal sheet.

Yet each day brings new opportunities and choices. There are things I saw going one way, that ended up another, and there were occurrences that I didn’t see happening at all, yet they did.

Redirection

But before you see this list as self-indulgent, depressing, or boastful, this look back is necessary. It’s important to understand where you’ve been to appreciate the potential in where you’re headed.

It may seem impossible for you this time of year to give a lot of thought to how things have changed. But it’s all part of your story.

And it’s only in the rearview that we can appreciate how rejection was just redirection.

On our way to Texas this year, we were buzzing along at a good clip. The weather was great and the golden hour cast a beautiful glow that made even the eighteen-wheelers look majestic. I was following my husband but he’s a more aggressive driver so he was about a quarter mile ahead of me.

Then I lost him. A few big rigs, some tall-profile SUVs, and several s-curves hid him from view. Then my GPS rerouted me. I assumed it had done the same for him and that was why I couldn’t see him. I had seconds to decide if I was going to exit the highway or continue on.

I went with the redirection.

Moments after exiting the highway, I was convinced the GPS wanted me lost in the tall grass of Mississippi backroads. There were twists and turns and one-lane bridges. How could this be the most efficient way to get to where I was going? Cell service was in and out like a twenty-something friend with benefits. The East Coaster in me broke out into a sweat.

Lost. Hopelessly lost. Sure, I followed the directions, but with fading cell service, it was only a matter of time before I had no guidance. Then I’d be trapped among the hills and hollows–a warning for women traveling. I cursed my GPS for being dumb. This was all its fault.

I realized then without a paper (or downloaded) map in the car, I was no longer in control. I had to hope my cell signal would hold until I could see the highway again or at least get out of the rural area and find a gas station oasis (preferably Buc-ee’s).

That’s when I noticed how enchanting the fading sunlight looked on the golden grasses, how the rust on the roof of a long abandoned cabin appeared to be purposefully done to offset the dismal gray color of the building, how horses are majestic beasts with gorgeous curves and tails that swish rhythmically.

I stopped worrying about what was next and concentrated on where I was. After all, there might be a chance I’d need to park my car in that golden grass and wait out the night if I couldn’t figure it out soon.

But I tamped the fear down and opened my eyes to what was all around me. The bucolic landscape of impossibly green hills and golden accents wasn’t anything like the sterile views I had seen from the highway and yet the road that took me to this peaceful place was only a few hundred feet away.

I was seeing the real Mississippi, not the man-created one but the natural one. Untouched. Less traveled. Vibrant in its simplicity. (Still, I was happy to have a full gas tank.)

Then I saw the sign to reenter the highway. When I did, cell service improved, and the views became more predictable—billboards, parts of exploded tires, fast-food wrappers.

I called my husband. He was stuck in traffic on the highway miles behind me. There had been an accident after he passed my turnoff. My concern over the time I had lost from my detour evaporated. I was thankful I had seen what I had. Undisturbed beauty and open roads.

It made no sense to me while I was in it, but my redirection had given me an experience my husband hadn’t had.

The Gift of Retrospect

We don’t always know why the plot twists of our lives happen. Perhaps they’re making way for something bigger and better or maybe, in my case, just giving you a better view.

And regrets aren’t worth your time because we can only base our decisions on the information we have at that moment. My husband hadn’t had my choice to exit and I hadn’t known why it was suggested I should.

We can only do what is best for us at that time with the tools and skills we have.

With any luck you’re not the same person reading this today as you were this time last year. You’ve learned something. You have overcome (or are working on that) and life has thrown you some curveballs.

But we learn from life in two ways—experience (having lived it) and learning from someone else by either hearing, reading, or watching their story.

So, during the holidays, give yourself the gift of reflection because when you open it, you’ll also likely receive the gift of appreciation. Be gentle with yourself and notice not what you didn’t accomplish but what you weathered and endured. Don’t look for only big wins; look for the strength it took to keep going some days whether you were battling fatigue or something bigger than that.

A new year is just around the corner, but before you spend time thinking about how you will try to change yourself for the better, appreciate the person you are today.

And think about the message you might have to share with others.

Don’t let another year go by without sharing your story with the world. If you don’t know where to start, start small. Think about:

  • What moment changed you?
  • What did it cost you to learn?
  • What do you know now that would help someone else?

If you have a story you’ve been carrying, I’m here to help you translate it into words that resonate.

Contact me today.