The other day, I was meeting with a friend who is a stay-at-home mom, as I once was. She was lamenting how hard it is to find time to write with all the responsibilities of home and children. I passed on a piece of advice a friend said to me when I was lamenting something...
Tag: creatives
How Deep is Your Thinking?
A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling really down. It lasted for about a week. I told someone who is close to me, and her advice was something she had said to me before, “Don’t think. You think too much. Just live in the moment and don’t worry about anything.” While that might sound...
Finding Brilliance in Your Ordinary Life
I’ve been working on my branding and the messaging for my new website. In running through various exercises to arrive at what I do best, I realized there is a consistent theme in my life’s work. Everything I’ve done—from my books and other writings, to my speaking and presentations, to my community work and activism—has...
Are You Ready to Be Vulnerable?
The other day, I was meeting with one of my women’s groups. We’re all getting to know each other really well, and one woman asked a pretty deep question. Another said, “Wow. You’re asking us to be pretty vulnerable.” And then we each answered, from the heart, and with faith that we would face no...
How Self-Improvement Can Help Your Art and Business
I made a commitment at the end of last year to devote myself to self-improvement in 2018. By that I meant, learning to meditate; creating more space in my life for contemplation and introspection; finding more time to read and attend classes; releasing old grudges, negative thought patterns, and pressures I put on myself; and...
10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows
Buddha once said everyone would experience 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows in their lifetime. I came across that quote the other day, and the number jolted me. It sounded so high! I mean, it’s not hard to imagine 10,000 joys if you think of a joy as finding a pretty feather as a child or...
No Great Story Ever Started with “I Think I’ll Take a Nap”
A friend of mine recently attended an afternoon writing panel on which I was speaking about Strong Women in Children’s Literature. She’d had a busy morning. She’d worked out and followed that with a heavy lunch with her family. She was tired and tempted to skip my panel in favor of a nap. After the...
How to Be in the Flow and Still Keep Living
I’ve always prided myself on being one of those people who never drops the ball, no matter how many I’m juggling. People ask how I stay so organized and on top of things. Oddly, I don’t think of myself as organized (you should see my desk), but I do take my responsibilities seriously. But lately,...
How to be One with Everything
I was that child who never pulled a leg off a grasshopper or a wing off a bee. I never burned an ant with a magnifying glass or kicked a dog for barking. I was that kid who named our plants and urged them to grow. I named our cars, too, and was furious with...
It’s Time to Be Bigger
2017 was a hard year. Political turmoil, worldwide terrorism, natural disasters, and so much more. Many of my friends started the year in a state of panic. So much to do, so much to undo. They took to the streets to protest and rally, and to the phones to call their senators and congressmen. They...