A year ago this week ended a decade of gestation – I carried this book baby for a long time before it went to print. And, as we all know, a year ago, this time was when the world turned on its side. For months I lamented friends’ thwarted wedding plans and graduation plans and canceled trips and theater performances and activities for my teenagers. It wasn’t until August that I realized the pivot required of me to release a book into a world that wasn’t reading pages but headlines, wasn’t wanting to grow but to survive, felt like a proper “birth.”
We’ve birthed our family in two ways. We flew across an ocean to meet a stranger and called them daughter on the same day, and we watched as my frame stretched and pulled to make space for a life that would change my body before it changed my world.
The creative process is like bringing a child into your family. Stretching, unscripted, awkward … and wondrous.
The words in ADORE felt untimely when the world’s attention span was reduced to soundbites in three short weeks last March. And they felt aptly timed for a world whose anxiety could no longer be buttoned.
I suppose that what we carry in our heart and our body leads us to think it’s forever ours to craft. But the best work slips right through us and into surrender.
ADORE is/was that surrender. Happy birthday, book baby.
