Feels Like Home

A blog by Krysta MacGray

book

Grab The Mic

By Leave a Comment

Two days ago I prayed to God to please help me know a way to write my book. I have been trying and trying to figure out what. 

The hell. 

It is. 

About. 

Fervently and to no avail.

That same day I found out Dani Shapiro was coming to my little town in the mountains and giving a talk on her memoir “Inheritance.”

I went to instagram to thank her for coming. An author of her caliber does not often make Steamboat Springs, Colorado one of their stops. To my surprise she wrote me back.

“I’ll actually be skyping/zooming in, alas. The travel became too much of a concern. But please come. There will be a Q and A.”

The second I read it I know this is why I’m going.

I need to ask her a question.

I pretend as if I have the option to stay home. Like I don’t really need to ask because I have all the answers I need inside. Nevermind that I could not locate any of these answers this past year. But surely they are there. Surely I’ll find them on my own. Despite the disappointment of her to being there in person, and insisting the answers are already inside me, I am open to the notion that maybe a way to find them is following the nudge to ask?

At Library Hall I am gathered in a room with two hundred people who are all 60-75 years old with the glaring exception of me and a handful of others. Jenny is our MC for the night. She is a middle aged woman with brown hair pulled back into a high braided pony tail. She’s wearing glasses low on her nose, is dressed in earth tones, and says “um” after every other word.

Jenny welcomes Dani and the talk begins. So far nothing has been said that isn’t directly related to Inheritance, the book we are here to learn about. Dani has not said anything about writing. She is instead, talking about what it means to find out you are not who you thought you were. About finding out the truth. What happens then? This is what her book is about, having discovered in her fifties that she had been conceived by sperm donor and unbeknownst to her to that point, is another man’s biological child.

“I’m going to turn the mic over for questions now” Jenny says.

I sit there and my heart pounds as a women sitting a few seats away from me immediately gestures for the microphone.

Crap.

I was supposed to gesture before her. I sit while she asks something about one of the authors first books and whether or not she thought her main characters quote at the end of the book was foreshadowing for what was to come in the authors own life.

I look to the right and Jenny is already handing the microphone to another woman. Somehow, I’ve lost my chance again.

“You’re not going to be able to ask her your question if you’re not assertive” I hear a voice inside say. “You’d better figure out how to get that microphone.” So I do what I always do when pressure is mounting, and I tell myself it’s not that big of a deal. Maybe I shouldn’t ask my question anyway. Maybe it’s not meant to be. What if it’s not appropriate to ask a question about writing when all we’ve discussed is her book exclusively? No one else is talking about writing. I’m too nervous anyway. What am I nervous about? It’s just a question! What’s wrong with me? I should probably bow out and forget the whole thing.”

Then I remember what my therapist said to me in my EMDR session that morning. After I’d told her I was self conscious about talking about a lump in my throat (again) when I *should* to be talking about my fear of flying, which is why I’m there, she said “should?”

“Yes” I said. “I ‘should’ myself a lot.”

“I noticed that” she said. Which made me question whether my shoulds were actually helpful.

I breathe deep breaths as I try and slow my heart rate and worry about how I’ll ask the question if I do indeed ask. I can’t make it too much about me specifically. I’m surrounded by a bunch of people. This is public. Dani Shapiro is not my personal mentor. I have to be respectful of everyones time.

But you have a question to ask, I hear myself push. ASK IT.

I fix my eyes on Jenny. When her eyes start searching the room my hand shoots up toward her and she walks over and hands me the microphone.

My heart beats wildly and I can hear the blood in my ears and then, it’s my turn.

“Hi Dani, I’m Krysta from Instagram. I know you teach writing and so I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a question about the process?”

“Not at all” she says.

“Oh good. Have you ever written a memoir that, a good part of the way through writing it, you still didn’t know what it was about? And if not—how do you get clarity around themes while in the middle of trying to write?”

Dani doesn’t hesitate. “Trying to think about theme during the writing process is too overwhelming.”She says. “It’s like standing in a house and trying to look out all the windows at the same time. You can’t do it. You can only look out one window at a time and ask yourself the question relevant to that one window. Theme—it turns out to be whatever you’re obsessed with. Theme turns out to be the thing you just keep writing about because you can’t not write about it.”

She took a breath.

“When I was writing “Devotion” which is a memoir I wrote when my son at the time was asking lots of questions like ‘what happens after we die?” and ‘will I go to heaven?’ and all these questions I had not allowed myself to sit with I just thought ‘you know, what would it be like to sit with these questions?’ and that’s what became really interesting to me. And so it was me looking out one window at a time with that question in mind. It’s only later themes emerge. So the only way to figure out clarity of theme is to write and while you’re writing, don’t think about theme. Because if you think about theme, it will sort of manhandle the writing. It will direct it and force it to places it would not have organically gone otherwise.”

She finished talking and I gave her a thumbs up—which I regretted immediately. Then I hurried back to my seat with directions for moving forward.

I smiled to myself because you cannot possibly know what you don’t know until you do. I have so much time invested in trying to look out all the windows at the same time, then wondering what is wrong with me for not being able.

But I never needed to try so hard.

I only ever needed someone to say “here honey. Here is how it’s done.”

And for that, I needed to grab the damn mic.

You Can’t Stop Me

By Leave a Comment

My dad, in his new place down the street from me.

“Is the last time you blogged in November?” My husband asked me the other day.

“Yeah, I guess so”

“I’m gonna unsubscribe” he said. I was not amused. “Seriously though, you need to post again.”

Here’s the thing. I’ve never been the kind of blogger that “prepares material” for you guys. I was never the one that had the valentine recipe posted the week before Valentine’s Day so that you could plan accordingly and make it. I was the one that posted it the day after to show you what I made. Pictures were usually with a normal background. No staged red and pink ribbons and flowers, I mean, unless it was authentically there waiting to be used. This is because I bring you the real me—my real self—in real time—each time I come to this space. I’m not gong to engineer anything to make it look like I had holiday appropriate food props and perfect lighting if I didn’t. 

And I won’t just post something because I haven’t posted in a while. I’m posting now because Jeremy brought it to my attention and then, I wanted to write you. So here I am.

Blogging 101 says you have to do certain things, like post regularly and often. I know this. Always have. But I reject it, not because I don’t like listening to prevailing wisdom, but because I’ve always felt this sort of finagling is not for me. Of this, I have always been certain. Whatever it is I do here, I don’t engineer it for a certain outcome. Not that it’s wrong to engineer things for certain outcomes. I do that in other spheres. Just not in blogging. 

Here, I just bring myself. However I am. Chatty or reflective. Frequent or infrequent. I’m in the latter season right now.

Right now, my life is bananas. Like, right now I have to stop writing and leave because I have a meeting at Land Title. 

Please hold.

Okay, I’m back. 

That wasn’t a stunt. I did actually leave and then return to the page. I have another appointment in a little bit, too. And dinner to make and laundry to fold. And a book to write. And kid to take to school at 10am. That’s just the normal stuff. What I want to talk about though, is that my life has been filled lately—just filled—with very abnormal things too.

First, some background information.

So, almost seven years ago, I started having a mid-life crisis which lasted until last year. The mid-life crisis was composed of the usual stuff. Who am I? What am I doing? What *can* I do? and stemmed from the fact that I was about to have my last baby. This baby would grow up and go to school and then what? All I had ever been was a stay-at-home-mom. I had my first child when I was twenty and literally had not done anything else. I didn’t want to do anything else. Stay-at-home-moming was my jam. The thought of doing something else depressed me. I thought I was made to be a mom and only a mom, and my purpose was running out with my babies. When I had Ellie, the clock started to tick. I had finite time to figure out what was next and make some decisions. 

My baby never slept and I stopped blogging and writing.

I got diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease.

I spend a year doing every diet and taking every test to try and “cure” it. 

I tested myself and challenged myself in mini ways to “see what I was made of” because of my “who am I, what am I doing, and what can I do?“ questions.

My fear of flying blew up.

I overdid everything because I didn’t know what to focus on. In one year, I tried to move to LA to become an actress (yes, you can laugh), buy a wedding venue property, write a memoir, write a cookbook, learn how to build a spec house, start an Airbnb business, and fundraise for Angelman Syndrome. Then I got two puppies that always peed in the house and barked non stop and I had to put everything on hold to train them…which never really worked.

I flailed. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Then I decided I would make space for what needed to come to life so I stopped doing everything. I stopped writing except for pleasure. I stopped trying to find properties and build businesses. I stopped trying to become an actress (because, duh), I stopped fundraising and formulating recipes and making plans. I decided to focus on God and quiet.

Soon, something did come to life. Specifically, my want to write the book, with the realization that this is what I was supposed to be doing the whole time. That I was doing everything else because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to write the book. This because I had tried before and couldn’t. More than that, I didn’t know what I was writing about, which is one of the reasons I could never do it. When someone asked “what is your book about?” I’d say “I don’t know” and that—well, it didn’t inspire confidence. I knew I needed to write the book anyway, despite the absence of clarity, and self doubt. To trust that whatever I was writing needed to get written through that lens. So I needed to get serious and go all in. The book became my singular focus.

So my “what am I doing, what can I do?”  was figured out. 

For a hot minute, I thought maybe I was home free.

Except writing is not all there is to life. Around the same time I decided I needed to go all in on the book, I sensed I also needed to get in shape. Urgently. Metaphorically and physically.

I needed to confront some of my old “avoidance of hard things and conversations tactics” and tackle them head-on instead. I also needed to sweat and drink more water. So I started challenging my body regularly and drinking (and peeing) more often. This all felt very important and so I was writing and working out and confronting old patterns. Which felt great. I finally went to the writing retreat I knew I needed to go to. I started making headway in my book. It felt like everything was on the right track.

Then I got plantar fascitis. 

During this time I became my fathers trustee, for his special needs trust–This is relevant, I swear–My dad was involved in a car accident in Brazil in 1995. He has resulting brain damage and is wheel chair bound and has lived in California his whole life. I became trustee because my dad was involved in a legal battle against his former trustee and there was no one else to handle it. Overnight, I was responsible for managing my dad’s money to make sure he didn’t run out in his lifetime, (let me tell you what I suck at: making sure money doesn’t run out in lifetimes) keeping his HOA dues and bills paid, managing doctors appointments and making sure his insurance didn’t lapse (which it did), singing powers of attorney and medical powers of attorney and providing banks with the trustee agreements so I could gain control and access to his accounts and all this, without being in the same state— with no access to his mail or figuring out who he had bills with or when they were due. I didn’t get the notice that his insurance had lapsed because they did not have my address on file. I hadn’t notified them because I had no idea who he had insurance with or who to call. No one could tell me where to find out the information I needed to stay on top of things. 

I was paying attorneys. And someone to forward his mail to me. Then he got injured and needed to stay in a rehab facility until he healed. Except he never really healed and I had to move him from one facility to another to another assisted living facility that he could not afford from OUT OF STATE and AHHHHHHH. I know you don’t follow everything and I am not saying everything, but know this:

Nightmare of nightmares.

It was the nightmare of all nightmares.

I started losing my hair. Not just thinning. I lost a clump. Like a bald spot. Like—not normal. It was the size of a nickel and was very obvious. My doctor says it’s because I’m autoimmune, which is lovely information. I go a few months doing comb overs and not knowing whether it will grow back.

Then I had a pre-cancerous mole removed.

My step-dad died and all sorts of weird things happened with my family.

Then, I decided I needed to move my dad here to Colorado to be closer because managing everything from one thousand miles away was proving to be impossible. 

I need his physical, real ID to send to social security so he can get a new card? HOW AM I GOING TO GET HIS REAL ID FROM ONE THOUSAND MILES AWAY WHEN HE CAN’T SEND IT TO ME HIMSELF? AND WHAT IF HE NEEDS HIS ID WHILE IT’S GONE?

Meanwhile, he’s afraid he’ll be cold if he moves to Colorado and I have to give his place in California 30 days notice and his bank account has no more money in it, and I have to move my dad here to my state BEFORE they can tell me if they will approve him for Colorado insurance and once he’s here I have a mountain of paperwork and I need to call my Uncle and ask him to locate birth certificates and what not. And I can’t even remember who I need to give them to.

That’s not true. I do remember.

I’m just being dramatic.

In all seriousness though? Nightmare of nightmares. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Regardless, it is consuming me. It’s consuming all my time and all my energy—seemingly without end—my “to do” just keeps growing—and I have not been able to get writing time in for my book. And I don’t mean this in a “I cannot make the time because it’s not important enough to me” way. I mean this in a “I was on hold with medicare for 1 1/2 hours, and then I have to go to the bank and get a 1099 for the tax years 2016, 2017, 2018 that my dad’s trust didn’t file for back then, and then scan and email those documents to the tax guy, then call my dad’s facility and get them that Medicare number, and then call his old place and give 30 day notice and then figure out how I am going to move his stuff out of his condo without a place to take it to since we are both out of state now—then repeat the next day with a different set of to-do’s” kind of way. I don’t have time for my book. And I don’t have time to blog. So that’s why I haven’t blogged since November, Jeremy. Then, you know, there are the normal things. There is school pick up and laundry and grocery shopping and dinner and working out and eating well and praying. All this, for something I know I need to do (take care of my dad) and I know is important, but I feel like I’m trying to do all the things and keep all the balls in the air and…and…AND.

Then, I got tinnitus. 

You guys, a week and a half ago I did not have tinnitus and then, I started to hear a sound in my ear a few times a day for two days for a couple minutes and then it would go away and I thought, that’s weird. Then, two weekends ago we sat down to watch “Ford vs Ferrari” and the sound happened again and NEVER STOPPED. I hear a sound in my ear all the time now. All. The. Time.

I am young for having tinnitus without ever having an event to spur it on so suddenly and no known family genetic history, the doctor tells me. 

I had a mole bleed the other day so I went to the dermatologist yesterday and they had to remove it and biopsy.

My left shoulder/neck totally seized up and I have a muscle headache for a week now despite doing all the stretches I’m supposed to do for that area and my PT can’t get me in until April. 

APRIL.

Here is my question. When did I become a medically ailing person?

WHEN????

Why did my body stop working in the midst of the most stressful time, while I tried in earnest to limit how stressful it could be by feeding myself well, moving my body, staying hydrated, praying, and trying not to drop any of the balls. Well, for very long, anyway.

Like. I tried. 

But nothing is working right. Nothing is smooth. I have to work ten times harder just to move ten times slower than other seasons I’ve been in.

And I don’t understand.

So that’s the backstory. 

And here I am now. I can tell you what has changed since the mid-life crisis started: This whole last seven years has been preparing me for whatever is next. It’s been a weird time. I have stepped into parts of my personhood that we’re not prominent before and made them more developed. Things that I’d rather have not developed, like saying what I need to say when it’s hard instead of avoiding conversations. And standing up for myself and believing I am worth standing up for and completely capable of doing that when I’m on the phone with people who intimidate me.  

Then this past year has felt like it’s finally go-time. Like the first five years were preparing for go-time, and the last year has been “now, now, go, go, go!”

Where I am going? I have no idea. But I know that wherever it is, I’m on the way, AND that I need to be able to handle a lot, for a long period of time, maybe while having a million bizarre small medical things happen during, AND handle it well while taking care of myself in the process, AND know that I am capable of the task before me.

Oh, and also be able to stand up for myself and talk to potentially intimidating people on the phone like it ain’t no thing. Because that’s what keeps happening.

That’s what I know so far.

I’ve been afraid of this spot. It seems too overwhelming. Too much. Not sustainable. It’s in the water too. I know you know what I’m talking about.

I’m not here to complain, (well, not ONLY to complain), and I do want to tell you what I’ve noticed about this spot. This place of being on the way to something you’ve been preparing for, which is hard enough, while just getting absolutely pummeled with wave after wave in the most frustrating and unrelenting fashion.

I think I’ve always been afraid of this spot because I believed the “hard” would discourage and prevent me from moving forward. I think I thought it would be enough to stop me. And being stopped and unable to move forward because I don’t have the skills or development to make good decisions and do so, is scary to me.

But I have the skills and development necessary. This is what I know now that I didn’t before. The last six years were spent developing skills that were necessary to getting to this point. And because I have them, nothing can stop me. Not hard things. And not harder things. 

Here’s how I know: when things get particularly hard, they actually serve to reinforce me.

When something is trying to take me down, I feel like giving up for 5 minutes. Everything sucks and I send out SOS texts that say “I don’t know what to do” and my life is ending and I cry. That happens. But the whole time I do this, I know I do out of habit and for connection. Because I FEEL like everything sucks and my life is ending and I’ll never be able to figure it out or know what to do ever again. But I don’t believe myself. That’s the difference. I used to believe it. Now, I can feel the feelings while knowing they are not true.

I know it’s not true because there have been too many times these last seven years when I have felt this every same way, and the situation resolved itself. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I feel there is no way, then I make a call I don’t want to make, and say some things I don’t want to say, and then all of a sudden a way opens up. Or, I have a talk with a friend or my husband and they say something that illuminates a path forward. 

Everything is figure-out-able. 

I know that now. Tricky is figure-out-able. Hard is figure-out-able. Tired is figure-out-able. Unrelenting is figure-out-able. You just have to be willing to do the thing that leads to figuring it out. Which is much, much easier said than done.

I feel this force—I don’t know an un-corny way to say that—it’s a real, live force, okay? And whenever something hard happens it gets stronger and stronger inside of me and all it does is convey this message: “No. Not today, not ever. I am onto you and YOU. CAN’T. STOP. ME.”

You can’t stop me. 

Because I’m ready now. I’m already on the way. 

I don’t know, you guys. 

I’m ready. 

That is scary to say. But I need to say it.

Because resistance and self-doubt and hard things. They can’t stop me now.

I’m ready to do whatever it is I am supposed to do. 

One of those things? I am supposed to write a damn book. 

So I will write. First I will write this to you and not worry about what you will think of this post. It’s kind of gritty, you know? A little self indulgent. Like, maybe I should polish it up before I hit publish because a vulnerability shame storm is sure to hit afterwards. Maybe I should not write this sort of thing at all until it’s had time to breathe and mature because what is this even about? An overwhelming season? My dad? Writing a book? WHO KNOWS. In the writing world, we call this kind of piece an “inhale.” It’s not meant for public consumption. You’re supposed to wait for an “exhale” because exhales are orderly and follow one idea through to the end. But order takes time. And I don’t got that. I have a book to write you guys, too. I do promise you though, the book will only be exhales. 😉

It’s Valentine’s Day.

So today, I will hit publish without editing this post. Then, I will go to my kitchen and make homemade cream puffs. I will whip cream and fold it in a vanilla pastry cream and I will pipe choux dough onto parchment and I will fill and dust with powdered sugar. Then I will take one to my dad, who I take care of now, and who lives down the street as of last month. Then I will pile the rest high on a plate to give to my family tonight because cream puffs are Jeremy’s favorite and also because part of my purpose is providing delight and beauty for the people I love. 

Then tomorrow I will write again. 

I can’t be stopped. 

Find What’s Useful For You. A Life Lesson

By Leave a Comment

I know. It’s been…a while. 

And do you know why?

I’m writing a book. Cough! Let me rephrase that. I’m trying to write a book. It’s going to hell in a hand basket and everything I write sucks and it’s terrible—or—awesomely amazing, it’s really coming together, miracle of miracles, I have written good things.

All depends on the day.  

And I haven’t written here because everything I write is potentially book material and also because I don’t think anyone actually reads this blog. Except my sisters. And Gretchen. And Jeremy. And Craig. 

Hi Sisters!

Hi Gretchen!

Hi Husband!

Hi Craig!

I appreciate your support. It makes me feel loved.

Anyway enough about my insecurity. How are you?

You can’t answer so imma just go ahead and talk about me some more. Good? Good.

Here’s the haps: It’s snowing today. My son just came into the kitchen where I’m sitting writing this and Jeremy is typing up the highlights of The Divine Conspiracy, one of his favorite books. 

“Ugh, the snow” Jeremiah says.

“you don’t like the snow?” Jeremy asks

He shakes his head, sullen.

“Jeremiah, it snows here a lot. You know, the better thing would be to figure out the gifts in the snow. Like, figure out what you like about it or what it offers you so you can look forward to that thing when it starts to snow.”

“Yeah” Jeremy says “I’m sitting here relaxing because it’s snowing. It makes me feel like I just want to be at home and have some down time instead of going somewhere. I like that.”

I’ve been learning how to figure out the gifts of the less than desireable lately. 

My favorite author in the whole wide world, Glennon Doyle, announced the title of her new book a few days ago. 

UNTAMED

On the back cover? 

“What would you do if you trusted yourself?”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best because omg I love her and everything she writes and admittedly have an unnatural affinity for her. Worst of times because although I still have no real idea about what my book is about (it keeps changing), I do know a huge theme is trusting myself. I actually have written the words “I think I just needed to learn that I could trust myself enough to know how to take care of me.” And then once, when outlining what my book might be about I wrote “a memoir about learning to trust God, learning to trust myself, and how the two commingle . It’s a combination of dealing with faith and doubt and listening to myself. When I wasn’t sure what lessons I’d learned I’d ask myself “what did learning to trust God and myself teach me about faith and doubt?” And “how did I become who I’m capable of being through these things? How did I learn to trust?”

The answer would be the big idea of your story.

I did not answer what the big idea of my story was, by the way. Because from the time I wrote that to now, it’s evolved. My book is not really that so much anymore. It’s dang close, but I don’t think the God piece is so prevalent. Not because I don’t want Him to be! Just because it’s not the way it’s shaping up. I think maybe my book is about my mid-life crisis instead. How when I got pregnant with Ellie, I was sent into a panic about her going to school and feared my purpose (as a stay-at-home-mom) was running out with my role. This prompted me to ask a bunch of panicky questions like who am I? What can I do in the world? WILL I HAVE TO GET A JOB AT STARBUCKS?! Or maybe my book is about being a Housewife and roles. I don’t know. It’s also about getting an autoimmune disease and what that meant—how I’d have to heal myself in ALL the ways. I’d have to learn to feed myself well and move my body more and…and…and…It’s probably little bit of all of that but I don’t know the label under which all of that fits.

I DON’T KNOW OKAY? 

Diary Of An Overdramatic Hot Mess, maybe?

Just kidding, that’s a stupidly generic title. And too self deprecating. I had a REAL crisis, ya’ll!

The point is, trusting myself is the ONLY thing that I know about my book. And then my hero wrote a book about learning to trust yourself. It hurt a little because I knew that’s how I was going to feel when I read what she had to say about something I’ve been trying to articulate for three years to no avail (yet) and then blew whatever I had to say out of the water—hurt.

How can I be so sure of this? Because pretty much everything the woman has written blows everything I’ve ever read out of the water. 

Heres the thing about this though. In the writing world this whole “she wrote my book before I could get done” is a bizarrely common phenomenon. I’ve read many authors accounts about how the very book they were writing was written faster by another renowned author. Nothing new under the sun and all that. The lesson is always the same: there’s room for everybody at the table. We need your voice. We need their voice. Keep writing.

Still, I felt like I was just drafted to the junior high basketball team when I learn Kobe Bryant is coming to play with us. Like…do they even need me? Do I just quit now?  I can’t imagine I’ll add any value after he steps on the court.

Vulnerable, I decided I needed to send out a little SOS email to my editor, Kelly. I don’t ever write to Kelly about personal matters. I pay her to edit my work. She is not a therapist. She owes me no free advice. But I wrote her because being a writer herself, she was one of the only people I knew who would understand and because I kept getting this nudge–tell Kelly, tell Kelly. 

As I told you, I’m learning to trust myself?

So I sent it. I ended with this question: “today I fear somebody already wrote my book better than I can. That’s not true, right?”

 Then I went to lunch with my sister and told her this whole story. 

“I know it’s not true” I say to her “but I feel like my book has no place now. She’s going to do it better.”

“Unless you’re a doubter, a worrier, a nail biter, an apologizer, a re-thinker. Then Memoir may not be your play pen. That’s the quality I found most consistently in those life story writers I’ve met. Truth is not their enemy, it’s the banister they grab for while feeling around on the dark cellar stairs. It’s the solution.” —Mary Karr

So you see, all this self-doubt and worrying makes me a legitimate candidate for the line of work I’m in. 

Funny thing is, after the initial disappointment, all the worry suddenly propelled me to articulate what I needed to say and get it down on the page before Glennon’s book gets released into the world. The threat of her doing it better than me prompted me to ask “what am I worried she’s going to say better than me?” which allowed me to actually know what I wanted to say. You’d think a writer would know what they want to say, but you’d be wrong.

In one day I re-wrote two chapters and then a new prospective intro. (I say “prospective” because I’ve written what I thought were three separate intros before realizing they were all chapters instead–THE INSANITY!)

What surprised me the most was after I’d written the prospective intro I woke up the next day and read my words and…here’s the crazy part…still felt like they were true.

Here is what I wrote:

“Let me tell you about the women who interest me. 

They are the ones who aren’t afraid.

of aging

of their bodies

of feeding themselves

of what they want

of becoming more

Let me tell you about the women who interest me. 

They are the ones who know love.

of God

of family

of self

of neighbors 

of the unloveable.

They know that beauty isn’t found in the reflection of a mirror but in the reflection of a life. 

They know the wisest guidance is not out there, but inside.

Let me tell you about the women who interest me.

They do the work they were born to do the way they were born to do it. 

They let themselves be human.

They know to see the unseen

They know how to be.

They know. They know. They know.

Those are the women who interest me. 

And I want to be one.”

I don’t know if this is what my book is about but I know that the gift of disappointment pushed me to write true things with urgency.

A few days after I’d found new wind in my writing sails, Kelly wrote me back. 

She said that she acknowledges that sometimes what God does “for” us actually looks and feels like getting pushed out of a tree.

“I’ll tell you something I know for sure” she writes, “Glennon Doyle can’t write Krysta MacGray’s book. Only you are having Krysta MacGray’s journey. And there really isn’t anything more special about her OR her writing than there is about you and yours. I promise. Pinky swear.

My best advice is to find what’s useful for you here. This really feels like some kind of gift in disguise to me. Feel the feels. But when you’re ready, be willing to poke through the ashes of your worry/disappointment and look for that little sparkly gem that’s hiding there.”

Don’t you just wish you knew Kelly?!

I mean.

Sometimes what God does “for” us actually looks and feels like getting pushed out of a tree.

Sometimes it looks like the threat of your hero outdoing you. Sometimes it looks like self-doubt, or fear the the unknown.

My best advice is to find what’s useful for you here, she’d written.

I can’t change what Glennon’s book is about. I can’t change what mine will be about (because it’s my story). What I can do is find the gift in the uncertainty and doubt.

Find the gifts. Find the way. 

Otherwise, it can just look like a bleak struggle. 

When disappointment comes a knocking, look for the sparkly little gems hidden there.

I want to be a woman who knows these things.