Word Magic!

The birth of a book on the anniversary of my birth

This morning, I did something I haven’t done since birth. I set my alarm for 6:49am, the exact moment of my birth, just so I could open my eyes at the moment I left the birth canal and took my first breathe of oxygenated air, 50 years ago. Since I have never been a morning person, I imagine I felt as discombobulated 50 years ago as I felt today. But this time I just laid in bed and reflected on my life, piecing together memories like filmmaker editing her movie.

I thought about the time when I was three and decided to give up my evening milk bottle—inspired, perhaps, by the latest episode of Wonder Woman with Linda Carter—and how I was so shaken by my own audacity, I told my parents, “I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

I thought about the week of existential dread, leading up to my 10th birthday, telling everyone that I was “leaving the single digits forever,” and how painfully aware I had become, that I would someday be dead.

I also thought about my journal entry the day I turned 13, grieving the transition from childhood to adolescence, when I wrote that “I am haunted by the passage of time.” I loved the drama of the line, and am still “haunted” by it, by the beauty, brutality, and brevity of life. How did this happen, how did I get here, and what’s it all about?

In honor of this latest milestone, I would like to offer what I’m calling, “a love letter from my heart to yours,” which is a little toolkit of encouragement and ideas designed to support each of us in finding our own answers through writing.

This offering is the book I am publishing—at long last!—this Halloween, October 31st, a magical day for a magical book: Word Magic: The Power of Writing to Reclaim Your Intuitive Wisdom.

As you will learn when you read the book, the image of the mostly-submerged pencil is a metaphor for a mostly-submerged iceberg, which is a metaphor for the fact that our intuition is mostly hidden from us—until we start to write.

In my experience, it is through writing that we access our deepest wisdom. The more we write, the more we learn to love and trust ourselves.

I also want to take a moment to make sure that everyone hears the name of my dear, artist friend Adrianne Kimbell, whose illustrated this fabulous cover and whose work and website you should check out here.

From here on out, I’ll be posting inspirational ideas from the book—so there is much more to come!

In the meanwhile, I want to thank you for being part of my little Substack, and helping me celebrating the 18,250^th (!) morning of my life. And I want to thank my mother, who had to go through the torments of labor to get me here when she did. I love you all!