Celebrate :: In Print!

This is a fun post to put up!  My first article in a national magazine!  

Here are some pics of the spread.  You can find Scholastic Parent & Child in your pediatrician's office, or you can order it online.  

The cover looks like this:

Not much to say here, except, that the fact that this happened at all had everything to do with stepping across an imaginary threshold.  On one side was the version of me who walked into Books Inc in Palo Alto one day, looked at all those books, and decided the world did not need to hear from one more person.  There were too many books already, what point was it to try to write, and who was I to think I had anything to say anyway.

There was no pit in my stomach, no adrenaline pumping up my heart rate, none of the body sensations that come to mind when you think of fear.  But it was fear all the same.  It was a quiet, peaceful resignation. It was maybe even a certain kind of hiding that slinks behind an unskillful understanding of what "zen" might look like.  

There is a part of me that feels sad about that moment, that decision to turn away from a dream I had harbored.  But there is a bigger part of me that is grateful for the girl who gave up.  Because what came out of giving up was writing for myself, writing because I love to write, writing because I am a creature who figures out her world by words.  I gave up (turns out temporarily) the dream of publishing, but the writing never stopped.  

Then one day I started blogging, and friends and family started to hang out here with me--I think some of you started thinking of me as a writer before I even thought of myself that way.  Thank you does not say enough for how much your company around here has encouraged me. 

This past January, in a coaching session with Sherri Lassila, I woke up again to the dream of professional writing.  This time there was the heart rate pumping, the pit in my stomach, all the embodiment of fear.  

I wrote about my fear here, here and here and then I stepped across the threshold and stopped being afraid to try.  

Having crossed the gate I was able to get practical about what it would take to move forward in this job called professional writer and decided to take a class called Writing about Parenting that was taught by an actual editor (I realized--a professional writer needs to know editors!).   I wrote this piece while taking that class.  For those of you that are publishing, you should know that Scholastic Parent & Child has just launched a new personal essay section of their magazine and they are currently taking submissions (the key for me was going to the beach in February while they were planning their June-July issue!).

So much for not much to say...ha!  That's what you get for hanging out with a writer.

PS  The editors picked the headline for the piece, and if you haven't read it already, the post in which I wrestle with what it feels like to be the author of an article called Badass Moms, you might want to check it out.  It is my most popular blog post yet.