In the 75 days leading up to my birthday last November, I’d quietly gone through a private typing challenge, which I interchangeably referred to as the #75daysoftyping and #75daysofmovement challenge. 

The criteria were simple: commit to two-handed typing practice for at least five minutes a day, record myself doing it, and take notes on what I was learning.

The trap, for me, though, is biting off more than I can chew.

The thing was, I’d finally gotten myself re-enrolled in neuro-PT and OT over the late summer and into the late fall, and I was barreling ahead within the structure given me by external organizations without checking in with myself on what it was I deeply needed for it all to be sustainable on my nervous system.

Additionally, I’d finally created an Instagram account for this blog, which I didn’t feel ready to launch publicly until I’d created more content and gotten a feel for how I wanted to use the account. (It’s still not open for public viewing.)

So even though my typing challenge was inherently a very private and low-key one, I turned it into this huge project — capturing daily video footage of myself typing, uploading it to the ’gram, posting daily reflections and often Stories to the account reflecting on what I’d experienced in the world of rehab.

This was fine for a good long stretch, but eventually toward the end I found myself too tired to complete my self-imposed content, opting to post placeholders to get around to again later (I’m noticing now that the final few posts are all placeholders, which is initially frustrating, but I’m choosing compassion for that part of me that always wants to do more, more, and then burns out).

The good news is, though, that I did type daily with both hands for 75+ days.

My intention was to continue my typing practice on a daily basis without posting about it, but evidently this only lasted till 4 December and then I eventually forgot about the practice almost entirely.

Today when I sat down to write this post, I set a five-minute timer so I could start out writing this 500-ish-word post with both hands for five minutes and then continue on with my right hand —

but without getting into the nittiest-grittiest details of what’s going on right now, I’m not in my most physically optimal state at the moment . . . after about four minutes, my left hand had hit the point of neuro-fatigue. Which feels disheartening, but again —

the move is self-compassion.

Self-compassion over self-flagellation, always.

If you looked over the long history of this blog (which I began in 2008), you’d see that I’ve consistently gone through stretches of starting and stopping for long stretches. I used to be really, really hard on myself for this — but now I see it for what it is: a lifelong pattern of overriding my actual underlying needs.

I’m sure this theme will crop up again and again in my future posts, as it’s a HUGE one I’ve been working with in this season. As with anything else re: the nervous system, it is likely many of you have experienced a similar pattern.

My intention & prayer is that these 500-word posts I write will seed some awareness that you find supportive, transformative, and (importantly!!) digestible. Something I am learning over and over and over (and over . . .) again is that information is useless without metabolizing/integration of it, leading to a different embodiment.

With love,

Pamela

PS. I’m keeping this practice as bare-bones and simple as possible today, so just getting this post published is a win. I may (likely) one day decide to “make it pretty,” but that day is not today.

I think about blogging nearly every day of my life, and the truth is I’ve been in a really long journey of rearranging elements of my life, my body, my home . . .

For instance, since November 2022 I’ve been in a longass process of getting myself re-enrolled in PT and OT — yes, more on this later — and there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. I’m on the schedule! (But not until late August.)

Since transition times require the most intention and mindfulness, I am not going to commit to writing in here with any sort of definable regularity quite yet. However! I am willing to show up when the energy is available and in the form it wants to come through.

What that means is the format may change; I may not sit down and write out a 10,000-word essay every time I post. Some posts will be in micro form; some will be photographic, perhaps a simple video here or there. I haven’t yet gone into detail on this on any of my blogs but for a few years now I’ve been in a deep dive around living my Human Design, which is an ongoing experiment. 

The piece I’m looking to play with here is around my undefined throat and how she needs a variety of ways to express!

Now that I’ve completed my little preamble, I’ll drop the one thing I came in here to bring to you today:

The medical model is pretty problematic; I’ve seen this everywhere in the US, I’ve seen it in Taiwan, I’ve even experienced it in Italy and witnessed it in the UK. It was alarming to me what went on in Australia during the height of the pandemic. Even in the countries that everyone projects has it so “great,” in my opinion that is still rooted in a foundation of a highly flawed system. Chances are if you’re a reader of this blog you have a lived experience of what I’m talking about.

But as much as the system sucks, there are small ways you can exercise your own sovreignty and agency.

The example most alive for me in this moment is in the arena of supplements.

If you’re concerned about the quality of your supplements (as I am), in an unregulated industry — a general rule of thumb is to only purchase your supplements either directly from the website of the company that makes them or from your medical provider. (If you’ve got access to a Full Script store, or another reputable dispensary, that could work, too.)

The irony of the fact that it is Prime Day today is not lost on me when I say this — but that same rule of thumb says to avoid ordering supplements on Amazon, because as of yet they haven’t really regulated who can and can’t sell supplements (and there can be a lot of dupes).

We generally try not to rely on Amazon for absolutely everything because we would rather invest in our local businesses when possible, but sometimes — under time or monetary constraints — Amazon can be of service.

What I did this week was I put my investigator hat on and found the “store” within Amazon that sells me a probiotic that I’ve been taking. I went on the official website of the company and contacted them asking them if this Amazon store was theirs.

They wrote me back right away and confirmed that it was in fact their store. This allowed me to relax and continue my subscribe & save with peace of mind. (And of course, come the day that our situation changes for the better, we can always make the swap back to ordering directly from the company.)

It may not be a groundbreaking, life-altering shift, but remember: We are only victims to navigating our lives if we choose to be.

Warmly,

Pamela

The thing is, everyone has these sides to them, and when we aren’t willing to express them, we aren’t being truthful. This doesn’t mean we should all willy-nilly go on rampages attacking innocent bystanders (though clearly the American collective especially has been moving through that for a long time); it comes with personal responsibility. It comes with knowing our impact.

And so even though I can play a masterful long game of pretending I’m all love and light all the time (and I have), the truth is I’m not. When I chronically hide my more unsavory feelings, it is an act of violence against myself.

When we aren’t being truthful about who we are, we are inherently un-trustable. We are engaging in a subtle manipulation rooted in the fawning trauma response in an attempt to find safety in our audience. Yes, trauma responses make sense given our histories — but the kicker is, when we do that, we inevitably become the one who is unsafe for others.

So I’m going to experiment with a series here called “Feeling Spicy.” Please take care of yourselves and don’t read the posts about topics you know you don’t have the capacity to stay grounded in and hold yourself in. I’ll be mindful of informing you of what I’m about to talk about on those posts.

A note, too, about this series: It is likely that conditioned “stuff” will come up for you. You may want to rebut or argue with me or convince me.

This is not the place for that. This is my digital space that I pay for, care for, and put my love into creating out of generosity.

If you become so activated you cannot tolerate reading my words without jumping into my comments section to try and put me in my place, know that I will definitely delete it.

The Internet can be a magical place where we are able to share ourselves, and I am so fucking thankful for it. And, it’s also a place where lots of people have developed the cowardly habit of hiding behind anonymity to dump their vitriol.

This was something my friends and I would do as 14-year-olds discovering chatrooms for the first time. I’ll rephrase this: Hiding behind anonymity on the Internet in an attempt to antagonize another is a behavior appropriate for young teenagers dealing with the confusion and turmoil of puberty without a healthy outlet.

So as much as I accept I haven’t always been “above it,” I encourage anyone who may find strong issue with hating on what I have to say to take it to their space. Their journals. Their art. Their therapist. Their blog. Their social media.

That said, being a human is complex and nuanced. There is only hope to heal rifts within ourselves and others through connection and personal responsibility.**

What that might look like is this: if you are able to stay in your body, to breathe and ground, with your heart open, any entitlement to my time/attention/energy in check, and there is something you’d like to say in response, you are welcome to write to me from that place.

Here we go!

Pamela

*For those of you who are familiar with Human Design, I’m a 5/1 emotional generator with the full Channel of Mating that includes Gate 6 (friction). If you aren’t familiar with HD, I will eventually post either some resources or a full article on this very important system I live in experimentation with.

You guys, I loved going live yesterday. I was a #hotdangmess — furreal, my surroundings looked like they’d exploded and the only presentable place I could find to record myself was in front of my white curtains, and then I was over 10 minutes late to the redo after I had to delete the abruptly ended broadcast I originally did — and since I had to do it twice, I got to watch a whole lot of me rambling to see what worked and what didn’t.

This was me leaning into my own yes: Inspiration had hit on my way home in the snowstorm to doing a livestream instead of writing a post, and though going live is always intimidating, I knew that challenging myself to do so would change things up in an interesting way and build up a muscle that I’d like to develop.

I’m extraverted by nature and loooved performing as a child and young adult. But because I began to hide from the world post-stroke, mainly because for a long time having had the stroke was a source of shame for me, I really stopped doing a lot of things I actually loved. It wasn’t necessarily conscious, of course, but I stopped dancing, theatre, sports. Stopped wearing things I wanted to wear so that I could feel safer walking around or safer being seen.

So doing a live broadcast is actually exciting for me. There’s no one making me do it, but it’s aligned with the way I enjoy expressing myself. That’s where my yes lay.

Hiding out is no fun. It feels . . . flat, uneventful. Like I’ve purchased a front-row seat to someone else’s show, someone else’s life. I don’t get to participate, be an active creator in what’s going on.

To be sure, hiding is a useful tool at times. Hiding out from the Inquisition in 1500s Spain when you’re secretly a Jew? Probably an actual lifesaver. But hiding who I really am from the world when there are people who need to hear some truth told to them in the way I deliver it? Who’s that in service to? My inner scaredy cat, and no one else.

Part of this yes naturally comes with a sense of danger, of thrill. There was no real voice of resistance, other than, “I don’t want to have to do this every single week. I know how you are.”

Ha. By the way, did I forget to mention that the voice of resistance (i.e., the ego) is very tricky, and VERY clever? Of course she is. She’s you, designed to protect you by holding you back — and if she weren’t a tricky trickster, you’d get the best of her every time.

Give thanks to her. Acknowledge her for trying to protect you, and then work with her to find a win/win.

So I’ll address the elephant in the room: Am I going to do FB Lives on the regular now that I’ve had this win? Now that I’ve done two in one day(!)?

I don’t know yet. I still need to have a chat with my Resistance, but I can’t say for sure. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy New Year!

Some things:

1. My word of 2019 is “lighthouse.” I’ll be experimenting with broadcasting in fun, fresh new ways, more often.

2. Since that is my intention, the content is not always going to be as long-form as some of my past posts. I’d like there to be a variety of long and short creations in my “portfolio,” as it were.

3. None of this will always look very polished. I’ve been honing my writing chops for 2/3 of my life and am very comfortable hiding behind the written word — but by committing to becoming a lighthouse and experimenting with creative license, there’s gotta be some room for me to put out content that’s done, but not perfect. Be prepared for a little ghetto fabulosity.

A note on new beginnings, and incidentally, the piece for today’s Forgiveness Friday:

Today coincidentally is my eight-year anniversary with my partner, and over the years, we’ve been steadily building a foundation of shared values as we uplevel our relationship. As this has happened, I have found myself unconsciously “testing” him and myself because there is some old junk from our pasts that hasn’t yet been fully resolved or cleared out of the way.

This is super normal in any close relationship that has withstood a long time. Even with people who are so like-minded that everything generally feels easy peasy, closeness always comes with checkpoints where “stuff” needs examination. I’m the first person to say that relationship duration is only one factor in relationship strength; I’ve had superclose besties that I became that close to in the span of a couple months, and acquaintances of several several years whose life aspirations and preferences I couldn’t even begin to tell you.

Intimacy is always evolving, and it’s a practice. It’s a commitment to self-care, so that you can show up energized and generous with others, and vice-versa.

You know why resentments build up between people whose lives are very close, but lack emotional intimacy? Because one or both (usually the case) of the people is holding on to baggage from the past and carrying that baggage from year to year. They aren’t clearing what’s preventing them from being as generous and loving as they’d like to be, and they’re allowing that resentment to build a case for not being giving and not loving that person.

And if you’re doing this with another person — your partner, your friend, your family member — then, chances are, you’re doing it with yourself, too. (Even if that’s a lack of forgiveness for a post-stroke condition.)

I descend from a line of impossible perfectionists. The levels of toxicity that would build up in my body holding grudges against myself or others who didn’t meet my (often completely unreasonable) expectations kept me so blocked off from true closeness with others that I’m actually astonished I had any friends prior to 2015. Yup. That recently.

A lot can change in a really short time, even if it feels like transformation can take forever. Hint: It goes faster when you’re willing.

I wasn’t truly willing to take the chance to ask for what I needed, which suddenly increased in a huge way after having had the stroke. Obviously.

It felt like too much to ask, to ask for anyone to slow down as they walked beside me, or to give me more time to physically do things.

Instead of empowering myself to voice these things, I just hoped for the best. Hoped friends would intuitively know how much time I needed to go from A to B, hoped men I dated would read my mind.

I got lucky sometimes, and other times I lost people because I didn’t know how to talk to them about these new things I needed. (We definitely don’t need to go into how the mind-reading thing went in my love life!)

Part of it was that I was only 19, part of it was that I wasn’t raised with modeling of effective communication, part of it was a lack of discussing any of this in therapy at post-stroke rehab. Regardless, I hope that my 15 years of practice in powerful communication and developing self-trust models some valuable tools for you.

So the first practice of 2019 I’d like to leave you with today is the practice of getting to know what your needs are. Your needs can be practical (“I need a full week to pack a suitcase before I travel anywhere,” “I need my phone to be fully charged at the start of the day”), they can be basic (“I must be fully fed before I start my workday,” “I need eight hours of sleep a night”) — in fact, I encourage you to start there, and they can be emotional (“I need to ask for five minutes to vent before I can move forward”). The last area often feels the hardest to ask for, in our emotionally constipated society, but it is KEY.

Just blindly going through your life not even knowing what your needs are is a great way to not get them met. It’s a great way to add to the baggage everyone’s carrying around year after year (especially you), and that’s frickin’ exhausting. Right?! Stop the madness!!

You have to name it to claim it, and that’s the first step to letting it go and creating more space and less conflict in your life and internal experience.

Don’t get caught up in creating a list that consumes you. If you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, you could go on forever with a list of grievances/demands. If that’s you, start with a list of five things only, and know that even if only one of those needs started getting consistently met that would be a huge improvement from where you were before.

If you find yourself consumed with despair at how many unmet needs you may have right now, there’s a part two to this exercise. Balance this list with a second list — a list of appreciation. Flood your mind (and ideally, your heart) with everything and everyone that you do have in your life that you truly are grateful for and remind yourself there is no lack in your life. Let that list be as long as possible. Really let it into your heart and mind and bathe in that feeling.

Take a deep breath. Know that you’ve taken an essential first step to taking ownership of your own personal power, and that that’s something to celebrate!

Questions? Comments? Share what comes up for you below, and share with someone you know. I would love to hear how the exercise adds to your life!

To new beginnings and renewed aliveness,

Pamela

Let’s talk about the walls we build to protect ourselves.I’ve been extraverted all my life — yet, I have a highly developed introversion to me too that’s confused a lot of people (particularly me). I’m highly sensitive to people’s energies, especially their anxiety.

During the course of my recent travels, I only just found out that the “highly sensitive extravert” is a thing, and not only did I find relief from that validation, but I also was able to resolve an unsettled, unanswered question on my heart for a long time.

If you live in the US, we live in a society where extraversion and being very outwardly expressive and around people all the time is celebrated and expected.

That’s all well and good until you feel like you’ve got something to hide, whether that’s inside of you or something to hide from. (For me, it was the internal impact of the disability.)

The thing about most extraverts (me included until maybe four years ago) is we don’t hold much back. We can come on really strong and we tend to dominate conversations.

Which is also all well and good until boundaries start to get crossed — which they inevitably will if you’re used to exerting your own will out into the world and never getting any pushback. And especially if historically you’ve had a lot of your own boundaries get crossed in your home life. Nobody is exempt, because as humans, each of our personal preferences vary.

I’m talking about a responsible use of our power as opposed to forcing ourselves onto others, which is not power, but an abuse of it.

I bring this up because also historically? Family members — whether extraverted or not — tend to exert their will onto one another. At the end of the day, human beings are a social animal, and animals, as much as we may love ’em, just do what they do until they are trained to otherwise.

I had to develop a strength in myself to hold true to my own needs with respect to my family. When I fall back into old patterns, then I practice loving them from an appropriate distance.

Right after my stroke, my family was great. They amazed me, in fact. Everything was about making my life easier — about supporting me so I could learn how to function again. They had me take the semester off of school. They were really patient with me, helped me walk up and down the stairs, gave me plenty of space to be.

That worked for a while, even until after I moved back from undergrad several years later and asked for a year to focus on my rehab before I’d enter the workforce.

After that year, though, I still wasn’t ready to enter the world again as a functioning adult. I didn’t have the awareness to vocalize my needs at the time, but what I needed was some space from the hovering voices of my parents trying to hurry me along and get me moving on with my life already. Unknowingly, I still needed to heal a lot of the trauma from the emotional impact of the stroke before I would actually be willing to “get on with life.”

Also, it needs to be said that while my family members unequivocally love me, and fiercely so, they also did not have the emotional capacity to understand my need for space for that processing.

Not only would I need to grieve my losses (with plenty of room for all emotions, btw) and give up the burden of hating my body for what I felt was a huge betrayal, I’d also need to grieve how I once showed up in the world so that I could create a new way of being.

But this was not the way my family operated, or anyone I knew at the time, for that matter. Instead, I tried the old way of just pushing through, believing there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Like, why couldn’t I just check my ego and get a job? Why couldn’t I spend hours and hours and hours every day at the gym concentrating on my rehab?

So it took me years and years of fighting with my family’s (and my own) expectations of me, of wasted energy, money, and perceived failure as I slowly, slowly uncovered the layers of my emotional wounding.

Much later on, through my mentor Kristin, I found a community, a sisterhood, of women whose foundational agreements lay in 100% personal responsibility, which made honest relating and emotional intimacy possible. Personal responsibility is the practice of actively living from the fact that we all have a hand in co-creating any experience, especially our interactions. It includes conscious relating at its best, while also leaving room for imperfection and mistakes. It’s a no-blame zone. When we make mistakes, we behave with accountability and clean them up.

Through the sustained practice of this intimate communication of my internal truths, I was able start to cracking open to who I was deep down. I started to develop accurate language and really valuable tools for relating to others vulnerably — and not in a manipulative way.

I began to embody and truly understand for the first time that not only was it okay to tell people what my boundaries (my needs and preferences) were, but that once I was clear in my no, could I be clear in my yes. And if I wasn’t clear about these things and the interactions between me and others became muddy, it was because there were some obvious leaks in the container that was allowing a lot of unintentional harm to happen.

So like, when people first start learning about boundaries often it becomes all about them and what they will or will not tolerate. Which is fine — but can quickly turn into a black-and-white testing facility that shuts most people out. Boundaries of that nature become a prison of your own making, rather than a two-way, mutually beneficial energy exchange.

When I was in that stage, it used to look like, “I won’t be friends with people who disagree with me.” And since I often unintentionally polarized the outside world, that qualifier ended up being a lot of people.

I was so afraid of being hurt or emotionally triggered that I would just energetically shut out anyone I held a grudge against — which did not leave me with many warm bodies to spend time with, to hug, to be in life with. If that person was someone I “had to” be around (such as a family member or a coworker) I would let those grudges and triggers build up, build up, build up until our relationships became very uncomfortable to all involved.

Let’s go back to my extraversion. The truth I denied for forever was, I love being around people. They energize me and they make my life infinitely more enjoyable. Nowadays, when I’m overwhelmed, all it takes for me to recharge is to close my eyes for a moment and reconnect with my body. Then I’m back and ready to play!

I’ve noticed this is severely different from the people I’m close with who are at their core introverted. They need to actually physically remove themselves from overstimulating environments in order to recharge, and even when they’re well versed in socializing (and even expressing in a very extraverted way for long stretches of time), they need their downtime like I need my food. (If we’ve ever eaten a meal together you’d know I eat the lion’s share at every chance I get.)

When it comes down to it, we all have a mixture of intro- and extraversion. We all have our own needs for closeness and for space. It’s normal and doesn’t need justifying. We all must find out what those needs are and also be open to the possibility of those needs to evolve over time.

As I cultivated more and more space to practice voicing my own needs and preferences within my sisterhood, I began to understand more deeply how I did not need to shut people out anymore for not being how I wanted them to be.

And eventually, once I began to truly and consciously integrate a deeper spirituality and love for myself, my internal landscape became more spacious, too. I made a home and a partner out of my relationship with my body through a combination of healing, intimate connection, space, and divinity.

By this, I mean if you’re like me and can hold grudges easily, you must make a regular practice of forgiving yourself and others — and if you’re just starting out, make a practice of revealing your truth, not to manipulate but simply to better be known — surrendering that up to something greater than you, and knowing that that resides in your heart. As long as your heart beats, you live, and as long as that is true, you can connect to it. Because that’s who you actually are.

I include this piece in the “body forgiveness” series because true forgiveness transforms the entire body, not just the brain. It’s no longer some lofty idea (“wouldn’t it be nice?”) but is true to your actual experience of life.

That’s why now, all I need is a moment to close my eyes and breathe before I can be out in the world.

Since this started, I’ve noticed myself feeling more and more safe to show the world who I really am and safe to trust the people I meet. It’s a deepened sense of self-trust, which (for those of us who lost that a long time ago) is only the result of self-care and practice.

In fact, right before I sat down at this coffee shop here in Venice, CA, I randomly had a really deep, 40-minute conversation with the woman sitting near me. We were like souls, and we were only able to find each other because we were willing to move through the world with open hearts and strong cores.

A strong core means that no matter what, you know you’ve got yourself. There’s absolutely nothing to hide, to hide from, nothing to defend, and nothing to fear.

Since a lot of this can’t be understood mentally (it is embodied), I’d love to hear what comes up for you. I’m here to answer your questions or hold space for your experience, so please contribute your comments below and share this with someone who could benefit.

Much love,

Pamela

And ever since, I’d written story after story. It was a self-imposed discipline. My first completed original work was a novel called All That and A Cup of Milk, which I wrote at 16 and self-published in a binder covered in magazine cutouts of models I’d used as representations of my characters. (I was 16. ’Nuff said.) 

This was my bliss. I used to come home every day after school, and like clockwork, would type away at the computer (people think I type fast now with my one superhand! I believe I even have video footage of me writing at the giant box that was my old-school desktop back in the day) working away at my stories. But . . . 

To this day, I haven’t completed another book. Something anti-magical occurred during undergrad. My writing degree required what I fondly call half an English major’s worth of literature classes. (Ironically, I’d spent a few years as a kid believing I wanted to become an English teacher. HA!) When I first learned how to read as a child, all I did was read. I used to go to the bathroom reading. I recently dragged myself to the eye doctor — one of my least favorite things to do — because I carry a hefty -10.5 contact lens prescription. This was the first year the eye doc had ever told me one of my eyes had stabilized and not gotten worse since my last visit. 

 Anyway. I’ve been nearsighted since I was six, and I’m sure all the 100,000s of hours I’ve spent with my little nose in a book was a heavy contributor. 

 When I was a creative writing major, I pretty much quit reading for pleasure. (The U of I might revoke my hard-earned degree for this.) I would come home from the school bookstores at the beginning of each semester with a stack of books as tall and thick as I was.

Meanwhile, all my scientist and numbersy friends/roommates would be all, “Why don’t you ever study?” Italian came easy to me. After a year of forcing Florentine shopkeepers and residents to talk to my Eastern face in Italian, I had done the impossible: I’d returned to the States not only proficient, but fluent, in the language. Because of this, I had pretty much placed out of any language courses U of I could have offered for my major, and all that was left was cultural courses. I may have been a wizard at rolling my Rs and conjugating verbs in any tense, but history is a different beast to me.

And then there was Dante. I spent a semester reading and studying his entire Divine Comedy (that’s three canticas — not just Inferno, but also Purgatorio and Paradiso). Let’s not forget that as a writing major I also had to dive deep into Shakespeare . . . If you escaped the education system with only an overview of Romeo & Juliet, know that for a writing or literature major, that sounds like graduating from high school with only knowledge of basic arithmetic. 

And then there was Nabokov. Who to this day I still can’t say I fully understand, other than appreciate his genius. 

 So pretty much, “studying” for me was reading. All. the. time. And besides the stories I had to write for my actual writing classes, I quit writing for fun as well, after a terrible blowout that had gotten me in trouble with a roommate I’d had as a sophomore. 

The period of pre-med lasted only a couple years at most. Physics took over my life so much that I even found references to Newtonian laws in my writing(!), and I had no social life. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am naturally an extravert, despite the fact that I have consciously chosen a very solitary pastime as my favorite vessel for carrying my voice to the masses. 

Pre-med made a total nerd out of me, and it soon became apparent that I’d been trying to mold myself around subjects that I merely found interesting, but wasn’t passionate enough about to shape a career out of. (Is anyone surprised that the Italian-CW major wasn’t dedicated enough to organic chemistry and molecular biology to pass the MCATs?) 

 I think what really drove that home was the semester I was lucky enough to get kicked out of a writing class (more on that later too) and then into an independent study in the creative writing department with one of its chairs. Prof. Madonick (or “Mike,” as he insisted I call him) inspired me to start my memoir. 

 When I wrote the first several pages of this memoir, I found five years’ worth of pent-up emotions release for the very first time. Things I didn’t even know I’d been holding came out of my fingertips and onto my screen. I could barely see the words as the vision of my words blurred through the tears. There were so many tears.

I was 19 years old when the stroke happened — so I was pretty much just a punk kid in the world believing I was invincible and capable of anything I could dream up. (Heck, I’m 31 today and still believe I’m capable of anything I can dream up.) But when I was 19, I both knew a lot and nothing about myself. Any self-exploration had been only at the surface level, and it wouldn’t be until I graduated that I really leapt into the vortex of personal development and self-study, because that was when I decided to give entrepreneurship a shot.

So the memoir really helped me process a lot of what I’d been feeling and experiencing underneath the façade of “everything’s just fine, and I’m just like everyone else, just a bit more gimpy.”

It had been precisely that façade that had kept me denying a lot of my own feelings. Things weren’t “just fine,” and I certainly wasn’t just like everyone else. “A bit more gimpy” looked like regular accidents and spills, anger and resentment, and an inability to do what I wanted to do how I wanted to do it. 

 (Wearing heels is as valid a desire as it is to not want to drool on someone while kissing them.)

The memoir had become so game-changing for me that I knew the world needed it.

I’ll say it again: The world needed it. And I believe this is why my memoir has been incomplete since I began it in 2008. Who was I to dare provide the world with something it needed? Two years later, I created Rehab Revolution, so that I could get a head start on creating a community of people who needed my voice. Since then, a small number of young stroke survivors have indeed reached out to me to thank me for what I’ve done for them. They truly warm my heart — and if any of them are reading this today, please know that you guys are why I write. 

 Four years ago, I sent myself to the UW-Madison’s Writers’ Institute conference for the first time, and I experienced a misplaced sense of shame. Shame that I was willing to put money on the line, invest the dollars into myself as a writer, but not willing to finish my manuscript before I came. There were what felt like hundreds of writers there, of all kinds, backgrounds, and genres, most of them there preparing to pitch their manuscripts to agents and editors who had traveled there to pick up new authors, and there I was, reeling. 

What? There were people there who could potentially propel my little 34-page-and-counting Word document into an actual, tangible book? I — the twentysomething stylish girl with a limp — could actually launch this dream of becoming a full-fledged author at this conference?! “Next year,” I told myself. “Next year I’ll have it ready.” 

“Next year” came around and I said the same thing. And again, and again. 

In retrospect, I don’t blame myself for freezing. I had no idea what I was getting into going to this conference in the first place, so that first year was a learning experience. I discovered that the conference, rather than focusing solely on the craft, taught the side of writing I’d never learned as a writing major — it taught the business side of writing.

How to pitch. Practice your pitching. Writing a query letter. Networking. 

I wrote a couple networking posts from 2013; that was my first year learning to network. And the first Writers’ Institute I attended was in 2012. #forshame 

 I remember finding myself seated next to an agent (who was looking for memoirs to sign! *facepalm*) at the (ahem) networking lunch and spiraling out of control in my head.

Ohmygodit’sanagentlookingformemoirsIshouldreallytalktohim. 

I told myself that this was the Universe’s way of handing me what I wanted on a silver platter, and that if I passed it up, it would not happen again. I forced myself to start a conversation with him . . . right as the lunch started wrapping. He was gracious enough to indulge me for several minutes, and he even gave me a little feedback and advice before he had to run off for someone’s pitch. I remember something he said was along the lines of not rushing my memoir, that it would take as long as it had to take. This encouraged me. I kept repeating the “Next year I’ll have it ready” and even signing myself up for non-traditional participation in NaNoWriMo a couple of times, but I found myself somehow blocked.

Next month, I’ll be going to my fourth Writers’ Institute conference. My manuscript still sits at 34 measly pages (though to be fair, they are single-spaced). I honestly thought I’d written more. But the truth is, that’s only because of my blog. To this day, I’ve published 209 (210 if you count this one) articles — most of them completely original content by me or by my guest writers — and while I am so happy to know that my posts are helping a small number of readers, it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because it fools me into believing I’ve made more progress on my book than I actually have, but it’s a blessing also because it’s deepened my resource of exploration into what my memoir could include. 

On a slight aside, I totally believe in Divine Messages. What these are are repetitive whispers from the Universe, gently guiding me to what I need to embrace right now. These whispers often crescendo into outright declarations spoken by actual people I see in my day-to-day existence, and then if I’m not receptive (I’ve grown to become very receptive — the Divine always knows what I need), I have to learn the hard way why I should’ve listened in the first place. I’ve been consistently reading a spiritual journey memoir as well as following author Danielle LaPorte online these days, and both of these writers (who run fairly big-profile businesses in spiritual and personal development work) have been through and come out on top of some major upheaval that makes my current “I’m starting my life over at 31! What to do?!” sound like major #firstworldwhining. 

Both of these writers are graduates of Marie Forleo’s famous B-School, which I FINALLY signed up for this year after standing at the sidelines like a wannabe for five years. 

 (I did enter the scholarship contest again for the last time — once you’re a B-Schooler, you’re forever a B-schooler. Here’s my video entry.) 

When I first began rebooting myself and my business, I started networking again like it was my job. (I mean . . . it totally is.) A virtual assistant that I’d met a year or two ago at a networking group, Mary, started talking to me about my book and began supporting me in a significant way. I told her that if I didn’t finish my book now, I was never going to do it. Rather than just “being excited” or giving me verbal encouragement and then forgetting about me, she’s been nudging me and keeping me accountable to my commitment to get my memoir out there. 

 Have I written anything yet? Well . . . this counts, doesn’t it? 

Seriously. I’ve learned that sometimes pushing through resistance just makes the resistance stronger. The fact that I’ve had my memoir actively on my mind this month and that it is sitting open on my laptop right now are already big steps if you consider my manuscript’s distinct absence from my radar for the past few years. Here’s a screenshot of a Facebook status I posted two weeks ago. (Mary suggested I post it.) 

I also promised Anthony that I’d make a super honest effort this week to work on my memoir. He kind of thinks I should save the time, energy, and money this year, sit out the conference, and buy myself another year.

But I know better. Enter more Divine Messages: Yesterday, I came across a blog post by one of my favorite friends and leaders, success coach Kris B. It’s about having the courage to go “all in.” (Funny sidenote . . . she actually featured me in it!!)

(I think the whispers are getting louder.)

B-School starts on 9 March, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to start. (The conference is on the 27th.) The year 2015 may have begun nearly three months ago, but I can feel it in my soul — this is the best year yet. I feel the culmination of everything I’ve ever done and everything that’s ever happened for me bubbling up in this moment.

I’ll be posting on my progress and anything else that comes up as I go. March will be a busy month of more reinvention, more exploration, more leaps and dives into the unknown.

The Universe will give you everything you want — and more — as long as you show that you are committed.

Thank you for reading this and allowing me to speak to you the way I know best. I love each and every one of you — even if you disagree with me and/or think I’m off my rocker.

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