Good for You News: Recent Episodes
Erin S. Lane
Hi Loves,
This is the cover of my new book:
And this is how I feel about it:
Happy. Swoony. Blushy. Obsessed.
It took a lot of less pleasant, but no less important feelings to get here. The brilliant designers at my book publisher worked their asses off. The earliest iterations were splashy and fun, the kind of book you might see at an airport kiosk. But I worried it looked like a tabloid or a ransom note. I declared emphatically, “I DO NOT do cherry red.” I countered with a very badly-designed alternative I created myself in Canva. They were kind and professional and proposed, Let’s just start over.
And then they sent me this.
I like this cover because it looks pretty, dressed in cream—no, let’s call it parchment—and accessorized with all of my favorite colors from the Blu Dot catalogue.
I like it because it looks literary but playful, the serif and sans serif fonts sitting side-by-side, giving off, as one friend put it, "Gloria Steinem meets Girl Scout Vibes."
I like it mostly because it has these gorgeous silhouettes popping out of letters like people in apartment building windows, hinting at how this book is not just a memoir but a manifesto, not just a book about about a me but a we, a book about how all of us—moms, non-moms, and those somewhere in between—can find love and joy and identity and meaning as someone other than a mother.
(Um, also, I cannot wait for you to meet the wide swath of women featured in the book, some of whom you may already know like Sarah Sentilles and Margaret Brunson Jessica Slice and Becky Blanco, Melody Moezzi and Emily Grey, Karen Swallow Prior and yes, even my own pastor.)
It was a sensitive process. As any book that has "woman" in the subtitle is. We debated that word "woman." I asked one of my wise friends, Father lizzie, if she thought it was too binary and she said, yeah, it is binary, but maybe that's what you're trying to help people see, how these expectations for parenting/not-parenting bear differently on people who are femme of center, and I said, yes, exactly, and she said, Plus, it needs to sell. And I said, yes, that, too.
Making this book—not just writing it but like making all these tiny, not so tiny decisions to go along with it—was a lifeline of purpose for me during the pandemic. And I so, so, so, hope it will be a lifeline of purpose for readers who are tired of the shitty scripts about a life well-lived, tired of being told what is or isn't wrong with them, what they will or won't regret, what they do or don't know about love. Because this book is a celebration, as Kate Bowler so generously said about it, "of love in all its forms."
It's available for pre-order now, please and thank you and compliments only at this time.
XO,Erin
P.S. True Story: Pre-orders are really wonderful for authors. They give booksellers a sense of the demand for our upcoming books. Like, should we stock 3 or 13? Oh, man look at all these pre-orders from people tired of the shitty scripts, let’s do 30!
P.P.S. Hot Tip: You can pre-order the book from any of your beloved booksellers, and if they don’t yet have copies ordered for the store, you can request that they do. Like, Oh, you don’t know? Let me tell you about the next best book in parenting/not-parenting.
P.P.P.S. Also This: If you buy the book now, you’ll soon get access to a FREE BONUS GIFT (yes, yes, sort of like Clinique) that I’ve been scheming for you. Just save your pre-order information, and stay tuned to this newsletter.
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Hi Loves,
I made a thing for you (again.) Femme Bonds XVI—my annual playlist of the best femme-fronted songs of the past year (ish)—is here.
It’s been another weird one for a lot of us. The usual reflection questions still feel impossible to answer. How are you? What was the year like? What were some highlights? (OK, I think? Full, somehow? A friend asked me to facilitate her mom’s funeral?) I marvel at anyone who’s been able to send a holiday card, choose a photo, ask for an address, say something true. My memory is getting fuzzy; my words are getting fewer. This is mostly fine.
This is mostly fine because I have music. Making playlists is the closest thing I have to a hobby right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing I do in which my mind floats and time swims and suddenly I am apologizing to the therapist for being two minutes late. Sorry, I was tending the transition between track four and five again. In a delicious reversal of roles, children stand at my bedroom door, while my puffy headphones blare, and say, Hello? Are you there? I’m talking to yooooooooou….
Yes, dears, I’m talking to me, too.
There are lots of ways to talk without talking, and after another year of unspeakable absurdity, they all seem precious to me. To talk with our tired feet against a sidewalk. To talk with our eyes closed and the covers pulled. To talk through the borrowed words of others: scripture, poetry, lyrics. To talk by listening. While listening to this year’s playlist, the music covering my ear like a conch shell, I sob-smiled into a sea of fresh feeling. It was a relief to feel my pulse.
A pastor I know says that Christmas is better sung than said. And I believe him. I believe him that music makes way for the magic of complexity. Music for when you believe (Jesus is born!) but also have some unbelief (No crying he makes?). Music for when you are feeling human (these people are hard to love!) and when you are feeling divine (you don’t have to love them alone!) Music for your rainbow of moods because your moods are talking to you. Even when, or especially when, you’re all talked out.
So this is me wishing you a very moody Christmas.
And a vibey New Year.
XO,Erin
P.S. If you are my favorite, you will tell me your favorite track.
P.P.S. If you are in the mood to make fun of your moods, please see the genius that is Maya Erskine’s and Anna Konkle’s middle school drama, Pen15.
P.P.P.S. If you are in the mood to listen to holiday music, my favorites (in no particular order) are: Christmas with the Chipmunks (Alvin & the Chipmunks), A Legendary Christmas (John Legend), and Christmas Songs (Diana Krall.) What about yours?!?
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Around the world, the number one thing that correlates with happiness is realistic expectations. This, according to an interview with author Mary Pipher about her vital new book Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age. Listening to that interview, I had two thoughts in quick succession: 1) that sounds right to me and 2) how totally depressing.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I find it infinitely easier to toggle between extremes, between violently high expectations for myself and others and, like, absolutely no, zero, zilch expectations. Both, I think, serve a similar purpose: to protect me from the imperfection of connection. But both, also, have a similar shadow; they keep me from embracing my own life—and not the idea of my life I’m obnoxiously intent on cultivating but my actual life, the one that is obnoxiously intent on cultivating me.
My middle kid and I just wrapped up a ten-week, virtual therapy group for adoptive families. There was much to love about it: the dedicated space to talk specifics about our gains and griefs, the coping skills to build tolerance for general asshattery and ambiguity, the weekly “prizes”—Grub Hub gift cards for the parents, a grab bag of stress relievers for the kids. When asked what she’d miss most about the group, Middle said confidently, if not cheekily, “Oh, definitely, the prizes.” But what I’ll miss most is the regular invitation to kinder expectations.
Families of all sorts come teeming with expectations, especially here in America where we’ve turned a certain kind of family (“traditional,” manageable, congenial) into evidence of divine blessing or personal virtue. Maybe we expected our family would look like the one we grew up with. Maybe we expected our family would be able to enjoy each other for longer than a hot 24-hours. I expected our foster-to-adopt family would always feel subversively, charmingly “untraditional.” Instead, most days, we are quietly basic. We eat Ramen. We watch The Voice. We like each other, and we don’t sometimes.
Next week our family will be celebrating Thanksgiving with a not-so-basic trip to the Pacific Northwest where my beloved brother and sister-in-law live. Sitting beside Rush in the tub—a bath bomb explosion between us—I told him we should talk expectations. Like, let’s not expect to visit the Space Needle after a five-hour flight. Or, like, let’s expect we’ll want some adult-only time. “But most of all?” I said, stretching my greasy legs out over his, “Let’s expect to just savor Charlie and Jenny.”
Loves, I used to think that realistic expectations meant low expectations. It meant giving up on the hope of growth. It meant settling for less than full potential. But now, after my therapy (re)group, I wonder if the recipe for happiness is not low expectations but slow expectations. To pare down your holiday menu. To simmer on your ingredients at hand. To trust the steady burn of Time and Tending.
But most of all?
May you expect to savor your own life.
Your obnoxiously real and radiant life.
XO,Erin
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Hi Love,
So, you are angry.
(Are angry? Feel angry?)
It is okay to feel angry.
Even if it also makes you feel scared and stupid and sometimes nothing at all because anger has been with you for a long time, maybe even from the beginning.
In the beginning, the proverbs say, She raised her voice. She took her stand.She cried out, “My cry is to all that live.”
What if Anger is Wisdom?
Anger wants to know that you’re alive.
In this way, anger is your mother. She protects you.She protects the fragile, purple parts of you.
Picture her when the world infantilizes your anger.When it says this is nothing more than a tantrum.When it says you sound like a teenager’s rage.
(You would love to hear a teenager’s rage, because rage would mean she feels safe andsafe would mean she feels mothered.)
Ask anger if she can teach you her mature ways, how she can comfort you, if you can hold still,how she can regulate you, if you can breath through.
Ask her, too, what she is protecting you from.
Oh, and ask her what she is asking of you.
In the beginning, She had trustworthy things to say.She opened her lips to speak what was right.She shaped her words to form what was true.
What is true?
(You are angry that misogyny is sometimes funny.Angry that your body is sometimes funny: slow and bloated and doleful.
Angry that Afghan women are in hiding.Angry that you’re not better at hiding;Angry that you want to hide.
Angry when he leaves the bottle beside the recycling bin,Angry when she forgets the school note by the cereal bowl,Angry that carelessness begs more care from you.
Angry that breath doesn’t naturally smell better,And fiber doesn’t naturally taste better,And you aren’t naturally better.
You are angry at the circle of life,Angry that some things have to die,Angry when anger is one of them.)
In the beginning, the proverbs say, Wisdom sounded like anger. Wisdom hated.Hated evil and pride and arrogance. Was cool with words like hate.
In this way, anger is our mother. She protects us.She protects the fragile, purple parts of us.
Until we don’t need her protection.Until we know are from feel. Until we know. She won’t be with us always.So remember to say thanks.
XO,Erin
P.S. I did an experiment in anger this week. You can see it here.
P.P.S. While my body was feeling slow and bloated and doleful, I binged the new Netflix series, Maid. There’s a great bit in episode two about the necessity of anger.
P.P.P.S. If you need a swear-y, angry meditation, this one is perfect. Thanks, mom.
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My mom comes over this week, and it comes out that one of our kids has a stomach ache. So, being a retired nurse, she feels around and says she knows what it is. She knows what needs to be done. Kid needs a suppository. Do I want to do it or do I want her to do it?
This is not what I signed up for.
I hear this refrain a lot these days. I hear it in my head before I go to bed. I hear it from other parents, and non-parents, too. We had some thoughts and feels about how our lives would turn out that have been turned upside down. It’s painful, confusing, sometimes even shame-spiral-y. What’s wrong with me for not being more, I don’t know, hardy?
Rush and I were naive to think we could skip the “stay-at-home” stage by adopting three girls who were school-aged. I can see that now pre-tty-y clearly. It’s normal to make up our minds about big life things when we are feeling our best: strong, confident, capable. But, these days, I’m curious about the insights that are coming to us when we may be feeling our worst: tiny, exhausted, limited.
Pentecost is coming, and I’ve been “helping” Rush prepare a sermon, by which I mean I’ve been sermonizing to him with some serious eyebrows and undertones that say, “Right? Right.” Pentecost is the liturgical season following Easter in the Christian calendar, and it’s meant to celebrate the presence of God (what we call the Holy Spirit) falling on Jesus’s forlorn followers.
Life hadn’t turned out exactly how the early Christians expected either. Their God died! But then came back from the dead?!? But then spent a cagey forty days walking around the earth before ascending into the sky! I imagine they might have made different decisions, too, if they had seen their lives all the way through.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus’s ancient words to those ancient people. He tells them it’s better for them that he leaves. They couldn’t handle all the hard truths at once. So, he promises to send them a Holy Friend to hold their hand through the pain and walk them to a more joyful place. Like a woman going into labor, he says, the only way out is through.
I specifically did not sign-up for labor. Rush and I were childfree for ten years before fostering-to-adopt, in part, to honor our energy limits, our financial limits, and our planet's limits. A lot of people were aghast that we didn’t follow a kind of “if you can, you should” theology. But I think there is something very kind, very human, very holy, to embracing your reality. And then embracing your new reality.
The only way out is through. It is helping me these days to remember this spiritual truth. It is helping me when I wake up for the third time in four days having dreamed of my dead dog. It is helping me when I go to bed feeling bad for feeling bad about something I felt. It is helping me when I am asked to do a task I feel squarely ill-prepared for.
So, do I want to do it or do I want her to do it? My mom asks about the suppository. Said kid and I look at each other, panicked, and then point to her. “You do it,” I say. “I would feel better that way,” kid says.
The only way out is through, but we don’t have to go through it alone.
XO,Erin
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
This month's Everything Happens book club pick, Permission to Feel, is helping me and my crew expand our feeling vocabulary so that we can go from being emotional judges to emotional scientists. Whatever you're feeling today—gloomy? cozy? jittery?—it's worth feeling. And, if you can, worth sharing. Click here for discussion questions.
For those who know the Enneagram, I recently learned that my native number may not be where I default (Number #5) but where I move in growth (Number #8). So, this week I’ve been trying to channel the Lady 8 energy—confident-feeling, justice-loving, tender-hearted—from my youth. This Chicago-inspired playlist is getting me in the mood. (Note to listeners: Some songs are explicit.)
Speaking of Chicago, I had so much fun binging The Last Dance docuseries on ESPN last week. Michael Jordan is no poster child for honoring our limits but, man, does his life inspire me to remember what I want, to go for it with tongue-hanging-out hunger, and extend myself grace to about-face and begin again. Whoomp, there it is.
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Bleep. Blurp. Bog. I have no idea how to celebrate Mother’s Day anymore.
It used to be enough to buy Mom a gift and leave Grandma a message. But now that I mother three adopted girls who call me “Erin” it’s gotten capital-F fraught. Take the cards they’ve procured for me in the past. Words that they would never say aloud come falling out of Hallmark’s mouth. Do they want to call me Mom? Do they think I want them to call me Mom? Or have they, too, gotten some version of the “Motherhood is a woman’s highest calling” message and, for one sweet day, want to include me in the parade?
Rush tells me I have to stop thinking they’re thinking so much.
He and I have been thinking a lot lately about the docudrama series, Mrs. America. It follows conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (two l’s) as she makes a name for herself opposing the Equal Rights Amendment with a clever, but twisted, argument. American women don’t need equal protection under the law when God has already granted them the greatest privilege of all: childbearing.
Like many philosophers and theologians who came before her, Schlafly mistook natural law for divine intention. If women had wombs, God intended them to use them. If women bore children, God intended them to raise them.
Any student of history knows that this method of deduction has been bad not just for women’s bodies. Same-sex loving bodies couldn’t reproduce with each other. God must not have intended them for intimacy. Black bodies were thought to have smaller brains and be more tolerant of pain. God must have intended them for slavery—and resiliency! It’s this kind of biological determinism that’s behind why it took more than two mad months to arrest two white men in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Apparently, some bodies are made to suffer.
That’s what most gets my goad about Phyllis: if motherhood is a status conferred by God, then those who aren’t mothers, or aren’t biological mothers, or aren’t biological mothers who make their children their world, become not just second-class citizens but second-class humans. Deficient, deviant, deformed—in a word, cursed. At the very least, we become unlikeable. At the very worst, women of differing mothering “statuses” become unlikeable to each other. But, then, this has always been the American way: to divide the disenfranchised from themselves.
Instead of mapping human nature onto God’s intentions, I’m more compelled by the opposite. How does what we know about God’s nature guide human intentions? Modern Christians have made so much of God’s first commission in the book of Genesis—“to be fruitful and multiply”—and so little of Jesus’s new commission in the Gospel of John—“to bear fruit that will last.” Yes, God is pro-creative. But that creativity has never been bound by a woman’s womb. God’s legacy has always been bigger than DNA—and, dear God, so is ours. What better evidence is there for a legacy of love than a childless savior who taught we are souls before roles?
“Mothering is love by any means necessary.” These words, written by marginalized mothers of color in the anthology Revolutionary Mothering, are becoming my new mantra. They remind me that mother makes a better verb than noun. That mother makes a better practice than privilege. That we are all mothers, no special gender or gymnastics required.
We are all something-other-than-mothers, too. I count it as one of adoption’s best side effects that I got to keep my first name. But then don’t all mothers? I love my first name. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get a homemade card this year rather than a Hallmark one making an acrostic poem out of it. You know—E is for energetic, R is for real nice—that kind of thing. There’s always one word you can tell they tried real hard to make work, and that word always becomes my favorite. It reminds me they’re human. It reminds me ‘human’ is my first and greatest vocation, too.
So this Mother’s Day, I don’t know know what in the what we’re going to do. My mom is coming over; there are some benefits to parents with bad boundaries during a pandemic. (Love you, Mom.) We’ll FaceTime the girls’ birth mom for a tamale-making tutorial; Rush will be leading the shuck-show. And I’m lobbying for lavender cupcakes that I will 100% have to order myself.
If Mother’s Day rankles, please remind me that there are 364 days a year when I can celebrate myself using some other such metaphor—and, also, that Monday is my sleep-in day.
XO,Erin
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
If you didn’t catch the Mother’s Day devotionals I did for Red Letter Christians this week, blessing the less celebrated faces of mothering, you can download them here. If you do share, please cite me! I also made short videos to go along with each day that you can find on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram by following @HeyErinLane. It was a fun ride, and now I need to go outside.
A friend pointed me to a fantastic-looking resource from activist and theologian Christena Cleveland called Christ Our Black Mother Speaks. I haven’t dug in yet but it strikes me as required reading for any church person leading others through this non-liturgical holiday.
Already cruised through your usual shows? Put Mrs. America on Hulu in your new line-up. The real-life history lesson is riveting enough without the actresses who star in it being so freaking brilliant: Cate Blanchett is Phyllis Schlafly, Rose Byrne is Gloria Steinem, and Uzo Aduba is Shirley Chisholm to name a few. Gah, women, ammaright?!?
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I wrote some extraordinarily bad sentences this week. Worse, I wrote them and then I unwrote them and then I rewrote them and then I moved them to untitled documents where they would go to die a slow death.
This kind of pulsating behavior, I told myself, was understandable of a pandemic. But what of after a pandemic? What if I still couldn’t produce a cohesive paragraph or reply to a text the same day it was received or commit to anything after 5 o’clock in the evening? When would it stop being okay to tell myself it was okay?
I overheard my neighbor call it the COVID-15. Like the so-called Freshman 15, it’s the feeling that you’ve packed on the pounds, real or metaphorical, during this uncertain transition. Maybe it felt good to get softer. Or maybe it felt more greasy than that. Either way, maybe it feels like the weight is weighing you down. Like it’s going to be a long road to lighter. Maybe you’re afraid that you’ve lost your ability to flex an old muscle.
But you haven’t.
What to do still lives in you.
Like riding a bike—when you’re ready, but not before you’re ready—
Muscle memory will meet motivation.
And you will soar.
I know this because I got on a bike last night. Another neighbor, a bright and unabashed five-year old, has been doing circles up and down our block all week. I was shocked when I learned she only just learned. She careened by parked cars. She made sharp turns in open intersections. She chatted easily with older kids who rode alongside her like bodyguards. When I saw her cruise by, feet up on the crossbar, I dropped my jaw in awe. I wanted some of that sauce.
Inspired, our crew got some bikes out of the basement last night and set out for an after-dinner ride through the neighborhood. It was not glamorous. Two of our three kiddos do not know how to ride a bike yet and Rush and I have, so far, proved ourselves to be insufferable teachers. (I offered to outsource the lessons to the five-year old’s mom but, so far, no takers.) Someone fell. Someone cried. Someone thought they were being helpful by asking “What’s your goal here?” And someone was wrong.
After all the someone’s were feeling a little less salty, it was my turn to ride. I hopped on one of the unused bikes and was surprised how little effort it took to move. Even though it wasn’t my bike, I knew bikes. My hands knew where to rest on the handlebars, and my legs knew how to pump the pedals. They knew so well that when I was the first to make it home, I turned around. I pushed uphill again just to meet my strength. I flew downhill again just to feel my soar.
Mental health experts say it’s the same with our mindset muscles. Old patterns persist under the surface. We can tap into them. New patterns can be built. If we lean into them. We are not stuck in this moment. Or as Radical Wellness Collaborative’s Erin Baute sums it up, “Emotion creates motion and motion creates change.”
Listen. I am nowhere near ready to get back to normal, or the new normal, or whatever uncertain future awaits us, as it has always awaited us. There will likely be no goal-setting or goal-meeting or even goal-asking inquiries for at least another month, maybe more, maybe four.
But I am ready to believe that, by the grace of God, I’m capable.
And I’m becoming capable by flexing my capacity.
I agree to an evening of neighborhood Yahtzee—brackets, face-off, front porch-style. I send a text that says, I’m having trouble externalizing my insides but you matter. I write sixty-three sentences, in journals and on laptops and even in that sad phone app, until I find one, maybe four, worth keeping.
XO,Erin
P.S. It will never stop being okay to not be okay.
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
Want to feel more hopeful? Pledge all or part of your stimulus check to undocumented immigrants left out of the federal relief package.
Want to feel less afraid? Listen to the newest Everything Happens interview with “uncertainty specialist” and palliative care doctor Sunita Puri, author of the exquisite new memoir That Good Night.
Want to feel more connected? Buy one of Flourish Market’s new self-care kits for yourself or a friend that includes a copy of my book, Lessons in Belonging! What better time than now to remember that a feeling of belonging is not somewhere “out there” but “baked-in” to our soul sauce.
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My best dog died two Fridays ago. Or so that’s what I was told.
“Tell her she’s a good girl now,” the vet said before her last breath. I held her graying chin in my hand. Rush rested his arm on her rising ribs. And, then, stillness.
The anticipation of grief was worse than thing itself. She’d been trying to die on us for almost two years. Even before then, we knew she was too good to be true. We had morbid conversations like happy people do. “Can you imagine?” “I’ll be a wreck.” “Let’s go like they did in The Notebook—spooning in bed and all at once.”
Amelia was our firstborn. We had tried to wait after our wedding, at least a year or maybe six months, before bringing a young thing into the family. We lasted six weeks. She lasted almost fourteen years. Lasted through the bitter fights she’d break up. The cross-country moves she was our constant through. The adoption of three girls and another dog, none of whom would have loved us if they had not loved her first. I’m sure of it. She was our therapist, our witness, our co-parent.
I imagined the grief would be gruesome—and, of course, imagining it made it so. But after the stillness of her body, came the stillness of mine. Rush and I poured ourselves a jar of wine and rocked on the front porch, singing spirituals. “I’ve got a feeling everything’s gonna be okay. Oh, oh, oh, I’ve got a feeling…” We drank and cried and made up new verses about all the things Amelia was now doing and all the dogs she was now greeting until the wind chimes rang three times and we went silent again.
It was then that the voice got loud.
“She’s not in the tomb.”
When it comes to Holy Week, or the week in which Christians rehearse Jesus’s path to death, burial, and rebirth, I have more of a Holy Saturday personality than an Easter Sunday one, by which I mean I’m drawn to the suspense rather than the ending, the bitter rather than the sweet. “The threat of resurrection,” as Parker Palmer so perfectly puts it, is more terrifying to me than death for it seems to require an enthusiasm for life I don’t come by honestly. I would rather read in bed.
But this year, Amelia’s death has opened up something surprisingly mystical in me. Not more than twenty minutes after the doggie hearse departed from our house did I get the surreal sense that she wasn’t in the hair we clipped off her back and stuffed into snack-sized bags. She wasn’t in the anointing oil we rubbed between her black eyes or the poem we tucked into her Pepto-Abysmal blanket. She wasn’t in any of these things; not even in the photos or memories, as pleasant people kept insisting.
She lives, like really, really lives, within me.
There’s this story in the Bible about Jesus raising his friend, Lazarus, from the dead. When he goes to tell Lazarus’s sister, Martha, that this is the plan, she responds with reason: “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.” In other words, I know the doctrinal drill that all will be set right in some distant day, just not this day when we need it most. It’s easy during these painful days to feel the same painful way.
But then Jesus says something that’s even harder to believe than bringing back dead bodies: “You don’t have to wait to the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
Okay, I might have said before Amelia’s death. I’m lucky enough to never have lost anyone that I lived with until now; Death has largely been a comfortable abstraction. But because of this, so too has Resurrection. So too has Life. It hardly seemed possible that I could experience the fullness of either without some massive Jedi mind tricks. But then the reality I had so long feared happened and I am okay. Better than okay, I am alive.
I walk around the house crying and smiling and breathing and holding my hand to my chest when it hurts.
She says, “You hurt because you love.”
I go to bed at night praying and talking and listening and clutching the angel pin I stick to my pajamas.
She says, “You’re in pain but not suffering.”
I feel her presence on the porch and under the table and in the bathroom watching me pee like a creep.
She says, “You’re alone but not abandoned.”
She speaks to me like this all the time now. And I don’t care to distinguish whether it is the little she (dog) or the big S/he (God) because it all sounds the same.
“I will be who you need me to be.”
I don’t suppose every death will feel this way to me—or that every death should feel this way to you. I write only to say that it’s possible to live resurrected now. To let something go and grow larger. To grab hold of God and see glory. Any day. Every day. This day, when you need it most.
I miss Amelia’s physical body like a phantom limb. But now she goes everywhere with me. Not gone, just free, like Easter come early.
XO,Erin
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
To find God in this day and age requires some serious grace—and mindfulness. Enter Steve Wiens’ gentle but radical new book, Shining Like the Sun, that takes you through seven mindfulness practices (attentiveness, ordinariness, simplicity, rhythm, delight, conversation, and restoration) to get unstuck from the striving and fall back into the present. Buy two—one to gift, one for you. #SupportAuthors
If Jesus is, right now, Resurrection and Life then that means those of us who follow him and his teachings are compelled to work toward Resurrection and Life for all peoples. One of my favorite nonprofits, Circle de Luz, is working to support Latina girls and their families through the coronavirus crisis and beyond. You can become a donor, mentor, or volunteer by clicking here.
I don’t know the best way to give away what I don’t need during this time but I tried the Venmo-ing random strangers thing last week in celebration of my book contract with Penguin Random House. Stay tuned to follow my unfolding story. And if you know others who want to explore the spirituality of the childless, childfree, and improbable families, please tell them about #GoodforYouNews!
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When you get the news that your children’s schools are cancelled for not two weeks but two months, you will text your husband Bahaha! from the bedroom where you are working with the door closed. Closing a door counts as doing.
Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. — Parker Palmer
At the start of every week, you will write a list you cannot keep. You will not text one person a day to ask if they’re okay. You will not write three thousand words worth saving. You will take half of the vitamins you hoped for. That’s okay. Making a list counts as doing.
It seems impossible that desirecan sometimes transform into devotion;But this has happened. — Alice Walker
Some nights you will go to bed and forget to brush your teeth. Some mornings you will get up and leave the bed unfurled. You will not heed the holiest of all work-from-home advice and wear. real. pants. Noticing the nosedive is a place to begin. Paying attention counts as doing.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. — Simone Weil
It will be both a perfect and terrible time to grieve. The slow burn will start in your nose. Move like an ocean behind your eyes. Crest like a wave in your throat until you swallow or sob. And you will have all the time in the world to welcome it. After just one more episode, you will have all the time in the world to welcome it. Talking to grief counts as doing.
Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes to the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. — Denise Levertov
Invitations will land like manna at your feet. To virtual dance parties and book readings. To tiny concerts and home workouts. You will decline nearly all of them in favor of learning to live with yourself. You, despite your complaints about your fellow crew, are the one you must learn to survive. Contemplation counts as doing.
I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do. — Maya Angelou
When your pastor reminds you that rest is a form of resistance, that rest is actually anti-supremacist, that rest is what makes us human, you will feel validated. You will feel so validated for being doing-repressed that it will actually free you to be doing-released. To name the pain that is paralyzing you. To speak the feeling that would free you. To choose the micro-move you can do. Moving forward counts as doing.
Take this on faith: the mind may neverfind the explanations that it seeks, butyou will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave’s crest will carryyou to unknown shores, beyond yourwildest dreams or destinations. Let itall go and find the place of rest andpeace, and certain transformation. — Danna Faulds
XO,Erin
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The term “doing-repressed” is Enneagram speak for personality types 4, 5, and 9 who can get locked into a sort of “thinking about their feelings” or “feeling about their thinkings” loop. Never heard the word or model? Now is as good a time as any to get to know it—and yourself. Suzanne Stabile’s work is a place to start.
Checklists are our friends, friends. Check-out these checklists for challenging times from Alexandra Franzen. Bonus: sign-up for her newsletter or download the new season of her So Obsessed podcast for a bit of bubble gum in the bleakness.
Do you have what you need to maintain your mental health during this pandemic? The Radical Wellness Collaborative is offering lots of rad resources and community hangs to meet the moment. And, for the next two weeks-ish, they’re also offering a FREE scaled down, modified version of a wellness plan to get you started in your work.
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I remember when friends starting having their first babies. Not being interested in this particular human project, I was always curious where the desire stemmed in them. Their answers were as varied as the newly-forming lines on their faces but one response stuck with me: we want to do it differently than our parents. In other words, I heard, we want a shot at not f*g this up.
Not f*g this up seems to be a common, if not entirely achievable, goal among most parents.
On a recent episode of Modern Family, Phil reassures his daughter Hailey, who is freaking out over accidentally letting her babies watch some freaky television, that “it’s natural to worry about your kids; it just means you love them.”
“So I’m always going to feel like I screwed them up somehow?” Hailey asks.
“Kind of,” her mom, Claire, replies. “I mean, eventually, you’ll be able to laugh at it. Probably around the time you’re reassuring your own children that they didn’t screw up their babies.” (And if your children don’t have children? Permission to laugh on your own schedule.)
A co-parent to three adopted girls now, I get it. I worry, too, about how my small failures of kindness will shape their ability to give and receive love when they’re older. In fact, I’m already plotting my first work of fiction on it. Three girls. Talking to three different therapists. All with three different ideas of the woman they called Erin, er, I mean, Corrine. I only hope that Claire’s truism can also work in reverse sometimes: That around the time you get grown, you can laugh at some of your parents’ bungles, too.
Not f*g this up is, of course, a desire that extends past parenting. You might experience it on the job. Or in a romantic relationship. I’m experiencing it on the regular in my creative life, now that I’ve got the urgency of a new book to tend on what feels like a topical landmine. Most days I wake up with this desire hiding in some fold of my body. My small intestine. My pre-frontal cortex. The left nostril. It’s always there, like a fresh nugget waiting to be picked.
I’ve learned strategies to quiet its longing. To get curious about its needs. (Isn’t it amazing how just asking your body what it needs can soothe it?) In fact, that’s exactly what I was doing on my back porch last week when my pen scribbled the most surprising and salty thing I’d heard from God in a long time:
It’s all mine.
You’re all mine.
And I am un-fuckup-able.
(Yes, my God swears. Yes, I think swearing is good for you. Yes, it’s okay if we disagree about this.)
There’s a lot we can and do f**k up in our own lives and country. The care of the overlooked and underresourced in our communities. The response to global health pandemics. Our democratic elections. And we should take seriously the call to make our corner of the world at least 5% kinder than it was yesterday. (Some of my favorite ideas around the internet on how to do that during the coronavirus craze are to practice the Namaste bow, to check-in on a neighbor, to tread softly in nature, and to donate your would’ve-been-spent travel or professional development dollars.) But we also need to take seriously the call to stop killing ourselves with the idea that good decision-making alone will save us or our children.
The good news of this life is that the God of the universe withstands our worst and loves us anyway. The good news of this life is that we have that same unbreakable Spirit loving within us. Loving us with fresh breath (and boggers) every morning. Loving us with lusty breeze every afternoon. Loving us with an easy forgiveness every night.
Some things, praise be, are truly un-fuckup-able.
XO,Erin
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Tend your soul. Last week, I got to hear Melody Moezzi read from her melodic memoir, The Rumi Prescription: How An Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, and am convinced it’s the remedy we all need to live with more intention and ease. Her Rumi translations are a tonic and the story of her father’s teachings along the way even sweeter. All you need is within you. But, still, buy this book for when you forget.
Join a book club. This month’s selection for the Everything Happens book club is RJ Palacio’s young adult novel, Wonder. I love that at the heart of this book is the reminder to “always try and be a little kinder than necessary.” If you’re feeling stir crazy, agree to read with a few friends or neighbors and then chat using our discussion questions!
Support an author. Authors depend on book events for spreading the word about and making a living from their writing. With many of those events being canceled, it’s even more important that we support their work. Analog Church by Jay Kim, Defiant by Kelley Nikondeha, and Resilient Threads by Mukta Panda are three new release worth your time and shelf space.
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Over a year and a half ago, I wrote the introduction to what I thought would be my next book project on women who were "childfree for the common good."
Between now and then, I must have revised those 2,500 words nearly 2,500 times as I pieced together a nonfiction book proposal. With every revision I kept asking, "How can I write a book big enough to include me, a now formerly-childfree adoptive parent of three?" and "How can I write a book generous enough to include you, that is, any woman wants to be about more than her mothering status and more than her own kin?" And, Good God, would anyone buy that book?
The answer is yes.
Yes, after finding and loosing my first literary agent whom I adored (and would have absolutely tried to make my friend if she was local) but could not sell the book outside a narrow marketplace.
Yes, after turning down the only offer we received, a small advance but with a fantastic editor, because the book I had proposed was not actually the book I wanted to write. (Fuhhhdge.)
Yes, after going to a writing workshop with the muddled manuscript and hearing "we're confused but not bored." I hugged those words to my chest like a life vest.
Yes, after returning home and clearing my calendar and scheming a new funding source so that I could draw from the deep well of institutional life and maybe, like, once a month drink $12 wine.
Yes, after going inward in prayer and going with my gut on the page and going with a new agent who took three months, two title changes, and one major narrative shift before taking me on.
Yes, after sitting on the toilet and sob-smiling as I prepared for calls with publishing people who intimidated the hell out of me but proved to be genuine human beings.
Yes, after offers came in with paychecks deserving of a profession and editors who got what took me nearly two years to throw down.
Yes, after I wholeheartedly accepted one of those offers last week.
Good God, indeed.
We're still in the contract phase, but I am beyond thrilled to have found a publishing home for a book meant to debunk the myths and inspire new scripts for women who don’t have, want, or prize children like we’re supposed to. Tired of the cultural truisms that say “Your biological clock is ticking” or “Children are your God-given duty” or “It’ll be different when you have your own.” Tired of the lies that all make the same claim—mother love is a superior love—and tired of the lies that are seeding deep shame.
This is a book for women who want their lives to tell a better story than the lies.
I have often joked that in the time it took me to write a book proposal, other friends have written a book. But I’m partial to the “publishing for slow pokes” road. The twists and turns that, according to my friend Margaret, don’t so much take us the “wrong” way as they do the “long” way home. The long way makes the homecoming that much surer, and the belly that much softer.
But only for a week, maybe. Longer if you’re unperturbable. And then you set back out, one word in front of the other, to do the real work of working it out.
XO,Erin
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Got a few ideas for a book, but not sure what thread to follow? Got a book-length manuscript, but wondering how to ace the proposal? Got a book coming out, and want to find its audience? I’m taking a break from taking on any more book coaching clients while I focus on my own book but I’d love to field your authorial questions for future #GoodforYouNews posts or webinars. Not as an expert but as a companion in crock-pot publishing. Leave comments directly on this post or reach out to me via social media @heyerinlane.
You know who is taking new coaching clients? My friend Margaret who founded Illumined Leadership Solutions for people who want to level-up in their life and work. If you’re local to Durham, NC she’ll also be speaking at Lululemon’s upcoming International Women’s Day Event on Sunday, March 8th. Get your tickets here.
Finally, if you’re longing to be a part of a community of women who is already tearing up the mother myths, join us for our next Good for You Gathering here in Raleigh, NC on Tuesday, March 17th as we take on the idea that “Parenting is the toughest job in the world.” Think happy hour meets mini-retreat. Get your tickets here.
In the meantime, I’ll be reading Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, an anthology edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs that centers mothers of color and marginalized mothers’ voices. Right on.
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What do you want your community to celebrate about your life whether you partner, parent, or procreate?
It was the closing question at our last Good for You Gathering for women discerning “the good life” with no child of their own. And I was facilitating, feeling good, creating space, doing my non-anxious presence thing which is very genuine while I’m “on” and pretty fragile when I’m not.
All I can remember now is that I said something about wanting to be remembered for my research. Which felt weirdly vulnerable to admit. But it’s true. I want to leave a legacy of words that are sent out two-by-two. To make not disciples but friends. Friends with God. Friends with kindred. Friends with oneself.
The day after the gathering, I was having a thick time with that last one. “Who says that?” I asked Rush. “I want to be known for my research? Sounds kind of sad. Or, like, super ego-y. Like I’m more in love with ideas than people.”
Rush looked up from his lunch plate piled high with beige. Beige chips. Beige sandwich. Beige cashews. Even his expression was beige, which riled and soothed me all the same. He has never been troubled with my troubles.
And, then, these untroubled words: “Erin, when are you going to realize that writing is how you love people?”
I don’t know why I’d never thought of that.
This past week, I got to spend time at the Louisville Institute with pastoral leaders who received grants to study and scheme innovations in American Christianity. There were folders and tumblers and mixers. Worship and ritual and resources. A lot of non-spiritual sitting. I couldn’t have walked more than a quarter mile while there. It was pretty much bliss.
But the true blessing came when my friend Mike let us peak into his pastoral imagination. We were talking about the practice of confirmation, like theologians do, when Mike said they’d done away with the whole thing at his church and upgraded to celebration.
Instead of corralling students into the church, they have a party in each youth’s home. If a youth doesn’t have a home, they have it in someone else’s home. You learn more about what your community members really believe in their homes, Mike says. (And my autographed Friends picture would agree.)
So, each youth gets to invite whoever they want to this celebration. Then the guests go around naming gifts that they see in this youth. At the end of it all, the youth names what they see in themselves, or what you might call their call. People are asked to raise their hands who share this care. And then the gathered people bless that call, trusting it to evolve, but also trusting the youth’s resolve.
I told Mike and the rest of the group that no church community ever laid hands on me when I thought I might like to write. Or when I graduated from divinity school to become not a pastor but a bridge-builder. Or when I declared myself purposefully and prayerfully “childfree for the common good.” I felt jipped now! Jipped but juiced.
Like, how many blessings are we missing out on by baptizing not just babies but knowings? Confirming not just pre-teens but callings? Marrying not just lovers but strangers with shared cares? How many blessings are we missing out on by not blessing our work as love?
Honestly, I very often feel incapable of love. Or at least the love other people seem to feel. “Like your heart is beating outside of your chest,” they say, and I go cross-eyed. Like I’m trying to do the emotional equivalent of one of those Seeing Eye posters.
I believe this kind of chest-love exists for other people. I’ve just never been able to work it out for myself. And working it out, people tell me, about both Seeing Eye posters and chest-love, is not the point. Which makes it hard to see the point in trying.
But more and more, I’m embracing that the mind can love, too.
Did you know the Greek word for mind, nous, can mean “the soul’s angel”? Nous, like the French word for “we.”We who grow worlds within us.We who glow from a distance.We who protect the soul’s existence.
You may not have a community to bless your work as love. You, like me, may have to ask: for an ordination of sorts. For an anointing, if you will. For a confirmation of call, if you can. You may have to ask for you or for her or for him or for them. Asking is everything.
But a self-blessing, the poet knows, can be just as lovely, too.
XO,Erin
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I am in the blessing mood thanks to The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief by Jan Richardson. Although written after her husband’s untimely death, Jan has a way of penning gems for all sorts of ordinary moments, like her Blessing for Dining Alone or Insomnia Blessing. It’s also this month’s pick for the Everything Happens book club, which means you can find discussion questions to go along with it here. You may even try your hand at writing a blessing of your own, like I did with this Blessing for You Who Are Incapable of Love.
My pastor friend Mike is a humble genius. If you’re into the kind of upside-down thinking he’s throwing down, please pick-up his book Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places. There are lots of stories to spark your communal imagination. Like hiring someone called The Roving Listener. Or threatening to fire someone if they started a youth group. Think less meetings, more parties.
I have to admit that I reluctantly watched the Oscars last Sunday. And I was smitten. With not just Janelle Monae’s performance but also her power nodding throughout the night (and that cape!). With Utkarsh Ambudkar’s spontaneous freestyle. And Cynthia Erivo’s gut-wrenching freedom song that should have won. If you need a vision of what a legacy of “work as love” looks like, look no further than her portrayal of the childless Harriet Tubman in Harriet.
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Hello again!
Did you know I read all my #goodforyounews posts aloud before publishing? Nerdy but true.
When I read my last one on surrender aloud to my husband, and made myself laugh no less than three times, he said, You should record your reading. I think he thinks it’d make me more relatable. ;)
So, I’m trying this out just for funsies. In the spirit of trying. In the spirt of trying less. In the spirit of, you know, surrender.
XO,Erin
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