For about two years now, I’ve known my next book was coming.

But kinda like how the gestation period for an elephant is 18-22 months vs. 40 weeks for a human, all creative projects have their own baking time.

After months of thinking about the book and starting to talk to my inner circle about it, I finally started the proposal in earnest last Thursday on the first new moon of the year on 1/11.

Side note: A decade ago I would’ve been beating myself up for not having any visible evidence of my new book for so long, despite knowing its time was coming. I know my creative cycles and processes well enough now, though, to trust the timing.

Just like we don’t see anything happening for a while before a seedling sprouts above ground, I trust that the marination time has all been necessary and productive. Plus, beating ourselves up has yet to prove to be an effective strategy for sustainable transformation.

Back to the book…

As I let my ideas pour through my fingers onto the fresh Google doc, I could feel the structure of the book begin to whisper to me.

The whisper is still faint and I know it’ll get louder each time I show up to the altar of the page.

What I know for sure, though, is that this book started taking shape the moment I pushed out my second baby, Ruby, on April 8, 2018, a full year before Do Less was even published.

And as I started retelling the stories that will become the vertebra holding the spine of this book together, I was surprised by what happened.

As a hearty New Englander who comes from a family whose matriarch’s motto was “Don’t ask for a lighter pack. Ask for a stronger back,” I have a large capacity for things to be intense without actually feeling the intensity in the moment.

It’s a coping mechanism that’s served me well.

But it’s also why, as I started writing and began to pull the threads of the last 6 years that included bringing a second child into the world, moving 4 times, my husband being debilitating ill without a clear diagnosis or treatment plan for months on end, the pandemic and the political and family turmoil that it brought with it, my husband breaking his knee and then getting hit by a car 18 months later, shattering the very same knee, I felt a lot of grief.

It makes sense that I couldn’t start the book until now.

We were very much still in it.

Mike’s in the best shape and vitality I’ve seen him in since before we had kids.

Our company had its best year of all time last year.

We have stable support and community.

We just signed a 13 month lease on a new workspace.

My kids are the healthiest and happiest they’ve ever been.

Our extended family’s political discord has moved to the back burner.

If I didn’t know what I know about the nervous system, I’d think there was something wrong with me that all of a sudden I’m feeling all of these feelings about what we’ve been through.

Feelings that, honestly, I thought I’d felt already.

But actually, when more stuff comes up to be felt, it’s a good sign.

When we feel safe enough, it’s a sign of wellness and stability, like now we have enough capacity to feel things we didn’t have enough energy, space, or support to feel before.

It doesn’t matter if something happened yesterday, last month, 10 years ago, in utero, or to your grandmother’s grandmother.

Our nervous systems store the memory and emotions of what’s happened to us (or to those we inherited DNA from) until we have the capacity to feel them all the way in and all the way through.

I’m glad I didn’t rush the book.

I wasn’t ready to start it because I didn’t have the stability to relive it…until now.

If you find yourself feeling waves of unexpected grief, anger, or any other emotion that might be uncomfortable and the feelings don’t match with what’s going on in your life, perhaps it’s a good sign.

Perhaps, like me, it’s time to exhale. Perhaps you’ve built enough safety and wellness to go back in time and close a bunch of emotional tabs from the past.

If so, congratulations! I’m right beside you, feeling it all and reclaiming my bandwidth for the next chapter of creation.

All my love,
Kate