Letting myself be seen.
I spent years asking the world to truly see my children. Launch week was the moment I finally let it see me.
Be the loudest voice in the room.
A line from my book found me this week, not in a hospital room, but on a sidewalk and a stranger’s front lawn. A reflection on invisible illness, bullying, and what it really costs to stand up for the people who cannot yet stand up for themselves.
The Room Was Full.
Over sixty people filled a room in Back Bay to celebrate the launch of Fighting for Their Lives. A recap of the night, a thank you, and a fundraiser for BAGLY.
Winter Night
I bought a painting called Winter Night. There is a swirl in the center like a tornado, and what I learned looking at it is how you find your center again when everything is moving too fast.
The last few weeks before.
The book is almost here. It is finished, the proof is in my hands, but it is not in the world yet. I want to be honest about what is underneath the wait.
The courage was never in the loving.
People keep calling me brave. For loving my son. For supporting him. Then I heard a line from Anne Hathaway that named something I had never been able to say out loud.
Mental health is not a casserole disease.
Meg sat down at a lunch counter, opened this book, and almost broke down in tears on the first page. She’s been navigating her family’s mental health journey for years. What she said about this book stopped me.
Hope and grief are not mutually exclusive.
Some weeks of this caregiving life have held more contradictions than I knew a person could hold. A medication finally working. A new diagnosis arriving. It took me years to understand that both things could be true at once.
What early readers see.
Something I did not expect when I shared the manuscript with early readers: how often someone would say back to me, in different words, the thing I most needed to hear. A reflection on what beta readers give you, and what one early reader helped me see about who this book is really for.
When my child taught me something.
For years, I thought my job as my oldest's mom was to teach him how to navigate the world. What I missed, for longer than I would like to admit, was that he was teaching me too.
Let people surprise you.
A little over a year ago, I left my last role to fight for my middle child's right to the educational supports and placement he needed. The stories in my head started immediately. This is what I learned about who shows up