Happy Birthday!
One book and a whole lot of journal pages
On July 14th, my book Radical Wellness: Pathways to a Healthy Body, Mind, and Planet will celebrate its first birthday. I created this book, but when it came out into the world, it started a life all its own. Each person who reads it brings their own perspective, and the same person can bring a different perspective on a different day. It is a book meant to be engaged with, reflected on, and grown with.
To celebrate this milestone, I went back this week to where it all began: my journals.
In January of 2020, I decided to start a new journaling practice. Not just any kind of journaling. I wanted to focus on getting to know myself, on growth, on mindfulness, and on creating habits of care that would help me show up in the world in a way that felt in alignment with my values and my inner spirit. I wanted to be honest, but mostly I wanted to be compassionate. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was that this practice would do three things at once: give me the confidence to write, teach me so much about how to care for myself, and become the very heart of the book I had always wanted to write.
I had always wanted to write a book about health and wellness, but I wasn’t doing much actual writing beyond workshops and handouts for my job as a wellness professional. Journaling changed that. It gave me a place to practice.
I started slowly. My first three entries took up only six to eight lines of the page, and I didn’t write on the other side. Maybe filling a whole journal felt too overwhelming. I quickly gave that up and started using both sides.
I started by using The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo as my guide, companion, and motivation, a book of daily reflections about life, always ending with journal prompts and meditation suggestions. My first entry is dated January 8th, 2020. I copied a line from page nine: “. . . things are never quite as bad as they seem inside the problem.” In response, I wrote just seven words: Your heart knows the way. Trust and patience.
On February 1st, I wrote about trying to meditate for five minutes, imagining my breath like the ocean: “Breathe in like a wave being sucked back into the ocean and breathe out like a wave coming ashore. Like the ocean is breathing. I am the ocean.”
On February 13th, I asked myself, “What would a loving inner voice sound like?” and invited that new voice into the conversation. I wrote: “Start to view your inner voice as a true partner, and recognize the power you have to make it a better relationship. Trust that your inner voice can grow and change, it just needs a little feedback and redirection.”
I spent a couple of hours this week reading through the rest of that first journal, witness to the time I took to engage with books, podcasts, and especially my own thoughts. I noticed that over time, the words and ideas began to flow more effortlessly. The practice was working on the page and inside me.
When COVID hit, I kept writing.
I took the free Yale course on Happiness and kept my notes in my journal. I learned about the power of gratitude and the art of savoring, stepping outside of an experience to take time to appreciate it. I developed a practice of savoring something each day and writing about it: a nice hot shower, a delicious meal, seeing my kids laugh together. I wrote each day about things I was grateful for as the world was unraveling. I didn’t just learn about gratitude during that time. I felt its power. It kept me grounded.
When I missed days in my journal, I just picked up where I left off. No judgment, just back to the page.
On April 3rd, 2020, I wrote: “Today on my walk, I savored the air on my face and the earth under my feet.” Reading that back this week, I felt a little corny and also completely in love with that corny human.
I wrote about my kids becoming young adults and my need to be needed. I allowed space to begin to feel the quiet of an emptying nest and what it might mean to fill that space with myself. I examined limiting beliefs that were holding me back and began to loosen my grip on them, to imagine new possibilities.
And then I started writing about the book.
On June 13th, 2020: “My book has to come from a place of love and how to put that love into action. Everything starts there.”
On July 28th: “My question — Why do I not follow through with what I know and feel is important to me? I really want to write this book, then why don’t I just work on it and see what happens?”
I kept asking. I kept writing. I kept showing up.
I wrote about turning 50 and getting a reading from a psychic.
My writing evolved over time. I leaned into feelings of restlessness, uncertainty, and disappointment. I noticed them, trying to leave the judgment aside. I asked questions and recognized these feelings as part of the process of growth, not something to be fixed.
Towards the end of rereading that first journal, I started noticing passages that actually ended up in the book in some form or another. The book had been inside me all along, growing in the pages of those journals, one entry at a time.
Thirteen filled journals later, when I hold Radical Wellness on its first birthday, what I feel most is pride and gratitude, not just for the finished thing, but for the version of myself who showed up day after day to write it. Who kept going when the entries were only six lines long. Who picked up the pen after missing days without judgment. Who asked hard questions and sat with the answers. Writing this book was the most radical act of wellness I have ever practiced. It was the gift I gave myself.
And it turns out that when you give yourself a gift like that, when you show up honestly for your own growth, it doesn’t stay contained. It spills over. It reaches out. It invites others to do the same.
Your heart knows the way. Trust and patience.
Happy birthday, little book. Look how far we’ve come.
(This post was written first in my journal!)
My friend Julie sent me something this week as I was working on this piece. It turns out that just five minutes of handwriting a day can do more for your memory and learning than you would ever expect from something so small. Something about pen on paper engages the brain in a way that typing never quite does. Reading that, I thought about all those journal pages, all those days with a pen in my hand, and I felt grateful all over again for the practice that started it all.
So here is my birthday wish, for you and for myself: pick up a pen. Start small. Six lines are enough. You don’t have to write on both sides of the page.
Your heart knows the way. Trust and patience.
On September 9th, I will be starting another Radical Wellness Book Club. For more information or to sign up, click here.
Read Together, Discover Together
Group meetings keep us connected, inspired, and accountable to one another.
Each participant benefits from shared experiences and mutual support. If you can’t make all of the sessions, no worries! You can still keep up with the reading and exercises.
What to Expect
In our 5 group sessions held over Zoom every two weeks, we will:
Begin with a grounding meditation
Share check-ins and provide feedback to one another
Review and reflect on the material and exercises from the book
Explore next steps and opportunities
That year went by quick, congrats