Thank You Isn’t Close to Enough (But It’s All I’ve Got?)

After six years earning my PHD (Persistent Hopeful Delusion) in becoming a published author, I felt prepared for the release of my debut novel. On launch day, I would exhale with relief and triumph, having finally reached the summit of that near-vertical learning curve.

Except that summit was actually the ticking peak of a roller coaster. Launch day (week? Month? What day is it?) sent me swooshing through a kaleidoscope of plot twists I never saw coming–about myself.

Lesson One: I have more friends than I thought

Launching The Blue Iris revealed that, in some important ways, I’m still the eleven-year-old girl who ate lunch alone and spent recesses hiding in the bathroom stall. The unmatched cruelty of middle school girls left me a little too wary of women. Unexpected kindness has me looking over my shoulder, bracing for the catch, while anything resembling a compliment leaves me fumbling for ways to reject it.

So imagine the cocktail of emotions as I was picking up some gorgeous marketing swag from a local small business, and after mentioning to the owner that I was struggling with my social media graphics, she offered to do some up for me. For free. “I want us all to succeed,” she said. “If I can help make that happen in any way, I will.” And while I couldn’t agree more, and probably would have done exactly the same thing, I was shocked to a puzzling degree that someone else, a woman I’d only just met, would do it for me.

Then there were the inevitable snags and delays that come with publishing a book (plus maybe a few more?). I found myself glued to a desk in the basement for weeks that turned into months, overwhelmed and unraveling as wrinkles in the process began to feel like sinkholes.

Meanwhile, a village rallied outside, joining forces from postal to zip codes to make sure they caught every ball before I dropped it. Chasing down marketing leads, passing out promo bookmarks, taking my child swimming, walking my dog and sending groceries. Tethering me to an unbroken chain of virtual hugs well after I stopped replying. Celebrating on my behalf (and reminding me to join in once in awhile). While I was cut off from the world, they were taking it by storm, championing this book most of them hadn’t even read yet.

For me.

Then, days before the launch, COVID had me bailing on a conference in Chicago where a fierce and beautiful tribe of women were gathering, many of whom I write alongside almost daily via Zoom. This group has a solution to every conundrum, a tonic for any wound, and I will never stop going on about how they changed everything for me. Naturally, I was so disappointed not to be joining them–but I was bowled over at how many of THEM seemed to miss ME just as much.

There I was, the gun shy girl so accustomed to watching from the sidelines, a part of the group (my group!) like never before in my life. And I wasn’t even there.

Lesson 2: It’s Not A Solo Mission

I used to think being a writer meant being alone. Just me and the screen and some people I made up.

Which can become quite the self-fulfilling prophecy; I spent years going in circles. Second guessing everything. Wondering what I was doing wrong and making it worse for trying to fix it. Adamant I’d tell no one I was writing a book (because what business did I have calling myself a writer, when nobody wanted to publish anything I wrote?).

It was only after I owned what I was doing (regardless of the outcome) and started speaking into existence the person I was (rather messily) becoming that stars began to align. With a tribe of writers around me and a village behind me, everything shifted in a palpable way.

It’s no coincidence that after half a decade of getting absolutely nowhere alone, everything I’d been clawing towards came together in a matter of months once I found my people–then let them in.

Lesson Three: I Might Never Stop Crying

Seriously. I’m really starting to annoy myself with this. A kind word about my book, and I can’t see where I’m walking. A screenshot of someone holding a copy and I’m sobbing in the middle of Shoppers Drug Mart.

What the hell?

But then, The Blue Iris isn’t a book for me. Never has been. At first, it was the lifeline pulling me from a dark, fearful place. Then, it healed my body. Then, it stole my heart. It proved me a fighter and forced me to get good and comfortable calling myself a writer.

By extension, those friends I didn’t think I had, this exquisite village who is patiently and persistently teaching me how to let them help, how to be gentler with myself, are doing SO MUCH MORE than they realize by lending their support to it.

By sharing their networks, ideas, lessons and platforms, buying a copy of the book (maybe one or two more for their friends), taking time to read its pages (and hence my heart), then telling me–and others!–that they ENJOYED it . . . it’s surreal, and beautifully dismantling.

Because what they’re also telling me is I didn’t make the stupidest, most wasteful decision of my life when I left a perfectly good career six years ago.

They’re proving there’s no force on earth more transformative or unstoppable than the sort of women who lift up other women.

They’re assuring me these characters I raised from infancy and loved with ferocity, these slices of myself (who, by the way, I’m having a really hard time figuring out how to let go of after all this time), are going to be just fine out there on their own.

They’re kicking open the bathroom stall and marching that little girl into the sunlight, assuring her it’s safe out there, because this time we’re together.

So, yeah. The crying.

The banal, pathetically inadequate THANK YOU SO MUCH on a loop.

Because even though my whole schtick is to chase the meaningful arrangement of words, I can’t find any that come anywhere close to what I actually mean to say.

So . . . to everyone who made my book launch about way more than my book–especially the women–thank you. So much.