I have found stepping into greater visibility this year both challenging and, at times, scary.
The old voices in my head kept taunting me: “Who do you think you are, to be so out there?”

“Why?” you might ask. “You seem to be seeking out such visibility?”

We all have backstories, and mine is that I grew up excruciatingly shy, almost ashamed to take up space. I was the plump, spotty one in a sporty, academic family. I often felt alien in a family of high achievers—both on the sports field and in the academic world.

“Writing made sense of my whole life. Today I am a writer who speaks. I did not write this book. This book wrote me. Writing chose me, writing healed me.” Now I choose to live a life worth writing for, a life worth writing about. I choose to step into the light.”

Except from “Belonging; Finding Tribes of Meaning.”