Current: After being home forever, I'll do anything.
Preferably before 4:30 pm in the winter. . . or not Monday nights when the Bachelor is on. . . other than that, anything.
Past:
If I could turn back time, I wouldn't go through my photos one day, come across a video of myself doing a speaking-event for my book, Dear Babies, at a beloved independent bookshop called The Dolphin Bookshop, and say "who the heck is ever going to watch this?," and delete it, because I'm such a hoarder-then-a-purger like that.
If I weren't unsure of copyright infringement, I would share a video of Cher singing "If I Could Turn Back Time" here.
Since all I have is what I have, I will share a transcript from the aforementioned engagement:
Preferably before 4:30 pm in the winter. . . or not Monday nights when the Bachelor is on. . . other than that, anything.
Past:
If I could turn back time, I wouldn't go through my photos one day, come across a video of myself doing a speaking-event for my book, Dear Babies, at a beloved independent bookshop called The Dolphin Bookshop, and say "who the heck is ever going to watch this?," and delete it, because I'm such a hoarder-then-a-purger like that.
If I weren't unsure of copyright infringement, I would share a video of Cher singing "If I Could Turn Back Time" here.
Since all I have is what I have, I will share a transcript from the aforementioned engagement:
"I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty of still thinking the holidays are going to go perfect. And when I say perfect, I mean that everyone in my immediate family will be present, because of all the unsolicited mom advice I’ve ever been given, nothing holds more true than this:
'At least one child will be sick for every vacation, birthday or holiday.'
I thought this would be a good place to start, on this eve, eve, eve of Mother’s Day, to talk about expectations, also because it ties into the back story of why are you sitting here today, listening to my wannabe TED talk. There’s something to be said about that moment in life when you realize things are not going as you’d expected.
For me I call it that moment when I stop and say--
'Oh, okay. . .'
In 2008 I left my corporate job at J.Crew. I took the job after being an entertainment editor at Seventeen magazine because after reviewing enough books, I had the crazy idea that I could write my own. I went to J.Crew thinking if I weren’t writing all day, I would have the energy and brain power to come home at night and write. . . yeah that didn’t happen. J.Crew was awesome, producing photo shoots, on set most days, with a discount, to boot. But I definitely had that moment when I realized my goals and my reality were growing further and further apart.
Around this time, I started trying to get pregnant.
Just when you’re starting to think--
I’m so glad I came tonight to hear the inner workings of Amy’s gynecological history
—I’ll spare you that and summarize, pretty quickly we learned we were going to need some help.
I touch on this in the prologue of the book and in pieces throughout, that cycle of learning things are not going as expected—and adjusting—those moments of shifting into an action plan. Saying, “oh, okay. . .”
I had a lot of those “oh-okay” moments when I was trying to get pregnant.
And, coincidentally, I had a lot of them with my writing.
In six months-time I completed a fiction book called “The Avian Conspiracy,” and the cycle of edits and queries was not going as I’d planned.
After two years of enduring the double-whammy at cocktail parties (client-dinners with my husband), smiling through the questions, “So, are you guys going to have kids?” and, “So, what’s going on with the book??” I found out I was pregnant with twins.
My only two eggs implanted through in vitro worked; they’re home right now watching Dora the Explorer.
There was such excitement, and such fear.
Maybe it’s a Catholic-guilt thing, maybe I’m crazy, maybe both, but when I was trying to get pregnant I could never shake the feeling of, what cosmic thing did I screw up to cause this. What did I do. Was this payback for high school. Surely, this is my fault. . . Then to be graced with an abundance of good news—twins--I was literally petrified. I did not want to do anything to screw it up.
Also floating around my mind were thoughts of, oh my god, I have no job. . . I left my job to write a book that was never going to get sold.
To keep from losing my mind, I opened my laptop and wrote a letter to the babies.
“Dear Babies,” it began. . .
That line was 100% written from the heart with no intention of anyone ever seeing it. It wasn’t until three-months into the first trimester when I actually published the letters on my website, and in doing so created a blog that grew a following. Not big. Not huge. But enough that one day a stranger reached out to me and thanked me. She said the letters made her feel less alone. It was one person. But sometimes, one person is enough.
When I was about seven-months pregnant I had a meeting about my fiction book and learned it still needed a lot of work, but, the editor said, she really liked the letters I was writing on my blog. . .And I said, “Oh, okay.”
We teamed up about a year and half ago to put together a collection of letters written when I was pregnant, and I was set to hit the query circle again. Only this time, different. This time, with much thicker skin. Once you have kids, don’t you feel like you can do anything? You grew a human, without any job training or instructions or remote clue about what you were doing. And you continue to do so in that way. With that in mind, you see so clearly that nothing else in the entire world matters except the health and safety of your child. So when a few “no’s” from agents started to come in, it was all okay.
To take an excerpt from the book here, on Friday, October 29, 2010, I wrote:
Dear Babies,
We did our pre-op blood work at the hospital today. We’ll all set for Monday.
You started kicking when our favorite song came on in the car home, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Remember how much I played that the beginning of our pregnancy?That was a lifetime ago. Everything that has happened since then, everything that has ever happened, it all gets lumped now into “before.”
Before. . .
I remember when I was an editorial assistant at MoreI went to a seminar presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors on how to make it to the next step. How to climb your way up the masthead, or something like that. There were all of these top level editors there from popular magazines, and I believe it was someone from Time Out New Yorkwho said, “No one is going to save you. No one is going to come tap you on the back.”
If you want something in life, babies, you have to go get it. Never get stuck. I implore you to work hard and never give up on your dreams and your goals.
I wanted to have a baby.
I never gave up.
A family at the pizza place tonight stopped me as I waddled by on my 20th trip to the bathroom. “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” they said, “but we have to ask, how many babies are in there?”
“Two,” I answered.
They’d bet each other three.
Tears welled up as I passed them.
“You okay?” your dad asked helping me slide back into the table.
I grinned the grin of triumph.
“Never better.”
Love,
Mom
I put into writing, never get stuck.
I put into writing, no one is going to save you.
(Aren’t I so nice?)
There’s a quote I love you may have heard—"you need to be the change you want to see in the world.” When you become a mom, you don’t just need to be the change you want to see, you need to be the person you want your kids to be.
We’ve got to watch our language.
We gotta eat right.
This is hard.
This is one of many things about parenting that is hard.
I flat-out lied to my daughter the other night when she busted me for eating chocolate covered popcorn for dinner. “Mama, what are you eating??” with her eyes lit up in glee. I told her it was cauliflower with brown sauce. "Eat your vegetables," when I’m eating friggin’ popcorn.
I implored my kids in writing to not give up when they faced stumbling blocks.
I told them no one was going to save them.
I told them no one was going to come tap them on the shoulder and offer them a better way and “unstuck” them.
And that’s how I come to stand before you tonight.
No one was tapping me on the back saying they wanted to publish “Dear Babies,” so I published it myself. I’ve been a one woman show, cranking this out in my gym clothes singing that song “everyday I’m hustlin’” in the back of my head.
I am not here to tell you how great I am.
If you get anything out of tonight, more than a latte or a muffin, it’s that I hope you see that great things can come out of moments when things do not go as expected. When you stop and say, “Oh, okay.”
I’ll end with a part of a letter, written on Tuesday, August 21, 2010:
. . . when I graduated from college in 2001 I joined a group called ED2010. It posted daily job listings and industry news to help young fledglings like myself in magazine publishing achieve their “dream job” by the year 2010. A good way to see if you’re on the right career path is to look at your bosses, do you want their job? While I saw that I did not, I still chased after those listings. I wanted to be a writer, which at the time I thought meant feeling validated by working at a big-name magazine. (You really don’t know half the things you think you do at age 22.)
Today I realize—as clarity does come with age, babies, not just “old” age but any age, any time you can look back on an experience and see it objectively and learn from it—I don’t need someone to tell me I’m a writer. I am one. I’ve always been one. I wrote “The Blackbeard Murders” in crayon when I was five. I’ll always be one, the way someone is a pessimist, or is someone who simply does not eat peas.
. . . Funny how another role has popped up in time for this 2010 deadline: Motherhood. I can’t help but wonder, has this been the plan all along?
I really don’t care for dream anything, babies. It cheapens things. Makes it all seem so Barbie. Dream house. Dream job. Dream man.
I do like thinking about the paths we take. The choices we make. The hard things we go through to get us to that big picture. Maybe we should see life like this:
Steps on a ladder, year after year."
'At least one child will be sick for every vacation, birthday or holiday.'
I thought this would be a good place to start, on this eve, eve, eve of Mother’s Day, to talk about expectations, also because it ties into the back story of why are you sitting here today, listening to my wannabe TED talk. There’s something to be said about that moment in life when you realize things are not going as you’d expected.
For me I call it that moment when I stop and say--
'Oh, okay. . .'
In 2008 I left my corporate job at J.Crew. I took the job after being an entertainment editor at Seventeen magazine because after reviewing enough books, I had the crazy idea that I could write my own. I went to J.Crew thinking if I weren’t writing all day, I would have the energy and brain power to come home at night and write. . . yeah that didn’t happen. J.Crew was awesome, producing photo shoots, on set most days, with a discount, to boot. But I definitely had that moment when I realized my goals and my reality were growing further and further apart.
Around this time, I started trying to get pregnant.
Just when you’re starting to think--
I’m so glad I came tonight to hear the inner workings of Amy’s gynecological history
—I’ll spare you that and summarize, pretty quickly we learned we were going to need some help.
I touch on this in the prologue of the book and in pieces throughout, that cycle of learning things are not going as expected—and adjusting—those moments of shifting into an action plan. Saying, “oh, okay. . .”
I had a lot of those “oh-okay” moments when I was trying to get pregnant.
And, coincidentally, I had a lot of them with my writing.
In six months-time I completed a fiction book called “The Avian Conspiracy,” and the cycle of edits and queries was not going as I’d planned.
After two years of enduring the double-whammy at cocktail parties (client-dinners with my husband), smiling through the questions, “So, are you guys going to have kids?” and, “So, what’s going on with the book??” I found out I was pregnant with twins.
My only two eggs implanted through in vitro worked; they’re home right now watching Dora the Explorer.
There was such excitement, and such fear.
Maybe it’s a Catholic-guilt thing, maybe I’m crazy, maybe both, but when I was trying to get pregnant I could never shake the feeling of, what cosmic thing did I screw up to cause this. What did I do. Was this payback for high school. Surely, this is my fault. . . Then to be graced with an abundance of good news—twins--I was literally petrified. I did not want to do anything to screw it up.
Also floating around my mind were thoughts of, oh my god, I have no job. . . I left my job to write a book that was never going to get sold.
To keep from losing my mind, I opened my laptop and wrote a letter to the babies.
“Dear Babies,” it began. . .
That line was 100% written from the heart with no intention of anyone ever seeing it. It wasn’t until three-months into the first trimester when I actually published the letters on my website, and in doing so created a blog that grew a following. Not big. Not huge. But enough that one day a stranger reached out to me and thanked me. She said the letters made her feel less alone. It was one person. But sometimes, one person is enough.
When I was about seven-months pregnant I had a meeting about my fiction book and learned it still needed a lot of work, but, the editor said, she really liked the letters I was writing on my blog. . .And I said, “Oh, okay.”
We teamed up about a year and half ago to put together a collection of letters written when I was pregnant, and I was set to hit the query circle again. Only this time, different. This time, with much thicker skin. Once you have kids, don’t you feel like you can do anything? You grew a human, without any job training or instructions or remote clue about what you were doing. And you continue to do so in that way. With that in mind, you see so clearly that nothing else in the entire world matters except the health and safety of your child. So when a few “no’s” from agents started to come in, it was all okay.
To take an excerpt from the book here, on Friday, October 29, 2010, I wrote:
Dear Babies,
We did our pre-op blood work at the hospital today. We’ll all set for Monday.
You started kicking when our favorite song came on in the car home, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Remember how much I played that the beginning of our pregnancy?That was a lifetime ago. Everything that has happened since then, everything that has ever happened, it all gets lumped now into “before.”
Before. . .
I remember when I was an editorial assistant at MoreI went to a seminar presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors on how to make it to the next step. How to climb your way up the masthead, or something like that. There were all of these top level editors there from popular magazines, and I believe it was someone from Time Out New Yorkwho said, “No one is going to save you. No one is going to come tap you on the back.”
If you want something in life, babies, you have to go get it. Never get stuck. I implore you to work hard and never give up on your dreams and your goals.
I wanted to have a baby.
I never gave up.
A family at the pizza place tonight stopped me as I waddled by on my 20th trip to the bathroom. “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” they said, “but we have to ask, how many babies are in there?”
“Two,” I answered.
They’d bet each other three.
Tears welled up as I passed them.
“You okay?” your dad asked helping me slide back into the table.
I grinned the grin of triumph.
“Never better.”
Love,
Mom
I put into writing, never get stuck.
I put into writing, no one is going to save you.
(Aren’t I so nice?)
There’s a quote I love you may have heard—"you need to be the change you want to see in the world.” When you become a mom, you don’t just need to be the change you want to see, you need to be the person you want your kids to be.
We’ve got to watch our language.
We gotta eat right.
This is hard.
This is one of many things about parenting that is hard.
I flat-out lied to my daughter the other night when she busted me for eating chocolate covered popcorn for dinner. “Mama, what are you eating??” with her eyes lit up in glee. I told her it was cauliflower with brown sauce. "Eat your vegetables," when I’m eating friggin’ popcorn.
I implored my kids in writing to not give up when they faced stumbling blocks.
I told them no one was going to save them.
I told them no one was going to come tap them on the shoulder and offer them a better way and “unstuck” them.
And that’s how I come to stand before you tonight.
No one was tapping me on the back saying they wanted to publish “Dear Babies,” so I published it myself. I’ve been a one woman show, cranking this out in my gym clothes singing that song “everyday I’m hustlin’” in the back of my head.
I am not here to tell you how great I am.
If you get anything out of tonight, more than a latte or a muffin, it’s that I hope you see that great things can come out of moments when things do not go as expected. When you stop and say, “Oh, okay.”
I’ll end with a part of a letter, written on Tuesday, August 21, 2010:
. . . when I graduated from college in 2001 I joined a group called ED2010. It posted daily job listings and industry news to help young fledglings like myself in magazine publishing achieve their “dream job” by the year 2010. A good way to see if you’re on the right career path is to look at your bosses, do you want their job? While I saw that I did not, I still chased after those listings. I wanted to be a writer, which at the time I thought meant feeling validated by working at a big-name magazine. (You really don’t know half the things you think you do at age 22.)
Today I realize—as clarity does come with age, babies, not just “old” age but any age, any time you can look back on an experience and see it objectively and learn from it—I don’t need someone to tell me I’m a writer. I am one. I’ve always been one. I wrote “The Blackbeard Murders” in crayon when I was five. I’ll always be one, the way someone is a pessimist, or is someone who simply does not eat peas.
. . . Funny how another role has popped up in time for this 2010 deadline: Motherhood. I can’t help but wonder, has this been the plan all along?
I really don’t care for dream anything, babies. It cheapens things. Makes it all seem so Barbie. Dream house. Dream job. Dream man.
I do like thinking about the paths we take. The choices we make. The hard things we go through to get us to that big picture. Maybe we should see life like this:
Steps on a ladder, year after year."