You know how stressful it is when you have a bunch of important things to do and you’re struggling to figure out how to get it all done? That’s me right now. 

I’m supposed to be completing the back half of my next book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. This has been true for months. COVID hasn’t helped. And now, as the nation’s consciousness is on the violence perpetrated against black people (Thank GOD), I’m fielding a lot of requests to speak about race. And I want to do them. I’m honored to get to be in the conversation. And particularly after having written Real American, I feel I might actually be able to be of use. Just this week I’m having a pinch-me moment of getting to be in conversation with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, one of our leading voices on race and anti-racism.

Yet Your Turn is like a plane-barreling-down-the-runway-while-the-wings-are-being-bolted-on. It’s already pre-orderable online. It has a publication date. And as of today, it has a jacket, which outside of my team and family you are the first to see. Authors get hardly any say over our jackets, and I’ll confess I’ve never liked the jacket for How to Raise an Adult. But this one, I love. I feel the love in my bones. I’ve been sneaking peeks at it all day! I hope you like it, too.

But you get that I’m still writing the thing, right? (I have a nagging feeling that this is not how real authors behave). Still, I’d be lying to you if I pretended this wasn’t the way I always do things. I guess what I mean is, terror meets exhilaration pretty regularly in my life. I think it fuels me!

So, what I'm trying to say to you is that I am going to be on a bit of a newsletter hiatus for the next few weeks as I hunker down and put Your Turn first. But please send me your good vibes and prayers and kind words. Because your support fuels me too. And if like me, you’re juggling too much stuff right now, I’m here to say Give yourself permission to do what you most need to do, and ask for the support you need! I’m in this with you!!! 

xo,