THE EVENING COUNTDOWN HAS COME TO A CLOSE! The Signature of All Things will b…
THE EVENING COUNTDOWN HAS COME TO A CLOSE!
The Signature of All Things will be published TOMORROW.
Sweet, patient, wonderful friends. Thank you for holding this space with me and for sharing my excitement. Here is our final night's countdown cake….appropriately and magnificently made of MOSS, in honor of my dear Alma Whittaker, who will be born tomorrow.
Our most beautiful cake yet, I daresay.
Funny, seems like only four years ago I was dreaming in the vaguest and most foggy way about this book. And then Alma came slowly walking out of the shadows. And here we are. And there she is.
I remain your humble and most grateful servant,
LG
A SHOWER OF BLESSINGS! Wonderful news! Janet Maslin of the New York Times (a st…
A SHOWER OF BLESSINGS!
Wonderful news! Janet Maslin of the New York Times (a stern critic who has been on record in the past NOT liking my work) just gave a rave review to "The Signature of All Things" which she called "vibrant", "hot-blooded" and "engrossing"!
WOOO!
Makes me fee like of like I felt in this photo last summer, after a long day's work in the garden.
BLISS,
Liz
KNOW THAT YOU ARE STRONG. Dear friends — A confession: I’m a baby. I was t…
KNOW THAT YOU ARE STRONG.
Dear friends —
A confession: I'm a baby. I was the baby of my family, and I liked that position. I tried with all my might to extend it for as long as I could. I was a fearful and tearful and clinging child. Everything alarmed me, because the world is f***ing alarming. Not only did I refuse to go into the ocean, for instance, but I also wept when I saw anyone else going to into the ocean. I ACTUALLY TRIED TO GET MY PARENTS TO MAKE PEOPLE STOP GOING IN THE OCEAN. (If i could've gotten the ocean turned off, that would have suited me, because it was bloody terrifying.) I liked being coddled and petted and comforted and basically completely tended to. It suited me, frankly. I would have liked to have been coddled my entire life, with somebody stroking my head and saying, "There, there…you don't have to go to school ever again."
The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was being born to a mother who refused to baby me after I was no longer, biologically, an actual baby.
I resented this, of course. I fought it. But she wasn't having it. And the world, not unlike my mother, also refused to baby me — frustratingly enough.
For a lot of my life, all I felt was fragile and weak. When I found people who indulged that sense of weakness in me, I was grateful. It took me a long time to realize that those were the wrong kind of people for me to be hanging around.
There's a line in that controversial "Tiger Mom" memoir where the woman says that the basic difference between Chinese mothers and American mothers is that American mothers fear their children are delicate, and Chinese mothers know without a doubt that their children are strong. This line struck me because my own mother, also, knew that her daughter was strong — even when I did not know it myself, even when I fought to prove that I was weak.
My life began to take on great proportions when I stopped trying to prove to myself or anyone else that I was delicate and tired and broken and fragile, and started remembering who I actually am: a human being who is descended from countless generations of human beings who SURVIVED. In other words, by definition: Strong.
I don't know anything about your heritage, but I can tell you without a doubt that this is who you are, too. If you are here on earth, it is because your ancestors survived. They survived unthinkable, unbearable, unsurvivable things. And you will, too.
So these days, when I feel myself getting weepy or tragic or victimized or overwhelmed or panicked or paranoid or self-pitying, I say to myself, "Sure, those are all natural feelings. No need to be ashamed of any of it. But don't dishonor the struggle and the resilience of your human inheritance by playing weak. Because we are strong."
We are not made of sugar candy, said Winston Churchill.
It's Monday morning, guys. You are more powerful than you could ever imagine. Buckle up your boots and go face it — whatever it is. Go be warriors.
FORZA,
Liz
Thank you, Sandra!
Thank you, Sandra!
Photos of Elizabeth Gilbert
Signature of All Things pushes them all aside ♥
