Someone wrote a book about my experience, is all I could think. Just the mere thought that there might be other women in the world, other girls, lost and lonely and desperate in their grief over their mothers…it was utterly overwhelming. It was also this defining moment in which I realized, perhaps for the first time ever, that I might actually survive this. Staring down at Hope’s photo on the back cover, seeing another woman who had experienced what I had, and gone on to tell about it, I realized that I might actually emerge from my mother’s death and one day find a way to feel whole again.

To say this book has had a profound effect on my journey of grief following my mother’s death, is an understatement.

Hope was literally the first person who ever gave me hope in the wake of my loss. I finally met her in person for the first time last year, at a little coffee shop in Santa Monica. I’ve met so many authors in the last decade but this was most awestruck I’d ever felt in the presence of one. We sat outside with our coffee and I could barely bring myself to speak, so instead I listened to Hope tell me that she had just read my book, and how much she loved it, and then I really couldn’t speak.

So instead, I gave my best attempt to tell Hope in a wobbly voice, tears in my eyes, just how much her book had meant to me, how much light and promise it had given to my poor, broken 20 year old self all those years ago, and how grateful I was to her because of it.

I’m sure you can imagine how honored I am to tell you that I’ve been asked to be the guest speaker this year at the annual Motherless Daughters Luncheon hosted by Hope Edelman and Irene Rubaum-Keller.

If you’re a motherless daughter or you know one who is, please join us! Here is a link to the official invitation. 

It was nice to be with my friends, all of them writers. Samantha Dunn, Jillian Lauren and Mark Sarvas. All of our kids are the same age and they ran around the yard with a pig and a horse and some dogs, while we drank wine and talked writing, and it was warm and sunny, and even though Jules knocked over a wine glass and Vera was afraid of all the animals, for just a little while I stopped thinking about all the things I have to think about these days.

All my life I’ve wanted to be a writer. Seriously. Ever since I was like, 9 and really understood that to be an option. Like really understood it, not the way Vera thinks she understands it now. I was a voracious reader by then, devouring anything my bought for me, and then eventually even my Dad’s Dean Koontz books, just because I needed something more.

I was already writing by then too. Dumb stories about lizards, and a couple years later stories about girls who ran away with their dogs, thinly veiled autobiographies of a life desired. After that poems, for years poems. Long, sad, terrible poems about loneliness and heartbreak. Christina Haag once wrote that she thinks she was born nostalgic. I think the same of myself. It was almost like I was primed for tragedy; I was so ready to write about it.

I think I was fifteen when I knew that there was no turning back, that I was going to be a writer. I had to be. And so I just gave myself over to it then, really let myself believe and dream and desire that life. I read about other writers all the time, about their lives and deaths, and in general I read dozens of books, as many as I could. I was the girl who read every book on the suggested summer reading list, not just the required five.

Then when I was in my twenties and publishing a book seemed like something I might really pull off one day, I then let myself dream of afternoons just like Sunday. I dreamed of being friends with real writers, about getting together to drink wine and talk about our next books, bitching about the changing face of publishing, bemoaning our failures and laughing and toasting to our successes.

And you know what?

It was all that. And even better than I imagined.

It’s better because it’s real. And it’s better too, because we have little kids running around, and that was never part of what I pictured, but it’s so cool that they’re there. I think about when they’re grown up one day and how they’ll tell stories about the other writers’ kids they were friends with and how we all sat around drinking and telling stories while they were completely unaware of how cool it all was. I love that.

But most of all, I just love the camaraderie, the shared sense of knowing this world, of being friends with people who grew up feeling the same way I did about books and words and life.

It’s probable that I should be exhausted and stressed out, but I’m not. Not at all.

I’m happy.

I feel full, and bursting with excitement about my life and about the days to come.

My trip to New York was absolutely dazzling.

On Sunday I stood in my friend Aidan’s living room and had the task of speaking to what was definitely the most impressive group of women I’ve ever stood before. And all I could think about was how I wouldn’t be standing there without every last one of them.

I began by talking about my mother, my beautiful, glamorous force of a mother. And how when she disappeared from my life when I was eighteen it was as though the entire world had gone dark.

But how back then, I wasn’t yet aware of the incredible gift she’d left for me. The gift of knowing how to connect with others, of how to fill my life up with all the very best people possible. This wasn’t a lesson she ever sat down and taught me outright, rather it was something she showed me just by the way she lived, by the way she loved.

And over the last decade and a half I’ve followed in her footsteps, not replacing her (impossible), but filling my world with women like her. And on Sunday, standing in Aidan’s gorgeous living room, I looked around with tears in my eyes, unable to believe this gift she had left behind for me.

(Aidan wrote me the most incredible love letter about the whole experience.)

The truth is that the last year has been a very difficult one. Having a second baby, giving birth and nursing a newborn into this world, trying to work and write and travel in the meantime…it’s all been exhausting and a little defeating. But being in New York, and being around all of these remarkable women was a wake-up call, a reminder of how flawed and vulnerable and beautiful and fucking strong we all are.

And how we’re much more so when we’re together.

(With Kelle Hampton and Jessica Shyba.)

The whole reason I was in NYC was because my book was nominated for a Books for a Better Life award in the inspirational memoir category, and when I told Aidan that I was coming she invited us to stay with her and insisted on hosting one of her inspiring Happier Hour salons, hence the Sunday brunch.

Aidan and I met several years ago, through the blogging world and book world, but only met in person for the first time last year when she graciously came out more than once to support my book. This past weekend we took our friendship to an entirely new level, entwining our families and our girls.

Vera is going to be talking about this trip for the rest of her life because of how much fun she had with Aidan’s three little girls.

This was actually Veronica’s third trip to New York. The first time we took her was when she was just 6 weeks old. The second time was last year on my book tour. The truth is that NYC is a hard city to visit with a kid, let alone two, but this last visit couldn’t have been more fun. This was the first time that Vera was really able to take in the city, and she just ate it up.

All weekend she kept saying, “Mama, I love New York City. I want to live here when I grow up and be a writer.”

You got it, kid. Do it. I’ll help you.

As usual, we ran up and down and all across the city, meeting up with a hundred different friends.

On Saturday we went to the Museum of Natural History with Momma’sGoneCity and Kelly Bergin, two of my absolute favorite bloggers and Instagrammers, and now simply two of my favorite people.

Sunday was the brunch at Aidan’s.

And Monday was the Books for a Better Life awards.

I didn’t have any expectations for this event really. I was so honored just have had my book nominated. Every single book up for an award was truly exceptional, the kind of books dredged up from deep places within people. The kind of books that offer service unto others, and are so often born out of challenging personal experiences.

Kelle Hampton’s Bloom was nominated, and she and I sipped spiked lemonade together at the cocktail reception and pinched each other, marveling over the fact that we were there at all. Both of our books were birthed out of the hardest things we’ve ever been through, and when we wrote them it was because we had to.

I think I can speak for Kelle when I say that I don’t think either of us ever envisioned all that would come with putting our books out there in the world. We just wrote because we didn’t know what else to do. So to find ourselves in dresses, sipping cocktails and surrounded by people who we  love and who love us, was just the most unexpected bonus to it all.

(This selfie took three tries because I couldn’t stop giggling.)

(With my beloved publicist Liz Keenan and my amazing editor Denise Roy.)

(With Edward Ash-Milby, who is the reason my book is on a shelf at every Barnes & Noble.)

(With my handsome date.)

Kelle and I didn’t win, but it was more than enough to just see our books up there. (And I think we’re both winners in a thousand ways anyway.)

(Celebrating afterwards with my agent Wendy (who has become a second mom to me), Liz & Denise.)

(And with Kelle and the enchanting Meg Thompson.)

It was a whirlwind trip, to say the least.

On our hellish trip home yesterday I just didn’t care that what was supposed to have been a seven-hour traveling day turned into a fourteen hour one. I didn’t care because it was utterly worth it. I would sit on a grounded airplane with two kids for three hours anytime for this kind of experience.

And all I could think, watching my girls yesterday, was that right this very minute I’m imparting to them the very same gift my mother gave me. And for that, I couldn’t be more grateful.

I also couldn’t do it without all of the incredible women in my life.

Thank you Aidan, Kelle, Jessica, Francesca, Channah, Valentina, Surbhi, Christina, Kelly, Meghan, Antonia, Caitlin, Meg, Denise, Liz, Wendy, Mary Elizabeth, Tre, Jami, Becky, Hilary, Kristine, Lindsay, Valerie, and Bryce.