Skip to main content

Tag: joyful

Colleen on her birthday.

Keep Living Until You Don’t

Posted in Blog.

Reflections On My Birthday

I’ve always thought our Moms should be celebrated on the day we mark as the anniversary of our birth.

After all, I didn’t do ANYTHING on March 8, 1970, except emerge into this world premature, 5 pounds, and sick. ⁠
⁠
❤️ Mom was the one who did all the work, who carried me in her womb, who endured the nausea I plagued her with, who stayed alive while both of us struggled those first few weeks — me in an incubator, her in your hospital bed. ⁠

SHE did the birthing, so really, shouldn’t it be happy birth day to HER, wherever she is? ❤️⁠

⭐️ Still, I own and celebrate this day, because while she did the BIRTHING, I do the LIVING, and that is no small thing.

I’m grateful for every breath I take, every day I wake, every lesson I’ve gleaned, and every gift I’ve been granted — the good, the unexpected, and the hard won.

👉 If you are reading this, you have touched this one life and you have given me the honor of being in yours.

Happy day to you. Keep living until you don’t.

Let me know how you plan to embrace life on your birthday — and beyond.

Pregnant with a New Book Baby!

Posted in Blog.

I can’t believe it’s been 8 years since I sold a book to a publisher, and just having done so again just means so much. I’m currently writing In Defense of Compassion: The Joyful Vegan’s Guide to Life in a Non-Vegan World, which will be released sometime in 2019 or 2020 (TBD) by BenBella Books, publisher of such bestselling books as The China Study.

It’s been a long and painful road to get back here, and though I never stopped writing (podcast episodes, self-published works, talks, radio editorials, opinion pieces, blog posts, letters to the editor, articles), somehow being contracted to write a book feels more real. It’s not. But it feels that way.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. More than that, I’ve always wanted to be an author. And even if I never wrote another book, I’d still be that. For sure. And I’m proud of each and every one of my babies.

But having something to say, organizing those thoughts into a proposal, and selling your idea to editors who think the world would want it…it feeds me so much.

The process of wordsmithing my ideas so that they’re succinct and understandable and absorbable and inspirational and actionable (while remaining unattached to the outcome! Ha!) is both maddening and exhilarating! Working toward to goal of birthing these ideas into the world just nourishes my very cells.

Symbolically, I feel like “I’m back,” even though I never went anywhere. But I did go somewhere. And better than being “back,” I’m on the other side. And I’m pregnant with so many books I can’t wait to follow this one with.

And yet, that is just one form of the content that lives in so many other ways: in my podcast, my articles, blog posts, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, and radio editorials. I strive to remain unattached to form, but I guess I’m just not there yet.

I’m just a practicing human. With another book to write!

(yay!!)