I'm Writing a Book!

AHHHHH!

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me pretending to journal

I finally get to share the news with you that I’m writing a book called ARE YOU MAD AT ME? and it’s going to be published by Simon & Schuster in the US, Penguin Random House in the UK and will be translated into 12+ languages! What is happening!!!!

I’ve been holding onto this secret for over a month, and holding onto this idea for many, many months. It began in August 2023 when I started working with my brilliant literary agent, Rebecca Gradinger, from UTA. This simply wouldn’t have been possible without her. For the months to come, I wrote in the wee hours of the morning, usually in my nightgown, to chip away at the book proposal before starting sessions, with the hope of just creating something I felt proud of, something that felt like therapy-on-a-page. More than anything, I wanted to just write something that I wish had existed when I was in my late teens/early twenties on the beginning of my healing journey.

The proposal process wrapped up in February and we shipped it off to editors. I was so incredibly lucky to have it be received with such care and interest, which speaks to how common this feeling of "are you mad at me?” is. So many of us feel it, think it, ruminate on it, and so few of us have the language and tools to understand it and work through it. I want this book to be that.

I'd love to hear if your language/territory is represented! More languages to come :)

A few lessons that I learned in the process, that no one asked for:

• I had this false notion that if writing felt messy and hard, that meant I wasn’t capable of doing it, or that I wasn’t cut out for it. I had this false belief that anyone who’s ever written a book just spewed it out in one-go, perfectly, with no edits to be made. Something shifted in me when I realized, oh! It turns out, the mess is PART of the process, a very necessary part, and the mess actually is what leads me to some of the ideas I feel most proud of. Let yourself be messy.

• The inner critic resists what is unfamiliar - not because you shouldn’t be doing it, but because, that’s it, it’s simply unfamiliar. And to try to lure you back into the familiar, the inner critic will think of a million reasons why you shouldn’t do what you want to do. In other words: don’t always trust what your inner critic says. In fact, rarely trust it.

• Not to get all inspirational-poster-in-your-middle-school-classroom, but there is legitimately zero downside to believing in yourself. Your daydreams aren’t silly, they’re information for what you desire most.

ARE YOU MAD AT ME? will be a blend of personal narrative, case studies, tangible tools and digestible, easy-to-understand research - exploring people pleasing as an under-recognized but incredibly common survival mechanism called the fawn response. If you read my newsletters or watch my content on social media, you already know how passionate I am about this topic - and my greatest hope is that this book will provide you with the tools and understanding to create a path forward, a path towards more self-compassion, empowerment and ease. I want this book to be an accessible entryway to deeper healing that gets to the root, a relatable read that gives you clarity and confidence to live a more peaceful existence.

As I’m typing this, it feels like I’m talking about someone else. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an author but didn’t think that would have been possible for me. Even in elementary school, I remember checking out five books at a time from my school library, exhaling a sigh of relief on Friday when I could, once again, bury my face between the covers of a book. I wish I could tell younger Meg that hibernating in her room with a journal and scribbling down her messy feelings would someday lead to this. I wish I could tell younger Meg that she’s not too sensitive, that her sensitivity will allow her to understand complicated feelings and hopefully help others understand them, too.

Over the years, my deepest intention with posting content online , and writing weekly newsletters and recording monthly guided meditations, has been to reach as many people as I could with this therapeutic information because I think we all have the right to know it. To me, this book is a continuation of that intention, bottling up everything that I’ve come to learn so far in this life, in one place, knowing I still have so much more to learn.

Thank you so much for being here, for reading, watching, journaling, healing and existing with me, and I’m excited to share as much about this process with you as I can. It’ll be a bit before the book comes out (turns out, just because we can binge a book in two days, it still takes two years to make it!). Writing this is proving to be such a vulnerable, healing process and I’m such a deep state of awe that I have the opportunity and privilege to do this. Grateful doesn’t begin to capture what I feel to have this safe, reflective community. We’re doing this together!

As I focus on this project, it’ll bring a few changes to my newsletter, which I’ll share next week (nothing bad!).

THANK YOU. Sending you all my love.

♡ Meg