No One Cried, No One Threw Up, aka: Join Me for a New 10-Week Writing Group
“I’ll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them – and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.”
~ John Green, from “Auld Lang Syne” in The Anthropocene Reviewed
“Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system. The answer is: You just do them. You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes – a quarter of an hour, say – you do some of it. Today. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, for many of us it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.”
~ Oliver Burkeman, from Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
Preamble: Some of what’s on my mind
1. Fallow periods – want to be creative but don’t feel the spark
2. Need to respect the quiet, the winter, the snow-covered world
3. Spiritual growth through letting go – a voluntary, intuitive journey
4. Rest is merited and needed to see the blessings
5. See(k) deeper meaning
6. What IS important?
7. Transitions and transformations without shame
8. A private life.
9. A neighborly life
10. A life of faith
11. A life of care
The morning after the blizzard, M.J. and I had a coffee date. It was more of a tea date, and we didn’t go out, so it was really a couch date, which also turned into a money date. In any case, we spent an hour and a half together, without phones or computers, just us, talking, connecting, listening, and then doing some planning and forecasting as a team, which meant looking at numbers and expenses and business trajectories and 18” of snow outside and their surgery coming up. And breathing, always with the breathing. At the end, we thanked each other for the time. “No one cried, no one threw up,” I said jokingly. They remarked that this would be a good title for something. I made a note of it, then heated up the leftover mushroom risotto for lunch.
I had been talking to them about the possibility of offering a writing group using prompts from my book, Fierce Encouragement: 201 Writing Prompts for Staying Grounded in Fragile Times. Suddenly, “No One Cried, No One Threw Up” seemed a much better title, or maybe a matching one.
But was this really a good measure of success?
I thought about the short documentary I just watched, A Swim Lesson, directed by Rashida Jones. In this 21-minute film, we meet Bill Marsh, a swimming teacher in Los Angeles who has taught more than 5,000 young children how to swim.
In this film, children do cry. They do throw up. They tantrum and fight him, cry for towels and moms. He is unfazed. Present. Consistent. Patient. Steady. The epitome of grounded. He reminds them that they are free to have all the feelings, but that they are not in control. He is the teacher. They are never unsafe. Their parents are watching, though instructed to be quiet and not interfere. (I should note that this would have been very difficult for me as a parent of young children, which gives me plenty to reflect on about my parenting.)
Crying and throwing up can be natural occurrences on the road to growth and discovering one’s innate capabilities and resilience. And fear is natural, especially when we are in uncharted waters – literally like these kids and figuratively, like us adults in the rest of our lives.
We need teachers and guides who can remind us that we are, in fact, safe. Being uncomfortable does not mean being unsafe or unloved. Sometimes it means that the people responsible for us care about something even bigger and deeper than our immediate sense of ease, which is our long-term sense of confidence in ourselves and our abilities to swim through life’s choppy and unpredictable waters.
Writing is my way of swimming, always has been. Sometimes, I still feel like a toddler grasping to the edge of the pool on the first day, sputtering and crying. Get me out of here! Other times, I feel the thrill, the independence, and the strength that comes with proving to myself that I can keep myself afloat.
Money is part of this journey. When I started my business, I was scared to death about money. Every month felt like learning how to swim all over again. Little by little over many years, I began to learn how to relax into it, at least some of the time. I learned that it was ok to float sometimes, necessary even. I learned that it was ok to need support even when I could technically do it alone. I learned that it was ok to try new strokes, even when I flailed and splashed and got water up my nose, which was often.
Then one day, I got tired of swimming. I got tired of teaching. I got tired of cheering everyone on. I got tired of the role I’d assigned myself. I got tired of the persona I’d created that looked and sounded like me but wasn’t fully me. I got tired of navigating social media. I got tired of showing up after years of modeling showing up. I got tired of the blurry lines between self and brand. I got tired of being publicly visible. I got tired of not remembering what life was like before I lived so much of it online. I got tired of seeing books pile up, unread. I got tired of people saying they felt like they knew me when we’d never met. I got tired of being good, even though no one was expecting anything of me but myself. I got tired of being afraid of change. I got tired of making nice, keeping up, keeping track. I got tired of screens. I got tired of followers. I got tired of likes. I got tired of shares and stories and scrolling.
I pulled the plug.
Now I was sitting in an empty swimming pool, having disinvited almost everyone from the party I’d been hosting. Nothing changed and everything changed.
I was free. I was terrified. I was relieved. I was wary and weary and jaded and judgmental of myself. I flashed on my ex-husband asking me, when we were in the throes of separating, “Was any of it real?” I felt like that. Of course it was real, I reminded myself. Change does not equal fraud. Growth does not negate what came before, it emerges from it. But it takes time, and I was predictably impatient. We were heading into winter, and I was acting surprised that the world lay dormant.
If we are lucky in this life, we get to pass through many chapters, experience many selves. And if we are even luckier, there will be a through line, a unifying thread that tethers end to end, birth to death. The through line might be love. The through line might be truth seeking. The through line might be courage, authenticity, or change itself. It might be a love of spring, a quickening, a softening, a strengthening, a surrendering to the present moment that became a little easier, maybe, over time.
Of course, if can also be messy, confusing, harrowing even. It can be tumultuous and destructive. It can be hurtful and unskilled. And it can also be generative, reparative, iterative, cumulative, and healing. Most likely, it is all of these in some measure or another.
My daughter wrote on my office whiteboard: “The future has an ancient heart,” a tiny blue heart next to the words. I read and consider this message at least once a day. I don’t need to understand it in order to feel it.
We wrap around ourselves like so many skins. Spiral backwards and upwards and around and around. We pass through stages of life like so many stations on our way back home. We begin as small children, helpless in the pool, until a good teacher shows us that we are not helpless. We have limbs, lungs, eyes, and the thing that cannot be taught, only modeled: Courage. No one should ever push a child into the pool, but she can jump. Oh, can she jump.
What is my gift? What is yours? What is the thing you genuinely care about that you can do for a few minutes today?
Turns out, my greatest moments these days are things like: Borrowing a shovel from a neighbor and shoveling our walkway and car out from under 18” of snow. Stopping to chat with another neighbor, sweat trickling between my sagging boobs. Swapping out the books in our Little Free Library. Answering a call from one of the kids, glad they want to come to me with questions and stories and updates of their own. Sautéing onions and garlic. First sip of strong morning coffee. Having lunch with my parents at their retirement community and chatting with a resident twice my age. Testing myself physically by keeping up with Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy while I run.
It’s not big. It’s not public. But that doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful. I write to remind myself and anyone who might happen to be reading.
I chose to shrink my world back to the size of something I can fit into my hands, which is all they could ever reasonably carry, after all.
I want to be the most me I can be. I want you to be the most you you can be.
That means accepting, embracing really, our limitations. It means not knowing where all of the people who loved us into our now are today, without making this a matter of fault or failure on our part, or theirs.
It means looking up at the names of Jewish women through the ages and knowing that my name is there, too, even if it’s outside the frame.
It means trusting that I don’t know and never will know just about anything. It means not wasting any more time worrying about this. It means I will write until the end of my days to the best of my ability, no matter how shallow or deep the pool.
It means I will never use AI to help me get unstuck. Because being stuck and getting unstuck, losing myself and finding myself, these are the experiences through which I discover my fortitude and my good fortune in life, again and again.
Fortitude and Good Fortune: A 10 Week Writing Practice
It might seem odd to invoke good fortune at a time when our country is under siege, and we are witnessing state terror taking over American cities in real time. It might seem odd and maybe it is.
But it is also a way of grounding ourselves in the fortitude we may forget is ours when we drift too far from our sense of gratitude for even the smallest of blessings. Can gratitude save democracy? Not by itself. But I believe that writing can return us to our sense of inner strength, and writing can also return us to awareness and the direct connection between cherishing the gifts of our lives and caring for the wellbeing of our neighbors, literal and figurative.
For 10 weeks, come be my writing neighbor.
When you sign up, I will mail you an inscribed copy of my book. Which series of prompts you use is up to you – choose your own adventure! You can also just open to a page once a week and use the prompt that’s staring back at you.
From there, you’ll set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes and write. Drop into the moment, and let the prompt be like Bill Marsh – patient, steady, allowing you to have all the feelings, but not letting you stop till you realize you can do it. You can swim. You can change. You can be honest about your life. You might cry and throw up, you might not, and either way you will be ok – maybe even stronger than you thought.
Bring your words to our group each week.
Read them out loud to a Zoom room filled with kind ears and human hearts, not to be critiqued but to be heard. And then, go back out into your life, whether you live a public life or a very private one or some combination of the two, as is true for most of us. See your writing practice seep into your days, your interactions, your moments of righteous rage and bracing heartache and dogged hope.
The Details
DATES & TIME
Mondays, March 9-May 11, 2026
6:00-8:00pm EST
SIZE
Up to 20 people (the maximum number where we can see everyone’s face on one screen)
DEADLINE
February 28, 2026 (so I have time to mail you your book!)
COST & PAYMENT
* One payment of $444 OR two monthly payments of $222
QUESTIONS?
Just drop me a note.
Each Zoom session will entail:
a period of spacious silence during which we can arrive
an invitation to name what you are bringing with you into the space
an opportunity to read your writing from the prompt you chose for the week
time for two people to offer a thought or question for further contemplation
a closing circle of what we’re each taking with us
Participants may share emojis and words of encouragement and appreciation in the chat, but there will be no writing critique or feedback in this group. All are welcome.