What if you knew before you knew?

Hey Sally!
May 6
2 min read

My Nana intimidated me.

Growing up, we would visit her apartment in Center City, Philadelphia, and as soon as we entered, I knew to go straight to the bathroom and wash my hands like a surgeon. I would come out holding them up for inspection just to prove I was clean enough to sit on her ivory silk sofa.

She had that look in her eyes, that air of buttoned-up royalty about her.

No matter the occasion, she looked like she had just walked out of the latest fashion magazine. Nana wore the clothes. The clothes never wore her.

She was also a highly accomplished artist, painter, and jewelry designer, and from what I understand, her lithographs are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

So when she passed away in 1996 and my father gave me two sculptures she had made in college, it felt important.

She was not a sculptor. These were different.

The sculptures were two girls sitting with their legs stretched out, feet on the ground, knees bent, elbows resting on their knees, and foreheads in their hands. They looked deep in thought, like they had a lot on their minds.

I naturally placed them back-to-back because they looked like bookends.

But I never put books between them.

Not one of the hundreds of books I have owned.

There was a quiet knowing before I knew. Somehow, I knew that one day I would write a book and that my book would go there.

I just didn’t know it would take 30 years.

This week, I placed the first copies of Trust Yourself Anyway: Designing a Life That Fits between Nana’s two thoughtful girls.

One paperback.

One hardcover.

And of course, they fit perfectly.

Their feet touch the edge of the cube, and the books fit between them with the kind of precision Nana would have appreciated. If the books were any thicker, they would not fit.

Of course they fit.

Of course Nana had something to do with it.

And of course this is exactly what the book is about.

Trust is the fitting room. It is the first pillar of my book and the foundation of self-trust. It is the place we enter, close the curtain and learn to listen to the quiet voice of our higher self instead of the noise of self-doubt.

The fitting room is not about fitting in.

It is about making sure what we choose fits us.

Tomorrow night, I will sit in conversation at Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood for my first in-store book signing.

I can hardly believe I get to write that sentence.

And by Friday, Trust Yourself Anyway can finally be in your hands.

This book took 30 years.

And somehow, it arrived right on time.