I feel like I’m back in middle school

I have spent much of this summer feeling strangely close to my middle school self.

And not in a fun way… it’s like I have sent out a stack of birthday party invitations and now have to wait to see if anyone comes.

Except I am forty-something years old, the invitations are book tour emails and preorder links and launch event pages, and the party is a book I spent years writing in the margins of my life.

There’s no dashboard for this. No list of who’s coming, no running tally I can refresh. Just the not-knowing, sitting there, which is somehow worse than bad news would be. Early readers have sent me messages that have made me exhale for a second, and take in that I made the impact I hoped.

Women have told me they felt seen by the pages, that the book gave language to something they had been carrying quietly for years. People have shared it before it is even out in the world.

That is real. And it doesn’t cancel out the dread. Both things are true at the same time, which is apparently what forty-something feels like too.

And yet, there is this younger part of me that is very much along for the ride. She shows up when I send the launch invitation. She shows up when I ask people to come celebrate. She shows up when I hit publish or send or post, and then feel that familiar wave of nausea that has accompanied almost every new level of visibility in my life.

The adult part of me understands what this is. This is a book launch. This is how books find their way into the world. You write the emails. You post the links. You ask people to preorder. You invite them to events. You tell them why the book matters.

You do not hide in your house and hope people magically hear about it through some mysterious underground network of emotionally attuned working mothers, though I would very much enjoy that option if it existed.

But the younger part of me does not experience it as a marketing plan.

She experiences it as being seen wanting.

And that is the vulnerable part: letting people see how much I care before I know how the story ends.

I think this has felt especially tender because I am living in a house full of children who are also learning, in their own ways, how risky it can feel to want something out loud. A friend from school you want to see outside of school. A college you might love that may or may not love you back. A text that sits there unanswered for too long.

I find myself coaching them to ask. To send the text. To name the thing. To remember that if someone says no, or does not answer, it will hurt, but it will not end them.

And then I sit down at my own computer and have to practice the same thing.

This has been one of the unexpected lessons of bringing this book into the world.

I have had to practice asking for help.
I have had to practice hearing no.
I have had to practice receiving support when it comes, instead of minimizing it or rushing past it.
I have had to practice making mistakes and realizing I did not, in fact, die from them.

Some of this has been deeply uncomfortable.

It brings up perfectionism, of course. What if I made a mistake? What if I ask too much? What if someone criticizes it? What if the thing I made with so much care is not received in the way I hope?

And also, alongside all of that, there is excitement. There is pride. There is the real and growing sense that this conversation is already reaching women.

That matters.

It matters because so much of Ambitious Mother is about helping women come back to what they actually want, not just what they are allowed to want, or what they can justify, or what sounds reasonable enough that no one will judge them for wanting it.

I had a client sit across from me not long ago and map out, in extraordinary detail, what everyone else in her life needed. Her children. Her partner. Her team. Her aging parents. She could see three steps ahead on all of it, the way she always can. Then I asked her, “What do you want?” And the room went quiet.

Not because she had no wants but because she hadn’t even wondered for herself in a long time, or because wanting had never felt safe enough to try.

This is why the launch feels connected to the book itself. I am not just writing about healthy striving. I am practicing it in real time, in front of people, which is apparently much less comfortable than writing about it alone in my office.

Healthy striving, for me right now, means letting myself care about this book and its reach without turning that caring into a verdict on my worth. It means asking people to come celebrate without apologizing for the invitation. It means receiving support when it comes and letting it feel as good as it does. It means tolerating the silence, too, sometimes.

It means showing my children that wanting something is not embarrassing. Or maybe, more honestly, that it can feel embarrassing and still be worth doing.

If one of my children sent out invitations and no one had RSVP’d yet, I know what I would say.

I would say, people all have their own stuff going on that isn’t about you, and even if only one person comes, we will have fun together. We will celebrate you.

I am trying to offer some version of that to myself now.

And this is part of what I want my children to see: not that their mother was untouched by wanting, rejection, embarrassment, or fear, but that she wanted something anyway. She asked for help. She let herself receive it. She heard no and kept going. She made mistakes and survived them.

She sent the invitation.
So this is me, sending it again.

Ambitious Mother comes out August 6th. If you’ve been meaning to preorder, I would be so grateful if you did. Preorders help books reach more people, and more than anything, I want this book to find the women who need it.

You can preorder here

P.S. If you’d like to come celebrate with me in person, I would love to meet you on tour! You can find the book tour and launch event details here.