Congratulations Amanda Poynter!
I I have three spots for Italy Sep 13-20, if you want to send me a email and to come regularly, not as a contest winner. If we don’t know each other, let me know a bit about you? Or why you feel called to attend. Same with my October retreat in Ojai California October 2 to 5. My email is jennifer@jenniferpastiloff.com.
Thank you to everyone who entered the Italy contest (by buying 10 copies of Proof of Life from an independent bookshop.)
That’s love right there. Just look what you did!
You supported independent bookstores. You supported you, in this beautiful community of ours. You acted from a place of pure generosity and kindness and reciprocity and belief in possibility. That’s something to be proud of. Look around: there’s a lot of cynical and ungenerous folks, who don’t believe in magic, or possibility, or supporting others. That ain’t you.
I hope you feel good about that. Especially about how many books were pre-ordered from independent bookstores. That’s not nothing. Especially in this day. Tonight, Anne Lamott told us that she just heard that 70% of all books are on Amazon for the iPhone! Read that again. So yea, ya did good.
Im full transparency, today was really hard. I spent most of the day crying and feeling really fucking stupid and ashamed that I allowed myself to believe I could actually hit the New York Times best seller list. That I had the audacity to say it out loud and put it out there, LIKE REALLY PUT IT OUT THERE AND GO FOR IT. To think I “got to” really go for it. I felt like I failed, even though I promised myself I would not do that. I’m sharing with you on the thoughts I had today. I promise that you don’t need to let me know that they aren’t true or any of that.
Those were just a few choice things that came up for me when I found out. I’m still dealing with some of them, although I am (I think) in a much different place than I was earlier today. That’s because of Anne Lamott and everyone in the room tonight in San Francisco. And because of coming back to Nicole’s house and looking at the names in the hat and stirring them around, putting my hands into the hat and touching all the folded up stickie notes. While my hands were shifting through the sticky notes with all the names on them, I could literally feel the love of the people who entered the contest and what that gesture meant. I could do that just by running my fingers through their sticky notes. I allowed your belief in me and your support to really sink in before Nicole went ahead and picked the name (with chopsticks.)
Yea, she’s weird.
I am so raw and tender, as I’ve shared. This is the very first thing (this book being published) that I have ever ever ever ever in my experienced without checking out or numbing or being self medicated!
Everything feels exacerbated and more intense and more emotional. I have a lot to say about it, but needless to say, that news of not making the NYT list did me in. I felt like I wanted to die from disappointment and shame and exhaustion in a lifetime of pain that I’ve shoved down into my body since I was eight years old.
I don’t want any lectures or platitudes, if you don’t mind, (even if you do mind, I still don’t want ant.)
It’s not that I don’t know that getting on that list isn’t the end all be all.
I know. I know that in my brain. But like I say a lot, the knowing a thing and embodying a thing are often in vastly different. Until they’re not.
There is no way that I was going find out that news after I spent so long hoping (and hoping out loud) and then immediately go to the place of “Well, at least I wrote a book. And no matter what, I’m still a winner!”
I will. Just not immediately.
I need a few minutes or days or whatever the timeframe is, but I won’t bypass how I felt, how I FEEL.
How I feel: like everything I’ve ever shoved back down into my body throughout my life is coming up, along with the NYT disappointment.
It felt like too much to bear today, as I sat in the Uber on the way to my event with Anne.
I don’t think though, that it could’ve been any more perfect, that was about to walk in and do an event with Anne Lamont as I was navigating the feeling of grief and all the sobriety stuff and the disappointment of the NYT. Kind of like the universe was winking at me. Or else it had something in its fucking eye?
I’ll write more about it in the morning. I’m exhausted from travel and from crying and from all sorts of things I can’t get into.
The only thing I can really get into now is that I’m very grateful to you.
I apologize for being late on the picking of the winner, but I do hope you feel good about entering. I know I can’t control it if you don’t, but, I can assure you that you DID LOVE.
You did love in a time where it’s needed more than ever. And knowing that hopefully feels really fucking good.
i’m behind and everything. I’ve been so busy promoting the book that I didn’t not even buy my plane ticket yet. But I’m going to take a breath and then another and another and then fall asleep and write you more in the morning.
Congratulations to Amanda Poynter!
I wish I could bring more people. That was part of the reason I was so hoping for the NYT list. I knew it would get me more speaking gigs and then I wouldn’t have to worry so much about the retreat as my sole income. I could give more from the heart, as I always end up doing anyway FFS.
If you feel called to, and want a scholarship a woman has lost a child, just reach out to me and it’s done.
I’m grateful to you and I love you. Thank you thank you thank you everyone.
I’m still feeling disappointed and disheartened but Anne Lamont held my heart tonight and loved me so hard and so good. The whole room dead and I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, because I’ve never walked on to a stage and such a vulnerable space. More later because I’m at the point now or nothing is making sense that’s coming out of my brain or my mouth except: I LOVE YOU.
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