New happenings in 2025!

To all my subscribers

Cardinal (detail) by Charley Harper, mid-century modern illustrator

Thank you so much for subscribing. It means you believe in and enjoy my work, so I’m excited and pleased to announce new offerings starting in January, 2025.

Substack’s functionality is robust and continues to grow. 2025 is the year I dive in, expand my offerings, and even experiment with paywalls. But don’t worry! There will still be enough meaningful and substantive free content.

Here’s what’s coming in January:

• (NEW) Guided meditations connected to that week’s essay.

• (NEW) Short bi-weekly podcast episodes (will alternate with bi-weekly essays).

• (NEW) Book chapter excerpts. Yes, I’m writing a book! Working title, Disordered Desire: a healing journey, about a significant pivot point when a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes intersected with my recovery from bulimia while I was in an abusive marriage with two children under six years old. It follows the path through all that, filled with stories and anecdotes, practices and meditations.

All subscribers will have full access to the bi-weekly essays and bi-weekly podcast episodes.

Paid subscribers will have unique access to:

• Guided meditation archive. Guided meditations will be released to everyone and then be archived behind a paywall.

• Book chapter excerpts from Disordered Desire: a healing journey. One or two paragraphs from the excerpt will be released to everyone but the entire excerpt will be behind a paywall. This may not happen until spring, 2025.

I’ve been writing and reading for a long time

I was a precocious reader—19th c. authors like the Brontes, Dickens and Galsworthy while I was still in in grade school. During long delicious hours of solitary reading I got lost in thick books about a European past, filled with characters riding in phaetons, dressed in bustles and tailcoats. Science fiction and fantasy were also on the list—20th c. authors like Asimov and Clark, the fabulous Ursula LeGuin who also wrote fantasy. Underpinning all of it were uncountable hours reading Grimm’s fairy tales and Greek myths, from childhood to now.

I never stopped reading but the path to creative writing was twistier. I didn’t believe I could make a living as a writer so was afraid to try. For a long while I poured my heart into writing journals and diaries, and sent four-page letters on legal paper(!) to friends who assured me they read every page. Even then I wasn’t so sure about that, but I kept writing.

When my oldest son was in second grade, I wrote six short biographies, printed and distributed them to his class. I can only remember five of the women: Rachel Carson, Sacagawea, Wilma Rudolph, Georgia O’Keefe and Eleanor Roosevelt. A writer friend happened to read them, liked them and connected me with her editor at Random House.

“It’s hard to write for that age group but you seem to have a knack for it,” she said, then offered me a contract to write two books in their Bullseye Biography series, Meet Hillary Rodham Clinton and Meet Maya Angelou. I wanted to secure more contracts but couldn’t. I freelanced as a writer/editor/illustrator until 2008 when I began managing public health programs. (more about all that in upcoming essays and my book!)

Fast forward to 2018. I started a blog on my coaching website that got very little traction. So I researched platforms where I could center my writing and find a community of readers and fellow writers, and wound up on Substack.

Glorious Ordinary had a soft launch in January 2023, meaning I didn’t market it right away. I wanted to write for the love of writing, and knew I needed time to develop a writing habit anchored in the flow state that has animated all creative endeavors since childhood. If my heart was engaged, readers and collaborators would subscribe. I believe that has proved true.

Two years later I’m still here, still writing and now expanding into my other great love—audio. In high school I participated in a course at KYW News Radio in Philadelphia for high school students, and read the news at the college radio station.

Podcasting has been in my sights for several years and I’m excited to start! All recordings will be done with my human voice. Not an AI voice agent.

If you have any questions or feedback, concerns or praise, please send me a message. I do my best to respond to every one of them.

*I write essays, profiles, articles, and poetry. Contact me for projects and collaborations.
*I speak and present on all the topics I write about. Contact me to speak.
*I coach women navigating major life transitions, especially women recovering from abusive workplaces.

Schedule a meeting here, find out more about me on my website and on LinkedIn, and of course, send me a missive on Substack.