Hi my friends,
I’m writing this newsletter from my old bedroom in Toronto. It is almost 6 PM on Saturday - I am jetlagged and just finished eating gyoza in bed.
My book came out today (yesterday when you read this), and I find it very poetic that I came back to the place where I first began to write.
I remember every sunset walk I took in the middle of the pandemic, that ended up inspiring “Where the Roses Bloom”. My legs were always perched up on my windowsill as I wrote. I’d listen to Lana and type out every single line of poetry into my notes app, before moving it into a Google doc.
Goose and Toulouse would always roam around, and I’d have to tell them “Mommy’s writing but she’ll play with you later!” And they would just stare and then I’d be full of guilt so I’d have to find an old piece of string to throw around at them for 10 minutes.
I remember having a few glasses of wine after dinner and sitting down to write “Our Story Never Had an Ending”. I remember learning that you have to be careful writing about someone who is very much alive and who will very much read your work. It was a lesson in learning not to villanize, but to understand.
I remember sitting on my couch, two Christmases ago, writing “Hallelujah”. I remember having to play the song over and over again, and I remember bawling while envisioning my mom sleeping beside the Christmas tree.
And of course, I remember the afternoons I would dedicate to sitting on my friend’s couch in Rome, being emotionally hungover from conversations about grief/life/death/everything in between with someone, who inspired “Reflections from a Morning After” and “What Isn’t Ours”.
You know what’s interesting? I remember the whole purpose of me writing was - selfishly - to have people understand me. And within the three love stories that are intertwined within Failing Gracefully, I now know that I accomplished that.
Failing Gracefully turned into the journey home. And there are many things I do not know. I do not know where I will be living in a week and a half, I do not know if the guy like I will ask to see me again, I do not know what I am going to eat for dinner tonight. I also do not know what shoes I will wear to my best friend’s wedding.
But what I do know - is that home became more than a place. Home became the mornings, afternoons, and evenings where we allowed ourselves to be both seen and understood. When he handed me my morning coffee, or when he told me that loss changes people, or when he told me to keep writing.
Home feels like letting someone see parts of ourselves that others wouldn’t. And that’s what Failing Gracefully feels like to me.
Thank you for reading my words and my stories and my letters. Thank you for letting me feel heard and understood. Thank you for bringing me home.
I love you all, so, so, so, much.
Emily
PS. Order Failing Gracefully HERE!!