A couple of weeks ago, “Lister” Liz Becker (#31 Hike Machu Picchu and #41 Learn to Sail) hooked me up with a friend of hers from San Francisco named Molly Rosen. Molly, a leadership-development consultant with absolutely no experience in publishing, had pulled off what so many women only dream of: she published a book.
Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex, and Work in Our Forties http://knowingpains.com/ had come out a few months earlier, and Molly was in New York promoting it on Today. What she did was incredible—but how she did it was even more inspiring. Molly got the idea for the collection after she went looking for a book like it and couldn’t find one. At that point, most people would have shrugged and said, ‘Gee that’s a shame. Guess I’ll have to buy War and Peace instead.’ But Molly saw an opportunity…and took it.
She reached out to women—some of them writers, most of them not—to share their life experiences (Liz was one of them). Molly edited the pieces and self published the book. From the start, she planned to donate all proceeds to breast cancer research, so she got everyone— contributors, designer, web host, illustrator, and photographer¬—to work for free.
After her Today interview, Molly and I met for coffee at her hotel to discuss the possibility of giving talks or leading workshops together. Between us, we could go on for days about the thrill of taking chances, trying new things, and making your life what you want it to be. And I’d love to do it, because I know exactly what the participants would walk away with.
They’d feel the same rush I did when I left my meeting with Molly.
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3 comments:
I also wrote and self-published a book recently about "the thrill of taking chances, trying new things, and making your life what you want it to be." Isn't that what midlife is all about?
Mine's called "Midlife Magic: Becoming the person you are inside!" It was an outgrowth of my amazing experiences writing the blog: MidlifeCrisisQueen.com for the past few years. Life can be quite sweet at midlife if you go for it and dig in!
Guess I should pick up the books before I'm outta this decade!
I know...somebody better start working on the Life After 50 book because I'm heading there fast.
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