Suzanne Grenager

My first guest blog post drew lovely comments

Suzanne Grenager — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:55:31 +0000

Years ago I wrote and, with great trepidation, mailed a much-labored-over book proposal to a renowned New York book editor. I had met her quite unexpectedly over the coffee urn at a wedding brunch, where she’d expressed interest in my work. I was sure that what seemed like a wildly serendipitous cup of Joe moment spelled imminent publication of the book I’d long felt destined to write.

Getting a top editor’s attention without being over-the-top famous or, better yet, infamous, is a rare and beautiful thing. So I rejoiced when the prominent woman liked my words.

Her surprising offer to help me find the literary agent she insisted I bring to her table, assured me I was the blessed one. But after several months pursuing agents, I walked away. And boy I am I’m glad I did!

Click here to read the full article at The BridgeMaker.

Suzanne’s answer to Becky’s big question.

Suzanne Grenager — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:16:07 +0000

I am hugely grateful to Alex, Mary and Carol Chris Hudson for their compassionate comments about Becky’s big question. Becky had asked how she can possibly leave the kind of lucrative job she has but hates while her family depends on her for support. Alex encouraged Becky to involve her family, so she doesn’t turn into a “martyr” and, Carol added, so as to include and empower the family in decisions affecting them all. Mary encourages Becky to do as she does, pursuing her passions elsewhere and treating herself to massages, inspiring books, a women’s group. Carol said her family found they could live modestly so long as they were “rich in love.”

Here is what I’d written to Becky before the comments came in:

Yours is a wrenching question, dear Becky, with no easy answers but many possible ways to proceed. I strongly recommend you find a life coach/spiritual mentor (which I used to be, but am no longer) to help you work through what is true and possible for you. Please spend some of that good money you make to get help untying your knot.

You are right it takes immense courage to face the fear of not having enough, especially when you’ve assumed responsibility for so many other people. The first question to ask yourself might be whether you need to shoulder so much. Have you too often said yes when your heart and gut said no? If so, that’s a habit it takes time to reverse. But it can and must be done before you do serious damage to yourself—body, mind and spirit. You must unravel what you have created as gracefully as you can, which is where that coach will come in handy.

You could “just walk away,” as you say, but why not set the stage to make it easier on YOU?

Specific questions you might consider: Is it really necessary for you to be the sole support for your parents? If you are an only child and they have no income and no way to create any, the answer may be yes. But if they have social security and Medicare (or disability payments), couldn’t they learn to live more simply while you explore new options? Could either of them work? Or if you have siblings or other relatives with means, could they be asked to help?

And what about your husband? Unless the kids are babies (and maybe if they are), they could be in day care. Or hey, unless your parents are seriously ill or disabled, couldn’t they help with their grandkids as you help support them? And how about a job for your husband, part-time, working from home, even if he has the kids? Bottom line: Assuming it’s a good marriage, please begin by talking with your husband about what you told me. If he is a person worthy of you, then he should be horrified by your situation and want to help you transition to a more fulfilling life.

I am sure it would be in the interest of your whole family for you to explore where your true passions lie. If you have an inkling, set aside time and money now to take steps you’re inspired to take, however small, to move in the direction of giving up your job and doing what you love. The world cannot afford for someone like you who knows better, someone with a Buddhist practice, to let fear drive her away from her heart’s desires and her soul’s deepest needs.

I send all love and support. The good news is you sound ready to do what you need to do for the sake of all. Please know that you have more courage than you can possibly imagine, and that if you line up with the universe by following your heart, the universe will line up with you. A final question for you: Is a wealthy, unhappy mother, wife and daughter a better mother, wife and daughter than a happy one who may need to struggle for a while to make ends meet?

Becky’s burning question

Suzanne Grenager — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:09:02 +0000

The morning after this website went live, I opened my email to find my first message from the site’s Connect page. It was from a stranger named Becky, and the subject heading said: “My Fear.” Becky was writing to ask for help with a huge, very tough life question faced, in one form or another, by several women and men I have known and counseled.

Because I want this to be a place where people share concerns and support each other, I asked Becky if I could share our exchange, so those of you who have been in her situation, and those who haven’t, might add valuable perspective to what I chose to say to her. Becky welcomes all the support we can give her. And her willingness to tolerate the intolerable out of fear of poverty —and I’d add, probably also of change and of disappointing others—is a familiar litany many of us will relate to. Her desire to live with passion and power is one we can all embrace.

Here is what Becky wrote: “I fear poverty. I grew up poor. As an adult, I’ve become financially successful. And unhappy. I am responsible not only for supporting myself, but also for the financial fate of my entire family: my husband (stay-at-home dad), my kids, and my parents.

“I work in a high-stress corporate environment and feel no passion for what I do. I don’t even like many of the people I work with. But it’s not just this job. I know deep down that I don’t want any job like this, no matter what it pays. I want to do work I love, to find my true vocation. But as a parent, my life isn’t all about me. And reading this back to myself, it sounds selfish.”

Becky continued: “The great test of my soul in this life is to develop the courage to face my fear of poverty head on and walk away. I would if it were just me. But I can’t see myself being the adult who allows my own kids to grow up with the level of financial insecurity I did. I do all sorts of soul searching and what I call light Buddhist presence work to maintain my sanity as well as possible and sustain what feels unsustainable.”

Becky ended: “My question is this: how can you go through a major life transition affecting your career and livelihood when so many others count on you to provide for them?”

Phew! I was deeply affected by the sincerity and gravity of Becky’s question. I didn’t know the answer. I told Becky I needed to take time to ponder her question deeply and wait till I was inspired before I replied. I wanted to see if I could shed at least enough light for Becky to see her way toward a first step or two out of the darkness. I’ll post my reply to her here soon.

Over the moon and under the porch—it’s B Day

Suzanne Grenager — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:25:08 +0000

Holy Moly, me-oh-my-oh! I am doing my little happy dance all by myself. My long-awaited B Day is here. (No, I don’t mean my birthday, though it feels like it and then some.) This B is for my bare-naked book. Bare Naked at the Reality Dance, the book I’ve dreamed of and labored over for seven years is now in my hot little hands and up for order on Amazon. And last night, this website, so gorgeously designed by Shannon Bodie who also designed the book, went live for all the world to see. I can hardly stand it I’m so excited and, also, friggin’ frightened to death.

Yes, I am over the moon—jumping up, and up, like the cow with the spoon. And at the very same time, I am crouched under the back porch, hiding out like a scaredy-cat, afraid for my life (which is to say my self-image). And for those of you who know your yoga poses, or know me, that metaphorical cat-cow position is a familiar one for this yogini to find herself in. I’ll explain.

It’s heart vs. head all over again. I am the cow over moon because my heart is absolutely thrilled that the daunting work of writing, editing, packaging and publishing this book I’ve known for almost ever was mine to do, is done, and to my satisfaction. It feels right—and right now, finally exhilarating—to have arrived at this exact heart, mind and soul nourishing place. I want to savor the precious moment, which Shannon and I will do at our typical early morning call time, but tomorrow via Skype, and with the atypical help of mimosas, her brilliant idea.

But—and it’s a big one—I am also terrified (or think I am) because my ego-mind has few clues how this unconventional book of mine will land. Of course I want people to like it, and me. And so far only one of several people who’ve read the book seemed not to. A few kindly raved. But those enthusiastic early readers were not my brothers or sisters-in-law or the people my kids are married to. Back when the writing started, I knew I couldn’t publish it till my mother was dead. It wasn’t so much because I said questionable things about her; it was because I figured the feral spiritual voice that began coming through my pen in 2004 would knock her white socks off, challenging our already complicated relationship. I was afraid to let her know me that well.

Lest you think I am overreacting, my dear husband of several decades was shocked by my wild new voice, its radical ruminations and the overt spirituality that had shown up and taken over when I finally sat myself down to see what I had to say. In truth, I myself was taken aback by the words I had written, once they were typed up by my friend Carol Keller. What the hell’s going on here? My mind wondered. Where did this Suzanne come from? I still don’t know for sure, other than to say I imagine the universal heart, and a man called Bapuji, must have played a part.

I do know that whenever we surrender enough of our stuff to show up as we really are, it’s a very thing good. Whether we give up willingly or whether we’re kicking and screaming, surrender is good for us and it’s good for a world that can’t wait for our light. So here I am, kids, in all my glory glory. Take me or leave me. But if there’s any way I can inspire you to dare to unleash your most outrageous self and let ‘er rip, I want to hear about it. And won’t that just be reward enough for all my fear? Yes it will. Thanks for the comments I hope you’ll want to leave.

You’d have thought I was going on Oprah

Suzanne Grenager — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:40:32 +0000

The second I finished the first draft of this post, the fearsome pictures arrived. Thank God—and Goddess (a photographer who, like my book/web designer, is improbably named Shannon)—they are great! But if you’d watched the lead-up to our shoot, you’d have thought I was going to be shot—or on Oprah, a prospect now relegated permanently to daydream land. Far short of a trembling-in-my-boots Oprah turn, I worked myself into a royal swivet over having my picture taken, frivolous as that sounds in the face of major wars, and political and economic meltdowns.

I worried about those things, too, as Shannon Bodie and I got started on the minor challenge of building what we agree must be the most gorgeous, inspiring, user-friendly author website we’ve ever seen (and we saw a ton). She embarked with ease on the site map design, a critical process, which was Geek to me. (Sorry, it’s in my Selby genes!) But we needed content to fill the pages Shannon was designing so as to feel, she said, like a welcoming Indian courtyard. The words of welcome, the bio and back story, the bits of the book we’d decided should be read aloud—and, not least, those stunning author photos everyone expects to see—it all had to be by or about me.

I wrote feverishly and managed to put off hunting down a recording studio and photographer for as long as I could. Happily, I was in Nova Scotia which, it turns out, is a hotbed of creative talent. So once I bit the photo-audio search bullet, I lucked into an author’s website dream team. The morning I was to record five book selections I’d hesitantly chosen, I googled my audio engineer, John Adams. The guy has recorded Yo Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and John Cage. Seriously? He was willing to work with me? Yep, and though I had significant doubts till I heard the files, our session in a cozy former yoga studio in Mahone Bay went wonderfully well. One down.

What scared the shit out of me (literally, I’m sorry to report) was the prospect of photographs. When Shannon George, my photographer, heard how terrified I was, she kindly agreed to come do a pre-shoot in advance of our real session. Her approach was reassuringly casual. But nothing helped. All week I was filled with dread. The night before, I slept not a wink, just as I’d feared.

Am I as vain and silly as my camera shy behavior might suggest? Maybe. Maybe I do want to look 15 years younger, and prettier, than I am. (Who wouldn’t?) Maybe, though, the prospect of a whole day in the eye of a lens conjured a childhood rife with cameras in my face as I got paraded out to pass hors d’oeuvres and pose for parents and their soggy cocktail party cohorts. Suzie, look, look at the camera! I had learned to put on a false photo face, and I didn’t like it.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s finally hit me that this book that’s been looming for 15 years is about to come out. Maybe a photo shoot made it all a little too real—that I’m soon to reveal the hell out of who I am, and exactly what I look like inside and out, bare naked at the reality dance. Is little Suzie still afraid of being seen? You bet. As you’ll see if you read the book, I’ve worked to be willing to show up, since that’s the whole point of my book. But judging from appearances, there’s more work yet to be done. Thanks for hanging in here with me on the proverbial edge.

Giving the universe space, part two

Suzanne Grenager — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:58:04 +0000

Note: In my last post, “Giving the universe space, part one,” I described the miracles that can only happen when we get out of the way by letting go of pesky people and/or activities we have outgrown and thus no longer serve us. I gave a dramatic example from my yoga teaching days. Then I cut to the recent past, where I’d just fired the second person I’d hired to help me develop an online presence in advance of my book publication. Difficult as they’d both been for me to work with, one right after the other and for different reasons, I was feeling helpless and scared without them. But not for long. The morning after letting the last person go, I followed my gut and took a wild leap into the arms of a seemingly improbable choice for a website/online presence developer, my book designer, Shannon Bodie. Here’s what happened next:

Well, thank God, Goddesses and all the forces of the universe that support me even when I don’t remember to believe in them. For it turns out this summer-into-fall is the time when—after 15 years of pining to do it—Shannon Bodie has decided to take a risk of her own. She’s about to transition from book designing alone to helping authors whose books she designs do exactly what I’m looking to do: create an authentic, compelling online presence, starting with a website precisely tailored to authors and their particular books. And Shannon has programmed time into her busy schedule to start learning whatever skills she doesn’t yet have for doing that like a pro.

Before our phone call was over, Shannon asked if I’d like to work with her one-on-one as a lab partner and guinea pig, so she can see through an author’s eyes what’s needed to do her long-anticipated dream job really, really well. Would I be willing to have my brain picked as she delves into the virtual world of blogging, author web design, social media marketing and the many other elements I was scared to death I wouldn’t be able to find great help getting done?

Would I ever! And what were the odds? Turns out Shannon is chomping at the bit to do the very research and online presence development work I need to have done—and on my behalf—because it’s what she needs to do to help her transition to her new full-service role for independent authors. How fortuitous—how miraculous—to have run smack into someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as she is, to hold my hand and walk me gracefully through what had felt like a terrifying unknown minefield. Thanks to Shannon, and to my own willingness to let go of two people at the risk of offending them—and yes, to know when to ask for help—I won’t be losing any more sleep about birthing my book. It feels like a miracle!

My recently irritable bowel apparently agrees. After yesterday’s call, where Shannon and I began laying out the bare bones of what I now finally trust will be a stunning and inspirational website for me and my book, I’ve had the calmest tummy I’ve enjoyed for a good six weeks. Although I haven’t been to see Batbayar the acupuncturist lately, I’m sure he’d be proud.

Giving the universe space, part one

Suzanne Grenager — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:59:02 +0000

I said I’d write more about how the miracle of letting go of what doesn’t work makes room for the universe to offer us what does. What was I thinking? I have no idea how that happens. I only know that, for me at least, it does happen, every single time. The trick—and it is a trick of magical proportions—is to do the letting go part when the time is right. As you too must know, the ego doesn’t like to let go, so we often need to figure out an end run that lets us get by her.

Thanks to ego’s tenacity, I’ve been known to wait way past the right time to let go of a dysfunctional situation. And poor universe has had to jump in early—by kicking me out, often screaming. An example of that unfortunate scenario is when I taught yoga at Dickinson College. It seemed a great gig at first. I loved teaching yoga and I loved that I had thirty-plus students in each of several classes for which I was getting well paid per student. (Okay, well paid for a yoga teacher anyway). And I (that is, my ego) really loved to be teaching at the college level.

It was also true, however, that I (in this case, my heart) didn’t love teaching yoga as much I once had. The extra large classes were also kind of a drag, not conducive to the intimacy and spiritual ambiance I enjoyed creating. Nor, honestly, did I love the Dickinson students, most of whom were taking yoga because it was a cooler, easier gym credit than, say, archery or swimming. After a few years of impersonal classes, overfilled with none-too-interested college kids, I wasn’t having so much fun. And I wasn’t making the difference I’d become a yoga teacher to make. But darned if I was going to let go of the “college teacher” label or the good money. That’s when the universe kicked in and the school cut my salary in half. Oh, well. I sighed and persisted.

It took a second dramatic pay cut, and worse, before I got the message that the real “I” didn’t want to teach at Dickinson any more. There was screaming. But it was only after I finally let go and quit, of course, that Ilana Rubenfeld showed up on the radar screen to blow my mind with her fabulous touch-talk therapy. The moment I saw her use her hands and voice to turn people’s fear back to love, I knew her training was the next thing I had to do. There wouldn’t have been much room to embark on that life-changing adventure had I still been holding Dickinson tight.

Cut to a few weeks ago, when I let go of a web designer/online marketer who’d been holding me back. No, that’s not fair. I was holding me back, because I was holding onto her for fear of not finding anyone else to create my website and the “online presence” the self-publishing book world says you must have. If I hadn’t screwed up my courage to fire Ms. Wrong the day before, it would never have occurred to me one July Friday morning to ask a critical if unlikely question of my book designer, now online-presence-collaborator par excellence, Ms. Shannon Bodie.

As we finished discussing the layout for my book during a routine call that morning, I (in some despair) had the presence of mind—or whatever it was—to ask this: “Shannon, don’t I remember seeing something on your website about you and your husband designing websites?” I knew her husband had another job now, she’d never mentioned anything about web design, and I was at that point looking less for a web designer and more for a social media whiz (or so I thought). As far as I knew, Shannon was neither. But I liked her a lot, she’s very experienced in the world of books and there was a terrifying vacuum. So I gave it a shot.

(To be continued . . . )

Practice what you preach, Suzanne

Suzanne Grenager — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:49:20 +0000

Here’s a sorry, ironic truth about the summer of 2011 for a couple of quirky, well-intentioned Central Pennsylvanians: Trond and I have worked ourselves into a pair of royal swivets publishing a book about the critical importance of people becoming calm and collected enough to make a significant difference in the world. I am not a little ashamed of myself that it has come to this.

I’m sure there’s a lesson here. And I think the Chinese acupuncturist we sought out to administer treatment for our ailing beings was onto a simple one the other day. Trond and I were lying side by side (and sunny side up) on tables in Batbayar’s office—as if for couples massage, I thought. Trond, who is less inclined to bodywork but was in enough (back) pain to accede this time, had couples’ biers in mind. “It’s as if we both died at once,” he said, as he sweetly hopes we will.

“You know about yoga and meditation, don’t you?” Our acupuncturist asked me out of the blue. (I haven’t a clue how he knew, but I do know, of course.) “Practice what you preach,” he added matter-of-factly, as he stuck another of his magical hair-thin needles into my third eye.

Yep, Batman, you’re onto me; it’s decidedly time to reassess, regroup and rearrange my life so I can feel a tad more authentic when the words in Bare Naked at the Reality Dance start rolling off the presses. (Okay, it’s a print-on-demand book with no presses involved, but you know what I’m saying.) I don’t need to try to be perfect (a hopeless intent anyway). But the world is always a better place when I practice the supreme self-care that the book I wrote teaches.

This week I’ve made significant progress in that direction. No, the irritable bowel syndrome that settled in a few weeks ago isn’t gone. And rather than stopping to rest, I ran around like the Madwoman of Chaillot preparing for a trip. But I also took significant steps to back away from the situations that had wreaked havoc on my body, mind and spirit. I slowed the book project down. Most critically, I screwed up the courage to tell a key book production team member that I could no longer work with her. And I hadn’t a clue how I’d manage without her skill set.

It wasn’t easy or in the least comfortable to do that, and I felt badly for her. But I remembered (as she, too, wisely acknowledged) that relationship is a two way street, and if one person isn’t totally satisfied, it’s no good for the other one either. So I drove another nail into the coffin of what used to be a more deadly case of co-dependence, even as I liberated myself from frustration and resentment that was making me—and according to Batbayar, my spleen—sick. A great sigh went up from my body-being as I hit Send on the “it’s all over” email and realized I don’t have to do this anymore.

I don’t have to do anything with anyone who doesn’t feel altogether right just to get the book launched in a hurry. No. I can wait till the exact right person to help with next steps comes along. That is my right and my responsibility. Anything less, I’m being untrue to myself and the book.

Wouldn’t you know it, the very next day that exact right person showed up in a way that took my breath away. The proof was in the pudding a day later when I was back on the acupuncture table. Batbayar checked my nine pulses as usual and, only because I asked what he felt, he had this to say in his calm, matter-of-fact tone: “Your spleen is stronger, Suzanne.” More soon about how the miracle of letting go of what doesn’t work makes room for the universe to offer us what does.

My cat is putting himself “to sleep”

Suzanne Grenager — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:22:16 +0000

My cat is dying today. In the midst of so much other craziness—in my little world and the great wide one—the death of this dear friend of 17 years is suddenly all that matters. He and his demise have my full attention. I say that, yet I sit inside writing while he lies outside, where I cannot see him from here. On this most perfect July Sunday, I check on him, I touch him, I weep. Then I come inside to tell his story, while he expires, muddy and unable to arise or clean himself, at the damp grassy edge of our backyard stream. I am here and he is there, drawing what must be his last, very gentle several hundred breaths. He wants to be alone. It is how it needs to be.

I understand very well today why people have their dying pets euthanized, as we have done. Sitting even a distanced deathwatch is painful. We are doing it because Arba is patiently showing us it’s the right thing to do this time. He does not appear to be suffering any more than my mother suffered on her hospital deathbed three summers ago; she who, like Arba, looked only slightly pained, and quite distanced, as if she too might have preferred to have been left alone.

Mother’s death seemed natural as an ICU demise can be. But from what I can tell, Arba is dying the most natural old-age death I have been privileged to witness. Like Mother, who really wanted to go home to die, he knows where he wants his life to end—in a natural setting all by himself .

Unlike Mother’s, his has been a slow, steady and fairly painless demise. No obvious symptoms like those that sent her to the hospital in agony one awful August midnight. As recently as last week, Arba was eating a bit and covetously lapping the rain water that gathers in our fire pit cover. He was jumping up on the patio chaise and settling in with me to survey the grassy terrain.

It was just the day before yesterday when I realized we hadn’t seen him for a day or two. It’s summer, and both our cats spend a lot of time outside, with acres of fields and woods for the roaming. So I didn’t think much of it until I noticed the dual food bowl in the back hall was suspiciously full. And now that I thought about it, our other cat, Cider, had been acting strangely for several days, not wanting to go outside much and meowing a lot. Uh oh.

The first of many searches began. Trond and I set off, together, then splitting up to survey the large overgrown perimeter of the property. We scoured the barn and outbuildings, flashlights in hand. Hot and tired, we finally gave up, unable to think of anywhere else he could be. Then we found him, near the stream, exactly where we’d started our search but where he had definitely not been then. Thank God! Except that the moment we sat down to be with and comfort him, he lumbered onto his feet and made his way unsteadily to a shady spot in the garden on the other side of the stream. Okay. At least we’d know where to find him, alive or dead, in the morning.

But yesterday morning there was no sign of Arba, again. After another big search, I had to go out. That’s when Trond went down to the far end of the pond, a badly overgrown area with a steep hillside leading to a muddy ditch where the pond water flows out through a pipe. In 40 years here I’d never been there. Trond wouldn’t haven’t been there either, except that after several years of contemplating it, yesterday was the day he decided to begin draining the pond.

When I returned, Trond was waiting to tell me. Arba had somehow made it all the way to the far end of the pond and—judging from how muddy he was—down into the deep gulch. He had crawled part way back up the steep hillside and stopped. We’d never have thought to look there!

The two of us rushed to the gulch and came upon Arba still lying in the hillside thicket. What to do? We couldn’t bear to leave him, uncertain as we were he hadn’t gotten stuck on his way back up. Adding to our discomfort, and possibly his, his muddy hind quarters had become a fly magnet. We deliberated and then moved him, slowly, gently, via a cardboard box with an escape hatch cut out and his cat bed cushion to lie on. We set the the box down with him in it on the back porch, against the stone wall of the house where he used to like to sit and take in the sun.

Arba would have none of it. In a move that was painful to watch, he got himself up, pushed himself out of the escape hatch and stumbled deliberately toward the garden next to the stream that he’d repaired to before. He settled in again among the tall hostas, seeming to know much better than we did where he belonged. It was time to let him be, and so we have ever since.

To our surprise earlier today, we found that he had moved for what I knew had to be one last time, from the garden down closer to the stream again. I am going to go check on him now and do not expect to find him alive…. I went, I checked and I found Arba, somehow moved again, flat out under the hostas. He is barely breathing and looks peaceful as my mother did in her last hours. Mother loved our gardens, and she loved Arba. I wish she could have died here with him.

Is the social media marketing big tent folding?

Suzanne Grenager — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:14:26 +0000

In my last post I said I was behind the times (as well as behind time) for not riding the gargantuan wave of social media marketing to promote my book. Mea culpa for lacking a virtual fan horde. But guess what? I’ve spent another few weeks at the social media marketing circus (if I may mix metaphors). And after yet more exposure to the many rings where I might share my wares with an audience of virtual strangers-cum-friends, I’m having second thoughts.

My first, and maybe last, second thought is that the wave may have crested—and the moment passed—for using every last social media trick to hook folks into buying whatever it is. In the nano-second evolutionary world of social media, hard hawking via Facebook, Twitter, webinars and slews of virtual partners offering free bonuses may no longer be the way to go. If it ever was.

If the aggressive multi-media approach is already feeling old to me as a recent customer—and it really, really is—my best, by now pretty experienced guess is it’s likely to feel old— “been there, done that, leave me alone already”—to the most sophisticated of my soon-to-be-readers. To the fresh and virtually untouched, it could be confounding. Like, excuse me, why are you sending me another email about a book I decided to buy after the first email. Leave me alone.

This isn’t to say the idea of building an on-line tribe isn’t a good one, in theory. If we’re talking a real tribe, of people I’ve actually connected with, one at a time or in small groups in real life (or, okay, on-line), I’ve got that and I want to stay in touch. But mere months before the book is out, to start working like mad to attract a raft of pretend friends for the purpose of creating a tribe to sell to feels inauthentic, and well, as I’ve heard the social media marketing people say…“salesy”.

I have a long-ago but significant background in advertising and public relations. And as the people I convinced to become coaching clients will tell you, I’m not shy about selling my goods. It occurs to me that those hundreds, and the thousands I taught yoga to, already know what I have to offer. I built my unofficial tribe organically over the decades while I’ve helped them and myself to become more fully who we are. Sure, I want to let these people know about the book. But does it have to take many almost certainly annoying rounds of virtual nudging to do it? No.

Mine is admittedly an old fashioned word-of-mouth way, with a new twist. We’ll have at the ready a webpage, ye old email and our modest Facebook presence, along with whatever other social media tools we may be moved to engage along the way. I don’t yet know what we’ll want to try, any more than I used to know what I was going to write in the journal that’s become Bare Naked at the Reality Dance. Neither, of course, do I know what the next wave in the larger world of social media might look like. Many pundits think Facebook has peaked, and I tend to agree.

What I do know is that much of the virtual marketing being done right now feels like overkill, and overkill is not for me. My small trusty team will help us find our own more quiet, intuitive way to proceed. I will keep you posted as we keep our collective ear to the ground to see whether the old hard-hitting wave may indeed have crested and whether there may be a new and gentler one forming in the virtual sea—not just for me to ride, but for the many of us who want to get our word out, not with a stick or bullhorn, but with a potent feminine whisper and a come-hither-because-it’s-lovely-here glance. I very much welcome your thoughts about mine!