Homeward – Coming October 11, 2022

Friends. Here it is.

I am so filled with joy to share this with you.

Louis L’Amour famously said “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”

Two and a half years ago, I had my life upended. I lost a relationship I thought would last forever. I lost a neighborhood, children, friends, family and pets. One day, I had a full life, and the next, I was staring at huge empty spaces. I lost a place I’d come to believe was my home. It felt like the end.

And the thing is, it was. It was the end. As I wrote in my first book, She Wrote it Down, some things need to die. But in those necessary deaths, can be rebirths. That’s not built in, though. The rebirth is not guaranteed. Like all births, there is labor involved. I had to stay still for the grief. I had to decide to feel everything. I had to stay sober. I had to do my work. I had to figure out what I needed and wanted, not in a partner, but in myself. Who was I going to be on the other side of this cleaving? How would I find my way home again? And what would that even mean?

I was so lost. I would stay lost for a while.But step by step, I found my way. I walked the streets of my new city, I got a dog. I listened to music, and I consumed art like it was my actual job. I leaned on my friends. And I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote.Then, I met someone. I didn’t fall in love. I walked into it. Hiked, really. Uphill. With my eyes wide open. I decided to love. First me. Then him. Then us.

Home is so much more than the place we lay our heads at night. It’s our identity, our safest place, and the touchstone we return to to reconnect with ourselves when we are lost. This book is the map of my journey home. I walked through downtown New Haven, speaking notes into my phone. I hiked the beautiful trails of Connecticut, taking photos and reconnecting with the woods and the world, learning not to sync my stride to someone else’s but to go at my own pace and find my own path.

Those notes became essays, which ultimately became this story. It’s not an origin story, and it’s not a final chapter – but it is a love story. All of it. Even the painful parts. It’s all love.And I’m home.

Homeward; How one woman embraced being lost to find her way home is coming on October 11, 2022. I can’t wait for you all to read it – so many of you have been a part of my healing and its creation. And now we get to celebrate coming home.

xoxoxoLaura