Every once in a while, something arrives in your inbox that makes you pause, breathe a little deeper, and whisper, Oh… this is good.

This week, I opened an email from Story Circle Network—an organization that has been nurturing women’s voices for decades—and found out that my piece “The Day I Chose Dirt Over Doctrine” has been selected for their upcoming anthology, Real Women Write: In the Garden, publishing this December.

To say I’m honored doesn’t feel like enough.
Story Circle Network has built a creative home for women who tell the truth—women who write from scar tissue and curiosity, from longing and grit, from hope that refuses to die. Their annual anthology gathers all of that into one place, and this year’s theme is especially meaningful:

In the Garden

A collection that explores
growth, loss, memory, beauty, resilience, and the quiet power of tending one’s own life.

This edition includes essays, stories, and poems from women who have lived richly, loved deeply, and learned to coax something green from even the rockiest soil. It’s about the gardens we inherit, the gardens we create, and the gardens we carry inside us.

To be included among these voices… truly, it’s one of the sweetest gifts of my writing year.

And this particular piece of mine—about choosing earth over ideology, breath over rigid belief—feels right at home in this collection. It’s soft and fierce at the same time. It’s a seed I planted long ago finally coming up through the dirt.

A huge thank you to Story Circle Network

For seeing value in women’s stories—messy, complicated, brave, unfinished.
For giving us places to grow, and pages to bloom on.
For choosing this piece of mine to stand alongside so many others.

Coming This December

The anthology will be available soon, and you’d better believe I’ll be cheering loudly when it arrives.

Want a copy as a gift?

If you become a paid subscriber to I’m Healing Out Loud this season, I’d love to send you a copy of the book as a thank-you.
My way of saying:
Welcome to the garden. I’m glad you’re here.

More details soon—December is just around the corner, and something beautiful is about to bloom.