Lynn, I can’t believe all you’ve been through and accomplished. Breast cancer at the same time that you published a book and graduated from college. I hope you see what a light you’ve become.

And Dotsie— Connect, encourage, support--I couldn’t agree more and, like you, haven’t found a better way. This is why I keep telling people about your site. Feel free to ask me anything. There’s very little I’m unwilling to share. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear more about my life, but I love hearing other people’s stories and gaining insight into what moves and motivates them. Your comments about your mother, Dotsie, remind me of Polly’s experience with hers. (See my first posting this morning). How interesting that both you and she are actively using your gifts, following your passions, and working to make a difference. What a wonderful legacy both your moms gave you--and, by extension, all of us.

In terms of my favorite story, I honestly don’t have one. Every story touched a different chord. Each was my favorite as I was writing it. That said, there are two, for very different reasons, that resonate with me more than the others. The first is Patricia Symonds’. The other is Rainelle Burton's, which I'll save for another time.

Like Pat, I always felt stupid. Pat’s teachers, a group of nuns in Liverpool, England, convinced her that she wasn’t smart. My father did the same to me. She and I were told this again and again to the point where we believed it so deeply that nothing we did and nothing anyone could say would prove to us otherwise. My estimate of my intelligence was so low that I dropped out of college. Pat’s was so low that by the time she was in her 40’s, she still didn’t have a high school diploma. (Note that there were other circumstances & factors surrounding my leaving school and that Pat grew up in England under a different educational system, but the emotional gist of what I’m saying is true.) Then Pat turned her life around and in her 40's earned a GED, B.A. and M.A. In her 50’s, she spent two years living in a bamboo house in the mountains of Thailand studying Hmong culture. At age 60, Ph.D. in hand, she was hired by Brown University, an Ivy League college, to teach anthropology. She just got promoted again last year at age 70. Needless to say, the nuns were wrong. She's extremely bright.

Anyway, the kicker for me is that at age 38, as I was finishing up my Master’s degree, I was considering going on to get a Ph.D. But I thought I’d be an antique by the time I finished my dissertation and that no would want to hire me. In reality, I would have been in my mid-40’s, which doesn’t seem that old to me now. Then I met Pat, who never even considered whether she’d be hired or not. She just followed her passion. That’s when I started to realize that I was writing Defying Gravity not just to help other people come into their own, but to help myself.