I still remember the exact moment. My bare feet (not yet tattooed with a map of the world) rested against the dashboard, my mom in the driver’s seat as we drove across Kentucky towards Nashville to visit my sister.

I’d already quit my job working in the ICU, the exhilarating freedom of walking through those heavy hospital doors, knowing I’d never have to walk through them again, mingled with naive excitement for what was to come.

“I’m still looking for a place to call home. A place where my roots can settle into the dark, deep earth, a place that resonates with the quiet song of my soul. I have been told to bloom where I’m planted, but the soil is dry and the gray sky too ominous for my spirit to feel nurtured. And so I’m packing my bags yet again, searching for a place to fit in, hoping the road will lead me to a clear path, an open meadow where the birds sing and the grass grows tall.”

From “Cultivating Contentment” originally shared on this blog.

“Are you going to write a book?” My Mom asked, driving across a bridge illuminated only by the constellations of stars above.

I hesitated, even though I already knew the answer: YES. Though the adventures I’d write about first on my travel blog, TheBarefootBeat, were still just a figment of my imagination, I somehow knew they’d become something more.

Over a decade later, I’m SO excited to introduce “The Pattern Shop,” a story of belonging woven together during years of loss, love, and finding my way home.

After spending ten + years trying to capture the stories that captivated and changed my heart–from my grandfather’s pattern shop in rural Missouri, to haunted hospital hallways, ancient temples in Mexico, visiting with warriors in the disappearing Ecuadorian jungle, falling in love in France, and returning to the red stained soil of Africa to remember the taste of joy, this book is about healing, transformation, and fragile hope.

While literary fiction, The Pattern Shop is a compilation of my lived experiences and the work of weaving them together to understand, and finally transform them. The stories and characters are talismans I hope you can carry with you on your own journey of becoming and finding your place in a chaotic world full of possibilities.

My goal is to share the self-publication journey with as much courage and heart (and juicy behind-the-scenes details!) as this book deserves. Being able to midwife it into the world on my terms and letting you in on the whole process feels especially tender and perfect.

But before diving into the book, I want to introduce you to twenty-five-year-old Mariah, whom I owe so much gratitude and love. Without her bravery, this book wouldn’t exist. This is what she wrote in 2013, with way more foresight and confidence than she gave herself credit for.

“I honestly don’t really know how this chapter of my life will be written, who will become the antagonist, how the plot will develop, if it will become a short story or a novel with a sequel. What I do know is that I’m embarking on this adventure to explore and discover the world around me, but it’s more than that. The truth is that I have been living a life incongruent with my core values and beliefs.

I’ve been participating in a cycle of consumerism, when what I really long for is simplicity and freedom from materialism. I’ve prided myself in being self-sufficient and independent living on my own, when what I really crave is community and interdependence. I’ve spent the last three years working the overnight shift, spending the majority of my days sleeping when all I craved was sunshine and a sense of normalcy.

I’ve been contributing to a broken system of healthcare delivery that focuses on illness instead of wellness, believing there is a better way but not knowing how to be more effective. I’ve felt helpless as I watch our environment become destroyed by greed, knowing that my own lifestyle perpetuates this destruction.

I want to live a life of service, trusting a Higher Power to work out the details, walking by faith and not by fear. Instead, I’ve been relying on my own limited abilities and sense of control to orchestrate a lifestyle that conflicts with my beliefs. I’ve allowed my daily responsibilities and obligations to distract me from honoring my authentic desires, caught in a cycle of hypocrisy, not sure how to escape.”

(You can check out the full blog post, written a week after I quit my job in the ICU here).

Twelve years later, in a new season of life as a mother and wife, I hear echoes of the same feeling, grappling with conflicting values, longing for more peace and simplicity, while not knowing exactly how to get there. Perhaps, re-visiting these stories and sharing them with you will offer a form of circular wisdom, from past to future me and back again.

After all, isn’t that the power of storytelling?

This week, I’ve started the process of hiring a copy/line editor to polish the final manuscript and will be sharing more details about that in our Heartbeats writer’s chat, as well as in the next update!

Join Mariah Friend’s subscriber chat

Thank you for letting me share this journey with you! I’d love to hear what resonates and what wisdom your past self might have for future you, or vice versa! Leave a comment, I read them all. 😊

Google+