“I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.”

~ Tina Fey

How do I KNOW I can do it? Why do I feel that I’m the one to tell my stories, share my message? Who the heck do I think I am, anyway?

These thoughts plague every writer—at least at first, and often even once they’ve got a shelf full of titles and awards. As humans, and especially as creatives, most of us need encouragement from outside of our limited self-perception. Someone who believed in us at the start of our writing process, maybe even before we did. Someone who could see and declare our talent aloud—“You know, you’ve got something here!”—and ignite our fire.

“You’re going to be switching careers soon to do something really big.”

Drew Lawrence, a popular Vedic Astrologer, tapped his pen on the printout of my chart in his lap. I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair, worried that my actor husband would think I was trying to hog his celestial spotlight.

I’d dragged Jesse here with the promise that Drew could make superstar prophecies for him—foretell a recurring role on TV or even a starring one. Though wildly talented, Jesse hadn’t booked a commercial since before our wedding. My attempts to ease the “poverty consciousness” in our home with affirmations and vision boards were often short-lived. Jesse preferred I just stop spending so much money instead. But even he seemed hopeful about this field trip to Drew’s, despite the $108 per session price tag. That is until Drew started making declarations about my future career success.

“Really? Because I’m a mom, and I have a busy career as a dog-walker,” I said.

Drew shook his head. “Dog-walking is not your destiny. You have Jupiter in the sixth house, so you’re a healer of animals. But you’re here for much more. You’ll be dealing with the masses.”

I looked sideways at Jesse, one of the most complicated humans I’d ever met. Clearly, Drew can’t see that I love humanity as a concept but find people insufferable. Jesse and I had gotten married after knowing each other all of two months, so—surprise, surprise—we rarely saw things the same way, only to find out after hours of kitchen-table processing that we often did. Despite the love, it’s safe to say we fought more in one week than I’d fought my entire life with everyone else combined. With the addition of our rambunctious toddler, Tosh, I could barely handle my little family. To be embraced by the masses sounded like a total shit show.

“Yes, but you’re great with people as long as you have downtime.” Drew pointed to an icon on the page. “This is Mercury, the planet of communication, and yours is powerful. It’s retrograde, so you think differently. See things people don’t see. It can make a person lonely at times, hard to feel like you fit in or want to join things, particularly when you’re young.” He smiled. I smiled. Wow. Star seer or mind reader? “The career you have coming has to do with lots of people and writing—a perfect balance of the two. It’s big energy. You have one of the most powerful charts I’ve ever seen.”

Wait, whaaaaat? I couldn’t fathom what this career could be but felt a sense of giddiness at the prospect.

“Your destiny is guaranteed,” Drew continued. “It doesn’t matter where you are in the world or what you’re doing; this new gig will soon find you.”

My head was spinning. “When do you think?” I asked.

“Sometime in the next fifteen months.” He turned back to the first page. “Your auspicious window starts this coming August and lasts until next August. You couldn’t avoid it if you moved underground.”

August?! Wow. That’s only twelve weeks away!

Despite my parents’ accolades for my typewritten Groople the Banana’s crime-fighting escapades in elementary school, grown-up me had no one rooting for my dimly lit dreams of writing. It mighta helped if I’d actually told someone when those childhood goals refused to budge. Nope! I’d need a nudge from a higher authority.

Van Jones, CNN commentator, lawyer, activist, founder of the Dreams Corps, and New York Times bestselling author of The Green Collar Economy, Rebuild the Dream, and Beyond the Messy Truth.

My mother encouraged me to write from the very beginning. I wasn’t very athletic. I was a nerd. I didn’t have that many friends. I didn’t have much going for me, but I liked to read, and I liked to write, and I liked to draw. My mother encouraged that. She taught typing and office management at the public high school, and whenever she would bring home the white typing paper, I would just get happy because I could fill it up. I would write stories and illustrate them. So, I had a great deal of confidence in my writing from very early on.

Nell Scovell, TV comedy writer, producer, director, and collaborator on the #1 New York Times bestseller Lean In. Her memoir, Just the Funny Parts, documents her decades writing for, among others: The Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, which she created and executive produced.

At my third-grade parent-teacher conference, the teacher complained I made too many jokes during class. She wanted my mother to talk to me about toning it down. Mom said she’d pass the message along. And she did . . . on my fortieth birthday! My mother waited thirty-two years until I was an established comedy writer to tell me that my third-grade teacher had notes on my personality.

My mother’s unconditional love is one of the reasons that I could withstand so much criticism and rejection over the years. It’s my Harry Potter scar.

Sabaa Tahir, #1 New York Times bestselling author with two titles on TIME magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time list: An Ember in the Ashes and A Torch Against the Night.

When I first thought, I’m going to try and write a book, I was twenty-one. I’m going to write a memoir about growing up in the desert. But I was twenty-one! I didn’t know anything. I was writing this book, or trying to, and I kept calling my mom to complain. Finally, probably sick of me whining, she said, “Why don’t you write a fantasy? You love fantasy!”

“I can’t write a fantasy,” I said. “No one would take me seriously!”

She said, “What are you talking about? No one’s going to take you seriously if you never finish your book!”

Immigrant moms. They just tell it to you like it is. There’s no coddling.*

Tosca Lee, New York Times bestselling author. Included in her eleven historical novels and thrillers are The Legend of Sheba, The Progeny, The Line Between, and A Single Light.

During spring break my freshman year, I was talking with my dad about my favorite books, saying that great novels are like roller coasters, with twists and turns and emotional highs and lows. I blurted out, “I think I’d like to write a book!” I wanted to know if I could build a roller coaster like that for someone else to enjoy.

I was supposed to spend that summer working at a bank as a teller. Mind you, I was terrible with numbers and could never balance my drawer. My dad said, “Okay, I will make you a deal. I will pay you what you would have made this summer as a bank teller if you will spend the summer writing your first novel full-time.”

I was all over it! I took on a historical novel about the Neolithic people of Stonehenge and had to do all this research. I thought, Wow, this is really hard! The following summer, I submitted it to Writers House, a New York literary agency. I made every single mistake writing that book and submitting it, but they sent me a detailed, generous rejection letter.

It wasn’t the result I wanted. But what I took away was, I am so doing this again! I think that was such a cool thing my father did for me, investing in me like that. I will always be grateful and would do that for my children in a heartbeat.

Jesse’s astrological chart was more sobering—accurately predicting the year his father left for Vietnam, details of his parents’ divorce, and, worst of all, how he’d never be able to feel my unconditional love, no matter how much I gave. Fabulous. Our drive home from Drew’s was uncharacteristically quiet, and I decided to do what every emotionally desperate follower of psychics, astrologers, or gurus does upon getting a mixed-bag reading: take what feels good and ignore the cruddy rest.

The next day, to show the Universe I was doing my part in the co-creation of my coming career miracle, I bought Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, the classic guide to wooing creativity. I committed to finishing every exercise within its twelve-week workbook. I picked Jesse up a copy too.

“It’ll be fun! We’ll do this together,” I cooed. “You’re already an artist, and Drew thinks I might be too.”

Jesse, a lover of adventure, agreed. We opened our books to chapter one, piping hot mugs of chai tea on the coffee table before us, and dug in.

By my calculations, once the twelve weeks were complete and I’d taken myself on every Cameron-ordered weekly “Artist Date” and dutifully scribbled my “Morning Pages” into my journal, it would be August, my magic window. If Drew Lawrence was wrong, no harm, no foul; I loved my pup clients. But if he was right, look out masses, here I come!

Dean Koontz

I was writing stories on tablet paper when I was eight years old and drawing covers for them and stapling them down one side and covering the staples with electrician’s tape so nobody would hurt their fingers. I peddled them to relatives for a nickel. I was publisher, writer, editor, and agent. It’s strange to me all these years later; that drive was there for this very thing at such a young age.

My English teacher was a woman named Winona Garbrick, and she was a World War II WAC in the Army, a delightful person, about five foot tall. As small as she was, football players were terrified of her. She took a liking to my writing in ninth grade and nurtured it through twelfth grade. She was the first person outside of an uncle who gave me the sense that I might have something, not just in writing, but that I might have some value. I didn’t get a sense of value from my family. So, she has a place in my heart forever.

Marianne Williamson, political activist, spiritual thought leader, and author of fourteen books, four of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers, including A Return to Love and Healing the Soul of America.

I started lecturing in 1983. After I’d been doing that for five years, I had dinner one night in San Francisco with Jerry Jampolsky. He’d written the first popularized book on the principles of the Course in Miracles. He said to me that night, “You ought to write a book.”

I said, “Well, other people have told me that, but I don’t feel pregnant with a book.”

“All of the information you would need is in these talks you’ve been giving, and you have the tapes.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how to get what’s in a talk onto a page.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s agree in consciousness in this moment that there’s someone out there who could help you take your words from a speech to a book.”

Two days later, I was in Los Angeles, and somebody came up to me after my talk and said that they were a literary agent. I gave them my phone number, but I never got a call.

Five days after that, I was approached by a different agent who I never heard from again. Then a few days later, in New York City, another literary agent approached me. He said, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?”

I said, “People kept saying that. I don’t know. I don’t feel pregnant with a book.”

“Well, they’re in your tapes.”

“I don’t know how to get it from the tapes to a page.”

“Well,” he said, “I can help you do that.”

And that’s how my book became a book.

Carol Allen, relationship coach and Vedic Astrologer, author of Love is in the Stars: The Wise Woman’s Astrological Guide to Men.* Her entertaining newsletter has been read by millions.

For years I insisted I’d never write a book in my industry. There were typically two kinds of astrology books: dense and academic, necessary for students of the stars but a form I could never pull off. Or too fluffy and light with mostly “pop astrology” predictions and descriptions that didn’t reflect the amazing wisdom true astrology could provide, and I didn’t want to write one of those. Not to mention that there were already so many awesome authors and titles and it had all been said before, and I didn’t see anything new I could contribute.

So, for fifteen years I insisted I’d never attempt it. But then one day I met one of my mentors, and he said to me over our first lunch, “You should write a book about what you do.”

“No way,” I said, laying out the same reasons I just gave.

“Why do people come to you, and how does astrology help them?” he asked.

I lit up and explained all the amazing ways astrology illuminates people’s relationships, way beyond the normal “sun sign compatibility” fluff we’ve all heard a million times. I told him about topics such as timing, aka “Seasons of Love” or “Seasons of Loneliness”; relationship “capacity”—how a person’s chart easily shows if they are “relationship material” or too good to be true; “astrological affliction”—the sad truth that many people have deep inborn defects of character that get in the way of them being a good partner to anyone, no matter how compatible, and on and on.

My mentor said, “Is there a book on all of that?”

And it hit me. There wasn’t. He hired me on the spot to write it for his online company—to sell the book digitally.* I couldn’t believe it. For fifteen years I was just sure I’d never so much as start, but in a one-hour conversation we laid out the whole book.

Six weeks later.

“Linda! You’re going to love this magic guy I just went to!” Carol said, breathless. “Trust me! You’ve got to book a session!”

She explained that Guru Singh, a Sikh leader, healer, and master yoga teacher, had given her just the right spiritual prescription in one session to put a stop to her wailing over her recent breakup with Bad Boyfriend. Thank God for that; nothing else had worked. Several of the world’s biggest movie stars, in fact—who I imagined could afford the best and probably had A+ level bullshit detectors—also credited this nondenominational, all-religions-welcome Guru character with their emotional and financial freedom.

Hmm. Did I need healing? What if he could confirm Drew’s astrological prediction? What ultimately cinched it for me was that Guru had just been named “Best Guru in LA” by Los Angeles magazine. Uh-huh. So very La La Land.

I arrived for my session to find Guru’s West Hollywood compound abloom in sweet-smelling jasmine. Wind chimes crashed, an unseasonable warning of a relentless Santa Ana wind season to come. Guru greeted me outside, a tall smiling man with a long, dark beard and bright blue eyes, clad in pure white from turbaned head to sandaled toes. His fingers were adorned with citrine and moonstone rings, and silver bangles climbed up one arm. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he hummed as if we’d had a divine appointment planned long ago.

Or maybe it was the fact that I was five minutes late.

We took our shoes off at the door to his office, a white room that smelled of incense and earth, with large flat pillows on the floor. Guru and his healing center were exactly as you’d imagine. Crystals as big as softballs were strewn about. A floor-to-ceiling mirror covered one wall, festooned with hundreds of stickers straight out of a label maker:

“Do not try to fit in; you fit perfectly in you.”

“Accept the other as yourself.”

“Eternity is not at all logical.”

“Time is always here forever, and it’s always right now.”

Unlike in his yoga classes, where Los Angeles magazine wrote that you had to “levitate for space,” we sat comfortably cross-legged facing one another on a large area rug. Suddenly, Guru stopped smiling or blinking and looked into my eyes as if evaluating my very existence. Almost a minute passed. I nodded nervously. Will he see how blessed my future’s supposed to be too? Will my aura or vibes reveal the destiny Drew saw?

“What the hell are you doing hiding behind all those dogs?!” Guru scolded.

Well, that was unexpected. Whoa, how does he know about my dog-walking business? Did Carol talk with him about me? His penetrating eyes stayed locked onto mine; the ferocity of his stare unnerved me. Um, am I in trouble? What does he mean, hiding behind all those dogs?

“You’re supposed to be a writer, remembered for at least a hundred and fifty years after your death,” he boomed, as if reading my heart. “When are you going to stop avoiding your destiny?”

Destiny?! Writer?! Wait! How does he know about my secret literary dreams? I hadn’t told him anything; Carol must have. But hold up! Not even Carol knows! I felt enormously uncomfortable and profoundly relieved all at the same time.

“But what am I supposed to write?” I asked. I hoped Guru didn’t give the same prophecy to everyone and that he’d have the answer to this too. The only topic that motivated me was educating people on things Mom had taught me about the environment. But that wasn’t popular, and in any case, I was no expert. How could I, a diploma-less laywoman, hope to make such topics entertaining to a populace that didn’t seem to give a shit?

“Words to heal humanity,” Guru pronounced. “You will write words to heal humanity.”

Oh, is that all? No biggie, although that was precisely what I yearned to do. But this all sounded ridiculously grandiose, particularly for someone who hadn’t written anything longer than a grocery list for ages. Guru kept on, each word speaking to my greatest wish—the one held close by my kid self, where I hoped dearly that one day I’d pen books that, like the aforementioned rows of gilt-edged encyclopedias that graced my childhood home, would stand the test of time.

I shielded my eyes with a groan-squeal and shook my head. “I’m scared, Guru. I don’t know if I can do it!”

“Stop! That’s horseshit, and you know it!” Guru was glaring at me, or through me, I couldn’t tell which. He seemed genuinely irritated. I wasn’t used to men scolding me—well, not before marrying Jesse. Jeez. Carol said he was so compassionate; when does that kick in? And are gurus allowed to swear like this? Can’t he see I still have six weeks before my auspicious window opens? Don’t these shaman types ever compare notes?

Guru motioned for me to sit in what looked like a tilted massage chair in a womb of a second room no larger than a walk-in closet. As I lay back, he covered my body in a weighty white blanket and slid cool egg-shaped crystals into my palms and another larger one over my heart that was connected to some kind of electrode or something because it was pulsing and lit from within. As the scent of sandalwood focused my senses, Guru placed bulky black headphones over my ears and shielded my eyes with a soft cloth. My cocooning was complete.

My headset came alive with tinkling bells, birdsong, waterfalls, and what could only be described as space vibrations. Guru held a microphone in his hand and began to speak powerful affirmations that seemed to merge with the mysterious symphony. I tried to memorize the various commandments he was imbuing into my consciousness, but I lost his words as soon as I heard them. Just relax and trust, I told myself. My breathing deepened.

An hour later, the faint pinging of a gong woke me up, but I had no idea how long I’d been out. “Keep your eyes closed and wiggle your toes,” Guru said as he put a Kleenex laced with lavender oil into my palm and raised it to my nose. The effect was immediate, like fragrant smelling salts. I was suddenly fully in my body.

“Good work!” Guru said, his voice now mellow, sweet. He uncovered my eyes and handed me a glass of Emergen-C vitamin drink before sitting down next to me. “You’re ready to step into your bigger life now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah!” I answered, careful not to break his gaze. Am I out of trouble yet?

“The wheels are already in motion,” he said with a wink. Goose bumps raced across my arms.

Anita Moorjani, international speaker, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Dying to Be Me, which chronicles her spontaneous total cancer healing following a near-death experience, plus Sensitive Is the New Strong, and What If This Is Heaven?

I was a part-time consultant with various corporations, speaking to their employees on culture. I’d had a spontaneous cancer healing following a near-death experience in the hospital. I was spending much of my time writing about it on a medical blog under the name “Anita M” because I didn’t want the people I was doing consulting work for to know I had cancer. I didn’t dare get out there and speak publicly as myself because I wasn’t a doctor.

My friend has a healing center in Dubai, and she invited me to come to speak. I was resistant, but something changed in me in Dubai. This was the first time I was physically and energetically feeling and seeing the impact my story had on people. People were crying. People who had stage 4 cancer and who said the medical world had taken away their hope.

I thought, Oh my God. This is my purpose. When I went to bed that night, I was thinking, I have no idea how this is going to happen. I’m going to leave it to the Universe. I’m going to leave it to my soul to figure it out.

The next morning happened to be my birthday. I woke up, checked my email, and there was one from Hay House, saying that Dr. Wayne Dyer had discovered my story and asked them to reach out to me to see if I was interested in writing a book—which they’d be happy to publish. I started crying.

“Do you know how hard you are to track down?” said Wayne, who would write the book’s foreword. “From the time I read your story to the time Hay House found you was five months! You said you were living in Hong Kong, and that’s all we had to go on.”

My friend with the center had given me permission. Wayne and Hay House gave me permission. But this is also about becoming ready ourselves. I call this the inside-out view. We think we have to go out there and hammer at the marketing and hammer other people. But no, it’s inside. Get yourself ready, and it’ll come.

Tom Hanks

My book [Uncommon Type] is dedicated to the wife and kids. But it also says: “Because of Nora.” When I first met Nora Ephron to talk about Sleepless in Seattle, I had a really big head. I thought I was important. Nora had only made one movie I’d seen; Rita took me to see it. I was meeting her under the auspices of: “This is a power meeting and I have clout right now.” Nora was beginning to write and direct movies and I was like, “Well, I really like your script, Nora. I got some problems with it, but I like your script.” It was a snooty-assed relationship that took a while to evolve. When we were actually going to make the movie, she and her sister, Delia, wrote the screenplay. It was originally a draft by a guy named Jeffrey Arch, but what always happens is the filmmaker who makes the film does the rewrite.

We were sitting around talking, and it was probably a three-hour meeting about my character and the story line. I got pushed out of shape because they wrote about a father-and-son relationship, and I had issues. I said, “You guys don’t know anything about fathers and sons. You don’t know anything! You’re women. You’re moms!”

Nora said, “Well, what would fathers do?”

“Fathers would look at their son and say, ‘You don’t want me to go off with a woman this weekend? Too bad! I’m gonna go get laid! What do you think of that?’ That’s the way fathers talk to sons.”

A version of that ended up in the movie. When the movie came out, Nora said to me, “You wrote that scene.”

I said, “No, I didn’t. I complained in a meeting; that’s a totally different thing.”

“No, you wrote it,” she said. “We didn’t have it. You came in and said this, and it’s more or less verbatim,” which happened in a couple of other places.

To be highfalutin, Nora was the very first person, a member of the same firmament I was in because we were both filmmakers, who said, “Not only are you a filmmaker, but you’re also a writer.”

When I started wanting to really write, she was there. The first thing I did was an article for the New York Times [“The Man Who Aged Me”] about my makeup man of nineteen years, Danny Striepeke, when he retired. I sent her a version of the piece, and she said, “This isn’t quite there yet, but it is a thing. Here’s what you have to do . . .” Her guidance is something I remember every single day and put to the test in every one of the stories for Uncommon Type. It’s voice! Voice, voice, voice. Theme is one thing; plot is something else. Character, dialogue—these are all key. But if you don’t have a voice, you don’t have a perspective; you don’t have a POV. Nora is the one who said, “If you want to be a writer, which I think you are, you have to develop voice. This one single thing will lead to everything else.”

That said, there are people out there who are wicked talented and creative, but they’re waiting for permission, waiting to be invited into the process. They’re waiting to be asked or discovered, but that’s rarely the way it works. You have to pursue your art twenty-four hours a day. You’ve always got to be thinking of a story and creating your own outlet for the stuff that’s inside you.

We humans are tribal. We crave support and cheerleading. Turns out, we can’t all depend on ourselves to take the plunge on a project directed by our own initiative. The majority of us get things done best when someone is on our tail, awaiting results.

To me, that’s welcome news! We don’t have to feel bad if we’re not taking steps to get ’er done. There’s no shame in needing to enroll people, true believers, to grant us permission and help bolster our belief. Remember, I hired Drew Lawrence, the astrologer, and Guru Singh. They didn’t stop me on a street corner and anoint me. I called their phone numbers, made appointments, and drove my ass across town in heavy traffic, looking for a miracle worthy of my Benjamins.

Of course, the reason their words were so meaningful was that they predicted the very thing I already wanted. If Drew or Guru had declared that my destiny was to be an astrophysicist, I would’ve laughed and walked out, never to return. But they were envisioning my heart’s desire.

The good news for you is that you don’t have to have a guru. If you want permission, let me give it to you right now. Ready? Trust your ache. You have the ache because you have what it takes. Let the very fact that you want something be enough of a reason.

Your desire is the only WHY you’ll ever need.

And, in most of the stories throughout this chapter, there was one person, one sacred relationship, that made a significant difference. Twenty-six-year-old me believed I needed permission from spiritual leaders because the stakes were too high and my experience too little. I didn’t yet have the confidence. If that’s hitting home, identify someone you can reach out to who really sees you—right now, before you turn the page. One sacred relationship you can connect with. If you don’t have that person, how can you go about finding them as you support yourself? Your people—coaches, mentors, groups, and uplifting friends—are out there, everywhere. When you do find them—those who get you, believe in you, and hold the vision if or when you can’t—stay close.

Every book, every character, every story has a champion. Sometimes, that champion spots the potential within you; sometimes, that champion is you.

Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author whose works include Eat Pray Love (which became a movie starring Julia Roberts), Committed, Big Magic, The Signature of All Things, and City of Girls.

When I was ten, I wrote a play called Mona’s Proof, a one-act play. ’Cause I was ten. That was as much juice as I had. It starred all my friends. I also directed and produced it. And it was a musical.

I wrote a song for it that went to the tune of “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” because it was the only song I knew. It’s about a girl who goes back in time, and nobody believes her. We produced that fucker. We worked it for months and put that play up onstage in the afternoon in the gym. We had costumes and posters that we hung all over the school. My parents both took off the day from work and came and saw it. And it was . . . it was really good. I stand by that play.

That was the first sense I ever had of, “I made a thing. Look! I made a thing!” There didn’t used to be this play called Mona’s Proof, but now there was. Everyone had to bear witness to it because we dragged them all there and made them watch all ten minutes of it. But it was great. It was a heist. We pulled it off.

A few years later, I was an understudy in the play Anything Goes. We got to write our bios in the mimeographed playbill for our tiny high school. Mine said, “Elizabeth Gilbert will travel the world and write for the New Yorker.” The cute thing is The New Yorker still hasn’t published any of my articles. They’ve had to write about me, but they won’t let me write for them.

There was a sense from a very early age that these two things—writing and traveling—are really important to me. This is who I’m going to be. I believed that about myself long before anybody else did. It wasn’t like I had a bunch of naysayers in my life. It’s just that I knew. There’s a point of believing in yourself before you have evidence and before anybody else can see it. The first person who has to believe in you is you, or you wouldn’t even bother. What would be even the point?

I feel like I was my first publicist, scripting my write-up in the local school playbill. Like, “Watch this young up-and-coming talent!” No lesser a writer than Walt Whitman did that when he published his first book of poetry. He wrote reviews of it under an assumed name and sent them to newspapers all over New England, saying, “This person is the greatest poet of his age.” It happened that he was correct. But there wasn’t anybody else who knew that yet. He was the only one who knew. He had to do his own press.

I’m very patient with people who have grandiose visions for their lives because I have grandiose visions for my life. And, who knows? I was never all that comfortable being a teacher of writing. It’s just not my nature to tell someone they don’t have what it takes. We all have stories of people telling us that. The last thing you want to do is show up in somebody’s memoir thirty years later as the asshole who didn’t see that the genius was a genius.

Taylor Dayne, singer, songwriter, memoirist (Tell It to My Heart), and one of Billboard’s Top 60 Female Artists of All Time, with eighteen top-ten hits and over seventy-five million albums sold.

I gave myself permission. I grew up in an apartment building, so I was constantly staring out a second-story window and dreaming. At four or five, I had this moment of listening to the radio and being able to sing along with it. Right there I said, “I know what I’m going to be. I don’t know what the rest of y’all are gonna do, but I’m gonna sing like Stevie Wonder or Karen Carpenter on that radio.” I knew I’d be heard by millions.

Gabrielle Bernstein

I remember trying to sell my first book in 2008, right at the [stock market] crash. My stepfather said to me, “Gabby, this is a terrible time. It’s a really hard time to sell a book.”

I was like, “I’m a Lovetarian. In the same way that if you were a vegetarian I wouldn’t put meat on your plate, don’t put your fear on my plate. I’m not going there.”

It was truly the law of attraction. I just believed. My mantra is the Joan of Arc quote: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” I know this is the work I’m here to do. I am unstoppable when it comes to my career because I chose this path, and this is what I’m meant to do, and I am taking good orderly direction. I’m not in that alignment in every corner of my life, but in my career, I am. In that alignment, anything’s possible, so it worked.

Abby Wambach

I needed Glennon [Doyle] in my life as my mirror because there are things I do on a daily basis that she points to and says, “Look! You do it this way! What you just did, most women don’t know.” Glennon is good at spotting newness and differentness. By unpacking some of the daily interactions I have with my own life, she’s allowed me to understand myself more, to show me a newer, more beautiful, better version of myself. That’s given me more access to create art. I didn’t realize that as an athlete I was also an artist out on the field.

I think a lot of women understand the idea of impostor syndrome, of feeling like a fraud, especially for the few of us that get offered a seat at the table. There’s a feeling of, “How did I break through?” When I retired from playing, there were a lot of conversations in our house about how I had a total identity as a soccer player. I achieved everything I possibly could as an athlete, as a soccer player. [Glennon] made me aware that soccer didn’t make me special. What I am, in my soul and my being, everything I brought to soccer, is what made soccer special. Everybody has access to that, no matter what you do. You have access to make whatever you’re doing special. You only need the invitation and the language to understand yourself as special. I didn’t just take off this costume of “soccer player.” I, Abby, am still the same person. Whatever I do, whatever I get to be a part of, I’m bringing my full self. That’s what makes it special, not the other way around.

At the end of the day, beautiful writing happens because you trust yourself as a writer. You start and keep going. You aren’t necessarily “qualified” through a string of credentials, but your dreams come true because you went looking for permission (within and/or without), made it your own, and ran like hell with it.

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*Fun fact: Sabaa did write that book, All My Rage, as a novel. Upon release, it hit the New York Times Best Seller list, making her the first Pakistani-American to hit the YA NY Times list for both fantasy and contemporary.

*Fun fact: She’s also my bossy little sister in this book—and in life.

*Most impressively, that “little” digital download book has earned Carol hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

*The number rises every year. Don’t even try and keep track!

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Permission and Prophecy

When Faith—Yours or Another’s—Fuels You