“I’m very much about letting other people shine because it makes us all shine brighter.”

~Chelsea Handler

Jealousy—a universal emotion. Perhaps you’ve felt it. Lost a lover to a best “friend.” Started a business with employees who left for a startup with more social media followers. Had a bestie stop taking your calls when success garnered her all sorts of sparkly new friends.

Writers are, by nature, sensitive. Today we have the clapback of Twitter, which makes us think twice before we overreact or misbehave. But history is filled with stories of longtime author feuds, rivalries, and jealousies:

Ernest Hemingway vs. William Faulkner

Ernest Hemingway (again) vs. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway (sheesh!) vs. Wallace Stevens

Mary McCarthy vs. Lillian Hellman

John Keats vs. Lord Byron

John Updike vs. Salman Rushdie

Truman Capote vs. Gore Vidal

A. S. Byatt vs. Margaret Drabble (sisters!)

I could go on and on. They’d write scathing reviews of each other’s work, spit on their reputations—even spit on each other (Richard Ford on Colson Whitehead at a party over a bad review, because—“You spat on my book!”).

My parents were relentless cheerleaders, telling my sister and me daily that we could be or do anything. “You’re so smart, special, funny, beautiful (fill-in-the-blank), and everyone loves you.” The subtext? The Universe is abundant; its favorite word is YES. Okay, Mom was dead, and Dad was freaking us out with his new Match.com dating addiction trying to replace her—oh my God, too many yeses!—but that’s beside the point. Huge dreams were always manifesting. They just weren’t yet mine.

But feeling maligned, misunderstood, or discarded hurts, no matter your upbringing. Being human in our modern-day world, where everyone is a “brand” vying for space at the top, is hard. Odds are, someone you love will go riding off into the sunset without you—don’t forget the little people! In La La Land, especially, everyone’s got a sob story. What hope do our shatterable hearts have as we endeavor to cheerlead ourselves? Plenty, thank goodness.

Miracle of miracles! A letter arrived from Leeza Gibbons. She’d heard about Mom’s death and had reconsidered. “If you’d still like me to do an interview for your book, I’m all yours.” Plus, she offered to consider promoting Lives Charmed on her national talk show! I wiped a grateful tear from my eye and held the letter to my chest. Thank you, Mom. I know this was your doing.

My agent had recently perked up thanks to the badassery of another mom—Diane’s.

“Why don’t you interview Arnold Palmer?” Sue Brodie said, taking the phone from Di’s hand. “He’s one of the nicest celebrities I know.” I wanted to scream. The legendary golfer had been on my wish list since my book dream. Di’s dad, John Brodie, a former quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers (yep, how very déjà vu all over again), had left his job as an NBC football commentator to play on the Senior Golf Tour. I knew he and Arnold were friends; I’d been trying to work up the courage to ask Sue for an intro, but I kept hearing the refrain “never mix business and friendship” in my head. I’d lost one mom; I couldn’t bear to lose another.

“Oh, Linda. It was so easy,” Sue said after the fact. “Arnie was getting his hair cut in a tent at the tournament. With your letter in my purse, I walked right up and gave it to him. He was so gracious.”

“He was gracious because it was you, Sue,” I said. “He’s invited me to his home in Bay Hill next month! You’ve just done more for me and my future than anyone else could.”

“Linny!” Di squealed. “Who doesn’t like Arnold Palmer? Your book is practically guaranteed to sell now!” I hoped she was right. Now I just needed to convince Jesse to fund my flight to Florida.

Dan called me right back.

“Great job!” he said. “Let me know once you’ve written up Leeza and Arnold Palmer’s chapters, and we’ll be about ready for a new round of submissions. Just one more big name should do it, Linda!” One more? It was always one more.

Thankfully, I was getting my energy back following Mom’s death. Without her, my world had tilted on its axis, and nothing had quite looked or felt the same since. But the torrent of tears that hit like a passing monsoon every day had lessened. This morning, no tears. Instead, an idea! It’s time to reach out to Meredith. Her album would be out soon, I guessed. I figured she could use a friend about now, someone who’d been there “before.” Maybe she could be that “one more” big name Dan wanted? Either way, I owed her a congratulatory letter and popped my long-overdue amends in the mail. I hoped she still lived at the same address.

A month later, I still hadn’t heard back from Meredith. But in my truck on Highway 64 about to cross the historic Gorge Bridge to Taos for groceries, I heard her. Over the radio were the familiar licks of her signature guitar. Then, this explosion: “I’M A BITCH, I’M A LOVER, I’M A CHILD, I’M A MOTHER . . .”

Oh my effing God! It’s Meredith! I could never mistake that voice! I’d known this was coming, but the sound of her still stunned.

Jillian Lauren

Oh, gosh. I’m envious all the time of everyone’s everything! I’m an artist, so I’m like, How come she gets that? How come she’s better at that? How come she gets more? If I were a man . . . It’s nonstop. Oh, and this one: If I only had this or that, I’d be happy.

That stuff is totally there, and I try to recognize it for what it is, which is it’s not a crime. It’s just human. Do I let it define my sense of self-worth? Not on my good days. I try to be very conscious of it. With envy and doubt, I try to preserve a little part of myself that is watching, able to say, “Hey, wow, look at you. You’re really envious right now. Isn’t that interesting? How curious.” That becomes useful to me because I’m writing about people with human emotions. I’m writing about the real stuff we all feel. If I was in a spiritual place where I’d transcended all of that, that would be an opportunity lost to be better able to write about envy creatively in a character or in myself.

I pulled over to the side of the road, cranked up the volume, and danced in my seat. Even my kneecaps had goosebumps! Sitting with my engine idling and the radio blaring, I was back to being a true-blue fan.

“That was Meredith Brooks,” the DJ blared, “with ‘Bitch.’ Sounds like a cross between Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow, doesn’t she? This one’s going to be HUGE, folks, and you’re going to want to call in because we’ve got a whole box full of her new album—Blurring the Edges—to give away tonight.”

Tears of joy trailed down my face. “Girl, you effing did it! YOU DID IT!” I screamed. “I’m so happy for you!” Feelings of fear and sadness and loneliness started to bubble up, too, but I pushed them aside. Right now, it was all about seeing the dream and celebrating it. Chew on that, naysayers! And, if Mer could do it, maybe I could too? Maybe we all could. I was sitting on the bench, but I knew all the plays!

Meredith’s album got rave reviews, soon going platinum in many countries and selling twelve million albums. “Bitch” was a number one worldwide hit that was nominated for eighteen major awards (including two Grammys—for Best Female Rock Performance and Best Rock Song) making her the toast, hell, the crème-filled croissant of the red carpet for the MTV awards and People’s Choice Awards.

“Well, I sure was wrong about that one,” Paul Williams said the next time I saw him, shaking his head in disbelief. Several years earlier, I’d made him sit and listen to her demo cassette, hoping he’d help her. (This was after I’d snuck her into his house and made her hold his Grammys and the Oscar to visualize her future.) “She’s going to be massive, Paul,” I’d said, to which he replied that while he liked Meredith, especially her guitar playing, he wasn’t sure he saw what I saw.

“At this point, I’d be lucky to have her ask me to sing with her!” he now said, laughing.

Elizabeth Lesser

There’s an incredible meditation practice that helps me be creatively courageous. Think of images you see in religious iconography—like Buddha statues or Joan of Arc on her horse, or Mother Mary, sitting tall with her veiled face, her heart aflame. In all those images, you have this being with a very straight back.

Now, imagine yourself sitting on a horse. Let’s just be Joan of Arc right now. She’s got this strong back, but her heart is open. She’s vulnerable. The same with the Buddha. He’s got a strong back and a big, fat belly that’s relaxed and tender. That, to me, is the essence of creative courage. You develop this straight back, this sense of, “I belong here. I’m riding through my kingdom on my horse with a straight back. I am noble and dignified.”

But before you get too full of yourself and turn into an asshole, you keep your chest open and your belly soft. You support your vulnerability with your strong back. You won’t turn into an arrogant person because of your soft front. I would say that’s the essence of true courage—not phony courage that leads to aggression and violence. Do whatever you can do to strengthen your backbone and keep yourself open and vulnerable.

As the months passed, I sat in wonderment, seeing Meredith pictured smiling in TIME magazine and reading about her foundation’s work, bringing music into inner-city schools. She’s saving the world! Soon she was opening for bands like the Rolling Stones and touring with Sheryl Crow and Sarah McLachlan, headlining the groundbreaking female lovefest Lilith Fair tour.*

From news clips, I was certain I could see Carrie-Anne and Janet in the front row on their feet and belting out the words as we used to do as a group, only now my nose was pressed to the window a thousand miles away. Every time I saw Janet flying through the air in Mer’s “Bitch” music video, wearing a cheeky cheerleading outfit, I felt positively left out of the ultimate cool-girls club.

“Linda,” my agent Dan said over the phone one day. “I’ve got a very interested editor, but she thinks you need bigger names.” Dead air. I counted to five before he broke the silence. “You’ve got no platform whatsoever. You don’t do any public speaking; you don’t teach or write articles; you’re not on the radio, and you’ve never been on TV.” Ouch. Isn’t this the kind of thing we should have talked about a year ago? “If you were writing fiction, it wouldn’t matter so much. But for nonfiction, she thinks you need more of your own star power. That, or bigger names. Don’t you know anyone else you can interview?”

“I can’t think of anyone. I used to be close friends with Meredith Brooks, but I wrote to her, and—”

“Yeah! Her! She would be great!”

Tomi Adeyemi

Once you believe you are capable, you are no longer jealous. Before reading Sabaa [Tahir]’s An Ember in the Ashes, I didn’t believe that. I was still hiding from sixty-plus rejections. My writing goals were this dirty secret. When I read Ember, I had this incredible experience: “Okay, this is now a textbook for me. I am going to study it until I understand why it made me feel this way.” I asked how it was created. What inspired this author? And then, “Oh, wow! This author got this amazing book deal. That’s my dream. Let me look more into that.” Even though I’d tried getting published and failed, I had gotten close enough to feel confident in the fact that it wasn’t impossible. I just need to get better.

If someone feels confused, I usually ask them, “Who are you jealous of?” Jealousy is your best compass. They’re doing something you want to do. Study them! I just watched Jojo Rabbit last night, and I loved everything about it. I’m so curious how it was created. Now my YouTube queue has ten Jojo Rabbit videos. People do all the thinking for you. Learn from it. Figure out what works for you, like adding tools to your toolbox.

An Ember in the Ashes taught me you could have an epic fantasy, and have it comment on something happening in our present day, and you could weave your culture in beautifully. I didn’t know a story like that could exist until Sabaa created it. Once I knew that, she became my mentor, long before I ever talked to her. Don’t think you need to DM Sabaa or me to understand how we’re working. It’s out there. It’s all on the internet. Just a couple of Google searches and an intentional mindset can help you get that Masterclass lesson.

Sabaa Tahir

One of the things I love most about Tomi [Adeyemi] is how comfortable she is in her skin and in her work. She’s such a confident writer—that’s such a rare and beautiful thing. I also love how she turns the things she learns into help for others. I was not nearly as put together when I was gently stalking her and others. Like when I met Laini Taylor, who was one of my heroes, at Comic-Con. I blabbed to her endlessly, and then I was really embarrassed. I think we look at jealousy negatively, but I try to sort of flip the word jealousy into something else from my culture.

There’s this concept of “nazar” in Muslim and Pakistani culture. It’s the evil eye. When you’re actively jealous of someone who you care about, you can accidentally put the evil eye on them. I don’t want to put that on anyone, so I feel this weird burden. If I’m jealous of someone, even if it’s someone I don’t like, I don’t want to curse them. I really try to flip it and think, Okay, maybe this person has something I like.

When I was first starting out, I was complaining to my mother, saying, “I just feel like I’m never going to get my book published.” She said: “Eyes on the road ahead of you. If you look at other people, you’re going to nazar them, and that’s really bad. Don’t do it.” And then she said, “And don’t nazar yourself.”

“Want to join us at the Telluride Film Festival?” my newish friend Janet Yang asked, offering her condo and a hoedown at Oliver Stone’s horse ranch. Okay, this works! As Stone’s producing partner, Janet was responsible for bringing one of my all-time favorite books to the screen, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. We’d completed Janet’s interview for my book a few months back and I was delighted she wanted to be girlfriends. What a wonderful distraction!

“Can we go, Jesse?” I squealed. “We hardly ever take family vacations, and we’ve never seen Telluride. And who knows who we might meet—for both our careers.”

When we pulled up to Janet’s condominium—surprise! The famed director Milos Forman greeted us at the door. Milos and Janet were about to film the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt with Woody Harrelson. Janet’s dark eyes lit up as she showed us our room, and I had a sense this was her way of introducing us to people who could hire Jesse or give me an interview, all without saying so. I’d heard Janet described as an “immovable force with a smile” around Hollywood, and I was all about it.

“Woody’s on his way over,” Janet said. Holy mother. Mr. Hemp? The most organic, eco–movie star alive! Could this be it? If he agreed to an interview, my final “big name” would be an environmental activist. My teeth clenched at the thought of pitching Woody here, now, but what had Dad said? It’s just a number’s game. Yeses come from asking. And I’d been reading about how hemp, one of Woody’s favorite plants, made up 90 percent of paper until the late 1800s. Wouldn’t it be fun to publicize that it’s one of the strongest and fastest-growing natural fibers on the planet? And, if the stars were really aligned, maybe Woody would notice that he and Jesse were separated at birth and cast him as his kin in a film? Suddenly a ball of nerves, I felt protective. This was big energy for any “journeyman actor” to hold. Would Jesse be okay around these heavy hitters?

Jesse seemed right at home with the moviemaker who’d won an Academy Award for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a second for Amadeus. Of course, Milos hadn’t seen Jesse’s horror film death scenes, but I hoped his eye for talent could appreciate that my man wasn’t showing any signs of shyness, insecurity, or spontaneous bleeding.

Just then . . . enter Tosh, stage left. Our five-year-old dervish who’d been roughing it in the country and attending a school where the average annual family income was $15,000 (subsidized with hunting, backyard chicken coops, and vegetable gardens) couldn’t fathom the bounty before him. Young enough that he didn’t remember the upscale homes we’d lived and worked in, his only comparison to this modest townhouse was our unfinished cabin.

“Mom, Dad!” Tosh yelled at top decibels as he ran full throttle into the hallway. “They have bathrooms here!”

We’d forgotten to explain to our son that most people in the “real” world don’t use outhouses. Tosh screamed with glee as he ran to the sink and turned on the faucet, full blast.

“Oooohhhh! They have running water!” Leaving the faucet gushing, Tosh raced to turn on the faucet in the adjoining sink before whipping around. “And they have a shower here too!” he exclaimed, banging on the glass door, and then heading off full speed into the nearest bedroom.

“Closets! And caarrppet!!!” We heard him dart up the stairs to a world of foreign appliances—hollering at the sight of a dishwasher, microwave, coffee maker, and garbage disposal. They might as well have been specially wrapped Christmas presents just for him.

Jesse looked at me, eyes wide. Janet smiled ear to ear. Milos, whom I’d remembered reading had parents who were murdered in Nazi concentration camps and who’d been raised by relatives and friends of his parents, didn’t flinch. But even if he had, to me, Tosh’s hullabaloo was the heart-meltiest, cutest thing I’d ever seen. We’d be leaving in forty-eight hours and, outside of Janet, we’d probably never see anyone from this weekend again. Our son’s joy, and our time together, was everything.

Telluride, which sits in a box canyon surrounded by steep forested mountains and dramatically high cliffs, turned out to be magical, with a bad-boy flair. The old mining town’s infamous past as the site of Butch Cassidy’s first bank robbery and a former favorite stop for drug runners seemed like the perfect place to pull off a heist with Mr. Woody Harrelson. All I had to do was corner him around Oliver Stone’s campfire that night and tease him about his mostly fruit and marijuana diet. Oh, and promise him final editing approval of his chapter so he wouldn’t think I was some tabloid stalker.

I was mesmerized by Woody’s bright and vivid blue eyes. Much has been written of these eyes. Oliver Stone says that he sees violence in them, but there was no evidence of that the next day as he and Jesse played an aggressive one-on-one basketball game. Not even after Jess beat him in the last seconds, proving that white men really can jump and that my husband was a blockhead. “Why couldn’t you let him win? Don’t you want him to hire you?” I said, only halfway teasing once out of earshot.

Woody was nothing if not adorable. Well, until I had that bright idea to prep for a yoga class he was teaching.

“Linda! Be my partner,” Woody said, pointing to the mat beside him. I was so delighted earlier in the day that he’d invited me to his private class that I’d slathered myself in fake tanning lotion to turn my New Mexico pallor into a warm California cocoa. My tan didn’t look too fake, per se, but I smelled to high heaven. Even I couldn’t stand myself. I kept my distance from Woody, hoping he wouldn’t catch a whiff.

“Is that as low as you can go?” Woody asked, walking over to watch me fail to touch my forehead to my knee, something he’d done seconds ago effortlessly. “You’re not very limber, are you?” he said, grinning.

“Um, I haven’t done yoga since having Tosh,” I answered. He smiled. Then he led the ten of us through a few stretches and poses before . . .

“Okay, everyone, it’s going to get a little hot in here, so don’t be freaky,” Woody announced. Everyone laughed.

Woody sat behind me to help me with the next pose, wrapping his arms around me from behind, his nose up against my neck. My very smelly neck. Oh, kill me now. Woody, the guy who rails against chemical companies, took a big breath in . . . and instantly dropped his arms, scooting backward on his backside, where he promptly started another pose without another word to me until I went up to him at the close for a formal goodbye. Good thing I had his assistant’s info! At the end of the day, it’s all about the gatekeepers.

My career goals still looked mostly delusional. At night I dreamed about building America’s first alternative paper mill (it had never been done in the US), starting GASPP—Global Alliance for Sustainable Publishing Practices (I built the website, but my time and finances weren’t sustainable), and going on The Tonight Show to somehow make green topics fun and hip in a cute black organic cotton dress (funny, they never called).

Our renunciation of the material world continued as the months rolled on, and my comeuppance kept coming up. My former support group friend Janet Gunn got the lead in the latest cable TV hit, Silk Stalkings, racing across the screen as an undercover crime fighter, driving fancy sports cars, and striding through luxurious locales in slinky designer clothes. Next, I learned that Carrie-Anne was training to make her A-list movie debut with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne in a little Space Age cyber-fantasy called The Matrix. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Carrie-Anne Moss was to be the female heroine—Trinity.

As the years rolled on, even after I was published, it felt like I couldn’t go anywhere without their success finding me. I’d be minding my own business, driving down an empty country road, when, boom, Dick Clark would announce on the radio, “And now, the hottest song in America, by the woman everyone is talking about, Meredith Brooks!” I’d walk past the televisions in Walmart and hear Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight yell across the aisles, “Our top story is The Matrix, the highest grossing R-rated film of the year . . .” Meredith, Carrie-Anne, and Janet’s bigger-than-life images looked down on me from billboards, across from magazines racks at dentist offices and salon visits, even making occasional appearances in my dreams. Lovely. Twice, strangers mistook me for Meredith and once a man asked if I was related to Carrie-Anne.

Spirit family, Guru had said. What did it all mean? One day, to feel part of the family, I tried to buy Carrie-Anne’s action figures—plural—but was told that “the most popular miniature dolls in the world” were all sold out.

And it seemed like everywhere I turned were stories of bestselling authors whose eager readers stood for hours in line to attend signings. Their books were selling in the hundreds of thousands, even millions, and being adapted for the small and large screens. Was I not disciplined enough? Committed enough? Had Guru—my guru—taught everyone something I’d missed? As I devoured success stories that weren’t mine, my heart sank into my stomach.

“Papercut comparisons,” Danielle LaPorte calls them.

Sarah Manguso

I’m going to speak in general, but really, I’m talking about myself. No matter how much one strives and how many goals one sets and achieves, there is always an infinity of goals above. Everything is relative. There are just as many people I would love to match in terms of the number of perfect sentences written or the number of books sold, but then there are uglier moments. I have many good conversations with my agent about this precise thing. Whenever I start feeling kind of greedy and acquisitive, needing that “next thing,” he reminds me that everybody has this “one person they’re constantly looking up to.” Then he starts naming the most famous white guy, novelist, who wins all of the prizes. He says, “I guarantee that so-and-so is looking at so-and-so and wanting what he has. And that guy is looking at so-and-so and watching what he has.” He then says, “And there are young writers who write to me, saying that they admire you, Sarah.” At its best, this is a circle of inspiration. At its worst, it’s a circle of raw envy.

Fortunately, I eventually got tired of feeling sorry for myself. One morning I walked outside, hugged my circle of trees, talked aloud to Mom, and felt oddly free. The letters I’d written to Mer, and Carrie-Anne, too—both unanswered (for a long while, but not unappreciated once they stopped traveling and could catch up, as they’d tell me later)—had helped free something within me. It was as if by sending out my olive branches of love, by honoring our past and sharing my joy at how their hard work had paid off, I’d cleared some safe place within me. Unleashed a reservoir of goodwill. With great relief, I watched as my thinking finally righted itself.

She’s saying everything I want to say—but better. That means I can get better too.

I’ll never have the audience they have. I’ll find my OWN audience.

Why keep going when their voices are so powerful? Because we’re a choir, and the world needs all our voices.

I called Woody’s assistant, who had taken a liking to me. “I’ll lasso him to the ground for you until he cries ‘uncle,’” she promised. Phew. At least she hadn’t forgotten and was still picking up her phone. I’d hold off on telling my agent until his interview was done, but I was more hopeful. I was learning to step off the roller coaster, to redirect my thoughts every time they strayed to the lunacy and dashed expectations of fake tans, wayward rock stars, and comparisons to the overtly “charmed,” all of which had become thinly veiled excuses to cease doing my work. Embarrassment and jealousy may be universal emotions, but I was done allowing them to make me their bitch.

In her essay collection, 300 Arguments, Sarah Manguso writes, “The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using all others as your control group, all your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.”

“Everyone else” makes me think of social media—where “everyone” hangs out. I don’t think we can discuss comparison without addressing social media.

I treasure the sense of connection (and entertainment!) I experience daily from my social media accounts. I post musings, “microblogs,” on writing and publishing nearly every morning—sometimes multiple times a day. The life-affirming lovefest includes favorite book recommendations, podcast quotes, cheering on cherished clients, and, of course, a zillion funny and sweet pics and videos of my pups and horses. (Follow me and join the love, and revisit lines from this very book!)

At first, I resisted social media mightily. I didn’t have enough time for my real friends, much less a bunch of “fake” ones. Plus, as you’ve seen, I’m not above comparing my real life to someone else’s perfectly crafted one and I was not looking forward to the pangs of jealousy I’d feel. (Can you imagine what a mess I’d have been spying on my former support group members had we all had accounts? For the love of God.)

I quickly learned that with the healing work I’d done inside and out, those instances of jealousy are temporary and the benefits of connecting through social media far outweigh the drawbacks. Social media, for me, has been a wonderfully life-enhancing, friendship-expanding, business-building, and information-gathering bonanza. Maybe that’s how you found your way to these pages!

If you’re not already well versed in the world of social media, there are shelves of books on the topic. As you know, being connected makes it so much easier to spread news of your book with readers, which is why publishers prefer that you come with a ready-made “following.” But if your social media reach doesn’t go far beyond your friends, family, your college roommates, and gym buddies, take heart. I’ve had many clients land traditional book deals with small accounts (fewer than two thousand followers)—the most recent being a gal who got a million-dollar deal with a top-five publisher. The key? Write a book (and book proposal!) they can’t put down.

You’ve got to forge your own path when it comes to building a social media presence. It’s okay to start slow, with one account on a platform that tickles your gag reflex less than the others. We all begin with zero followers. Take time to watch writers you admire and see how they share graphics and pictures and snippets from their lives and books. If you’re like me, intimidation will give way to creative bursts and even eagerness. Rather than forcing yourself to post on a rigid schedule, wait until it feels right. You’ll learn the difference between excitement in your belly and legitimate fear warning you to take a different tack. Trolls, Twitter clapback, and being virtually spat upon aside (ignore ’em all, they don’t deserve your energy!), my guess is you’ll come to see that enough “strangers” become beloved friends and readers to justify jumping in.

If you’re currently feeling forsaken or jealous, rather than give up your dreams or dim your light, redirect that frustrated energy into rocket fuel. Realize that, as bestselling author and speaker Mel Robbins says, “Jealousy is simply blocked desire. If you flip that jealousy into inspiration, the block will disappear.”

I hope we’ve convinced you that you are beyond compare, that your beautiful sensitivity means that your dreams matter, and that you’ve got all it takes to do you better than anyone. (Everyone does—sweet, right?) To channel my mom and dad—which I imagine they positively love right now, wherever they are—“You’re so smart, special, funny, beautiful (fill-in-the-blank)—and everyone loves you.” The Universe is abundant; its favorite word for you is YES!

Be your most relentless cheerleader. Then write for you, from you, as you.

__________________

*In case it’s not obvious, Steven’s kidding.

*Fun fact: Meredith’s team tried to keep “Bitch” on alternative rock radio, but it left the genre within a week, shooting up to Pop’s #1 song. Watching this, I was convinced that some things simply can’t be held back. Then, just as remarkably, the Lilith women (and just about every female alternative artist), flipped from alt-rock to pop, where women ruled for the first time in history. Talk about a cool time to be a female artist or fan!

16

The Bitch of Comparison

When Everyone Else Hits the Big Time