Many of you know I’ve been writing a memoir for ten years. Many of you know I’ve been trying to land the plane for the last two years. Maybe you’ve even watched me circle above in my brain while we’re on the ground getting into shenanigans. And if you’re a writer, you know it’s 50% about putting your ass in the seat and 50% about whatever’s keeping you from putting your ass in the seat.
Last time I spent a day on the end of my book, I cried the entire time. Back in the day, when I was becoming a young professor and living with my grandmother while I recovered from a freak accident (you’ll read about it in my memoir when I land the plane), and the ensuing doctor bill debt, I’d take a bath at the end of the day, and she’d say, “You shovel shit today?”
Having raised three boys who became men in construction and sanitation, she understood why her sons needed long, hot showers when they came home from work. But her granddaughter, who had landed the cushy white-collar work as a professor, not so much.
“I don’t expect you to understand this, Nanny,” I’d begin, “but sometimes I do shovel shit.”
Those of you who write hard truths you must excavate know exactly what I’m talking about, even if my grandmother didn’t. And here’s what you may not know: I took last winter hard. I wondered whether the world cares about children, books, or writers. I wondered what every writer wonders: will anyone care about my story when I finish it? My memoir features more than one near-and-dear-to-my-heart girl who wasn’t safe in her own childhood.
Around then, Michael G. Neece reached out.
If you don’t know him, he’s the King of Kindness, the epitome of his brand’s promise. I was lucky to be his writing coach on his first book, In Kind, which he wrote in about a year despite multiple personal challenges along the way. And, well, occupational hazard, he and I became friends.
Michael & Clementina co-taught and imagined his next book in Portugal, April 2024
A lot of my friends like the vivacious, high-energy version of me. Last winter I tried something that scares me: when they asked, I told them the truth about my despair. When I like people, I don’t want them to leave. But I guess that’s the advantage of losing people you love: you realize a performance prison is worse than losing the ones who only love the easy version of you.
“I’m not feeling so hot,” I said in the late winter, early spring of 2026, when Michael asked how I was feeling.
Michael listened. Michael told me he cared. He convinced me the world cares. Then he said he had proof and told me what he was working on. Then he asked me to join.
My first thought was: Will saying yes take me away from my own work?
Dear reader, I said yes. Because here I was telling myself women couldn’t do humanism alone anymore; we needed more men to collaborate with us. And then Michael showed up.
Did I manifest him? Wait. Is this my heroine’s journey? The allies and helpers do arrive. He’s out there doing what he does, and I’m doing what I do, and… oh, we’re allies!
The doubt came back. The anthology has a format, set by the publisher (who I’ve since come to adore), and my story would share the page with bullet-pointed strategy. There would be launch plans. I’d have to market. This isn’t the straight-up literary memoir I’ve committed myself to for a decade. Then I realized my doubt was masquerading as perfectionism. Hello, gremlin, my old friend. I see you’ve come to talk with me again.
Then I met the co-authors. As I learned their stories and what they’re doing with their lives, I saw that none of them is letting fear or complacency get the better of them. I got to work on stories like the ones written by Fortuna Ludmir, Kevin Huntting, and Jennifer White. You guys, I hit the new-colleague jackpot. Wait until you read about what these people do, what they’ve done, who they are. I didn’t know it, but I’d said yes to a whole group of people who empower me. No one writes alone. I say it all the time. Turns out I needed to feel it too. And Michael’s right: if we want to live in a kinder world, we’re going to have to build it ourselves. That’s what this book is about.
So, yes, I’m a co-author of Our Future Is Kind®: The Ultimate Guide to Making a Difference, and it comes out November 13, World Kindness Day. Alongside twenty-five humans I’m getting to know and respect—activists, speakers, healers, and teachers from all over the world—I’m answering the same question: How do we build a kind future?
My chapter, “Our Future Is Kind, Conscious, and Consenting: Cultivating the Courage to Write Our Way There,” brings together all aspects of my work. If you’ve been part of this community for a while, some of it will feel familiar. Some of it might surprise you. And I write about something I haven’t talked about publicly before—it’ll explain one reason why being visible, being seen, and even writing often feel tinged with danger for me.
You’ll get the literary memoir soon, I promise. Maybe this is my way of putting a toe in the water and finding out I won’t die from telling the truth of my experience. So far, saying yes has sent rewards my way: new allies, colleagues, and experiences. Dear reader, you’re part of it.
And I could really use your support. If I can count on you to be an early reader and Amazon reviewer, sign up here: https://www.ourfutureiskind.com/earlyreaders. That link goes to the publisher handling this, so drop me a line and let me know we’re in this together. I’ll be eternally grateful. You may have heard me say it takes a village to raise a Clementina. Thanks for being part of mine.
Clementina
P.S. Our Future Is Kind®