Hi, Loves,
Happy World Kindness Day! It’s also launch day. Our Future Is Kind: The Ultimate Guide to Making a Difference is out in the world, and I’m in it!
When you click that link, know this: it’s so much bigger than a book. This is a movement.
I’ve lived with this book for months. I worked through draft chapters with my pod of fellow authors and read much of it when my galley copy arrived. Still, a few days ago I curled up with it, read a big chunk in one sitting, and was so moved. Chapter after chapter, people who had every reason to harden chose kindness instead: toward themselves, toward others, toward all of us. I closed it feeling, perhaps for the first time, a real sense of belonging, and so happy to be part of this movement toward the kinder world we want for ourselves, our children, and our fur babies. I think you’ll feel that way too.
A kinder future won’t happen by accident. We have to build it on purpose, together.
My chapter, “The Future Is Kind, Conscious, and Consenting: Cultivating the Courage to Write Our Way There,” is personal. In it, I introduce you to an early tragedy of mine. On the heels of a freak accident, an undergraduate professor who doubled as my boyfriend, abandoned me oh so slowly. And, sadly, I’d long before abandoned myself. It’s a great example of me not creating the future I wanted to live in. To figure out how I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be, I take you down the long road back to one question: Given the 30-year age gap, an even bigger power gap, and my low self-esteem, was I even capable of consent?
Writing my way through that question led me to the idea at the heart of my work. I call it radical consent. It isn’t the absence of a no. It’s the presence of a genuine yes, and that requires consciousness.
Then the chapter turns toward you. The second half is practice: strategies you can use on the page, at work, and at home to notice what you’re agreeing to that you haven’t said yes to, and to write your way toward different choices, which will always yield different outcomes, presuming that’s what you want.
Executive coach Rachel Horan called my chapter a “compelling read with heart, grit and message crucial to our cultural moment.”
This book exists because Michael G Neece believed kindness deserved a guide and gathered us to write it. I coached Michael through his first book, In Kind, so watching him lead this one has been pure joy and I’m so grateful to him for inviting me in to such a remarkable group of humans.
Here’s how you can celebrate with me today:
• Get your copy today. Order on Amazon. Buying during launch week helps a new book get seen.
• Leave a review once you’ve read it. A few honest sentences go a long way.
• Send this, or buy a copy for one person who needs it.
No one writes alone. No one builds a kinder future alone, either. Thank you for being part of mine. And please, write me and let me know what my words, or anyone else’s stirred in you.
With love, kindness, and gratitude,
Clementina