When I was little, I would wait until everyone had gone to bed, sneak into the living room and plug in the Christmas tree lights.  In the dark, I lay underneath the tree and looked up through the branches.  The pockets of piney darkness illuminated by the conical colored lights were doorways that promised entry to the same places my books did--lands beyond reality, havens where life seemed more perfect than reality--Willy Wonka's factory, Pippi's porch, the Country Bunny's house. The North Pole.

Now, between emails and edits, trips to Fedex and the dumpster, I'm scrambling to get the last presents to put under the tree. I'm trying hard to savor the season, to find time to lie under the proverbial tree. But it doesn't seem to be happening.  Not if I'm going to get my work done and provide the kind of Christmas I remember.

Wrapping up the old year and trying to celebrate the present, I find myself pinning hopes on 2010 and the new decade's much needed personal and professional resolutions. 2009 has been "interesting times" for book publishing. A year ago, we were all generally worried about the economy and whistling in the dark that the Kindle wouldn't really affect the loyalties of true book buyers.  Now we find ourselves in a world that has been shaken to the core. What is a book, how do we make it, and how do we sell it? Basically, who are we? What relevance do we have in a digital world? These are hard questions, and they'll take more than just a new marketing plan to solve; they demand a whole new paradigm, if not some out-and-out magic.

Rounding a corner of this magnitude demands taking stock: of my job, my calling, my company, my industry. Even in this digital era, I find myself turning to books for answers. And journaling, even more old-school, seems a good place to get a grip.

We have just published a book called Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of the Authentic Self. The author, Angela Caughlin, leads readers through the brain science behind journaling with intention and shows how it can unleash seven powerful benefits--health, awareness, connection, focus, creativity, authenticity, and vision.  Like the pockets of light just behind our favorite ornaments on the Christmas tree, our memories--and especially the stories we don't quite remember--hold the power to change our lives in wonderful ways.

I'm too big to lie under the tree these days. But stopping to contemplate the magic hidden in its branches, I realize that whatever challenges and opportunities this new decade brings, the strength that I will need to handle them is already some where in me, just as generations of love and tradition are tucked in those fragrant branches.

If Santa Claus brings gifts to tired old editor moms on Christmas, perhaps he will tuck a new fountain pen in my stocking. And if he does, I will use it to start unleashing the power of the stories within me.  I'm enough of a believer--in journaling and in Angela's knowledge, among other things--to trust that it will help me find the vision, focus, creativity and other qualities the new decade demands. At home and at work.

As August tells Lily in The Secret Life of Bees, "There is nothing perfect.  There is only life." The stories we tell, the ornaments we choose for our trees, however funky or chipped, celebrate our lives. In this holiday season, and in the New Year, let's take time to reflect on the stories that we've collected over the years, share them, and gather the strength that is hidden within them.

There's still powerful magic just beyond the lights.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
~Charles Dana

The Thomas Nast illustration above is available from The Philadelphia Print Shop.

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 When I was in college, I dated a boy from Virginia with a very large family.  Everywhere we went in the Commonwealth,  I was introduced to cousins, aunts and uncles, of every degree.  The way I knew that they were his relatives is that their relationship preceded them: everyone was called Aunt Leticia Baldridge, or Cousin Buthorpington.  Most of them had names of such old stock that John Smith himself would have felt like an upstart newcomer, so it was interesting for me when they found out I was from Texas.  One Aunt--Hezbollah Jane, or whatever her name might have been--actually looked at me over her pince-nez and said, upon learning my state of origin, "Oh, I'm sorry."  Veddy, veddy sorry, I'm sure.

The great majority of the twice, thrice or octoply removed cousins that I encountered were lovely people, but the sheer number of them boggled a person who then had only five first cousins on the planet.  I have more now, but that's a different story, longer than I care to go into right now. Point here is, the idea of a greatly extended family who valued its connectedness to the point of nomenclature, was not only phenomenal, but inspirational. I wanted cousins like that--hordes of kind, interesting people to see on holidays and lesser occasions, to drink tea and juleps with, or perhaps correspond with on Crane's paper about literary ideas or Kilimanjaro trips. There would be trust, openness, and great inspiration. Every day would be lived at the pinnacle of Mazlow's pyramid.

My first real inroads into expanding my circle of trust came when I married the youngest child of a family of eight siblings.  Can't you see the relative clicks adding up?  In laws, outlaws, nieces, nephews, a bounty of riches in the connectedness department.  None of us call each other "Cousin," but that's ok.  It is the 21st century now. Holiday activity increased tenfold, and creativity abounds in my extended family.

But even with all those wonderful people added to my life, I still felt the need for another kind of connectedness.  My current nuclear family started looking for other like-minded families to hang out with on Friday nights, fish with, and such. We have a family of friends here in Houston that we call "the Country Cousins."  They are not related to us, but we love them like they were. All of our children are mildly confused by it. "Are we related?" they ask, and all the grown ups resoundingly  answer, "Yes!" One day they'll understand: love is thicker than water, thicker than beer.

Recently, I have been reminded of the camaraderie of shared work. Spending time creating books with people forms a wonderful kinship, a bond that is somewhat like a family thing, as we go through good times and tough ones together, always with the green-light optimism that more good times are ahead. And I have  found another line of connectedness among these individuals--something that doesn't transcend these primary relationships but augments them like Oxiclean does Tide. It is the Katherine Center Effect, and it flows back and forth between my personal and professional lives like some kind of powerful primordial soup, creating new relationships, strengthening old ones, and enhancing connectedness wherever it flows.

Everyone I encounter these days--everyone to whom I am inexplicable drawn to befriend, or to write a contract for their book, or just to drink coffee with--is linked to Katherine like a Virginia cousin, usually only once or twice removed. Well, you may think, that is logical, because you are a book editor and she is a famous book writer, and you both live in Houston, which is not a book town. And that's where you would be wrong.  On several levels, the first being that Houston is as conducive to the propagation of the book arts as anyplace. Salt Lake City? St. Paul? Oxford, Mississipi? Exeter, New Hampshire? What did those towns have in a meaningful hard-cover way besides a few inspired individuals?

So, here's how it struck me that Katherine is at the center of a web of book people in Houston, a gracious Miss Spider, encouraging other writers and editors to come for tea rather than to become lunch. First, I realized:

1.  Katherine introduced me to Laura Mayes, a kirtsy.com founder and general wizardress, who first became our author and more recently our colleague.
2.  Katherine grew up on the same street as Angela Caughlin, the author of Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of Your Authentic Self, which we will publish this fall.
3.  Katherine invited me to lunch one day where I got to sit with Karen Walrond, who has since become our author as she pens and shoots The Beauty of Different.
4.  Katherine is connected to the Bright Sky editors: her talented sister is recently responsible for Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, and her former carpool mate not only edited Angela Caughlin's books, but also The Mother-In Law Manual.
5.  Katherine told Beth Irvine about Bright Sky, leading to a ripple effect of  signs that made it  possible for us to sign Beth up for three exciting books.
6.  Katherine is a graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, making her, in my book, first cousins with a huge number of the amazing authors in town.

Six first degree relationships, and I will not bore you with all they myriad  once-removeds.  But, even recognizing these connections, I had never thought about the incredible enzymatic role my talented friend was playing in Houston until this Friday.

I went to a workshop at Joy Yoga, on Washington Avenue, down the street from  my favorite pizza place. It was lead by Angela Caughlin and Beth Irvine (who also know each other, go figure). It was about combining yoga and guided journaling to go deeper with intention.

I come rushing in, late from busyness and stress, and I hit peace like a wall.  After I smacked into it, I slid into a river of mental and physical submission and let these two powerful ladies have their way with my consciousness and my piriformis as I floated through the next couple of hours.  Only when I reemerged, focused, calm, and content on the other side, did I notice that Karen Walrond was in the workshop, too.  Wow, I thought, Look at all these wonderful women, together.  And the realization spread like a double rainbow in the mountains: They are all Bright Sky authors. That's when it struck me like a bolt that before we connected under Bright Sky, we were connected through Katherine.

So, perhaps she is some sort of literary fairy godmother--a sane Auntie Mame, a well-grounded Durrell, a rosy-cheeked Mrs. Wilcox or even  a kinder, soberer Dorothy Parker--inviting us to lunch, waving her wand over us, opening our eyes to the marvelous potential in one another. In any case, even though her copyright pages pledge her to another, Katherine is an integral part of the Bright Sky family. Love is thicker than imprints, too.

How many more wonderful connections are out there, waiting to be discovered in this creative frontier of a book town? And how many lead back to Cousin Katherine?

We'll just have to stay centered to find out.

It is something-it can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.
~Wallace Stegner

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As we struggle with the end of the economic fairy tale we've been living and look at having to take a  more grown up approach, I notice that the concept of storytelling seems to be coming up again and again. Perhaps after an age of facade and subterfuge, we are looking for authentic stories (like those of Brene Brown), or perhaps we have time again to read, to tell tales, to recall morals and values from earlier times. Whatever the case, everywhere I turn, people are talking about the value of sharing stories.

My work at Bright Sky revolves around stories--finding them, helping authors to express them, communicating their messages concisely to the world--but storytelling has much deeper resonance than the obvious job skill applications.

Years ago, I took a  teaching workshop for a curriculum called Godly Play.  It's a system based on the belief that the Bible is a collection of family stories.  I had always intuitively believed that stories were powerful and that greater truths could be found in fiction than in fact, but this workshop made it very clear why. It explained that children who are denied stories when they are young have a much higher suicide rate than others, and talked about the intense power to heal that storytelling has.  We are a storytelling people: we are hardwired to spin yarns. It's how we pass our values down to our children, it's how we define who deserves to win the prince's hand, and it's why the little mermaid must die.

When I was little, I had a beautiful edition of Hans Christian Andersen stories.  It had a luminous color plate for each story, with a thin vellum insert between the illustration and the story.  My favorite tale was The Little Mermaid. It might have been a fashion thing--she and her sisters wore gorgeous wreaths, each made of a different material like starfish, sea anemones, or coral--but more probably It was just a magical, compelling story.  I read it again and again.

Every time I got halfway through the story and the little mermaid started making the same mistakes again, I realized with fresh despair that she was doomed.  It was seafoam time again.  As an adult, I understand that the fact that the little mermaid was united in eternity with the heavenly hostesses was supposed to be a happy ending, but back then it wasn't doing it for me. It was just a downer.

But, from that deep sad place I learned not to make deals with Sea Witches.  Not to give away my best gifts to try to become someone else. Not to trust men who are enchanted with witchy women. It was a rough lesson, but a good one.  All stories don't, can't and shouldn't have happy endings.  Because life doesn't.  If we want to build resilience in our children, but we won't even let them feel the imagined pain of a story, how will they ever have the resources to deal with real pain? If our stories don't introduce the full range of human emotions, we rob our children. 

So it was with horror that I read an article recently that announced that scientists have discovered a drug that will erase bad memories. Wow.  That is way beyond any revisionist fairy tale telling that Uncle Walt ever did.

There is a wonderful dystopian novel for children called The Giver. It is one of those short books that you could read again and again and come away from with new meat every time, like an enchanted lambchop bone. In The Giver's society, the leaders have determined that memories are too painful and too messy for the people to handle  Every child is given a role at age twelve.  Some will breed, some will work, it's all very brave new world-y. Getting your job at the Ceremony of the Twelves is the most important point in your life.  Once a generation, one child is designated as the Receiver of Memory.  And it is the hardest job imaginable, to bear all the memories--all the stories--of an entire people.

If you haven't yet read The Giver,  I am certainly not going to spoil the suspense by telling you what the Receiver in the current generation does.  Suffice it to say, Lois Lowry does a bang up job of convincing me that memories are worth keeping, stories are worth telling, and, as painful as it might be, we can trust that we are strong enough to bear our own stories.

This fall, we are publishing a book called Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of Your Authentic Self by Angela Caughlin, a counselor and a life coach with expertise in guiding people through change--grief, loss, instability--towards transformation. This book takes everything she has learned about using guided journaling as a powerful healing modality in her work and combines it with the latest brain science to help us access the stories that are locked within us. Once we dive deep and find the important stories, we can use them first to formulate  questions about our own lives ,and then as keys to answer those questions.

Diving deep for stories we may find gifts that we once offered up to the Sea Witch for some coveted prize, goal or person. And when we recover our gifts, they are like sunken treasure, more valuable than ever. We are a storytelling people. Our stories have great value. We can't just erase the parts we don't  like. In our fiction or in our memories.

Even if the little mermaid goes all seafoam sometimes.

“Every day in a life fills the whole life with expectations and memory.”
~C.S. Lewis

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