My good friend Lynn Rosen asked me if I would be a “minder” for author Dani Shapiro during an Open Book event at Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, PA. Author and fellow podcaster Gretchen Rubin interviewed her about Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love for an episode of Shapiro’s podcast Family Secrets.
As a minder, my job was to take care of the author, making sure no one monopolized her time or approached her when she wasn’t signing books.
Several years ago, I read a blog by a writer I was unfamiliar with at the time and it changed my life. The writer was Dani Shapiro, her blog is called On Being. In her post “On Beginning Again,” she writes about how writing and meditation are similar in that with each we must continually begin again. Each time we face the page or come to our mat is a new beginning, which can be daunting, but “We remain willing to feel our way through the darkness, to stop, take stock, breathe in, breathe out, begin again. And again, and again.”
Susan Barr-Toman 