A couple of years ago, my anonymous friend hipped me to a blog called 37 Days. Patti Digh's tag line "what would you be doing today if you only had 37 days to live?" intrigued me. I do believe I read through her whole blog post archive in a single sitting; it was like sitting with a thoughtful old friend, someone who knew me and knew some things I might do differently to become the "new" me I longed to be.
Today, Patti launches her book Life is a Verb, inspired by her blog, with a month-long blog tour. Readers, I'm so excited to tell you that the tour kicks off HERE. Here's my interview with Patti--you'll find out why I love her work so much and why you will too.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: I’m so excited that you’re here to kick off your month-long blog tour for Life is a Verb. I’ve been reading your blog religiously for the last couple of years and I love love the book. Tell us a little bit about how the blog and the book came to be.
Patti: The blog, 37days, started after my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003 and died 37 days later. We all know we’re going to die sometime—even though we try to deny the fact—but that timeframe really shocked me and scared me. I asked myself one question, “What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?” It’s a hard question to answer sometimes, when I’m in the midst of work deadlines and dinner to cook and laundry to wash…
But deep down, I knew the answer to that question—I needed to write. I needed to leave behind for my two young daughters a bigger piece of myself. Not a house or a set of china, but the stories I carry around in my head. I wanted to help open the space for them to lead more intentional lives. I didn’t want to tell them how to live, but I wanted to leave behind some challenges for them to think about. I felt a great deal of urgency about getting the stories written before I died, realizing that my 37 days could start at anytime—and so could anyone else’s.
In the process of writing for them, I myself learned a lot about what it means to be mindful, to live a more intentional life.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: I hope you don’t mind the comparison, but as I read the book I was put in mind of some of my go-to muses when I’m stuck: Anne Lamott, Brenda Ueland, and Natalie Goldberg. Their books are all about writing, but your book addresses a bigger issue—stuckness in life. That’s why the title, Life is a Verb, seems so fitting to me, but can you explain a little about why you chose that title?
Patti: First of all, I’m completely humbled by the comparison—those are my go-to muses also.
“Life is a verb” is a phrase written by a favorite feminist writer from the late 1800s, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I’ve always loved her work—and that phrase. As I looked at the 37 essays that were selected to be in the book, I realized that one hallmark of living intentionally is to seize life, to act, to be and do with direction and intention. As I looked at the themes that kept emerging, six action steps or practices stood out, all of which implied an action—a verb—of some sort: Say yes, Be generous, Speak up, Trust yourself, Love more, and Slow down. So it seemed fitting that “Life is a verb” be the title to reflect the need for us to do more than watch life.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: You start each chapter off with these extraordinary poems. What is it about poetry that serves as a touchstone for mindful living?
Patti: I think poetry lets us step out of linear thought, allows us to dive into metaphor and ritual and meaning in a wholly different way. It makes us see. It allows us to see, perhaps in a way that prose cannot. In poetry we tell truths that are hard to tell otherwise, we juxtapose things that become new things by relationship. I knew I wanted a different kind of vision to open each new chapter and in most cases, I went to readers of 37days to find the poem that would enlarge our shared vision of what it means to “be generous” or “become you.” It also gave me an opportunity to publish some poets that deserve a wider audience, to highlight the ways in which they see the world and comment on it.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: I love the quotes. How did you find them?
Patti: I’m a true believer in 3x5 index cards, on which I capture quotes and snippets of conversation—and I’ve done that for years. So when the book became a reality and was in process, I knew that I wanted to highlight and ground and underscore the messages of each essay with quotes, some from people we all know and others from people we’ve never heard of. A reader commented that they loved the fact there were quotes from Buddha, Homer Simpson, and Frank Zappa in the same book, and I’ll have to admit, the quotes sprinkled throughout the book are an eclectic bunch!
Light-skinned-ed Girl: I got the sense reading the book that your background as a diversity trainer played a role in the way you conceived the book’s content and resonance. In some ways, it seems that the book is about breaking stereotypes of the deepest order—stereotypes we have about ourselves and our own limits—and tolerance for the unknown and unknowable. Could you tell us a little bit about your diversity work? And also, how might your own sensitivities have shaped the book and the vision you share for intentional living?
Patti: In asking this question, in this way, you have succeeded in articulating something I knew, but hadn’t said—my thanks for that.
Yes, my work for the past 20 years has been around diversity issues and helping people and organizations understand the personal, business, and societal costs of discrimination and “isms” of all sorts. I co-founded The Circle Project in 2005 (the same year I started my 37days blog) with David Robinson, a theater director in Seattle, to create truly transformational experiences around diversity and authenticity and creativity.
What I know from that work, and from my own life experiences, is that stereotypes are patterns—and we live by patterns. We learn early in our lives the patterns that will no doubt play out the rest of our lives, unless we recognize some of them as negative or destructive and work hard to change them. This book is, as you’ve so rightly assessed, about breaking patterns. Or, at the very least, about surfacing them. In particular, chapter four, “Be generous,” is about allowing that the people around us who seem vastly different from us are as deeply human and specific and richly textured as we are. What I want to do is open the space for people to truly see others as deeply, poignantly human.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: The book is a sumptuous morsel. The size of it, the rich illustrations. It’s just gorgeous. Tell us about the artwork for the book.
Patti: I love that you enjoy the feel of it. I must admit, I probably was a terror to my publisher about size and feel and wide, open margins, and even the typography—they thrilled me when they agreed to use my favorite typeface, Filosofia, for the text. This was an important book for me—it was my life’s gift to my daughters—and it needed to be all it could be. I wanted it to reflect who I am in ways beyond the written word, and it fully does. I’m so proud of it for that.
Two weeks before the manuscript was due, I got an email from a woman named Donna B. Miller. She had read an essay of mine on the blog and had created a small card to remind herself of the essay, to put in her wallet. She attached the artwork in case I wanted to see it. I printed it out and ran out to the grocery store to run errands. In the parking lot of the grocery store, I looked at what she had sent. It was a gorgeous, small, artistic card to remind her of the essay. I wondered why this book couldn’t be illustrated by people like Donna who love 37days and have read it for years, rather than by a designer with no attachment to the work.
So, I asked the publisher and they agreed to look at anything that came in, but made no promises. It was over Thanksgiving and we had an aggressive deadline of only two weeks, but when I asked readers of the blog, over 125 pieces of original, beautiful art was created by artists from around the globe in response to the essays in the book. We told the artists that only 37 pieces would be chosen, but the publisher was blown away and not only changed the book to a full-color book throughout, but committed to including every single piece that was sent. It was, as a friend said, “an artistic and literary barn-raising.” I really loved that it was a fully inclusive process.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: You know what I like most about the book? It’s work! I mean, yeah, I started feeling good while I read it because it’s about affirming the good stuff, giving yourself the opportunity to be bigger, laughing-er. But also, you give us real assignments. Why were the exercises important to include?
Patti: I love the word “laughing-er.” I’ll have to remember that one!
This question takes me back to the title of the book. Life is a VERB. That entails doing something to integrate the learning into your life. And so I created two kinds of activities at the end of each essay, one that is called an “action,” a 10-minute exercise to immediately reinforce the message of the essay, and one that’s called a “movement,” a longer-term practice to try for 37 days, and perhaps for the rest of your life. The book is created in a way that allows for dipping into and out of, so you can try something for 37 days, and dip back in for another practice to try.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: What is the main thing you hope readers of the book will get out of Life is a Verb?
Patti: I get a lot of email from readers saying that they love the blog, but that they don’t have extraordinary stories, that they haven’t sailed around the world or interviewed Stevie Wonder in their pajamas. My answer is this: life itself is extraordinary. The bulk of the stories in this book aren’t about my travels around the world, they are about seeing my toddler’s red shoes in the yard and feeling completely satisfied. They are about simply paying attention to the one wild and precious life that poet Mary Oliver talks about right here at home. We are our most potent at our most ordinary. We save our china to use for special occasions when life itself is the special occasion. So my hope is that people will see themselves in this book, much more than they see me. That they will recognize themselves out of patterns rather than repeat themselves out of them. That they will not wait for permission, but realize that this is our 37 days.
Light-skinned-ed Girl: What’s next for Patti Digh? With the book’s publication, are you living the 37th day? Or is it the 1st?
Patti: This book represents a great deal for me. It represents my owning, finally, the title of writer. Even now, that’s hard for me to say. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I feel it too presumptuous. It represents the fulfillment of a promise to myself, to create this “instruction manual” for my two girls. I am at a deeper peace with the knowledge that I will die, having created this for them. That feels incredible to me.
There are more stories to tell them, so I’ll be getting back to my small desk and a cup of earl grey tea with soy milk very, very soon to start writing them.
If I may, I’d like to say thank you to Light-skinned-ed Girl for hosting me here. I was delighted that you were interested in being part of this blog tour and wanted you to be the first stop on the tour because I so respect your work. My thanks.
Look for Patti tomorrow over at thru my lens…lightly. For a complete schedule of her blog tour visit: www.37days.com
You can also learn more about Patti Digh here.
