#129: Possibility factories.
How independent bookstores helped rebuild my life after loss (and where you might find the hope you're looking for).
The Luminist is a reader-supported publication that illuminates the pain, the pleasure, and the paradox on the path to technicolor living. Subscribe below to receive posts about how loss teaches us to get the most out of life (along with silly gifs) in your inbox every Saturday.
Ten months from now, that will be me.
I was standing in a Chelsea brownstone at a book launch, having a full on out-of-body experience.
I clapped as Jillian Lavender, author of Do Reset, stepped off the makeshift stage radiating peace. I smiled as Miranda, the publisher I share with Jillian, told the origin story of our publishing house, The Do Book Company. I joined the other guests in flipping through the pages of Do Reset, admiring its cheeky cover.
And then I floated to a quiet corner to let myself take it all in…
It was one of those moments where time stands still — a moment so surreal it magnetizes your full presence into the here and now.
OMG, I’m going to be a published author.
In my mind, I could clearly see all the crossroads — the points of no going back — that had brought me to this white walled, glass-ceiling room. The path felt both so unlikely, so impossibly precarious, and yet so fated — my husband’s death, years of grief and doubt, a job that gave me meaning and repaired my sense of self, serendipitous meetings on Colorado trails and in London workshops, corporate retirement and my kitchen table where I’d write even when I wanted to quit. Notebooks full of scribbled ideas, teetering piles of dashed-off sticky notes, half-started google docs, all littering my trail like discarded tissues or perhaps breadcrumbs...
And now I’d have something to show for it. And something to share with others going through it.
I pulled my attention back to the brownstone.
Ten more months, Deagle.
And then I’d be at my own book launch.
Not in a fancy New York rowhouse, but somewhere in Virginia with my friends and family, beaming as I presented Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change.
This moment felt like completing a circle. From desperate reader to hopeful author. From seeker to guide.
Books have always been my happy place. As a kid, I’d spend hours holed up in my room escaping to different worlds: Middle Earth, the Kansas prairies, a galaxy far, far away.
As an adult, I'd lose track of time browsing bookshelves, running my fingers across spines, breathing in that perfect paper-and-possibility scent that no candle has ever quite captured.
But after Mike died, books transformed from a pleasant pastime into my first line of defense.
Loss doesn't just take someone away. It torches your mental map — all those assumptions about how life works, which path to take, and how to stay “safe”. Suddenly you're standing in unfamiliar territory, directionless.
My brain, remarkable pattern-recognition machine that it is, frantically searched for new bearings. Examples. Evidence. Stories of people who'd walked this hellscape before me and somehow kept going.
I found those stories on bookshelves.
Bearing the Unbearable showed me I wasn't crazy when grief ambushed me in the cereal aisle. Keep Moving gave me permission to believe life on the other side of loss could be better, richer, more meaningful. Grief and Hamburgers (yes, that's actually the title) made me laugh.
These weren't just books. They were lifelines thrown to a drowning woman.
The books mattered, but equally important were the places I found them.
Independent bookstores became my go-to destinations for directions, possibility, hope. I didn’t have to know what I was looking for, but in the carefully curated shelves, I always found what I needed.
Unlike algorithms that feed you more of what you've already consumed, indies offer something magical: human discernment. Booksellers who've read widely and thought deeply, coming up with connections no algorithm would make. “If you liked that memoir about grief, you might find comfort in this novel about rebuilding.”
Places like The Tattered Cover inside Denver Airport, Island Books in the Outer Banks, The Bookworm in Vail Valley, Loyalty Books in DC. International havens like Daunt Books in London and Unity Books in Auckland. These aren’t just retail spaces for me. They are possibility factories. Wisdom waypoints. Hope harbors. Places where someone has thoughtfully selected titles that, more than once, made me gape in astonishment at the feeling that these people — author and bookseller — were living inside my head.
When loss blinds you to possibility, don’t panic. There are tomes of insight and inspiration all over the world, just waiting for you to crack their spine.
Books and bookstores saved me. But they might not be your thing.
Maybe you find soul sustenance at a community garden where the elderly man who lost his wife a decade ago speaks about her with a smile, then divides her prized dahlias and passes some to you.
Maybe it’s with the podcast host who survived something similar and articulates exactly what you can't yet put into words.
Maybe it’s in the Pinterest board of grief quotes that somehow feel written just for you, or on the trail where you watch winter turn into spring, or in the garage workshop where you build something from nothing.
The medium doesn't matter. What matters is finding spaces — physical or virtual, social or solitary — that consistently feed your healing. Places that reliably offer new ways of understanding what you're living through. That stock metaphorical flares for your darkest nights.
Because when loss cracks us open, it creates a hungry emptiness. That void needs filling — not with distraction or numbing, but with sanity. With understanding. With possibility. With hope.
The day after the book launch in New York, I had lunch with Miranda and her daughter Millie at a cozy West Village bistro. We debriefed about the night before, talked next steps for Do Loss, and pretended not to notice Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup at the catty-corner table.
As they gathered their luggage to head to JFK for their flight home, Miranda asked about my plans for the rest of the day.
"I'm just going to wander," I said. "I have a list of bookstores I'd like to check out."
And I did. I spent quality hours browsing shelves, talking to booksellers, feeding my soul. I came out with a haul of books that will help me grow — as a writer, a person, a guide.
I also thought about the strange symmetry of my journey. Nine years ago, books were my lifeboats. Now I'm building my own vessel for others to climb aboard.
Standing in the Poetry section of Three Lives & Company in Greenwich Village, surrounded by slim volumes that punch well above their weight, it hit me: what saves us shapes us. My life didn't just rebound after Mike died. It reconfigured — like a house that loses a load-bearing wall and has to find a new way to stand. Books helped me rebuild, and in doing so became a central axis of my life. Of course I became a writer. I wasn’t just healing with books, I was honing in on the power of books to bring me back to myself, even when “myself” was nothing more than a pile of shattered glass.
I wonder: what's saving you right now? What wisdom waypoint is providing shelter and hope amidst the storm? Maybe it's not a bookstore. Maybe it's hiking trails through National Parks or Buddhist meditation or that YouTube channel about rebuilding vintage motorcycles.
Whatever it is, pay attention. Because it might not just be medicine for tough days, it might be fulfillment for a long life.
To finding what lights us up and following it home,
P.S. Did I mention I’m publishing a book soon?? You can pre-order your copy of Do Loss here!
