Introducing our very first Wonder Club!

Wondering about Meditations for Mortals

Hi friends!

Hope your Christmas was lovely and your Hanukkah has been bright. The holidays can be such a blur! Lots of happy moments mixed in with hefty doses of all the other big feelings…

One of our favorite new holiday traditions is to go for a walk in the woods on one of the days around Christmas. I live close to some of the most famous woods in America, where visiting requires a reservation. It’s one of my husband’s favorite spots on earth, so, in some ways, our yearly trip ends up being a little gift to him. This year it was pouring rain, but we pressed on with our umbrellas and had a grand, wet time.

I took this one last year. It was too rainy for a decent pic this year!

Have you taken any good walks lately? I’d love to hear about one in the comments.

Today’s newsletter contains a very exciting announcement! This January on Living the In-Between Times I’ll be hosting our very first Wonder Club.

What is a Wonder Club?

I hope it will be exactly what it sounds like—a place where we can all get together and wonder about some of life’s big questions and how we can apply some answers to the everyday, in-between times of our lives.

As opposed to a book club, where we all gather around agreed upon pages in a book, in the Wonder Club, we’ll gather around an idea or wondering each week that’s been sparked by our reading.

I’m also calling it a Wonder Club because my intention is to be inclusive. No worries if your TBR pile is already teeteringly high, or you’ve got too much on your plate this month for another “project”! Whether you’ve read the book or not, you’re in the club and can wonder along with us!

We’ll start with this:

Why this book?

I picked Meditations for Mortals by

Oliver Burkeman

as our first book for a couple of reasons. One is the structure. 28 daily short chapters seems very doable.

The second is the questions it promises to address:

How can we embrace our nonnegotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? How do we shed the illusion that life will really begin as soon as we can “get on top of everything”?

Juicy, right? These are exactly the questions this newsletter has been wrestling with since its inception.

I’m excited to hear some new ideas, but I’ll also be bringing a healthy dose of skepticism. Most “self-help” books (especially those written by men, sorry) sound good in theory, but in practice, crumble under the weight of the grind of modern-day momming.

I’m hoping that by wrestling together here in the Wonder Club, we can answer more expansive questions like: How do you embrace your human limitations or make good decisions about using time when your to-do list isn’t just “your to-do list” but your list plus the complete care and feeding of several other human beings?

While I’d love the “map for a liberating journey toward a more meaningful life” promised by this book, I’d also love one that’s grounded in the realities of the constant schlepping and tending and interruptions of daily mom life?

So, let’s see what we can conjur up together in the Wonder Club! We’ll start January 6th!

And… I’d love to hear about a wonder-full walk you’ve taken recently (maybe with a picture) in the comments!