Thin Places is a reflective collection of personal essays that finds moments of connection, grace, and the sacred in the ordinary encounters and places of everyday life. Why was this an important book for you to write? 

So much of this book is about journeys, the paths we take, and the unforeseen changes in direction along the way; this idea, too, that all roads lead to where we are going. Similarly, writing this book was very much a journey for me. While I tried to keep to a minimum the number of essays directly about me and my journey, I became a part of every essay, or every essay became a part of me—meaning, in crossing paths, everyone’s journey became my journey and my journey, in turn, connected with theirs. It was incredibly healing, also humbling, empowering, enlightening, inspiring, you name it! Writing it also solidified in my mind the ideas about which I write, especially this overarching idea that there are a lot of people and just as many paths and it doesn’t really matter the path or the series of paths we are on compared to someone else’s as long as we learn to love. I really do believe that it is in love that we find our way.  In a world where there can be a lot of conflict, especially now, I needed that reminder.

How did you decide which family experiences belonged in the collection?

I didn’t set out to retell certain experiences. I simply set out to be more aware and try to capture what I felt or what came to mind in the moments when I first felt or thought them. But I did feel drawn to find thin places as well as extraordinary stories with staying power in unlikely or ordinary places. No sooner did I settle on that theme of journeys and thin places than I began to see them everywhere, in places, people, and things. More than that, I came to realize that everyone has a story, everyone is a story, and we all have deep desire to share our story and what we learned or who we became along the way. So, it wasn’t so much deciding what essays to include as it was getting out of the way so that I could see stories and thinness where I might not normally look. The more I listened and observed and altogether stepped into people’s stories, the more powerful they became and the deeper my connection to them grew. Meaningful stories and personal connections really are everywhere, if we look for them. Because of that, many of the stories I tell, though not mine, were observed by me. So I am a part of each story, each essay, but they are not about me.

How did personal failure become part of the spiritual questions in the book?

First, that question makes me think of Krista Tippet, the host of OnBeing, who talks a lot about “living the questions,” which is to say there is value in learning to sit and be okay sitting with uncertainty. My life has definitely given me a lot of opportunities to sit with questions, many of them coming in the midst of deep pain and the settling dust of despair. Second, any time there is struggle, no matter who is struggling or what that struggle looks like, I think “spiritual” questions are not far behind (whether we or not we recognize or utter them). Not religious questions, mind you, but spiritual questions, which I see as being more universal, those questions that lead us to consider how it is we are all connected together, and what it truly means to love and be our brother’s or sister’s keeper. But we can’t get to that level of understanding and love without vulnerability and being open, to some degree, about our weaknesses, mistakes, struggles, wounds, etc. This book does not shy away from highlighting those things. To that end, some of the thinnest places seem to be born in or because of hardships. While this book is not about my divorce, nor is it about my kids’ mental health struggles in the wake of that divorce, that moment, or failure as you might call it—in looking back—proved to be a catalyst for greater degrees of growth, love, and understanding. So, for me, without that moment, I don’t think I would’ve been ready to ask the questions I needed to ask in order to understand what I needed to understand.

What was the greatest gift this collection gave you as a writer and as a person? 

My writing journey and my life journey, they are pretty much one and the same. I love that Leonard Cohen quote that says, “If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” In that sense, life gave me the gift to experience what I did, and in writing about it, I found the gift expanded, a gift that keeps on giving, if you will. More specifically, it connected me to so many people. And it continues to connect me to many more. It also helped me see people as they really are, which is not unlike you or me. That takes effort, and it is a work in progress, but I don’t know if there is a greater gift after which to seek. The more we can understand or seek to understand, the less of judgment, hate, hurt, war, etc. there will be.

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