Free Excerpt from The Lighthouse Guide
INTRODUCTION
My Letter to You
Dear Reader,
As the saying goes, there are no new ideas, just new ways of expressing them. Before writing this book, I made the conscious decision not to read extensively on the subjects touched upon within it beyond verifying specific quotes or referenced ideas. This book was never intended as a definitive worldview or groundbreaking tome so much as this human’s—my—thoughts as I’ve collected them like so many happy little stones in my pockets along this journey of life. I share them with you now. Some small and unassuming, some sparkling.
This book is no substitute for professional counseling or legal or financial advice. It is nothing more nor less than me sitting across from you at a metaphorical kitchen table, chatting about what is on your heart and me offering my piece. Feel free to read it from cover to cover or as whimsy, intuition, or the issue of the moment lead you. Take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. I don’t expect my thoughts to be universally applicable. They are just one perspective, hopefully a helpful one.
What this book is, is a love story. It’s the story of how I, as I grew older, grew less cynical, more accepting, more open-minded. I fell more in love with humanity: beautiful, messy, quirky, complicated, big-feeling-ed humanity. And I want you to, too.
You deserve a world in which each of us brings our highest and best self to the journey before us. Where we live the golden rule in all we do.
I am like a lighthouse illuminating this limited shore of existence, hoping I can help those still navigating the stormy seas nearby to find comfort and hope, and know that, despite it all, they are not, and never will be, alone.
Peace and light, Cheri
Before We Begin
This book is for you, of course, because all books are for the reader, but that made it very difficult to write. Who are you? Where are you on life’s journey? What are your joys and sorrows, talents and flaws? With what are you struggling on this random day that ends in Y? These are questions I will never know the answers to, but I do know that something in me is drawn to sit with you in the space of this not-knowingness, to learn the questions on your heart, and to seek guidance to offer you.
Maybe your questions revolve around a relationship: a friendship, a romantic partner, a family member, or coworker. Maybe you are struggling with money and career: how to make it, when it’s enough, how to save or spend wisely but generously. Perhaps you have lingering fears about more existential concerns: life and death, whether you are meant to have children, whether you are doing too much or not enough.
If so, I humbly offer this work.
Humbly being the operative word here, because—hoo boy!—it would be so easy for ego to take charge in a book offering advice, judgment too, but that’s not what you’re asking for, I’m guessing. So, instead, this guide is a series of stories, anecdotes, and related advice. It’s sometimes brief and sometimes more involved and covers a variety of topics, so you can target an area of choice or read through at leisure. We are in this life together, existing as humans on this orbiting ball of amazement. If I have something to offer in experience or insight that you find helpful, it is yours.
That all said, why in the world should you even read this book or listen to me? Who am I to offer guidance or advice to anyone? This is a valid question, and I applaud you asking, because I think we should all be discerning about who we listen to in the age of mis and dis-information, don’t you?
I am a mother. Although that is not all that defines me, it is one aspect everyone on earth will have familiarity with, so I begin there. I was a child of modest means in a household with two parents who loved one another, several siblings who intermittently fought but as adults do not. I went to college, earned my bachelor’s degrees in Business and English, dated for several years before meeting my now husband (the Research Scientist). We went on to buy a small fixer-upper and have spent the last several decades renovating it, having two children, homeschooling them for a time (and then not), sending them off to college, watching them go on to advanced degrees, land their first jobs, travel, and fall in love in turn.
And through all that time, we have lived and loved and lost— pets, parents, jobs—but we’ve also traveled, hosted amazing parties, gotten very, very sick and somehow, miraculously, gotten better again. We lived through pandemic lockdowns and ice storms and familial dysfunction, and we’ve watched love bloom in those who thought their chances were over. My life has spanned the time of seeing the world embrace the internet and cell phones and technology and still have memories of canning food and splitting wood for the furnace.
This is to say, I am a human on this earth living in this time of great transition. So many people want to stop the clock and go back to “simpler” times when they were naïve of the struggles of those around them, even participated in adding to them, wittingly or not. They want to return to when they were ignorant of their own biases or self-centeredness. But no more than we can reverse the effects of climate change on our planet or erase the effects of time on our physical bodies, with the age of information, the naiveté of the past is gone. Burying one’s head in the sand of time isn’t an option, either—at least not a sustainable one. And as the wise and eloquent Maya Angelou once said: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
I want to do better.
Ideally, I would love to be in conversation with you, dear reader, because I’m excited about the possibilities for the future of this world we’re in. I know there are a lot of people who dread change and actively run away from it. But if you are living this change in this moment and need a bit of the illumination of past experience to shine a light so you can navigate these seas of change safely and with more confidence, I’m here for you. You are welcome for tying that metaphor together, those of you who like predictability; I see you, too. Change is hard for you, so I will do my best to make this guide as simply and logically laid out as I can.
So, let’s dig in. Make yourself a cup of tea or other warm something-something (coffee is my go-to, but if it’s late, you know your body and what time you need to get up in the morning, make good choices), get yourself cozy, and sit with me for a bit.
We’re in this thing called life together, and isn’t that something to think about? (And if you heard The Artist Formerly Known as Prince singing just now, I see you, too.)
CHAPTER ONE – YOU ARE LOVED
In a perfect world you are loved unconditionally.
In an imperfect world you are still loved unconditionally.
My bedroom overlooks the forest outside our New England home, the branches of a youthful oak tree waving to me each morning. At night, my bedside light casts soft illumination, and I cannot count the times my now young adult children have come up and crawled under the thick down comforter or thrown themselves across the length and breadth of the bed just to talk.
I never feel so grateful as a parent as when I am sought out for comfort or advice or when my kids want to share something big or seemingly trivial that’s happening to them in their lives or in the world, dreams they have forming, or ideas they want to test out in the space outside their brains. When we become one big pig pile of late-night chatting and someone decides to run for chips or tea, and then the cats or dogs come to be near, it’s then that I know I must be doing something right. A lot of it isn’t under my control, but the parts that are? They have an enormous impact.
I think the reason my kids seek me out even after my lights are off, is because they know without a doubt that the lights are always on for them. No matter the hour or what else I have going on, they have my unconditional love and undivided attention. Stuck on that paper? I’ll read it for you. Unsure if this person is a good fit? Let’s talk about why you feel that way.
Unconditional love means that no matter what they do or the choices they make, I will seek connection with them over judgment.
Seek connection over judgment.
This is like the age-old question for those in conflict: are you trying to resolve your argument or win it?
I may be a middle-aged mother easily dismissed, and there may well be countless more memorable people with more impressive credentials who could write a similar book, but they didn’t. I did. I felt the call in a thousand small and profound ways to draw together the lessons I’ve learned in this lifetime in order to share them. As simple as they may seem, there are times that we don’t trust our gut, we ignore the red flags, we believe (falsely) that the only one we can count on is ourselves, and in that disconnection and fierce, often trauma-induced independence, we isolate ourselves and cut ourselves off from the ties that give this life meaning.
There was no single reason I chose to write this book. It feels more like a case of this book demanding to be written—things The Universe in capital letters wanted me to pass along. There were plenty of times when I felt helpless to change the world for the better, and with hindsight many ideas which appear in this book are things I wish my younger self had known.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Does everything happen for a reason? Why don’t all parents love their children unconditionally and if their religion or social circle tells them to cast judgment instead of seeking connection, what will that do to their families and, by extension, the world?
When I was younger and the AIDS epidemic was in full force and I would read about men—someone’s brother or child—literally dying with no family to comfort them, I thought, “What parent would abandon their child like that? How is this love?”
This book was being written then even when I wasn’t aware of it. It was being formed in my subconscious in response to the cruelty, uncertainty, the utter wrongness of so much of what I observed. If there were parents out there who couldn’t or wouldn’t love their child unconditionally, then I would be sure to parent my own children so that they knew they were loved.
This book was written back when I experienced unrelenting bullying, but also when I became the one who allowed the bullying. As I learned about the wrong ways to human and imagined the right ways, I made mistakes, but also grew.
I went off to college, met my now husband, got married, bought a house, and began a lifetime of hard-core DIY projects, including having children.
I’d seen my share of parenting fails, knew my parents loved me unconditionally, but like most parents, I still struggled to form a clear sense of what truly good parenting looked like. I knew it meant, at the very least, listening to your child and your gut. It meant not just providing for the physical body of a child but nurturing their mind and emotional health.
I had so many doubts and bumpy bits along the way, but when my eldest out of the blue left me a small handwritten note on my desk one day, I felt I’d won a parenting award. What did it say?
“Thank you for raising me to think critically instead of taking everything at face value.”
Not only had I managed to safely bring this child to adulthood, I’d provided guidance for how to human.
But this book is about so much more than parenting.
This book is about navigating life’s messiness while also dreaming of miracles. Over the years, we’ve had multiple medical crises rock our household, and even had addiction take hold of a loved one like it does for far too many. I’ve been a sounding board for friends going through divorce, losing spouses, and finding new love. I watched my kids fall in love for the first time, suffer heartbreak and move on to later, stronger partnerships.
Through it all, I questioned and doubted and wondered if the choices we were making were the right ones. Despite that doubt, there’s one thing I know for certain: I am loved. So are you. In this crazy world of good things and rough times and big feelings, the one certainty is that we are all loved.
If you get nothing else from this book. If you stop here and walk away, I want you to know without any doubt that you are loved.
Maybe you aren’t feeling that right now. That’s okay. It’s why this next chapter talks about loving and respecting yourself enough to know that you are worthy of love. You are meant to be here.
You deserve to be.
Want to read more? Buy at your favorite retailer or order through this site here!