Dear Reader,

I’m writing this from my desk, with a copy of Beyond Infidelity on the shelf beside me. It's wild how that book came into the world. A few years ago, it didn't exist, and neither did the version of me who could have written it. I’ve been thinking this week about what it actually took to get from there to here; and about the tension I lived inside for a long time before anything changed for me. I want to tell you about it.

It was March 2023. I'd been feeling a pull inside myself constantly for the last six months. I had a full private practice with clients I adored, and my life was going better than ever. Why did I keep feeling this tension between where I was and where I was feeling called to be?

If you’ve ever felt that, you know how it shows up: like a nagging feeling you can't ignore; an undercurrent to the life that's humming along as usual.

Last minute, a friend invited me to one of my favorite places, a place that's helped me heal and grow tremendously over the years: the Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Mass. I decided to do something there I’d never done before, mostly because I’d run out of other ideas to break through how I was feeling: I booked a session with a medium. I know exactly how that sounds. Very woo. But like I said, I was out of ideas, and I knew I had to try something different to gain something different.

Our session was powerful and interesting, and when it ended I got up to leave. Then she said, “Sit down. I have one more thing to tell you. It's coming through for me so strongly, I can't not say it even though our time is over." Then she said, "You’re meant for more. So don’t be surprised when everything changes.”

WOAH. "I've been feeling that," I said to her. She said, "Your entire practice is going to change." But I wondered, HOW?
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When I finally got home from Kripalu a couple days later, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I woke up from a deep night's sleep, and suddenly, the entire outline and chapter summaries for the book that became 'Beyond Infidelity; were pouring out of me like I was overtaken.
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I hadn't planned to write a book. I hadn't even thought about writing a book.

Elizabeth Gilbert has language for this in Big Magic:

Her larger point is that an idea comes looking for a human collaborator; and if you don’t say yes, it goes and finds someone who will. That is exactly what it felt like. That book was knocking, and I had no choice but to answer.

I sat and wrote all day in my pjs. The dog didn’t get fed. I never changed out of what I’d slept in. It was like I was possessed.

But I didn't know how I would get this book into the world, I only knew it needed to be. So I simply I resolved to do one thing every day toward making the book a reality. One day at a time.

Rilke wrote something in Letters to a Young Poet that I kept close during that stretch:

I had to do my part. The rest would continue to evolve and unfold.

I wasn’t without challenges, like anybody. The practice was full. I’m a single mother to a small child, and the primary parent. I had no time, and no room. So every day I did one thing, no matter how small.

Meanwhile, I took to social media to educate about infidelity openly. Everything began to change quickly.

The response was huge. What I was saying was resonating. People wanted to talk with me, travel to see me. I couldn’t have both my regular private practice AND grow into this new space.

To try to hold on to both would mean that I was half-present with clients I loved and half-present with the work that was calling me. There’s a specific kind of exhaustion straddling two lives instead of standing in one.

I knew I had to make the leap. To let go of my old life to make room for the evolving new one. And the longer I took for that to happen, the longer I’d struggle and the slower my evolution.

So, I let go of all my clients, the practice I'd spent years building and nurturing, to make space for this new endeavor. Then my literary agent reached out. We signed. Beyond Infidelity was really, truly, on its way.
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The book went from inception in March 2023, to publication by Penguin Random House in January 2026. It was quite an evolution, and the entire process has changed me, and my entire life.

All that to say: when we feel the tension between the old and the new, we have to bet on ourselves. We have to gather the courage to leave room in our life for our own evolution.

Now, I want to be careful here, because I know how this can be heard.

Growing is not the same as escaping. The pull I felt was toward myself, not away from a person, thing, or life.

That nagging feeling was asking me to grow, to build something; to ask myself where my next version was, and how to do the uncomfortable, challenging work I needed to tenaciously do in order to become her.

A plant that is contained by its pot won’t grow bigger.

Since those early days of 2023 when I couldn't figure out how to access my next version, I've entered into a space where I constantly shed and grow, shed and grow.

So here’s the question I ask myself constantly, and the one I want to leave with you:

Where am I the constraining variable on my own life?

When you ask that of yourself, then really sit with what arises in you, what shows up?

Reply to this and let me know.

With all my love and support,

Lauren

P.S. — If you haven't yet watched my free Masterclass, it's linked right here for you. The topic, 'Overcoming Your Private Fears,' is so apropros for today's newsletter topic. We all have private fears. The challenge is to feel them, inquire about the root of them, then ask ourselves what growth is hiding beyond them. You got this. I believe in you, as much as I believed in Beyond Infidelity when it didn't even exist.

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