True for You

Creating Magic Through Liminal Spaces with Erin Petti

• Renee Cupples • Season 2 • Episode 3

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This episode features my lifelong best friend and author Erin Petti! Erin shares part of her journey in becoming a writer of middle grade fiction and finding "magic in the middle" by revisiting the liminal spaces of adolescence. She has made it her creative mission to encourage confidence in her writing students because of the abundance of support she received growing up from her parents and mentors. Featuring shout outs to our hometown, yoga practice and ghost stories, Erin's passion for creativity and empowerment is both inspiring and accessible.

About Erin Petti:

A published children's book author, Erin is certified at the 200-hour level at the Whitman Wellness Center through yogaspirit® Studios, and currently enrolled in her 300 hour AYTT,  She lives in Massachusetts with her family and is the founder of Pens & Poses, a children’s yoga and creativity project that aims to integrate the imaginative arts with movement, joy, and mindfulness. Read more at erinpettibooks.com or pensandposes.com.

Episode References:

The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee

Thelma Bee: In Toil and Treble

Thelma Bee and the Darkwood Queen

Book 3 Launch Party 5/6/25  5 PM Ventress Public Library Marshfield, MA

Bonniejean Boettcher, Narrator of the Thelma Bee Series

Kris Aro McLeod, Illustrator of the Thelma Bee Series

Snowy Wings Publishing

What We Do in the Shadows

The Haunted Dungeon, Winthrop, MA Epic Halloween Attraction in the 1990s

Tom O'Brien, WHS & Haunted Dungeon Alumnus

WCAT - Winthrop Community Access Television

Mr. Neil Shapiro, Former WMS and WHS Drama Teacher & Spiritual Mentor

Winnie the Pooh

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Natalie Goldberg

Mel Robbins

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Email: trueforyoupodcast@gmail.com

Instagram: @trueforyoupodcast

Facebook: @trueforyoupodcast

This is the True For You podcast, a place where we show up for ourselves fully. I'm your host, Renee Cupples. Becoming a yoga teacher helped set me free from trying to always have everything figured out and surrender to what is again and again. If you're looking for inspiration and direction in your life, look to yourself and what you love.

I am here to serve as a mirror to remind you of how amazing you truly are. Let's begin.

 Welcome everyone to the True For You podcast. It's your host Renee Cupples, and I have my best friend, Erin Petti here joining us today. I've known Erin since the first grade. We grew up together in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and I'm so excited to have her here. Erin is a published children's book author and a certified 200 hour level instructor of yoga at the Whitman Wellness Center and is currently in her 300 hour advanced yoga teacher training.

She lives in Massachusetts with her family and is founder of Pens and Poses, a children's yoga and creativity project that aims to integrate the imaginative arts with movement, joy, and mindfulness. You can read more at erinpettibooks.com or pensandposes.com.  I've known Erin obviously for a really long time and we became best friends in ninth grade and we did a lot of drama and creative projects together, and I've walked through the decades with you, Erin, and, I'm just so grateful to have you in my life and to have you here and to be able to share this space for you and to celebrate the launch of your third book in the Thelma Bee series. Mm-hmm. That's Thelma Bee and the Darkwood Queen that's gonna be coming out on May 6th. And you're gonna have a launch party at the Ventress Memorial Library in Marshfield.

So here to celebrate you and talk about some of our favorite deep topics today. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Renee, you're a treasure. Thank you so much. I love your podcast. I'm a long time fan, first time writing in, but just, I'm so excited to even just see your face this morning and wicked grateful.

Thank you, Renee. 

Thank you, Erin. So do you want to introduce yourself? Some listeners might already be familiar with you, but just give us a little bit of an intro about your story. 

Sure. So, hi, my name's Erin.  I am a writer of middle grade fiction, so I have three, well, two now, and almost three books out.

 It's the Thelma Bee trilogy, has adventure and ghosts and mystery and a lot of adolescent shenanigans.  I'm also a creative writing teacher. I travel around to different libraries and schools with young writers programs, trying to really empower young creators with confidence and just to find their voice and unlock their stories.

It's really one of my very favorite parts of what I do. So that's me. 

Awesome.  We were talking a little bit before, we started the interview about why and what led you to become a middle grade author. Do you wanna go into a little bit more detail about that? 

Yeah, I mean I think that it's really interesting because we had kind of a long conversation before we started recording, because you had initially asked questions about being a YA author, which is a young adult author.

And it might seem like a small difference, but I'm not actually a young adult author because that would be kind of your high school aged teen characters. The place where I really find myself drawn back to again and again is the middle grade space. So you know you're done with picture books, you're done with chapter books, you're done with early readers, and now you're in that like fifth, sixth, seventh grade, middle ground space.  So my protagonist for the Thelma Bee series, she begins as an 11-year-old in sixth grade and the last book is in seventh grade. So we kind of see a little bit of maturation.  It's really specific, right? It's like this kind of specific category, and I just think that there's so much- this is someone else's term, but like magic in the middle, you know?  The idea that we go through this piece of life where we are very much still children and very much being kind of introduced to the adult world simultaneously and holding those two things and not being one a hundred percent and not being the other a hundred percent.

And since I write about magic and I write about things that are beyond our everyday life, to me, that's the richest space because when you have this dissonance, when you have these cracks and these kind of uncomfortable middle spaces, we were talking about liminal spaces, that's where magic can get in through those cracks.

Magic can get in through those awkward junctions, you know what I mean? And it just seems like if you're gonna write fantastical stories, for me anyway, that's such a space where there's room for it. There's so much room for magic to get in because reality is a shifting earthquake because you're 12 years old, you know what I mean?  And I love exploring it, and for me, it was probably the hardest part of my growing up life was that middle part. And so I really, really get a lot of inspiration from revisiting that space and taking a look at it from a lot of different perspectives. And then adding ghosts, 'cause I love a ghost story.

I know, I don't know if you can see my shirt here. I just, 

Oh heck yeah. This team spirit, my shirt says werewolves, not swear wolves from What We Do In The Shadows. 

Oh good. Uh, Erin and I are both October babies, so I feel like all things spooky are relevant all times of year, not just the spooky time.  

365 baby.

Yeah. It's one of the, the benefits of team Libra. So, I would love to hear more too about when you had originally penned Thelma, you had designed it as a trilogy, but you weren't sure if the other two books were even gonna get published. So can you give us a little more background on that, that journey that you went through. Yeah. 

Oh my goodness. It's been a journey. So the thing that I don't want any listener to doubt is that if you wanna write a book, you can write a book. If you want to be an author, you can be an author. If you have it in your heart, and this is very yoga retreat coded, but if you have it in your heart, it is for you, right? We know this to be true.  And now I'll talk about some of the complications. 

It's like a dark night of the soul, right? To have to, yeah, you want to birth something from your creative world and then hope it will get out into the world, but have to kind of become unattached to the outcome. 

It's really, really interesting. The kind of game that publishing or any kind, any kind of- maybe, maybe it's in any profession, the kind of game that the success or lack of success can play with your, with your confidence and your ego and your solar plexus chakra as we're here on your podcast, Renee. But, so the first book got a traditional publishing deal. And it was like, so exciting. And they did such a beautiful job. It was a small publisher. They sent me to Chicago and they sent me to Minneapolis and I got to do all this stuff. And the book got great reviews.  And it was like a, a real ride. It was really like a very exciting ride. And the book was everywhere and it was just so exhilarating.

It was like, it was like one of those like highs that you're like, is this even happening? And then the publishing house went through some changes and was just not publishing books anymore after, you know, 2016. And it was like very unclear whether, I mean, I wrote the first book and it ends, you know, it, it ends, but it's open-ended enough because it was supposed to be a series or a trilogy.

And they were just not gonna be publishing any more books and it was really unclear whether that was just gonna be it. And it was a number of years I kind of had to think about what the next steps were. And the, the real transformation kind of happened in yoga teacher training, obviously.

But just thinking about what felt good, what felt right, and it just was impossible for me to think that I could not get the rest of the story out. And then out of nowhere, the way that things do, a friend who, who was a dear friend now, but was then like kind of a friend of a friend, Bonniejean, who's a brilliant audiobook narrator, got in touch and she's like, ERIN.

I just read your book, please let me narrate this. And I was like, what do you mean?  I don't even have a second or a third book. And then all the while kind of thinking I wanted to finish it, she's like, let's just do it. I was like, okay. So it was kind of this mind shift and hearing her talk about, 'cause she had recently read the book, when we had this conversation and it made me remember all the all those things that I had been connecting with. So we just kind of revitalized and I was able to partner with a publisher called Snowy Wings Publishing, which is independent. So it's an author collaborative, I won't go into the details, but there's library distribution, there's all this distribution, but it's independent, so I'm not on the hook for anyone else's decision that I can't control, you know what I mean? And then the illustrator and the cover designer from the first book was so happy to get back in and Bonniejean was on, and then all the people at Snowy Wings were on, and all of a sudden it was happening in this way that I could never have, never have predicted. But actually is even better, because to circle right back around because of that wait time, because of the wait time, because I was ready to like go, go, go. The book that came out in 2022, which is the second Thelma Bee book, is easily a thousand times better than what it would've been if it came out in 2017. A thousand times better because I had more years of writing experience, because there were different people with different perspectives that had read it and given me thoughts.

It was supposed to be that way, and there were characters that I, I never, ever would have discovered in 2017 that were right there for me in 2022. And they're characters that are cherished now, and it's just like, man, we don't wanna wait. Boy, we don't wanna wait. We don't want to be told no when we want something.

And sometimes all of that just leads to the story taking the road that it was always supposed to take. And it stinks to learn that lesson, but it's also kind of amazing to learn that lesson. 

Yeah.  I love that it became this team collaborative too. So having Bonniejean on board and a different publisher and the illustrator, it reinvigorated it and made it more exciting and your creative process was reinvigorated and you definitely don't wanna wait.

But sometimes that's exactly what needs to happen for it to be the right time for it to come out and to have it be something that it's not you alone, right? It's all the people right supporting you and the team of people that are launching it that help lift you up and help make it worth the wait.

And honestly, for me, it was the journey between feeling like a lucky kid who was being helped out by a bunch of adults. And I was like, I'm just happy to be here guys. Thanks so much. You know what I mean? Like, I was just a lucky kid who didn't know anything. And now my experience is this is my creation and I'm proud of it and I'm grateful and I'm the captain of this show.

Look at me. I'm the captain now. Right? But it's just a completely different feeling. And I would be, you know, I'd be thrilled to do,  a different book with a bigger house and be kind of the lucky kid at the table again. But it feels, with this experience, it feels so good and so empowering to know that I, I get to decide how this story ends, you know?

Yeah.

Because it's my story. 

And speaking of the ending of the story, I love that there's a little nugget in the third book for our Winthrop peeps, the town that we grew up in. Do you wanna give a little, a little teaser, a little sneak peek for all those who know, and remember the haunted dungeon? Oh my goodness.

I don't know if you've seen, the book is not out in the world yet, so I don't think you have an actual copy yet. Am I correct? 

No, I just know the teaser. I just know, yeah. 

The dedication is to the haunted dungeon kids.  That is the first page dedication. So in the archives of our shared history, Winthrop had this really incredible, super scary Halloween attraction called The Haunted Dungeon that was a not renovated fort, it was just an old dusky fort, that the coolest, spookiest, edgiest high school kids took as their kind of October home. And just made it the scariest haunted house ever and people lined up. And this is a thing that could not happen, you know, the Lord's year of 2025. It was just so cool to me and I never went through since then, since I wrote the book because a lot of the book takes place in, in Thelma's town, they have a haunted dungeon and there's a cast of teen characters that kind of run it, and it's integral to the mystery and the plot of the story.

But I had to like look back at old WCAT footage to see in that, former Winthrop resident Tom O'Brien sent me, so grateful, just to see what it was like 'cause I was too scared to go in when I was a kid. Oh yeah. And it was just so, it was such a rich part of  a small town culture to have that. And it felt like a really, really beautiful, easy fit for, first of all, the trajectory of what Thelma is going through, but also her town and  the innate silliness and quirkiness of the characters that she is surrounded with in her friend group. It was just such a, when I, when I thought of it, I was like, yeah, man, that's the third book. Like, that's it. Mm-hmm. Uh, really drawing a lot from.

I did go through it. It is like an underground bunker. I mean,  I have like very sparse memories of it, but I don't love haunted houses. Like I'm not that girl. I can't. I scream through the whole thing and can't handle it, but I do remember going through and it being absolutely terrifying and you're like literally in an underground bunker and there's no escape and it was an abandoned lot. So now   there's a Fort Banks elementary school. Yes. In Winthrop and there's a graveyard. But at the time it was like an abandoned lot. 

It was, although in my book, I did play with it a little bit because I have the graveyard there. Because the graveyard is also very important, yes. 

You need the graveyard. 

So we have a complex where it's this underground fort and then a graveyard next to it This is the most, I mean it, they're all Halloween-y books, but this one actually takes place on Halloween. Oh, this is the Halloween capper for The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee series. It was very fun to write. 

Oh, so good, and such a good throwback. I think so much obviously our formative years are, were shaped and grown in Winthrop and it's like this little seaside town, little meaning 25,000 people like packed into two square miles. But to us it felt like a small town because all the surrounding towns were a lot bigger than our town space wise and number of people wise. And it's something that shaped who we are and helped us find our voice. And our high school drama teacher, Mr. Shapiro, was one of our mentors and he passed away a week after 9/11 and has continued to be a spiritual mentor for both of us. And, I think that it's something that people have different views, right, of where you grew up. It could be like you wanna escape or you never wanna leave, and you kind of take the lessons that you need or forget them if that's what feels good. So, I, I appreciate and love the throwbacks and it's interesting the stuff that pops up sometimes or the stuff that you forget that you remember.

Absolutely.

Yeah. 

And to be able to play - I love the idea of memory, you know what I mean, in memory and fiction and the way that, it is how we remember it, whether we remember it the right way or not, right?  So playing with fiction and playing with something real and being able to kind of like craft something really, really, really true out of make believe stuffs is just so, so fun.

And it, it's such an interesting exercise and like what's true versus what's real, versus what do you remember versus what do you imagine? It's one of one of the cooler things about storytelling, I think. 

Yeah. And, and you do a beautiful job of, of weaving storytelling and imaginative play into your writing workshops and, um, you're an amazing improv teacher and create creative writing teacher.

And I think that kind of marrying those worlds too. And you're a yoga teacher. Taking all of these parts of you, right? And trying to kind of create, uh, a creative process that's your own, but also that you can share with other people and try to spark the creativity in them is, is super important. 

Something that I was, 'cause you just mentioned Mr. Shapiro in, in this, like, something that I was thinking about. 'cause I teach a lot, a lot, a lot of kids creative writing and it's so exciting and  they look at me and they're like, oh, this is a person who wrote a book, so she must know what she's talking. Right? So that's a thing I have going in.

But the most important piece of what I can share with any of these kids is that confidence that they have the power to make their own stuff, and it's important that they do. And then I have an adult group now that I've been working with and it's just like our Tuesday night writing group.

And I'm like, oh my God. It's the same thing.  Yes, I share more in depth about like craft and this and that and the other thing. And they're like, this is a person who wrote a book. She probably knows what she's doing, but like once again, the most important piece of it, any that I can offer is just like, you've got this, you've got this.

And I realized when I was thinking about it, I think I'm just trying to share the thing that I had in abundance growing up between my parents and Mr. Shapiro. Just saying like, you've got this, you can do this. You're smart, you're talented. Go, go, go. And I was given that in such abundance and I'm so grateful and so lucky to have received that, that like, that is actually the key thing.

In all of my workshops, in all of the traveling that I do, in all of the groups that I lead, is just saying like, yeah, I wrote a book. I can talk to you about craft, I can talk, but like what I want you to walk away from today with is like, you've got this. You're powerful enough. You're smart enough. Every single person who's walking this earth has a unique story, and if you wanna tell it, tell it.

I was just, I woke up, I, I woke up. I did, I grew up with it. That always felt second nature to me because of all the support that I got. And it's crazy to me that anyone doesn't have that support. So I feel like I'm just this fire hose of confidence trying to spread that's the good word, you know what I mean?  That's the thing. You can. If you want to, you can. If you don't want to, that's okay. You can do something else.  Bake a cake or paint or, and, but if you wanna write a book, you can do it a hundred percent. 

And you know, when you're in, when you're growing up and in an education based environment you're gonna have to write from, you know, until the time that you're at the end of high school, and then if you move on to college, like it's not an optional thing, right? It's something that you have to do in all forms in, and it's the way that we communicate. You're gonna have to draft an email, you're gonna have to draft a text.

It's so to be able to find your voice and to be able to express yourself. And you're also gonna mess up, right? You're gonna have to edit and you're gonna have to learn from the ways that you communicate that didn't work or the ways that people communicate back to you and how you receive it, right?

And how much you let it affect how you feel about yourself and about the world. And, so it does apply to real life too, being able to find that voice and to be confident in it. And I think so many people, myself included, right? You maybe write something and you're like, nobody's gonna wanna hear this.

Or maybe this is just for me.  A lot of times you're telling yourself this story that, 

Yeah. 

That's not meant to be shared, but then when you share it, it actually gives you an incredible source of power and sense of vulnerability in putting out a message into the world.

And it's not up to you how it's received. 

Oh yeah.

That's not for your interpretation because everybody's gonna receive it differently. And that's gonna say more about them, right, than it says about you. So learning that part to let it out and then let it go, let go of the outcome is huge.

In teaching yoga, a lot of times stuff will come through and I'm like, what is this? I don't understand why I'm supposed to be teaching this pose, or saying this thing. I don't know where it's coming from. Yeah. But I'm like, I'm just meant to say this, and I just let it out and let it go and try not to get attached 'cause I honestly don't know where it's coming from. I'm like, we need to do this stretch right now. I don't know why, but we need to do it. Someone in the room needs it, someone in the room needs the message, but I just trust. And it's something simple like a hamstring stretch and you're like, what am I releasing? What am I holding onto? And not trying to go too deep with it all the time, but I secretly not so secretly love going deep. Like I love not so secretly. Yeah. Right. I love  when a message like that comes through and, sometimes like I'll be in a class too, and I'll feel like I wanna cry, but it's not mine. I'm like, why do I wanna cry right now?  Is that somebody else's? It's is that the energy is, is something happening ? I love it. I'm like, what is that? 

Right? But is it, yeah. And I love that, like when you're talking about teaching yoga, like that feeling and especially, gosh, no, 'cause it's for both, for kids and adults. Like recognizing the feeling of intuition, recognizing if something feels right. What does it feel like when something feels right? What does it feel like when something feels forced or wrong? And just that, the discernment of that is something so simple and actually so hard because you know, as we grow up, we just have so many outside inputs telling us that we feel one way or telling us that we feel another way, or we should or we shouldn't.

And in yoga practice, that's one of the key things is just what actually feels good in real life inside your body versus what feels a little off. And especially I think for kids establishing that. What do you feel like when you feel good? What do you feel like when you feel strong so that when something comes in and it makes you feel not good you can identify it instead of just being like, no, this is fine too. You know what I mean? Identifying when something throws you off your balance because you know what it feels like to be in balance.

Yeah. That just discernment piece too of, 'cause sometimes you get an intuitive hit that you feel like shouldn't be shared. Right. And maybe that's where you go to your creative processes and develop something, right? Could that could be shared in the future. Write it down like free flow writing when you just go to write and it feels like the pen is moving, but you don't even know. Yeah. What's gonna come out of it is incredible, because a lot of times you have a lot in your mind that you just need to unload. And it's, yeah, that can be a creative practice in and of itself. We have so many thoughts and things happening in our mind.

And just to scrub it out, it's like the first 10 minutes of meditation when you're just like, there's no way that you're ever gonna have that brain take a break but then 10 minutes later, maybe you settle in and you're like, oh, okay, I'm here.

But like, you know, when we think about morning pages like Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, Artist's Way type stuff,  that's purpose of it is to clear it out, like clean house, right? Get all this stuff out so that you can engage with yourself on a deeper level without all the clutter, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I love this conversation so much. Erin. I could talk to you for hours, obviously. I mean, 

We even have coffee. 

Yes. Yes. Cheers. Cheers. Everyone take a sip of your, of your favorite beverage. What do you have? Is that like a little Winnie the Pooh? It is. Oh, I love it. Mine is just little otters in love. I love that.

Oh, you're so cute. So cute. Otters in Love, and Norah's reading a book right now. And it's, it's about an otter and the title is O-D-D-E-R.

I haven't read that and I've wanted to, it's supposed to be wonderful. 

Yeah, I love that. I love that play on words. Where, right. Yeah. And that, that age, that staged well, Norah's in seventh grade and your oldest is in sixth grade. Right. And,  I think a lot of the, the stuff that she's going through, sometimes I have a hard time walking her through because I remember how hard it was at that age to just exist. Yeah. And to work with all the dynamics of all the different hormones and things happening. And you know, even if your teacher has a bad day and you take it the wrong way, that it was somehow your fault and you know, things going on with your parents and all these things. And I'm just trying to hold space for her, but I actually have a lot of feelings about my experience at that time and you know, you don't always share everything that you experienced in that time you internalized so much and, and process that experience. So, I try not to project any feelings that I have onto her, but I'm like, oh, maybe I haven't worked through some of that stuff that I, oh my God went through at that time. You know?

It's really every single thing in the whole wide world, obnoxiously is about balance. And you have your instincts as a mom and you have your moral compass and you have the things that are really important to be present for your kid, while, you must let go of all expectations, right? So yes, I am love, I am support. I am everything that you need me to be, while understanding that however the day or the year or the behavior or the situation looks, I have no control over that and I should have no expectations about that based on my own experiences.  Your human is your human, and they are gonna develop in a way that has very little to do with your opinions about your own childhood. I mean, it's just. It's utterly, utterly independent and that, I mean, in most ways for me it's been delightful because I'm like, man, she's got like zero of the hangups that I had, which is awesome. Also, she's like six feet tall and has broad shoulders and like flowing golden hair and she's like a softball dynamo. And I'm like, I don't have a lot in common with you, but it's what a delight, right. But it's a delight to just be like, you are so different. The challenges you have are different. The strengths that you have are different. And I just get to support it and I just get to watch it and be here if we need that motherly instinct and if we need that moral compass, you know what I mean? But otherwise, like, boy, you are your own human. You know? It's wild stuff. 

So Erin, if you could go back to your middle grade aged self, if you could have a one-on-one with that version of Erin, what, what would you say? 

Holy cow. Renee coming in heavy Cupples.  I almost called you Ortolani, but I didn't so, and I am gonna try not to cry on your podcast.  The friend that I made, my imaginary friend, my protagonist, Thelma Bee, is in so many ways the thing that I needed when I was in sixth grade. Because in sixth grade in particular, and my kid's in sixth grade. So it's like, boy, are we full circling all over the place right now? But I was telling you earlier like I did not speak a word in school the entire year unless I was called on by a teacher. I was riddled with anxiety and I still struggle with anxiety, but in sixth grade it hit so hard and so fast. And the transition to middle school and I didn't sleep. I remember looking at the clock , 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 3:30 AM and just being like, oh my God. I'm never gonna be able to sleep. I'm never gonna be able to wake up in the morning. And  it was just the hardest year I've had, and I was so overwhelmed with how I was perceived by other people. And I think the thing that I did when I was, whether I knew it or not, when I was first writing my character, is she doesn't give one hoot about how people perceive her. And it's if anyone has a problem, it's their problem. It's not her problem. 


And I would just tell myself that everything that you're worried about. You can be worried. It's okay, but at the same time, there's so much worth inside of you. There's so much undiscovered country inside of you. The future is so bright and this is a down year, man. It's gonna get better. It gets better, right? I wish I had a little voice inside of my head when I was in sixth grade that was kind of like, Hey, screw the man. You know what I mean? And I didn't have that then. I was just terrified all the time. 

Oh my God. And I have this very intense widow's peak that is now my hair is normal adult hair, but I was trying to grow my bangs out in sixth grade. Renee, and like God love her. She was a lovely woman, but the hairdresser that my mom took me to, told me to put gel in my hair and slick it back into a ponytail, and I had this crazy widow's peak and I looked like Eddie Munster. And then some pieces would fall down in the day. So if I was already at a 10 and a half outta 10 for anxiety, it's very lucky that I escaped with my life into seventh grade because I was in survival mode that whole year.

And I think that like we were talking about these in between uncomfortable spaces. I keep going back, right? I keep writing books about being 11 and 12 years old, because to me, I think that's where I'm still figuring things out. I'm really interested in looking at that space and healing that space, and giving power, and giving autonomy and giving voice to that space because those are the things that I, by my own hand, by my own, you know, no one was coming down hard on me.

Yeah,  the liminal space, but in the space of your sixth grade self. 

Right.

Because that was a hair crisis.

It was not a joke. I was, and, but like things like that, like hair and like pimples and you know, it's such a stereotype of, but that sent me into a psychological tailspin, because it was just like, how can I leave my home? But I knew that I had to because everyone expected me at school. Mm-hmm. But it was the emotions , and it's like the first time you fall in love and then it goes away and you feel like you're gonna die because you've never fallen out of love before.

You know what I mean? Because you're feeling all of these things for the first time when you're an adolescent, it really has a wallop to it because you haven't proven to yourself that you can deal with these things and move on. Yet this is the first time, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Every, I love that Mel Robbins stuff, you do the thing then you prove to yourself that you can do the thing. You're a person who can do the thing, and then you can go, that's how you grow and that's how you get strong. 

Yeah. That belief in self is so difficult at that time because every problem is 10 xd as if there's a giant magnifying glass on you and everyone else can also see it in the same way when in reality they're just seeing their own problems in that way. Yes.  They're not necessarily seeing your own and a lot of times ridicule and things like that are the way that people are masking their own insecurities and their own problems and all of those dynamics are just so difficult to navigate.

And I think you gain a lot of perspective, although I could see how people could still be bitter about things that happen at that time. So I can understand both, you know? Yeah. Letting it go. And then also still not feeling over it in a way. I can see both perspectives, you know, hindsight. But I think that sitting in uncomfortable spaces is the way that we learn and grow the most, but also the most, one of the most difficult things you can do is to sit in discomfort.

It's so brutal. 

Be okay with it. Yeah. 

Yeah. I mean, even bringing it back to yoga, teaching. Sometimes I'll be just going through leading everyone through a really gentle modified sun salutation and think about when we do come up to flat back. I'm like, this stinks, right? Like, we're just like, this is like an in between thing that we rush through.

What if we sit here for a second? What does this feel like? What are your shoulders doing? What is your jaw doing? Because it's just an in between thing and we always wanna rush through the in between things, but there can be so much there if you let yourself feel the discomfort of it and you disrupt the pattern of rushing through things. That's something that teenage adolescent me would have absolutely no patience for, but that is one of those things that you, as you grow older , all right, every step of the way is a step. 

Mm-hmm. Yes. Sitting in discomfort at age 12. No, thank you. No thank you. You just find the quickest escape. Yep. Even if it's by shrinking yourself and God making yourself as small as humanly possible. You know, that's, I would say like probably a lot of people's go-to at that time.

Well, Erin, I just wanna celebrate you so much 'cause I am, I'm so excited to celebrate the closing of the chapter of Thelma Bee for your book launch party on May 6th. Again, that's in Marshfield and I'll put it in the show notes as well, and kind of ending your journey with Thelma.

But obviously it'll always be such a big part of you and your story and , just celebrating that character and kind of what it's helped you see in yourself that maybe you couldn't see at the time you were that age.  But,  yeah, do you have anything that, that you would like to share as we close out our time together?

I think  I'm so grateful just to be able to talk with you. It does make me wanna see if you're available every Wednesday morning for a cup of coffee on Zoom. Right. This has been so delightful.  I was at a elementary school the other day and one of the kids asked me this question, like, when did you decide you just wanted to write a book?

And I was like, that's an interesting question because I was, I've been writing, I've been writing since third grade. I never wrote a whole book, and I was sometime in my late twenties or early thirties, and I just thought if I start today, in one year, I could be done and I would be so proud of myself.

And then it was just that little mindset shift of like, you know, why not? Why not just try?

Thank you so much, Erin, for joining me. I'll put in the show notes how to get in touch with you if people are interested in booking you for a writing workshop or attending any of your children's yoga or regular yoga classes. But thank you again and I'm so excited for the third and final book of the Thelma Bee series. 

Thank you, Renee. 

Thank you, Erin. Take care, and I'll see you next Wednesday. 

Alright, bye!

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