Lindsay Detwiler's Blog, page 60

A Voice for the Innocent, A Plea for the Forgotten

During the ���off season��� of ���Walking Dead��� last year, my husband and I were browsing for a new show to get hooked on for our Sunday night vegetation sessions. An advertisement for a show called ���Salem��� caught our eye, and we started watching. Although the content is somewhat odd at times, we found that it fulfilled our need���my husband enjoys the gore, while I like my eye candy a.k.a. Shane West (who also happens to be Landon in A Walk to Remember).

Besides drooling over the hunky protagonist, the show hooks me because of its sheer horror���not just from creepy side effects, but from the whole premise behind it. It���s hard to imagine that in our country, women and men were brutally tortured and murdered for their ���witchcraft������which was most likely nothing more than a few attention-seeking girls pointing false fingers.

The persecution of the innocence has always struck a chord within me. I guess it���s just the thought of knowing you didn���t do anything wrong, but being punished and shunned anyway. I imagine the terror and the pure disgust in humanity that Sarah Bishop must have felt when no matter what she did, she couldn���t convince everyone that she wasn���t a witch.

We like to think that the Puritans were just crazy, disillusioned, and na��ve people. It was hundreds of years ago; nothing like this would happen today.

Think again.

If you visit the Innocence Project���s website, you will see hundreds of similar stories.�� The victims may not be accused of witchcraft, but they are accused of the modern-day equivalents. Convicted murderers and rapists sitting on death row with one thing in common: they didn���t do it.

We like to think that in our society, this sort of thing doesn���t happen, couldn���t happen. We are scientific, knowledgeable, and advanced. Everyone in prison is certainly guilty; our justice system isn���t slipshod enough to let the innocent slip through the cracks made for the guilty.

Wrong.

It is utterly horrifying to read about how many men and women have lost years and decades of their lives because of false convictions. Ever since high school, I would think about the sheer terror of being behind bars and not having anyone believe the truth. I think about the loved ones of the convicted, and how they, too, lose everything based on inequitable events.

Obviously, then, Voice of Innocence stemmed from a place near to my heart and my fears. I guess I was always meant to write this book because it���s something that just haunts me.�� Even though I���ve never experienced this firsthand (and hopefully never will), it still strikes me as something that needs to be talked about. Corbin may be fictional, but there are plenty of real Corbins in the world.�� There are plenty of real Emma���s mourning the loss of him to a wrongful conviction.

It���s easy to write someone off as a criminal, to throw away the key based on ���evidence.��� It���s easy to point fingers and say the person somehow deserved it or that they have to be guilty. But like ���Salem��� reminds us, sometimes what we think of as ���evidence��� or 100% proof is nothing of the sort.

~Lindsay Detwiler, author of Voice of Innocence

A Love Broken

If she���s gonna love again, it���ll be with a man who sees her soul and smiles. If she���s gonna love again, it���ll be with a man who builds her up higher than she envisioned.

The sun blasted her face in a warm reverie, a soft breeze sweeping her hair back. It is a perfect day, a day to write poetry about. To her, though, it���s a mockery. On a day like today, it should be raining and gray, dusky and chilling, like the inside of her chest.

She stands, alone, all alone, her mind endlessly rumbling through memories. Visions of good times and of bad float through her, whirling her in a misty, dream-like state. Mostly, though, a single thought is the forerunner in her exhausted brain���I���m all alone.

If she���s gonna love again, it���ll be with a man whom she trusts with her life and her values. If she���s gonna love again, it���ll be with a man who, as time passes, holds her tighter but still lets her wade and wonder.

At first, their love had been magical, soft, and warm. It wasn���t the fairy tale kind of magical love, but it was still wonderful in its own way. The type of magical realism that is a treasure to find in this harsh world. She was happy, which is all you can really ask for.

But that was all gone now. Their love had been buried, never to be unearthed due to circumstances uncontrollable.

Some said she should see this as a new beginning, a way to find out what she wants in life now. She usually just wipes on a cool, reserved smile and ignores them. They don���t get it. They don���t know what she���s been through. They think they know, but they don���t. They can���t.

If she���s gonna love again, others will see them together and feel the fiery faith.

She sits now, the cool grass tickling her legs as she crosses them. She mindlessly picks at the blades in front of her, wishing she could hypnotize her mind by counting how many there are in the sea of the lawn before her.

She wants to hate him for what he did to her. How he���s hurt her. He���s moving on to new things, to brighter things���and she���s just left in his dust. She wants to blame him for the bruises he���s left on her, the pain he���s caused her. She wants to tarnish their memories with pure hatred so that she doesn���t have to feel this loss. She wants to scream, to cry, to curl up and just die. How could he do this to her? How could he leave her like this? How will she get past this? Her heart has melted in her chest, a warm, gooey residue of what it once was. She doesn���t know how she can ever solidify it into the heart it once was. He���s done that to her. It���s his fault.

If she���s gonna love again, it won���t be an eternity but a hard, fast conflagration that leaves everyone else in the embers.

But she knows, deep down she knows, it���s not fair. He didn���t do this on purpose. He didn���t mean to hurt her this way, to leave her as a broken piece of the woman she once was, of the woman she would ever be. He didn���t want their love story to end in this chaotic rubble that she now faced.

Time, everyone said. It will heal with time. You���ll see.

But right now, there wasn���t enough time between her memories with him and now. She wonder if ��there ever would be.

You can���t stay alone forever, they softly suggested, trying to reassure her. He would want you to move on.

That might be true.

But right now, she can���t think of anything but his name, meticulously carved in scrawling text.

She can���t move most days, can���t breathe, can���t think.

So how could they say that she would love again? How do you love when your heart is fractured into a million pieces? How did you love if some of those pieces are gone, buried with your soulmate in the dead, muddy earth?

The truth is, if she���s gonna love again, it will be a long time from now. The grass will die into a brown, dead conglomeration of weeds. Leaves will rustle past, piling in front and threatening to cover the earth where he is. Seasons will change once, twice, three times, maybe even a dozen times before she thinks about it. Before she sees that maybe it���s possible, just maybe.

Yes, there will be many winters that pass by, many winters where she will stand in this same spot, choking down sobs for who they were, for who he was. Feeling the suffocating restriction��in her chest, clutching at her still-fractured heart. Unforgivable, chilling winters will be the worst times for her���springtime promises hope, but the winters will simply reinforce this freezing feeling in her chest. She will be forced to swipe away the icy, redundant snow from his icy grave, and she will lose hope all over again. She will feel the constricting feeling, the doubt, the pain, fresh and new.

Yes, it���s true, with time her heart might thaw, and she might even love again.

But it will take time.

Lindsay Detwiler, Author of Voice of Innocence

Meet Corbin

“The night that had changed my life, destroyed it, the night that had chewed me up and spit me out like a piece of leathery meat, began as one of the happiest nights of my life. It was a night of hope and of dreams, of feathery clouds gently guiding me toward a solid future of satisfaction. It was a night that I impatiently waited for. When it finally arrived, I was filled with joy for what would soon unfold. Now, looking back, I feel sorry for that guy getting ready in this room. I look at this list with pity for what would never be. I wonder how things could have been different. I wonder what Emma felt that night, what she must have experienced. I wonder, above all, why.”

Age: 47

Occupation: Unemployed due to prison sentence

Relationship: Attached to a woman who no longer exists in his world

Who he was: a free-spirit; a football player; a loner turned social by Emma; an artist; a mastiff owner; a stoic boy who went through hell; a loyal boyfriend ; a passionate fiance; a terrible student; an innocent convicted of a crime he didn’t commit

Who he is now:��broken yet determined; free yet chained; passionate about Emma despite the time that’s passed; stoic yet warm; fearful of the future; unsure of the meaning of life; figuring out what happiness and justice look like in the real world

Find out more about Corbin’s tragic tale in Voice of Innocence, available at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TMX826K

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/voice-of-innocence-lindsay-detwiler/1121237080?ean=2940046578041

“A captivating story of romance, intrigue, high emotions, and ultimate tragedy. You would think ‘Voice of Innocence’ would be a pretty predictable story-line but I was surprised by the things that started to occur. Unfortunate events play out in a smooth paced push and pull novel of gripping interludes. Experiences follow suit in an awakening drama of conflicting twists and turns.” ~Pennie Mae Cartawick

Story Tellers

Every family has one: the repetitive story teller. In my family, it���s my husband. We���ve known each other for fifteen years, but he still insists on telling the same stories. At every family function, my ears are harangued with the same stories I���ve been hearing over and over. Each time, though, he puts so much emotion into it, it seems to the outsider like it���s new. But I assure you, the stories about his grandma going clothes shopping and the spider story are not new.

After reading this quote from The Secret Life of Bees, though, I begrudgingly have a new appreciation for my husband���s annoying tendencies to repeat himself. Our family stories are what make us���us. They remind us of our lives, our memories, and our roots. They connect us to those around us, weaving a web of tales and glimpses of our past together. They make us who we are.

If we think about it, our families all have those ���traditional��� stories, the stories we love to tell at holidays and laugh over and over at. For my family, we always talk about the time my dad tried to ���dry��� his money in the microwave after a summer water battle (Note: dollar bills in the microwave will not only be dried, but burnt to a crisp). We talk about the time my mom cooked a terrible fish dinner as a newlywed; the little dog they had jumped on the table, took a bite of the fish, and started choking. We tell the story about how my parent���s bull terrier jumped up and bit my grandma in the behind when she was getting in the fridge. We tell the embarrassing story of how I basically poisoned the family for an entire summer when I didn���t realize that you had to put detergent in the dishwasher (Hey, I was like twelve . . .that���s a valid excuse, right?).

Our stories from our families are the most important stories we weave. They make our collective memories valuable. They carry on our legacies for generations. They combine us with those who matter the most to us.�� As Kidd suggests, they keep us alive and fulfilled.

What���s your favorite family tale that you tell?�� Feel free to share below!

Voice of Innocence

Check out a video for Voice of Innocence!

Meet Emma

I’ll be focusing on some characters from my novel Voice of Innocence for the next few posts. For those of you who haven’t read my book yet, I wanted you to get to know the characters who have haunted me thoughts for years.

Meet Emma Ranstein

Age: Forty-Seven

Relationship:Married to John, a doctor, but still plagued by��Corbin, her first love

Occupation: Secretary

Who she was: a bookworm; a band nerd; a rule follower; in love with Corbin Jones; a dreamer

Who she ��is today: a rational brunette who likes to break away from her square-like tendencies; a deep thinker; an animal lover; she feels deeply, intensely; her heart is torn from guilt and a passion she can’t get over; living the American Dream; a wine drinker; a terrible cook; wondering if she got everything she wanted in life; wondering if it’s too late to find happiness.

Quote: “I, Emma Ranstein, am the girl who lives in every small town. Maybe you even know a girl like me, at least to some extent. While debating between healthy and sugary cereals at the local food market, ladies in their World���s Best Grandma sweatshirts whisper a bit too loudly, ���Oh, there���s that poor Emma. Sweet girl. I remember when she was going places. If only������ or ���Life has dealt her such a bad hand.��� Perhaps, in many ways, they are right. However, I am not only that girl you know in town that everybody pities. The reasons behind my sorrow are probably not experienced by many, which is fortunate.”

Find out more about Emma in Voice of Innocence, available at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TMX826K

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/voice-of-innocence-lindsay-detwiler/1121237080?ean=2940046578041

“Detwiler’s writing is easy to get into. I was instantly pulled into the story. Though the reader does know what happened fairly early on, the emotion and love between Corbin and Emma make you want to see what happens. I liken it to watching a train wreck that you know is going to happen, but not because of the sick sadistic value. You are watching this train wreck in the hopes that the passengers survive. Kind of like watching Titanic, you know there is a romance and an iceberg, but you keep watching, hoping that the relationship survives.”~Casia P. Courtier

A Love Kindled

Later, she would say it fell from the sky.

Not a graceful, floating fall from the heavens, but a slamming, bone-splitting fall.�� Slamming into her chest with a force undeniable, it seemed to bruise her heart, threatened to split her in two. Once it fell into her, she subconsciously knew that nothing could ever be the same.

It was a dreary day when her world collided with his. A day of dismal clouds, of the threat of rain, of really no significance. Just an average Wednesday, a nothing commemorative kind of day. Until it happened.

Strolling through the doors of Barnes & Noble, the wafting smell of roasted coffee beans tempted her toward the caf��. She was usually a pumpkin spice or vanilla kind of girl, but today she was feeling like a dark roast only person. Maybe she was maturing, her taste buds growing up from the froofy lattes of her twenties. Then again, maybe she just wanted a plain coffee and nothing more.

Mindlessly reaching into her wristlet to gather crinkled dollar bills and a wad of change, she waited patiently in line as other customers dictated elaborate orders. She tapped her foot, feeling a bit self-conscious. This wasn���t her type of place, her usual haunt. She didn���t even know now why she had come. The threat of boredom and the lack of a desire to go anywhere had somehow meshed into her arrival at the book store. She had decided recently to start ���working on herself,��� to better herself body and spirit. She had decided a few weeks ago that instead of watching mindless television and dull commercials, she would start reading. Classics even.

The motivation had taken a while to build. In fact, her presence in the book store to buy some books wasn���t really a result of her motivation���perhaps just the lack thereof. Tired of sitting at home and not wanting to hit the gym, she had decided that coming to the bookstore might not be so bad. Plus, she knew there was a caf��. She convinced herself this was for her ���betterment��� project; deep down, though, she knew it was nothing more than a wasted afternoon.

When it was finally her turn, she headed to the counter and spelled out her overly simplistic order, feeling somewhat embarrassed by the low price.�� When her name was called (why do they have to call her name for a simple black coffee? It���s not like anyone else would order something so menial), she added a touch of cream, popped on the lid, and decided to take a rest at a table in the caf��. Self-betterment was hard work, after all; she didn���t want to go too fast.

Waiting for her coffee to cool, she gazed around at the other customers. A few were reading, a few were pretending to read, and a few were just shoveling in muffins. Nothing exciting to see here, she decided.�� After a few more mindless moments of taking up the chair, she took a sip of her coffee (which was still way too hot and burnt her tongue), stood, and headed toward the book section.

She browsed the fiction, mystery, and self-help section, deciding that books were way more expensive than she thought. Twenty bucks for a collection of paper? She wanted to be better, but not twenty-dollars for a book better. So when she saw the ���bargain��� sign, she decided that a bargain read is still, in fact, a read. Mine as well start cheaply, right?

Like a woman on a mission, she plodded to the table. She saw some authors��� names she actually recognized, applauded herself for showing a sense of literary knowledge, and began to touch the covers. Too plain, she thought. Too exotic. Too girly.�� Nothing looked like a good fit.

It was when she circled around the table to the other side that it happened. The sky-falling incident. The chest-slamming incident. Her splitting in two incident.

On the other side of the table, handling a $4.99 book with a weird cover, he stood.

She eyed him with both curiosity and fear, contemplation and hesitancy. He���s not her type. At all.

Her type is the guy in the kitchen department at Lowe���s���burly, manly, I���ll fix your cabinets man. Her type is her mechanic, facial hair and rippling muscles with a deep, sexy voice. Her type is the guy at the grocery store in dirty pants and a juvenile T-shirt���a working man, a man���s man. That���s her type.

The man holding the book was none of the above. He���s the stereotypical bookworm, complete with the thick glasses and overly-styled hair. He wore a button up���a freshly pressed, crinkle-free button up���and a pair of designer jeans. Even his sneakers screamed clean, formal, fashionable. He���s clean-shaven, he���s scrawny. He���s nothing that she���d be interested in.

But then she can���t help but feel the slamming feeling in her heart. Something happened, and it wasn���t just caffeine jitters. Something monumental had happened.

Get a grip, she told herself. But she just couldn’t. She couldn’t overcome the chest-ripping feeling by the stranger. It seemed ridiculous to her but uncontrollable all the same.

And then he looked up at her, eyes connecting with hers. They had a moment, a long moment. The slamming feelings settled in, subtly shifted to something else. He felt it, too, as evidenced by his breathy pause, the undeniable look in his eyes.

The other book buyers strolled past, heading to read about life-changing moments and beautiful happy endings. They didn���t even realize that something from a novel was unfolding right in front of them.

They can���t be faulted because at first glance, it truly looked like nothing was happening. Just an average girl standing by the books, unsure of which to commit to, and an average guy, pawing through old best sellers. There wasn���t a stream of light framing them or soft love song playing in the background. It was a basic, simplistic, normal moment.

But for those two people standing by the bargain book rack, everything had just happened with a single look. The average Wednesday had become something special, something memorable, dreary clouds and all.

Lindsay Detwiler, author of Voice of Innocence (available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon)

Never Grow Up

Recently, my students gave presentations on the most important life lessons they���ve learned. One presentation really stood out to me; it was entitled ���Never Grow Up.��� The student talked about her love of Peter Pan as a child and how magical it seemed to never grow up. She then talked about how in life, we are in such a rush to grow up that we lose the childlike wonder.

Immediately, this sentiment struck a chord with me. Perhaps it���s because with each birthday after my twenty-first, I feel like I���m fighting the aging clock (I actually bought a ridiculously expensive wrinkle cream set last year when I saw the first fine lines under my eyes . . .The horror!). Maybe it���s just that from the time we���re teenagers, we place our eyes on the ���real world��� that we want to be a part of. We���re so worried with our career choices and making ���wise��� decisions that we forget to enjoy our youth. One day, we wake up . . .and it���s gone. While the Peter Pan tale may be far-fetched, it certainly speaks to a common human truth; we often overlook the beauty of childhood until it���s gone forever. Then, we would do anything to have it back, to forget about the complexities of the adult world (dishes and laundry aren���t any fun, after all). We wish we could regain that childlike wonder, that beautiful innocence, the magic that we saw in everything.

The presentation was only two minutes, but it really got me evaluating my life. Do we have to completely abandon the magic of childhood just because we���re in our twenties? Is there a point when suddenly we are ���cut off��� from the beautiful, fun, exhilarating moments of our youth? Or can we, even in adulthood, reclaim some of these moments?

I think the answer is yes.

I got to thinking about my own life and how many times I���ve been embarrassed because I feel like a ���little kid.��� At the grocery store, my husband and I do the walk of shame to the cashier as we look at an array of Kool-Aid, goldfish crackers, cheese stick snacks, teddy grahams, and even juice boxes. Adults buy organic food and vegetables; we want to die from embarrassment if we see anyone we know.

The list goes on and on. I’m mortified that Taylor Swift cds are a big part of my collection and that I sing loudly to her songs because I’m not a teenager. When I go for ice cream, my husband chides me for my childish tendency to get sprinkles on my ice cream. I worry that my pink outfits look too pre-teen.�� I pass my Aeropostale in the mall, suddenly feeling too ���grown up��� to wear their hoodies. I want to go in the petting zoo at the fair but know I would look ridiculous.

Why?�� Why does every fun activity, every exciting thing, have to have an age limit?

It doesn���t.

The presentation reminded me of one fundamentally overlooked fact: there is no age limit on fun. We can still find moments of our childhood if we���re willing to let go of our self-invented stigma. After all, is it such a bad thing to be considered ���childish��� at times? Isn���t childhood the most beautiful point in life? I���m not saying that we should skip work to sit and color Spongebob pages in our footie pajamas while eating nothing but Pop-Tarts; we do have to find some sense of balance (I���m not endorsing you to become a man child or a woman child because that is just creepy). But I���m saying that it���s okay to drink Kool-aid at twenty-seven.�� It���s okay to require sprinkles on your ice cream at forty-two. It���s even okay if you like to break out a coloring page every once in a while.

As Randy Pausch advised in his last lecture, ���Never lose the child like wonder.��� What beautiful advice to live by.

Domesticity or Sanity . . .You Decide

True to the contemporary era, my female characters tend to be ���go-getters,��� balancing family life and careers. Unlike some modern literature, though, my characters don���t make it look easy.�� Being a working woman is difficult, as many of you know, and my characters really reflect that, especially in my second novel.

I am currently childless other than Henry and our cats, yet I struggle with managing our house and a full-time job.�� I look at my co-workers who have multiple children and just wonder how they do it.�� Where does the time and energy come from?

I find that when I come home from work, I���m exhausted.�� There���s so much to do, though: laundry, bills, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, budgeting, etc. It���s a cycle that can easily drown you.

I���m no expert on finding balance between work, family, and relaxation. My house will certainly never be in Home & Gardens magazine. Nonetheless, here���s what I���ve learned so far when it comes to being a modern working woman and maintain sanity:

Clean is a subjective term, as it should be

It���s great to come home to a spotless home fit for a visit from the Queen, but who has time to clean the floor with a toothbrush and diligently annihilate every crumb and speck of dirt? No one. I���ve learned that my standards for neatness can be lowered Monday-Friday. Who gets visitors on a work night anyway? If someone wants to visit, I schedule it for a weekend so that I have time to get the house in order (and hide the crumbs and dirt) before they come over. After all, is the house really messy if there���s no one to witness it?

Frozen food is still food �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��I like real mashed potatoes and delicious, three-course meals just like everyone else. At the end of the day, though, frozen chicken patties and fries still get the job done. You don���t have to cook like Rachael Ray every day.


Magic Erasers are King

Who has time to scrub a bathtub for thirty minutes? Not me. Magic erasers are the best thing in the entire world. A few swipes and everything sparkles. A true Godsend!

Give yourself at least one ponytail day a week

Stiletto heels, perfectly crisp dress pants, a gorgeous silk blouse, smooth curls, and airbrushed make-up���the look of a professional. Aim for perfection in your looks on Monday.�� Then, if by the end of the week you���re exhausted, cut yourself a break. No one will remember that you wore your hair in a ponytail and skimped on the makeup by the end of the week; they���re all setting their eyes on the weekend, too.

Take a break!

There���s always something on the to-do list, but don���t get sucked into an endless rut of exhausting tasks. Take a nap, watch some television, sit and stare at the wall���just take time every day to do nothing.�� Most importantly, don���t feel guilty about it.

So there you have it.�� My keys to sanity.�� As I speak, there are Henry���s toys all over the living room, some muddy footprints in the kitchen, laundry piled to the ceiling, and makeup all over my bathroom sink.�� What am I off to do, though? Watch some Once Upon a Time and sip some coffee.�� So if you���re planning on visiting today, you better give me a warning call so I can hide my mess in the coat closet.

The Comfort Zone

It was my third year of college that I signed up for a Creative Writing Course. I loved writing stories and poetry, so I thought it would be an easy A. Little did I know when I walked through that classroom door that I was walking straight out of my comfort zone.

The professor ended up being the head of the drama department at the time���which meant that the only creative writing we would be doing all semester was writing plays, and writing a lot of them.

I���ve never dropped a course, but I seriously considered it after the first day when we were instructed to write a scene for a play for the next class.�� I had no idea what I was doing. I have no acting experience; I can���t even pretend to be surprised when I���m opening a gift if I know what it is. ��Truth be told, I didn���t even like plays.�� But I decided to give it a go and look at it as a challenge.�� It would be great, I assured myself.

I walked in with my silent scene about a woman leaving her husband.�� I was confident, feeling like I had captured emotion. When the professor came in, I started passing my paper up but froze when I heard her tell us that we would be sharing them.�� We had to read our scene to the class, and then it would be critiqued. Suddenly, my stomach plummeted.�� I had never shared my writing before, let alone a play. How would I make it through? Hands shaking, I nervously read my scene to the class.�� I waited for my critique, expecting a few soft suggestions.�� Instead, the professor told me that my scene was unrealistic, boring, and not something that would be seen on stage. I slumped into my seat wanting to die, and left the class almost in tears.

I still had time to quit, and thought seriously about heading to the registrar���s office to change classes.�� My stubbornness, though, refused to let me give in. Determination in my eyes, I decided to stick with it.�� Over the next fifteen weeks, I wrote more plays than you can imagine. Some met harsh criticism, some met applause. It all wrapped up with a one act play that had to be performed in front of an audience.�� I never felt like vomiting more than I did during that assembly.�� Nonetheless, I made it through.

At the time, I hated the class.�� I was nervous and uncomfortable during every single class.�� Looking back, though, it was one of the foundational classes in developing my writing ability, and it helping me get a novel published. From the class, I learned how to write realistic dialogue, which is key in a novel. I learned to get over my fear of criticism. I learned that not everyone will love everything you write, but that doesn���t lessen your work.

Stepping out of my comfort zone and taking the class helped me grow as a writer and as a person. It���s easy to keep yourself in a familiar box, to breeze through life. But what are you learning if you do that? Sometimes, when we step into unchartered territory, when we put ourselves in situations that make us cringe, when we put ourselves in positions that seem impossible to overcome, we surprise ourselves. It is by pushing ourselves to the limit that we find what we���re made of and that we can head toward dreams we couldn���t even foresee.

Maybe for you stepping out of your comfort zone is just trying a new entr��e at your favorite restaurant, or applying for a job you don���t think you���ll ever get. Maybe it���s asking someone out on a date who you think is out of your league or trying out for a sport even though you can barely walk without falling. Whatever it is, find it and pursue it. Your dance out of your comfort zone may end up failing miserably.�� Then again, it just may launch your life in a new direction that fulfills you in ways you didn���t even think possible.