Becoming

BECOMING is a big concept and a big deal to me. It is the very foundation of the work that I do and the life that I strive to live. It is, perhaps, THE process that we're all in, all our lives, whether we mean to or not. I'm continually asking, how's it going? Am I doing it with intention? On purpose? Informed by my life experiences and wisdom and in the direction of my dreams? I mean, how am I ME? How did I get HERE? And where am I GOING!? The MEET CHERIE page talks about a lot of the details of my professional life, but I also wanted to share with you some heart-centered stories of my own adventures in becoming.

I share this part of my story as a way for you to get to know me a little better. I share this book as a way for people to get to know themselves a little better. 

In 2015, I asked my dad to write down all of my favorite stories about our family, and from his life. I'd asked for this for years but this time I had him with the idea that I wanted all of this history and wisdom to someday give to his grandchild whom I was expecting. I wanted him to record, at first as an unedited, off-the-cuff journal, all of the stories I'd heard my whole life, ranging from the precious, to the wild and wise. He has always been my favorite writer and storyteller and I wanted to capture for myself, my daughter, and for the whole world really, as many of these life lessons as I could. His telling of this history through his lens, and in his style, has been such a huge part of my own process of becoming who I am and how I operate in the world, I so very much wanted to share it all. 

For a long time, I could hardly read one of the stories I’d asked for, as I'd almost certainly need a box of tissue to get through it. I still cry just reading birthday cards from him. These stories were almost too much for my tender heart and eyes, and I even knew them already! During the first few years of my daughter’s life, I was entirely too exhausted to even read what he’d written; but the closing of my business in 2020 was the catalyst for me to throw myself into the extraordinary process of editing, together with my dad, what was a journal, then alchemizing it into a memoir. We spent a full year together, word by word, conversation by conversation, laughter and tears by laughter and tears, bringing this memoir to life. He also trusted me with my own artistic expression in both the cover design and the title. He trusted my heart and mind to help bring the whole thing into being. As I write in the forward of the book, “I unequivocally believe that working so closely on this book project with both my dad and mom to get to this version has been one of the great privileges of my life.” I know that I am among the luckiest of us, which I believe comes with a profound responsibility to act accordingly.

I recently came across this dictionary my mom handed down to my daughter. Here's the inscription my dad wrote in it as my 5th birthday present...but a tiny glimpse into how his mind and heart come through his words. Over 10x years later, gosh are these some wise ones!