"My own personal river"
novelist, editor, and writing coach Rachel Miranda on writing through major illness, losing track of time, and remembering that you are enough✨
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of creative practice and mindfulness. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. Subscribe for free below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
Today, I’m excited to share an interview with novelist, editor, and writing coach Rachel Miranda, whose debut novel, Broken Chocolate, just came out this spring. This novel was inspired by the patients, doctors, and caregivers Rachel encountered while managing a brain trauma clinic for many years, and that real-life experience lends the world of the novel a texture and depth that you can feel in its pages.
I was lucky to read an early copy of her novel this winter and write a blurb for it: “Rachel Miranda’s debut novel transports us into the rich world of the Sandor family in the wake of a devastating accident. With a keen eye for detail and poignant storytelling, Miranda invites us to root for these characters as they fail, falter, and chart a new path forward. We witness their quiet, everyday struggles and cheer them on as they find their way back to each other. This book reminds us of the magic of embracing our lives and our loved ones as they are, not as we wish they would be.”
In this interview, Rachel shares about writing through major illness, including a lung transplant and spinal fractures, losing track of time while writing, and remembering that you are enough. Read on, friends. ✨
What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you in your daily life?
These days, I try to write something every day—even if it’s the answer to some interview questions! I don’t have a routine, per se, but I prefer to write in the morning when my mind is sharpest and my energy is highest. If I haven’t started by mid-afternoon, there is no way I will be able to engage in creative writing that day.
I should mention that I have had some major health challenges—a lung transplant after severe interstitial lung disease, and two spinal fractures, just in the last year—so I’m on disability now, which has lots of downsides, but one major upside is that I have a lot more time to write than I did before. As a freelance editor, I used to spend much of my time before I got really, really sick hustling for work or hustling to meet deadlines, and it didn’t leave a lot of time or energy for my own writing. But when I was diagnosed, I thought hard about what mattered most to me for whatever time I might have left, and besides my four wonderful kids and their families, writing was at the top of my list (and finding a little house by the sea—but that’s a story for another day).
What are the most important mindfulness/spiritual practices in your life?
My mindfulness practices are more catch-as-catch-can than I’d like right now, but I have been using a combination of insight meditation, yoga nidra, and portable biofeedback for more than a decade to help me moderate my intensity, stay on a smoother daily path, and manage the rough spots when they arrive.
I am a particular devotee of the mindfulness teacher Tara Brach, and I also use Insight Timer a lot for sleep yoga (Yoga Nidra – just guided imagery/meditation) at night when sleep escapes me. Plus, I have this nifty little machine called an em-wave, that helps me with sympathetic nervous system regulation.
I use all these tools as I need them—but I continue to strive for a more regular practice, especially during this last, totally bonkers year of my life! I also believe that any time I spend by the ocean is mindful time—it always has the effect of settling me and putting things into perspective. Finally, I try to take daily walks, no matter how long or short, and I find that when I can get outside, just breathing the air and looking around at the sky and trees and flowers and listening for bird calls can be a true mindfulness break.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/spiritual/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it?
It’s been hard being so ill in my fifties; it comes with a lot of guilt and feelings of debility and ineptitude. The mantra I’ve found the most comforting and that I return to regularly is “I am enough,” which my daughter, who is a social worker, gave me a few years ago. I don’t have it on a post-it note but I probably should!
Do you see your creative and mindfulness practices as connected? In what ways?
Yes, I really do. I think that writing itself serves as a unique mindfulness practice for me: There is no other activity that puts me in the flow like writing.
I find that I lose all track of time; that I sometimes feel like I’ve been in an actual dream state when I emerge from a period of focus. It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like my own personal river I can step into and it will take me to a new place every time.
Are there any books / writers / teachers / approaches that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
There are a few books that I would say have been transformative for me in the body/mind space.
First is anything by mindfulness teacher Tara Brach, though my favorite is True Refuge, one of her early ones. She is one of the founders of the school of “insight meditation,” which talks the practitioner through a human problem while in a state of open-hearted focus, using a salad of wisdom from nearly every spiritual practice. She covers every conceivable subject in her free weekly podcasts on her website, and I find her thoughtful, clever and funny, and spot-on in terms of her insights about how we encounter these knotty relational problems and how we might find our way through them.
Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth (not a religious book—a book about mindful eating) was revolutionary for me in terms of how I understood my relationship to diet culture and my own body, and how I found my way out of a lifelong habit of self-torment around these subjects in my late forties. Of course it’s never going to be entirely easy, but her wisdom and humor help a lot. She has many other excellent books to her name, too, including Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations about Food and Money, which helped me reframe my relationship to our culture of consumption.
Finally, the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May really helped me to tolerate and even lean into the periods of enforced inactivity and recovery that I’ve faced repeatedly in the last years. In fact, when I first learned about this book, I was too sick to read it on paper so I listened to the audiobook instead—which turned out to be a tremendous boon, because it’s read by the author, who has one of the most soothing and delightful voices I’ve ever heard. I highly recommend the audiobook! But no matter how you receive her wisdom, her words about those seasons (whether actually winter or not) when we must slow down, turn inward, and listen to what our bodies are asking from us, are invaluable for navigating such a period.
How have creative and/or mindfulness practices helped you in your life?
There are several ways that creative and mindfulness practices have made a huge difference in my life:
Mindfulness became central to me when I discovered the Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, MA while I was raising my kids in Connecticut, and I began to take time out to learn how this practice could lower the intensity of my internal experience of life just enough to make it more manageable without dulling the creative and interpersonal gifts that same intensity brings me. Ultimately, insight meditation and other mindfulness practices helped me through divorce after a 25-year marriage, to work through a lifetime of body-shaming, through becoming an empty-nester, and to manage chronic illness, acute pain, and the wild ride that is post-transplant life. Patience has never been my best event! But I’m learning.
Creative writing, which I only turned to in midlife, has given me a sense of purpose and, I suppose, a feeling of rightness, ever since I realized, in a single, blinding moment, that I wanted to be a writer. I have fought hard to keep my writing practice alive through the difficulties of the past years. I started a Substack column called Air Hunger three months after my lung transplant, and it’s been challenging, but so very rewarding to try to write through all of this. And my debut novel, Broken Chocolate, was published at the end of March! It’s been such a gift to have the opportunity to dive back into that story (which I wrote more than a decade ago) for developmental editing and to see how it’s become relevant to my life now, in an existential way I never could have anticipated when I wrote it. And through the worst of the bad news, it’s been powerful to have the hopefulness of that publishing contract to hold onto.
Cooking has also been a creative practice of mine for many years—I wrote and published a cookbook a few years ago, The World at Our Table: A Euro-American Cookbook of Family Favorites, illustrated by my daughter, the artist Serena Faye Feingold. Though I haven’t been able to do much cooking lately, I know I will get back to it, as it is how I always gather people around me. Cooking intersects with my novel, too, in that one of the main characters is a pastry chef and through her, I express my own sense that cooking is a love language, that lovingly-prepared food served at the table can bring people together and infuse them with warmth, nourishment, and belonging.
Rachel Miranda emigrated from Switzerland to America at the age of eight and currently lives in the greater New York area. She is the author of The World at Our Table: A Euro-American Cookbook of Family Favorites, and writes a Substack series called Air Hunger. Her creative writing appears in a range of literary online and print journals in the US and abroad. She is a freelance editor of literary, scholarly, and translated works, and the managing editor of Plamen Press. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington Writing Seminars and received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. She continues to savor every chance to play with the English language.
More from Rachel ✨
Order your copy of Rachel’s debut novel, Broken Chocolate, from Vine Leaves Press!
Learn more at Rachel’s website, including info and links to her creative writing, cookbook, and freelance editing practice.
Subscribe below to Rachel’s Substack series, Air Hunger, about life after lung transplant and more broadly, about how to reimagine a meaningful life when the one you envisioned isn’t the one you get.
Your turn: What resonates with you? Do you have any other questions or thoughts to share with Rachel?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ✨
We just kicked off our low-key book club for The Practice of Attention on Monday and I’m loving seeing the discussion get going. You can join anytime and in any way! Details here 👇🏼
Catherine Pierce has a very cool offering coming up called Summer of Attention starting June 27th—not just for writers, but “for anyone who wants to use their time, mind, and imagination more intentionally.” We’re definitely going to combine our forces for some king of An Attention Thing, too. Details here!
Catherine LaSota just shared a series of video interviews with awesome artists talking about how they make their creative projects. Sign up here to get them for free! (featuring Courtney Maum, Melissa Kaitlyn Carter and Denne Michele Norris).
Before you go, will you take a moment to hit the heart button or leave a quick comment about what strikes you here? This one simple action is incredibly effective at helping to spread the word about Rachel’s work! Or, send it to a friend! 💥
✨Be Where You Are is a newsletter for anyone who hears the humming underneath it all and wants to create spacious time on this planet right now.✨ To reply to this newsletter, just hit reply. I’d love to hear from you! You can also find me on Instagram/Facebook/Bluesky or find more info at my website.