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This Will Change Your Life
Updated: Oct 1
YOUR NEXT DRAFT
Brought to you by Becca Baisch
Your Life.
Deeply Felt.
Beautifully Told.
october 2026
Know Your Now Edition
Welcome to Your Next Draft! A newsletter for women who believe life is not something you arrive at, but something you reinvent and keep writing. Here you'll find ideas to ponder, conversations with others, questions worth wrestling with, challenges to consider, and resources to help you with each draft of your one wild, beautiful life.
IN THIS ISSUE
Love Notes The theme of this month's issue
Her Next Draft My inagural interview with Dr. Melissa Blair was the perfect start
Worth Your Time Something to read, watch, or listen to
Thoughts for Your Next Draft The deeper dive
Ask Yourself This A challenge, if you choose to accept it
Do This
A to-do list you'll love
Her "Writes"
Go support writers (especially women writers!) we're special, vulnerable souls ;-)
Before You Go
Party and preorders
Love Notes
I'm so happy you're here.
When I get anxious (as much as I can define what that means) it lodges itself in my gut. It pushes up into my chest, and it literally seems to come from nowhere. Everything irritates me. I feel the need to eat, or food is suddenly sickening. I snap at the littlest thing. I feel stuck, inadequate, and agitated all at the same time.
Here comes the part where I’d like to say I found a fix for this.
I didn’t. Because there isn't.
But I found the now.
After someone strongly recommended I read The Power of Now, I finally did, months and months later. It would sort of gently poke at me from my windowsill perch, as if saying, how about . . . now? ;)
It couldn’t have been better timing.
Especially after my interview with Missy Blair. One word in particular stayed with me, and it’s her life’s one word as well: ALLOW.
I think it aligns beautifully with Eckhart’s word: SURRENDER.
Here’s the honest truth: I have two opposing forces in me. One aches for growth, change, and novelty—to veer outside the lane. The other says, Stay in your lane. You might get destroyed!!
I’ve been able to practice more literally sitting with my gut. I don’t ask, Why does this hurt? I don’t ask, What should I do about it? I don’t ignore it. I don’t distract myself from it. I deeply observe it.
Combined with Eckhart’s wisdom (which I touch on more below) and Missy’s wisdom, I’ve been able to consistently ask myself: Is this a NOW problem?
If so, address the problem at hand and then move on.
But so many things I perceive as problems are actually problems I create through my expectations of what should be happening versus what is actually happening. I constantly catch my mind creating problems, and it's like physically wrestling with it back to the present. I'd rather go do hill repeats.
Eckhart calls the space between what is and what we think should be a “pain gap.”
Of course I can still take action even when surrendering or allowing. Action from from this place is far more effective than action from a place of despair, anger, negativity, or shame created by this pain-gap from our expectations.
As Missy says: “It all turns out okay. It really does. Not the way you expected. But it turns out okay.”
And maybe that’s the practice: not fixing everything, but allowing what is, surrendering to what is, and asking whether what is happening right now actually needs to be solved.
Because right now, if you are reading this—
Hi, friend.
You are reading this.
And I am sending you the gift of love, stillness, observation of what is, presence, and being here.
Now.
Love,
Becca
Her Next Draft Interview: Melissa (Missy) Blair, PhD
"When you focus on the good, the good gets better."
For my inaugural Her Next Draft conversation, I sat down with Dr. Melissa Blair, whose memoir would be titled: "Getting S-- Done Since 1967" ;-) Missy is proud to be the mother of five daughters, having learned to be a dog mom, cultivating amazing friendships, and transitioning into early retirement from a career as a private practice psychologist. She embodies the art of gratitude and strives to focus on the beauty of each moment. A lover of travel, hearing and reading good stories, and connecting with others, she currently lives in Crystal, Minnesota with her partner and two dogs (but has dreams of exploring the country in a camper van).
I first met Missy in 2015, when I was working on an inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry unit and needed a psychological evaluation for one of my patients. Dr. Missy came highly recommended, and we connected almost immediately. Like me, she believed that understanding someone's story mattered just as much as understanding a diagnosis.
I wanted to hear what she had learned about change, relationships, expectations, and becoming someone new. What followed was honest, funny, and full of wisdom. Here are a few of my favorite pieces of our conversation.
1. What did you believe at 30 that you no longer believe?
That marriage was forever. I was perfectly content. It worked—until it didn't. I also grew up believing that education, particularly a college degree, was the key to success. My mother had a master's degree, academics were important in my family, and I passed that belief along to my children. But over time, I've realized there are many paths to a successful life. You don't necessarily need a college degree, especially when there are so many ways to build a meaningful career without taking on enormous amounts of debt. I think the bigger lesson is simply to be open. There isn't one prescribed path.
2. What are you learning to say no to?
People who drain my energy or bring toxic energy into my life. I think that came out of my marriage. There was so much pressure around maintaining relationships and ties because we had children together. Eventually, I realized I could choose what kind of energy I allowed into my life. I've also learned to say no to things that simply aren't worth my time anymore.
I'm the kind of person who finishes every book I start. But recently, I put down two books I wasn't enjoying. One was even by an author I really love. And I thought, Life is too short.
My time is too valuable to spend it on something I'm not enjoying when there are a million other books I might love.
3. What has become easier over time?
Caring less about what people think of me: I tend to overexplain because I want people to understand where I'm coming from. But I'm learning that no is a complete sentence.
I also think there's a difference between being direct and being unkind. My sister is wonderful at this. She can be incredibly straightforward, but she does it with kindness and clarity.
And I've learned something else: don't ask a question unless you're willing to hear the answer.
Understanding control: A friend of mine, who's a motivational speaker, always talks about controlling the controllables. Figure out what you can control and do that. Everything else, let go. You can control your delivery. You can control your intention. If your intention is kindness and compassion, you have to let go of whether someone else receives it that way. So much of anxiety, I've realized, is the illusion of control.
Understanding expectations: what happens when we enter a situation without expectations?
That doesn't mean you aren't motivated or that you don't care about the outcome. It means you start with a blank slate. If you already have something written in your head, you can be disappointed when reality doesn't match it. But if you go in without expectations, you can appreciate whatever good happens.
4. What does your 80-year-old self tell you?
Get the boob job when you're seventy! ;) lol. In all seriousness though: It's all going to be okay. There's a quote I've carried with me since college: Everything turns out okay. It always does. That doesn't mean everything turns out the way you expect it to. It just means you can't know, in the middle of something difficult, what might be waiting on the other side. Maybe you didn't get the job you wanted because something better was coming. You just don't know at the time.
5. What activity makes you feel most alive or lose track of time?
For much of my life, it was running. Then it was open-water swimming. Then yoga.
I've always been very goal-oriented. I loved working toward something, accomplishing it, and then setting the next goal. But now that I'm semi-retired, I'm discovering something different: being. The other day I watched a squirrel for five minutes. It got a nut from our tree, climbed the fence, jumped to the neighbor's fence, went to their tree, and buried the nut. It did it three times. And I thought, That's how you chose to spend the last five minutes of your life. There was something so peaceful about realizing that I have the time now to simply notice things.
6. What has being a mother taught you about seeing life from someone else's perspective?
My daughters have taught me that my intentions aren't necessarily the same thing as their experience. There were things I did as a parent that I believed were empowering my children, and later, some of them told me they experienced those same things very differently. That was hard to hear. But it's also been a powerful lesson in understanding that someone else's experience can be completely different from what you intended. As a psychologist, I spent years telling people, I might not agree with what you did, but I want to understand how you got there. I've had to learn to apply that same principle to the people I love.
7. You went through a lot of change in the last several years. What are you actively writing or rewriting in this latest draft of your life?
For a long time, I kept thinking, When is everything going to settle down? I went from being married and living in the same house for 25 years to getting divorced and moving. My children moved in and out. I was in a long-distance relationship. That ended. I learned to be on my own. And now I'm in another relationship. Eventually I realized something: Life has never been stable. Your child starts a new school. Someone quits a sport. Someone takes an art class, and suddenly every Saturday looks different. When my kids were little and things were hard, people would always say, It'll get easier when they're older. At some point I thought, When is that going to happen? And then I realized: I don't think life ever gets easier. I think the difficult things just keep changing. Oddly, that was both depressing and freeing. Once I stopped expecting life to become easier, I could meet each new challenge with more acceptance.
8. What word are you carrying into this next draft?
Allow. During a meditation, when I was feeling like everything was completely chaotic and wondering what I was supposed to do, the word allow came to me. I actually wear it on a bracelet as a reminder. Allow myself to be open to each experience. Allow myself to have whatever emotional reaction I'm going to have. Allow other people to be themselves. So much of life is trying to make things happen, or trying to make them happen a certain way. I'm learning to leave some room for what happens when I don't.
Gratitude really works. People can roll their eyes at it, but I've experienced it firsthand.
After my divorce, I bought something that said, When you focus on the good, the good gets better. There were mornings when I would wake up dreading my day—dreading my life.
So I would stay in bed and tell myself, You don't get up until you think of something good.
Eventually, I realized that changing what I focused on could change how I experienced the day.
Maybe that's another part of getting older: realizing that some of the things we once dismissed actually hold a lot of wisdom.
-------
Thank you, Missy!
Worth Your Time
What I'm Reading
I think I might be finally grasping (after years) what being mindful and present feels like:
The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle
Best quote from the book: “Your task in life is this: Do not search for love. Become the portal through which love enters.”
My Top Ten Takeaways: (these are almost verbatim from the book, not my words):
10) Your mind is a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. Observe your mind: 80–90% is repetitive and useless, often harmful. It causes serious leakage of vital energy.
9) The problem of the mind cannot be solved by the mind. The self is intimately connected to its problems. Being free of them would mean a loss of self. The mind itself is not dysfunctional. Dysfunction sets in when you mistake it for who you are.
8) Do you have a problem or a situation? A problem is an illusion of the mind. If you’ve ever been in a life-or-death emergency, that was not a problem. The mind doesn’t have time to fool around and make it into a problem.
7) Of course, you can pursue external goals. In life, there are many things to be attained or acquired, yet on a deeper level, you are already complete. You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.
6) Most people’s normal state of mind is not an acute pain or unhappiness, but an almost continuous low level of unease, discontent, boredom, nervousness, and kind of background static. (Oh, hi there, Becca.)
5) Any action is better than no action. If you truly cannot change a situation, then surrender. That is not weakness. You may find the situation changes on its own without any effort on your part. In any case, you are still free.
4) Stress = Being “here” + wanting to be “there.”
3) There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. But you cannot improve your life. Your life is already perfect. Stop substituting setting goals and striving to achieve things for the feeling of life.
2) Your outer journey might have a million steps. But your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.
1) The unobserved mind runs your life when you are not present to witness it.
What I'm Listening To
It's so true when you bend your mind toward something, your antennae piques. I had a patient’s mom say, “I just came from a work conference where Mel Robbins was the speaker! Do you know who she is?” I searched my brain because of course I’d heard of Mel, and I said, “. . . Is she that, self-help, motivational—”
“Yes, yes, that’s her!”
I took it as a sign: Go find Mel.
And this was the podcast I listened to (below, you can click on it). Usually when I see promises like: THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! I get a little skeptical, like, “C’mon, Mel. That’s just clickbait.”
There was one line from the guest, though, that made me break into tears. It was like the universe said, “Becca, I see you.”
I hope you feel seen, too, if you give this a listen.
Thoughts for Your Next Draft
Good (An Imposter Syndrome Quandary)
Ask Yourself This
"Your life shrinks or expands in proportion to your willingness to take a risk on something." -Gary Vaynerchuk
But most of us don't take risks because of fear of judgment.
How do you stop caring what other people think?
Do This
I stole this from The Power of Now:
Do this exercise on what it means to be here and NOW:
Close your eyes and say to yourself: “I wonder what my next thought is going to be.” Wait for it. Wait. Wait like a cat watching a mouse hole. What is going to come? How long does it take?
Her Writes
Jessika Grewe Glover is a fantastic literary writer who can take any genre and elevate it with her gorgeous prose.
She’s especially known for her ability to transcend the everyday and blend it with the fantastic—whether that means discovering a veil between our world and a fae world, or encountering ghosts that come alive through mysterious artwork and haunted houses.
Her latest novel, Bromeliad House, was recently published by Quill & Crow and is currently on sale. I am always thrilled that I get to be one of Jessika’s first readers during her creation process, and I still remember turning the pages like crazy on a flight while reading Bromeliad House.
The main character has a “curse,” if you will: she can see someone’s “fetch”—their ghostly double—right before they die.
It’s eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, and completely Jessika.
P.S. Jessika will be at my book party in November! Bring a book for her to sign, and make sure you say hi. I can’t wait to celebrate with her.
Before You Go
Party & Preorders
I’d love for you, your friends, and your family to come hang out with me on the most gorgeous 8th floor in Minneapolis.
How often do you get to get fancy, drink fancy wine, eat fancy cookies, and take in the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi?
I’m looking at you, Wisconsin and Rochester friends. ;-) I promise you’ll be home before you turn into a pumpkin.
The Dala Horse Daughters is available for preorder from most retailers now. I have links to Amazon, B&N, and Bookshop.org on my website.
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