Our value doesn’t come from that next big thing — I stopped working to go to law school, I stopped lawyering to teach (which is to say, facilitate learning while being underpaid and underappreciated). I stopped teaching to write a book. I stopped writing to publicize my book. Sometime in there, I became a consultant, which is to say, a…

My grandfather, an alcoholic, once lifted his end of the dining room table so that the whole dinner, all of the dishes and food for a family of seven, slid down into the lap of my grandmother, a paraplegic. Glass shattered, gravy oozed over the side of the table, kids…

“Will you write another book?” people cannot help but ask me. It’s like asking if I plan to grow another arm? If I will go to Jupiter? If I’d like to repeat orthodonture, law school and three natural childbirths? Writing a book is like raising a kid. The birth of…

This morning I face an ascent up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. I know these 18 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing. I’ve completed this hike three times before, at ages 19, 29, and 39. This time, I’m 49-years-old and in a week I will descend into mid-life with…

Last Tuesday I was enjoying a late lunch of organic quinoa with micro greens and ginger kombucha with my new friend Gisele. We figured out that we had an incredible amount in common: We married handsome men from the Bay Area, athletes who grew up with media attention and adoration…

The sense of security and equanimity only comes from within — Over the course of my life, I’ve called almost forty places home. Dirty farmhouses, midcentury-modern boxes, muggy warehouse spaces, and suburban homes with beautiful bones. My mom and I moved a lot when I was a kid. Not my father — he left us when I was only two years…

Excerpt from Almost Innocent: From searching to saved in America’s criminal justice system by Shanti Brien (Amplify Publishing, 2021) I knew the bleak path through the criminal justice system. In my work as a criminal appellate attorney, I witness hope and resilience; I see gratitude and self-awareness. But mostly, I…

The graduation ceremony has never been more important than during these uncertain times. “My dear terrified graduates, you are about to enter the most uncertain and most thrilling part of your lives.” -Lin-Manuel Miranda In 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda, of Hamilton fame, spoke at the graduation ceremony at the University of Pennsylvania, expressing the conflicting emotions the gowned graduates most likely felt. Only four…

Last week, when I asked my fifth grader what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said “a unicorn” without hesitation. Apart from the non-traditional gender thing which I so appreciate about that choice, I also loved the fact that I wouldn’t have to buy another costume; my son has…