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3x/month stories for humans seeking depth and meaning.

I'm Janelle Hardy and at some point you signed up for this weekly (ish) newsletter on memoir-writing, somatic (body) healing and stories. If you'd like to leave, just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.

All the My Little Ponies I never wanted

I was eight years old.

Birthday parties were a Very Big Deal.

I campaigned and campaigned and Mom and Dad finally let me invite eleven friends to my party.

My greedy little heart immediately calculated the present possibilities. Eleven friends equals eleven presents, equals tons of Very Cool Toys.

The day came. Early October. I don't remember what we ate. I don't remember how we played. I don't remember the goody bags we must have made for all my friends (and 3 siblings) to have at the end.

I remember the moment I'd been waiting for. The moment when the birthday girl gets to open her presents. Me! Me, me, me.

Sitting in a circle with my eleven (could this be possible?!) friends surrounding me, I tore into the first present. A My Little Pony.

My heart sank.

I tore into the second present. Then the third. More My Little Ponies.

I tore into the fourth, fifth, sixth. My heart sank. A beautiful covetous variety of My Little Ponies. My friends' eyes lit up and they grabbed at the toys as they made the rounds, ooing and aahing.

This was the year of My Little Ponies. And, somehow, even though everyone was crazy about them, especially all the girls, I HATED THEM.

I don't know why. I don't know how, all I know and remember is a visceral, despising hatred for their high, anatomically impossible rumps, flirty hair and star and heart-stamped butts.

I just googled them. They're kinda cute.

But the eight-year-old heart knows what the eight-year-old heart desires. And it was, that year, against the grain of all other eight-year-old hearts.

Every single one of my 11+ presents was a My Little Pony.

I had a whole stable, and I didn't want any of them.

Chatting on the phone with my mom, I asked her if she remembered that birthday party. She laughed and said she sure did!

My gramma Julia, her mom, was there, snoring away.

My mom had fallen asleep beside her, and woke to find all of the My Little Ponies perched along her body.

And me.

Heartbroken.

I'd laid out such a plan, convinced my parents to let me invite eleven whole friends, dreamed about ALL THE PRESENTS, and, after getting ALL THE PRESENTS, discovered what happens when all you get is what you sincerely don't want.

Boo.

But please, take my tragic pain and use this little story as an inspired writing prompt!

See where it takes you. Maybe you were a kid in the 80s, and loved My Little Ponies. GOOD FOR YOU 🙄 (scoff scoff)!

On another note, I have something to share, where you won't be stuck with the one and only thing you don't want. Something with variety.

I'm a presenter in my colleague and writing/story expert Daniel David Wallace's free online summit, Find Your Readers, which runs July 20th to 23rd.

It's for writers of all levels (whether or not you've finished your first book) to help you build your audience.

As many of you know, if you're a writer you need readers. Which means you have to figure out how to reach your people, and marketing can be challenging.

I used to hate marketing but now I love it.

I find it to be a creative and spiritual challenge, and I use my newsletter and storytelling skills (like with this story above) to make invitations.

In my presentation I'm talking all about how I've grown and nurtured my newsletter list by telling stories, and taken up the invitation to spiritual and personal growth that creative entrepreneurship demands. Aka a trial by fiiire!

I get into a lot of specifics in my presentation that will be helpful if you're trying to figure out how to nurture your readers and you like my newsletter style, as I've spent hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars learning these skills.

Join Daniel Wallace's free Find Your Readers Summit here (*affiliate link). This is less a "book marketing summit" than a guide to building a public presence and to reaching the right people -- the people who will care about what you are writing.

xoxo,

Janelle

PS - The event has free and paid ticket options. You can actually watch the whole event live, for free, but it's also great to upgrade to the (very affordable) paid ticket(*affiliate link).

If you don't have a lot of time to devote during the event, buying the pass is the **best** way to attend this substantial, in-depth event, giving you the best possible benefit to your writing craft (because you can refer to the transcripts and watch the replays whenever you want).

In addition, pass buyers will receive an assortment of **bonuses** from speakers plus a "book" of the talk transcripts and an audio-only version of the summit for easy listening.

* affiliate link means it's a referral link. This means if you choose sign up for this pass, I'll receive a small percentage. This is a sweet and transparent way to market one's work by directing advertising and marketing money towards peers' cross-promotional shares, rather than into the pockets of Meta and google advertising.