I wanted to write an incredibly poignant, inspiring post for Earth Day. In the rare moments where one of my children didn’t happen to be spilling something, cutting a tooth, or having a tantrum because her shoes don’t velcro tightly enough, I sat and pondered what I should say. I knew it had to be amazing.

But not having slept through the night for the past nine months (still love you, buddy), I knew that it wasn’t going to be amazing. Heck, I’m so sleep deprived the last two emails I sent to bookstores had typos in them. TYPOS. And me, a writer. I started feeling overwhelmed. After all, conservation of our planet is one of my “things”, so much so that it’s a major theme throughout Kissing Frogs. The pressure I was putting on myself crippled me, until I thought. “Forget it, don’t bother.” And so I didn’t write the post.

Until now.

See, I know this post isn’t going to be amazing. And that’s okay. Because something floated to the top of consciousness during my hot yoga class last night. (Sweating in a hot and humid room next to half-naked strangers always has a way of making things clearer).

What came to me was this: “If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up doing nothing for nobody.”**

This quote (not mine) can be applied to every aspect of life. For writers, if you wait until the story is perfect before putting it down, it won’t get written. It’s also perfect for Earth Day. Sometimes it’s easy to be overwhelmed. The polar ice caps are melting, hundreds of species are going extinct every day, seas are rising, and things like fire, floods and drought are becoming the norm. But even small changes have the power to make a difference. Things like being careful with how much water you use, how much stuff you buy, how much meat you eat, all add up.

This Earth Day until Saturday, April 25th (Save the Frogs Day), the Kissing Frogs e-book (Kobo/iTunes/Amazon) will be on sale in Canada and I will be donating a portion of book sales to Save the Frogs! If you happen to purchase a book that day, feel free to contact me. It’s just a small thing, I know. But wait, here’s another quote:

“We each have within ourselves the ability to shape our own destinies. That much we understand. But, more important, each of us has an equal ability to shape the destiny of the universe. Ah, that you find more difficult to believe. But I tell you it is so. You do not have to be the leader of the Council. You do not have to be king or monarch or the head of a clan to have a significant impact on the world around you. In the vastness of the ocean, is any drop of water greater than another? No, you answer, and neither has a single drop the ability to cause a tidal wave. But, I argue, if a single drop falls into the ocean, it creates ripples. And these ripples spread. And perhaps – who knows – these ripples may grow and swell and eventually break foaming upon the shore. Like a drop in the vast ocean, each of us causes ripples as we move through our lives. The effects of whatever we do – insignificant as it may seem – spread out beyond us. We may never know what far-reaching impact even the simplest action might have on our fellow mortals. Thus we need to be conscious, all of the time, of our place in the ocean, of our place in the world, of our place among our fellow creatures. For if enough of us join forces, we can swell the tide of events – for good or for evil.” -Margaret Weis

Don’t let fear paralyze you from doing the little things and making a ripple. Don’t become indifferent or fatalistic or hopeless.

Don’t give up. There is still hope.

**When I googled to see who came up with the quote, I was taken to Ashton Kutcher’s Facebook page. Knowing that couldn’t be right, I dug a little deeper (search result number three), and came up with the name Malcolm Bane. Feel free to google him if you’re interested, though Ashton has better pictures.

xoxo