Then, I got laid off. And, it was the refreshingly raw words of Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, who talked me down when I thought my young career was dying a very sudden, ego-crippling death. Getting laid off, despite all the practical "it's just business" reasoning, can demoralise you so swiftly and effectively that I wholeheartedly believed I wasn't qualified to write another published word again. Lamott's brash telling of her (many) failures and ways she got back up affirmed that 1) I was not crazy, or 2) at the least, I wasn't alone. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way taught me to haul my ass back to the drawing board and keep applying and writing and believing. And, when I eventually landed a job in NYC, Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In reminded me that work is hard but it's a hard-wrought privilege and something worth fighting for.