Like anyone, sometimes I feel a little uncertain about the path I’m on or a decision I’ve made. At these times, I know all I need is a small but powerful dose of Anaïs Nin – and one of her quotes was just the medicine I needed today.

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present.”

I feel like she has lived what I am living – that she has seen the internal struggles I face as a woman and a writer:
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

That her sprit understands mine:
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

She gives me strength to be confident:
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

And the confidence to be strong:
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

To expect happiness and fulfilment:
“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

Anaïs Nin was a strong and complex woman. I am so grateful we have the legacy of her writing and her diaries to benefit from her insights and experiences.

Little Birds was the inspiration for my own collection of sensual short stories, Love, Lust & Nipple Clamps.