about that.) Maybe, like so many of us, you’re having a hard time making sense of our unpredictable reality, and you’re searching for words, ideas, and people with whom you can connect and from whom you might learn a thing or three. I am, too. Always. We all want to feel a bit more hopeful, and a lot less alone.
Whatever your reason, I’m happy you’re here. Grateful, too. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I forded a river of insecurities and fears to write this book (paging Mr. Drama), and it’s an honor to share it with you. A dream come true, really. That said, just to manage your expectations, I’m absolutely certain the answers to all life’s challenges are not contained within the pages of this book. I’m also somewhat certain that some answers to some of life’s challenges (some of the time) are contained here — at least answers that have helped me find more peace, joy, and meaning. Answers that often begin and end with love. Since we’re all so similar — once you dig beneath the surface to our human insecurities, fears, and joys — I’m confident some of these answers, as well as many of the questions I pose, will resonate with you in some way. We don’t have to live each other’s stories to understand each other’s lives. If the lovely people in my social media community have taught me anything, it’s that we’re pretty much all the same, and we each have so much to learn from one another.
We all want to give and receive love.
We all want to be seen.
I see you, by the way, and you’re positively radiant.
In each chapter of this book, I share a personal experience that pulled me from my center — that shook me up — and the ways in which I brought myself back to peace, and to love. Some of the experiences are tragic, like my parents’ murder in 1985, and my brother’s heroin overdose nine years later. In those chapters you won’t likely be snickering at my clever delivery (assuming you’ve snickered at all so far). Making my way back to center has entailed integrating those realities into my life rather than finding any real closure with them. Does anyone honestly find closure with grief?
Most of the stories, however, reflect on everyday challenges we can all relate to, like the weight of shame, the search for happiness, the struggle to be authentic, and the awkwardness of sperm donation. (Well, maybe you can’t relate to that one.) I look at situations that provoked my mind to do its crazy dance, which just happens to be my mind’s favorite way to boogie. Throughout these chapters, I focus on the many mandates of love, such as kindness, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness. I consider what happens when we choose love over fear, the heart over the ego. (Spoiler alert: really good stuff.) I don’t shy away from the times I’ve acted like a total asshole, either. In fact, they make perfect examples of how much harder life is when we operate outside the energy of love. (Spoiler alert #2: way harder.)
Though I knew I wanted the book’s title to be Big Love — because I love those two words together and because that’s my most common sign-off to my Facebook community — I wasn’t sure it captured the content well enough. Then I considered all the different examples I share in these pages, all the ways in which I’ve struggled to be compassionate or forgiving or gracious or kind. The instances of overwhelming envy or self-righteousness, the moments of embarrassing failure and shame. In each instance, it was love that carried me back to my center. Love encouraged me to show up for my life authentically. Love challenged me to move forward, despite my fears. Every single time, love walked me home.
The one thing I know for sure:
Love makes life better. Love heals.
Okay, that’s two things, but you get the picture.
Choose love for a week, and see if your life doesn’t feel different. That’s homework, by the way, so get to it. Every time you’re inclined to act from anger or blame or self-righteousness or condemnation, stop yourself, take a good, long breath, and invite love into the moment. Just to see what happens. I’m betting on something great. Even miraculous.
This feels like a good time to get to the actual book. (Unless you’re here for the HBO series and still haven’t figured out you’re in the wrong place. Or are you?)
Before we dive in, I want to give a shout-out to my Facebook community. I wish I could blast trumpets for them. I have no doubt that this book exists, in great part, because of the love and support they’ve shown me the past few years — and because there are a lot of them, which made me that much more appealing to my publisher. They’ve kept me inspired to show up, to keep writing, and to share my truth. They’ve helped me through some dark moments and have reminded me — when I really needed the reminder — that I am not alone, and that I am loved. They’ve encouraged me to keep moving forward and to create a life that more closely reflects my dreams. (It’s happening!) I’m so very grateful for their belief in me.
To you reading this right now, whoever and wherever you are, I hope you never doubt that you are beautiful, resilient, and so very worthy of love, just as you are. Thank you for going on this journey with me. May we get lost in hope, inspiration, clarity, connection, fun and, of course, BIG LOVE.
I was fourteen when my parents were shot and killed in their Detroit fruit market. Mary’s Market. That’s what the sign said when they bought the store many years before, so they stuck with the name. All their customers called my mom Mary, even though her name was Camille. She never corrected them. My dad, James, was Jimmy to all. Jimmy and Camille Stabile. Fifty-eight and fifty-six years old. Married for thirty-seven years. Parents to seven children. Murdered on a Monday morning in September.
I had spent that weekend at my sister Rose’s house. We had just finished breakfast when my brother Jimmy called to tell her that a neighbor had spotted our parents’ empty navy-blue Camaro parked outside their market. The market’s doors were still closed and locked, hours after they should have been opened. Nobody inside was answering the phone.
I saw my sister’s panic and felt my own. My parents’ store was in a rough neighborhood of Detroit, too familiar with violent crime, and nothing about this situation seemed right. Where are you? I thought. Just answer the phone and tell us you’re okay. I feared the worst but chose to stay hopeful until we knew what had happened. It’s difficult enough to accept a loved one’s death when it’s certain, impossible to do so when there’s any doubt. Without confirmation, my parents stayed alive in my mind. Barely.
Rose and I hurried to her brown Chevy Chevette and headed to her husband, Joe’s, restaurant — the Ham Palace — where he and my sister Kim worked. We would gather there while Jimmy drove to my parents’ store to find out what was going on. I don’t recall what Rose and I talked about, if anything, during the ride. All I remember is the “Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” playing on the radio. Other songs must have played during the twenty-five minutes it took for us to get to the Ham Palace, but I recall only that saxophone-soaked instrumental. It was the soundtrack to those final, hopeful thoughts of a future life with my parents and will forever be the song I associate with losing them.
My brother-in-law closed the restaurant early, and he, Rose, Kim, and I, along with Lori, a family friend who worked there, waited for news about my parents. My mind raced between hope and fear, between possibility and dread, between a simple misunderstanding and a life-changing nightmare. I had just stepped out of the bathroom when my brother Jimmy arrived. I stopped at the bathroom door and watched, from across the restaurant, as he spoke words I couldn’t hear to my sisters. Then came their screams. Those I heard clearly. Rose and Kim collapsed into each other’s arms and wailed. And hope vanished.
I slipped back into the dark bathroom, crouched in the corner beside the urinal, and sobbed to the sound of my sisters’ screams. To this day, I have still never felt as alone as I did that day in the bathroom. I wanted my sisters to hold me, too. I wanted to insert myself into their grip, but I couldn’t make myself go out there. I couldn’t walk into that reality, and so I stayed, on the piss-stained floor, alone. Lost. Shocked and shaking. I heard Rose ask, “Where’s Scott?” just before Lori walked in, knelt down beside me, and wrapped me in her