PARE Is Here – And You Were Building the Whole Time
PARE is our latest release, asking: how many versions of yourself did it take to get here?
I don’t mean that as a trick question. I mean the you who softened her accent in one meeting and turned it all the way up at the family party. The you who said yes when every bone said no. The you who learned a whole new set of rules in a new city, a new job, a new marriage, a new grief — and kept showing up anyway. Ogres have layers, Shrek told us (the most quoted wisdom of 2001, and I stand by it). So do we. Nobody ever handed us instructions for what to do with ours.
So I wrote some.
PARE: 100 Reminders for the Unwavering Self is out — and I’ll confess something. I’ve refreshed that Amazon page more times this week than I’m willing to put in writing. (Okay. A lot. Let’s leave it at a lot.)
Here’s how it started. When readers finished Artificially Flavored Layers, they wrote back — and without being asked, they kept naming the same handful of things: masks, code-switching, reinvention, betrayal, and what actually makes a place home. Nine stories had cracked open a conversation I didn’t know we were having. So I went looking for those truths directly.
A famous line is attributed to Michelangelo: he saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set it free. Gorgeous. But we are not marble, and no finished angel is hiding underneath, tapping her foot, waiting for us to get our act together.
Pare is a kitchen word before it’s a book title. When you pare yams, a tangerine, or an apple, you’re not hunting for some other food or fruit buried inside; you’re trimming what’s not useful, hard, or bruised so you can keep what feeds you. That’s the whole premise of this book: paring isn’t erasing who you’ve been. It’s choosing which layers still serve you, and letting the rest fall away.
The 100 reminders move through five movements — think of them as five rooms in the same house:
- The Layers We Wear — identity, and the masks we put on to get through the door
- The Codes We Carry — the rules handed to us before we were old enough to question them, and the quiet art of code-switching
- What Crossed the Border and What Didn’t — reinvention, and what we packed (and left behind) on the way to somewhere new
- The Doorway Truth Needs — betrayal, trust, and the courage to ask whether something is worth saving
- Home Is Something You Keep Building — because home was never a finish line
What you’ve told me so far
The first reviews started arriving on October 3, and I’ve read every single one more than once.
Jay called it a reflection on identity that doesn’t ask you to apologize for surviving — and noticed something I hoped someone would. In these pages, code-switching is translation, not betrayal. The voice that says yes when your body says no is a bodyguard, not a fraud. Jay summed up the ending as being handed permission to stop apologizing. I sat with that one for a while.
Then Mary Lee wrote this:
“I’m tired of self-help that treats my life like a problem to solve. This book doesn’t.” — Mary Lee, Amazon review
She told me (well, told Amazon — same thing this week) that an entry about a parking lot serving as a chapel with terrible acoustics made her laugh, then tear up. If you’ve ever cried in your car between errands, you already know that chapel. We’ve all held service there.
RayS said you can read just one a day or several in a row, and that the same entry lands differently depending on what life is doing that week. Some days, RayS wrote, you just open the book and see what you land on. Yes! That is exactly how I hoped it would be used — like a vitamin, or a friend who picks up on the first ring. Jo’sTreasures named who it’s for in one breath: anyone who has felt the pressure to change themselves to belong. And Melissa M called it a nice gift for any woman, which — with the holidays tiptoeing closer — I am choosing to hear as a prophecy.
One more thing made me smile. Ely Cerda said her favorite part was the verses at the end of the book. Mary Lee, on the other hand, said the faith-based anchors weren’t always her speed — but she appreciated the comfort. I love both answers. That’s exactly where I placed those anchors: low on the page, quiet, there for whoever reaches for them. Nobody gets a sermon. Everybody gets a hand on the shoulder.
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” — Psalm 139:14
The line that keeps coming back
What moved me most was how many of you landed, in your own words, on the same truth the book is built around. Mary Lee put it this way: nothing in these pages says she’s waiting for her real life to start — it says she’s been building it the whole time.
That’s it. That’s the book.
You were never underneath the layers, waiting to be found. You were building the whole time.
So here’s my invitation. PARE is on Kindle for $6.99—and free with Kindle Unlimited—and the paperback ($15.99) is for anyone who likes to underline, dog-ear, and leave it face-down on the nightstand like the rest of us. Read it in order or out of it. Open it on a hard morning. Argue with the ones that don’t fit yet.
Get a Signed Copy of PARE (USA Orders Only)
And if it meets you somewhere real, would you leave an honest review? Each one helps the next reader find her way to it—and, as you can tell, I read them all.
Peace to every version of you that got you here — and to the one still becoming.
Prompt: Which layer are you keeping this season — and which one are you ready to pare?
— Ama
Sources: Shrek (DreamWorks, 2001); Psalm 139:14 (NIV); customer reviews of PARE on Amazon.com, October 3–6, 2026.
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