Unfolding the Heart: One Woman’s Quest for True Nature by Rosanne Annoni will be available for purchase on September 29, 2026.
Dear Rosanne Annoni,
In the days before my students leave campus for break, I read the following quote from Pema Chödrön to my students:
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
In my own practice — creative, professional, and personal — I have been working towards this loop of throwing myself out of the nests I create. Receiving the press release for this book, I felt as though your experience staying in Chödrön’s lodgings called to me.
I am taken by your quoting of St. Teresa of Avila: “Let nothing disturb you.”
In a therapy session just before the new year, I told my therapist that my New Year’s goal was to be “more responsive, less reactive.” Having spent the vast majority of my life riddled with a laundry list of anxieties, my goal for 2026 was to find ways to mitigate my reactivity. For example, if I were to receive a startling email, rather than jumping up and rushing to answer it, my goal would be to allow myself to put the task aside until I am calm and collected. I don’t know quite how successful I’ve been at this, but it is a goal I wish to continue working towards.
I will admit that I find it incredibly difficult to ask for help. In fact, allowing others to assist me with my mental load is one of my biggest hurdles. I would rather drown in my sorrows than let someone in to help me dig myself out of a hole. I am struck by the depth of your relationship with Mike throughout your memoir; I am lucky, in a sense, that I can identify with this friendship. Over the past decade or so, I have been blessed to have a steadfast friendship with
What a blessing it is to find someone who might not be a carbon copy of you, but who you share values with. We might not have the same goals, taste in books, or clothing styles, but I know that I can send her a message out of the blue — even if we haven’t spoken in a while — and our relationship dynamic remains the same.
While I have struggled with keeping a faith or sense of spirituality over the course of my life, I feel there is much I can learn from you. Unfolding the Heart, while deeply rooted in your spiritual practice, holds lessons we — spiritual or not — can latch on to.
Thank you for sharing your story with the world.
All my best,
Carlin Steere
FanMail/Interview Editor
Carlin Steere
