23: Mindfulness for Writers with Claire Parsons

Shonda Ramsey interviews Claire Parsons, a lawyer and mindfulness instructor, who discusses her journey from practicing law to writing and teaching mindfulness. She emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in her life, which helped her manage anxiety and depression. Claire launched her blog, Brilliant Legal Mind, in 2020 and published her first book, "How to be a Badass Lawyer," in 2022. She also wrote a children's book, "Mommy Needs a Minute." Claire advises new writers to start small, use tools like LinkedIn, and maintain a consistent practice. She highlights the value of community and support in overcoming writer's block and self-doubt.
Connect with Claire Here:
Connect with her on LinkedIn: / claireeparsons
Follow her blog on LinkedIn: / brilliantlegalmind
Visit her website: www.brilliantlegalmind.com
Purchase her book: a.co/d/1cyOQT9
Purchase her children’s book: a.co/d/iofvlkQ
Claire’s Bio:
I am Claire E. Parsons, lawyer, mindfulness teacher, speaker, and author. My journey is one with many facets and not all of them have been planned. I practice in the areas of school law, employment law, and litigation at Bricker Graydon LLP in the Cincinnati area. I love practicing law and serving my clients and community through my work.
For much of my life continuing into the early years of my law practice, though, I struggled with anxiety, overthinking, and perfectionism. At times, this would spike into depression and it culminated with the hardest experience with this after the birth of my first daughter. She’s now a preteen and doing great but the experience was a wake up call for me. I realized I could not afford to keep living in the same pattern and I had to try a new approach. When I had recovered from my experience with postpartum depression, I started a meditation practice that changed my life in many ways.
In the years after, I became obsessed with understanding why the practice had helped me so much. I read and studied extensively and began attending retreats to develop my practice further. Ultimately, I began speaking and writing about mindfulness on LinkedIn, blogs, and for other outlets, which led to me becoming trained to teach it. I am now certified to teach mindfulness and other modalities and I founded the Brilliant Legal Mind blog in 2020 to share resources and instruction to make mindfulness more accessible and relevant to lawyers and professionals. In 2022, I published my first book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, a 4-week guide to help lawyers easily learn meditation practice. The following year, I published a children’s book called Mommy Needs a Minute, a comical take on the struggle of finding quiet time for meditation as a parent.
Claire’s Letter to You:
I know you may feel like you don't know how to write a book. You might even be doubting whether you can write a book. And on top of this, there may be doubts about whether anyone will buy or read your book even if you get it done. I don't have a magic strategy to make those doubts go away, but I can say from experience that they shouldn't keep you from writing. Sometimes our dreams don't work out and we run into roadblocks. It's still worth it to try. The act of writing is good for the soul, even if the outcome of our words is not entirely in our hands. I started playing around a few years ago and step by step became a writer. I did this even while managing a law practice and a family. It was not easy but I am grateful for every step. Writing didn't necessarily change my whole life but it changed how I viewed my life and I wish that same thing for you.

[@BrilliantLegalMind]

Thanks for having me on the show. It was great to talk with you about my 2 favorite things.