Meet Stephanie Larkin

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stephanie Larkin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stephanie, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Growing up I suffered from a number of physical issues. In fact, I couldn’t walk from the time I was 14 until past 18 years old. At the time, doctors were unsure of what exactly was wrong, and it took 6 operations to get me to where I am today. The whole time, my mother never let me feel disabled in any way. I still went to school dances and proms, went away to summer camp each summer, and took the subways all over New York by myself. As a teen I played violin with the New York Youth Symphony, which meant that I was taking the subways on crutches with a violin strapped to my back all the way to Carnegie Hall for rehearsals each weekend – and that was before the stations had elevators!

My mother taught me resilience from an early age. Mom was a single mother who raised me and my brother while working her way up the ranks in the Post Office to become the supervisor of the northeast region, all while running the PTA and going to college at night to earn her Bachelor’s Degree. Mom never let anything bring her down, and she never let me see anything in my own life as a liability – just something that made me unique. I learned resilience from the best!

My mother was raised by my grandmother and great-grandmother – two fabulous single mothers who raised her to be a strong, independent woman. My grandmother was one of the original skater girls for Western Union – roller skating back and forth across the enormous office building delivering telegrams – while her mother took care of my mom. I proudly come from three generations of strong, resilient women who lived together in a tenement in Manhattan.

I was also gifted with a fabulous, resilient daughter, who most certainly has embraced her genetics in the best possible way. Kathleen is an Air Force officer who has been a gifted leader both here as well as oversees while deployed. Whether she was earning awards for physical training or keeping her unit calm under drone strikes, she has proven to be quite irrepressible. When people comment about my own strength and abilities to bounce back and forge ahead in difficulties, I think of the amazing women before me – and behind me – whom I admire and emulate in my own life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Stephanie Larkin is the “head penguin” of Red Penguin Books an independent publishing company
for over 15 years. Stephanie is the host of television’s The Author Corner, an award-winning educational cable TV series airing in Queens and Long Island, airing on Verizon and Optimum, Between the Covers – the show for readers, and writers, and lovers of books, and her podcast Once and Future Authors, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. Stephanie’s goal and company motto is “Changing lives … one book at a time!”

Back on the home front, Stephanie has been married for 25+ years to her best friend Kieran – a fellow author and teacher. They have 3 children who are somehow wildly different yet an amazing combination of them both – a college student, an actor/artist, and an Air Force officer. They love to travel the world, and when not seeing sites from Macchu Pichu to the Parthenon, they enjoy their cats and dog at home.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three qualities that make the most impact on my journey are optimism, flexibility, and openness.
I have optimism in that I expect the best outcomes to occur – not by chance, but due to working hard to achieve my goals. If one is not optimistic and does not expect their dreams to come true, then they will subsequently not work hard and achieve them. Our thoughts influence our beliefs, which in turn affects our actions and thus our outcomes, and so lacking optimism will truly affect your results.

Flexibility is crucial because life does have a way of throwing curve balls. Four years ago the world was shaken with a global pandemic, and it was those individuals and businesses with the most flexibility who were able to not only survive but to thrive in those unprecedented circumstances.

Openness is vital because the opposite – closemindedness – implies that one thinks that one already knows everything that there is to know. Being open to new people, new ideas, and new concepts means that you aren’t arrogant enough to think that you know all, and that you realize that the only true constant in the world is change.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

When I feel overwhelmed, I can generally trace it directly to the feeling that I have too many “spinning plates in the air” and feel as if I am losing control. While I generally thrive on juggling many projects at once, the overwhelm enters the picture when I can’t see a clear path and I have far too many details going on in my head.

To combat the feeling of being overwhelmed, I focus on documentation. A chaotic desk, an overflowing email box, and looming deadlines that are all stored in my head will make me feel stressed and anxious, but if I clear through the clutter, answer or delegate the email, and create a task list that itemizes certain items for each day – being sure to accomplish needed tasks in time for deadlines – I will feel in control each time I look at that list and check of the next item.

Breaking larger projects into small tasks that can be accomplished sequentially also helps to combat the feeling of overwhelm. Whether walking across a canyon or tackling my emails, everything gets accomplished by taking things just one step at a time, so focusing on just the next step – and not the next mountain – helps me to combat the anxiety and stress that come with always looking at the “big picture.”

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