17. My book – OUT NOW !

I pause here from the February journal entries to post a real-time note, September 14:

My book  “Good Choice    A Soul’s Story”   is OUT NOW !  

People can actually buy it !  

Last Monday I received a package which looked suspiciously like a book. I wasn’t expecting it to be ready yet, as I’d just signed off on all the approvals a week before.

It’s hard to describe the feeling as I cut open the heavy cardboard and there was my book, with its beautiful shiny cover, and my name on the front !

It was so surreal to open up to the first page, as I have done for countless hundreds of books over my lifetime, and see the title, and the author – oh, wait, that’s me!

Then to flick through the pages and recognize the words I had written all those years ago, to see the bits I’d updated and elaborated on while staying in Tasmania earlier this year, to read the testimonials from my dear friends on the back cover, and to see the poems that had been in a folder in my wardrobe for over twenty years. My writing—in an actual book !

I’m absolutely thrilled with the front cover – it’s a found image that seems to have been made just for me, and it’s so inviting. It’s magical and enchanting, and feels like you want to jump right into the picture. I love the layout the designers did on the back cover as well, with the photo taken by my brilliant photographer niece @meaghancook in her family room.

As soon as I sat on the couch with my book in my hands, the tears came. There were so many emotions washing through me, none of which I can articulate clearly. Many people have kindly said how proud they are of me, but I can’t really identify with that. It’s more a feeling of humility; that I’ve somehow had these words given to me to help me make sense of my life, that my recent life experiences have led me to feel compassion and want to share it with others, and that I feel connection with future readers who may get something out of it. It’s a huge thing for Little Old Internalizing Me to undergo this transformation that I’m ready to share my very personal soul truth that’s been hiding in here all this time. It’s a huge shift for me, and I feel the blessing of having been brought to this point. It’s also been a huge amount of work – and it’s only 119 pages! I now have a renewed respect and admiration for authors.

It took a full week for me to consolidate this big news, and to feel that I was ready to share it. I’ll be having a proper book launch in about six weeks, but to get the ball rolling, today I’ve been sending it out via email, facebook and instagram, so there’s no going back now, no crawling back under the rock. It feels a little like the stage of childbirth when labour actually begins. Is it just me, or do most women feel like saying, “Oh, thank you, but I’ll be getting off the bed now. I’m not sure I want to do this after all.” ?

I repeat my mantra: “I align with the greater awareness that is driving the outcome of any situation.”

It’s available through Balboa Press website – “Bookshop”,  or through Amazon. I’ll link up the “Buy My Book” button on this website as soon as I figure out how to do that.