Feeling Better: Why I Wrote This Book

I love to sit in trees and read, don't you?
Photo by Jalen Laine Photography.

A couple of weeks ago, I let you know that I wrote a book. A book! It's called Feeling Better: A Field Guide to Liking Yourself and it's coming out in February of 2019. I want to share with you guys a little more about what led me to write this particular book.

I started writing it a long time ago - I'm going to guess it was around 2010 that the first bits of it came out onto the "page" of my computer screen. At first, I wrote it because I needed it. I had previously developed a set of practices and habits that helped me get over my depression and learn to see myself as a person with value, instead of a thoroughly unloveable and worthless creature. It was a lot of work, teaching myself that I had any kind of value at all.

Then, after I had the revelation, did the work, and finally believed it to be true, life went on. At some point, I started a relationship that, when it ended, broke me. Not just my heart - it broke me. I was left in pieces and the only way I could glue myself back together was writing. I wrote down all those practices that had previously saved me. All the things that, last time I had to put myself together, had been the glue that made it stick. I wrote about the healing I had found once, a long time ago.

Eventually, time and friends and life and my heart and that writing practice did their thing and I did heal.

That's when I started to realize that maybe, just maybe, this collection of habits and exercises could be useful for someone else. I couldn't find anything like it; it seemed all the self-help books were either written by experts in their field who were writing from a place of authority but no personal experience, or personal stories woven into narratives without clear directives in terms of practical things that brought healing.

I realized that it was possible that the practices that had saved me could save someone else.

So then, naturally, I proceeded to ignore the book for several years, plucking away at it in tiny increments and mostly avoiding the calling I had just found in myself because that's what happens when you find a calling much bigger than yourself! (There is nothing like publishing a book about how to find your self-worth to help you question all the self-worth you have found in yourself.)

Finally, I realized that I had to just do it. I found an editor, and we polished that collection of writing up into a book. The book that I hope you will read in just a few months! (A few MONTHS!??!!! That's VERY SOON! EEK!)

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