Spending my week writing out personal notes and mailing advanced reader copies of my new book, and honestly, even with the stack of books before me it doesn’t feel real…
What many don’t know is that I first sat down to write this book in 2017. I rewrote the first 3 chapters more times than I care to admit. I struggled to get my story onto the pages in a way that would be of service to others. Each time the pages felt dark and angry. I was frustrated, unsure of how to proceed and frustrated that I sat here block trying to write a book I had never set out to write. The outline for the book had been put on my path by the universe and yet here I sat, unsure as to why. In the book, I took about that warm summer night, when I jumped out of the shower to grab my phone and write down the flurry of thoughts and words I seem to be downloading. At first glance, it seemed like a jumble of words that I may form into a post or article, but after a second look, I realized I had just written down the chapters titles of the book I was meant to write.
After a year of very little process and multiple rewrites, I went to one of my mentors for guidance. Her response was simple. Stop writing.
I was taken aback. It seemed counter-intuitive that the way to write the book was for me to stop writing. But she went on. Explaining that there was a part of my story that remained unhealed, and until I processed it, released my judgments, and did the work, I would not be able to write the book I was meant to write.
Reluctantly, I listened. I spent the next 5 months doing the work. Work I thought I had already done, might I add. I left myself go back into those emotions, I let myself feel the anger and the hurt, all over again, and I sat with it. Day after day, meditating and journaling my way through it. Reflecting and releasing. Bringing in more light to dispel the darkness. It brought me in deeper, closer to myself, and healed wounds I didn’t realize were there. And as I result I was able to write, and write I did. Over the course of 6 weeks, the words spilled out onto the page. Same story, same outline, but told from a different perspective and with a different purpose. And in October I get to share it will all of you. Which is both exciting and terrifying?
These pages are filled with so much love, that had I not taken a break, I never would have been able to write this book in its current form. The point is, detours, aren’t really detours. They’re opportunities to realign and set us off in the right direction.
Shifting our perspective around detours and obstacles, helps us release our resistance, surrendering to the will of a plan for us that may be far greater than what we could have imagined for ourselves.
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